gerardcharleswilson

Villers-Bretonneux: "Nothing to do but go forward and die hard"

During these days when the loss of male identity is so evident in the unrestrained violence of many young men and the effete exhibitions of homosexual activists whose march on society's institutions appears unstoppable, it is some consolation when Anzac Day comes around in Australia each year. This last Anzac Day (25 April) marks a pleasing development.

For a long time the focus of the commemoration of the exploits of the Anzac (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) soldier has understandably been on the military disaster of Gallipoli. Most Australians believe this military disaster on an isolated peninsula of Turkey forged the Australian identity. The qualities of mateship, courage an an attitude of never-say-die which we Australians pride ourselves on came to the fore during those terrible futile months. But what was a military disaster was also a moral triumph, a triumph of the spirit.

That spirit was never so fully on display than in the military offensive undertaken at the end of the First World War by two Australian brigades to liberate the French town of Villers-Bretonneux from German occupation. It was a critical battle, the British generals thinking that if the Germans broke through and captured Amiens the war would be lost. The key tactic of the Australians was to rush the enemy from the trenches. It was a dramatic departure from the trench warfare.

The assault began at 10pm on 24 April. It was a do-or-die attack. The diggers took out the German machine guns then fought the enemy in a ferocious house-to-house confrontation. One German officer later wrote that the Australians 'were magnificent, nothing seemed to stop them. When our fire was heaviest, they just disappeared in shell holes and came up as soon as it slackened.'

By dawn on 25 April, exactly three years after the Anzacs stormed ashore at Gallipoli, the Australians had broken through the German positions and the French and Australian flags were raised over Villers-Bretonneux. It took the rest of the day and into the next to secure the town. But secure it they did and the Anzacs established a new front line, marking the end of the German offensive on the Somme. A British General called the Anzac attack 'perhaps the greatest individual feat of the war'.

These passages are taken from the report on the link below. What is missing in that report is that the determination of those young men, some of whom were not more than seventeen-years-old, was expressed in the motto that ran openly through the ranks:

Nothing to do but go forward and die hard

It is sobering and makes one pause at the exhibition of so much manly courage and determination. These were ordinary young men from all walks of life. It was not the violence of war that brought them across the world to an obscure part of France. It was the principle of a manly moral freedom - as Edmund Burke called it - that motivated them. Their spirit and courage present a model for young men to follow.

The spirit of Gallipoli and Villers-Bretonneux is still preserved in its most undiluted form in our military, in the men (it is overwhelmingly men) who willingly offer themselves to protect the freedoms of a society formed over the centuries, but now under internal and external assault. No tribute is great enough for the young men in Afghanistan and Iraq who know what's at stake and what true courage is.

Honour and gratitude is due to Jason Marks for making the supreme sacrifice and our condolences to his wife and children.

29 April 2008

Villers-Bretonneux: "Nothing to do but go forward and die hard"

Nothing to do but go forward and die hard