Aussie-land, Day 2c: Australian War Museum

I had only a taste of the museum as I did join a tour, but then had to leave afterwards as I had some errands to run.  Tomorrow is a public holiday, Canberra Day, so I had to make sure I did what I had to do (buy a sim card so that the cell I had could work; get a card reader for my photos).

Anyhow, it is a most impressive display, with most of the focus on World War I and II, although there were parts dedicated to conflict before World War I (mostly Boer War) and after WWII (Korea, Vietnam, peacekeeping).  I only saw the World Wars stuff. 

I was really struck by the discussion of Gallipoli, which plays a very similar role to Australia's sense of nationhood as Vimy does for Canadians.  As this display demonstrates, the topography here was just awful for a landing.  One of the most notable features of the entire museum, but especially the Gallipoli stuff, is the critical angles are often taken.  There was a dispute a few years ago about US displays acknowledging the possibility that the atomic bombings might not have been necessary.  No problem here for the Aussies to be clear about mistakes made.

As one approaches the museum, several sites stand out.  There are a series of plaques for units in one or more wars, urging people not to forget the sacrifices made.  I took a heap of pictures and am only including a few:

•  The first is interesting because it is a WWI unit that was everywhere, including the Somme and Gallipoli.  Just astounding.  I caught one great quote about Gallipoli: "You just had to sit there and wait for your bullet.

• The second is striking because it, like many Aussie units in World War II, not only fought in the Med but then again later in places like Borneo.  I am a big fan of Band of Brothers, which shows how much just one company went through from D-Day to Holland to Bastogne.  Well, these Aussies had not just one year of fighting, but four years or more from deserts to jungles. 
• The third is interesting because Australia has its own Vietnam experience about which Americans know nothing.

Besides the plaques, there is also a rail gun captured by the Aussies towards the end of WWI; a tank, a gun from the HMS Australian and other stuff.

Once inside the first thing you see is the eternal flame that can be seen from the Prime Minister's office.  Well, if all the doors were open and he had great binoculars.  This hall in the museum is surrounded by plaques with the names of the folks lost in all of Australia's wars with, as Canadians would note, poppies inserted by friends and family.

The centerpiece is their Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which is under the dome of the building.  It has stained glass windows with portraits of WWI figures, with labels describing the attributes of Australian solders/sailors/airmen/nurses under them:

• Coolness (referring to cool under fire, not trendy or Fonz-like), Control, Audacity, Endurance, Decision, Resource, Candor, Devotion, Generosity, Independence, Patriotism, Chivalry, Loyalty, and a few that I missed.

The WWII figures are murals, as the pic here shows--sailor, soldier, airman, nurse.  The one of the airman depicts the tragedy that is the bombing of civilian cities--again pretty striking critique of a past armed effort.

The World War I displays were very good at illustrating the challenges of that war--the stupidity that was Gallipoli, marked by only one successful effort--the evacuation that ended it; the mud and artillery of the Western front; and the role of horses in the more mobile middle eastern front.

We ran more quickly through the WWII displays, but a couple of things became clear. 

• As mentioned above, they had units fight in multiple theatres, from the North Africa campaign to Borneo.  First, they got screwed by the British, put in difficult spots like Tobruk. Then, they got scrwed by MacArthur as they were used to clean up some islands after the war was largely decided.
• American teaching of the war tend to overlook a bit the Eastern side of the African campaign, but this is nothing compared to the focus in the Pacific--on the Naval battles and the big efforts by the Marines (Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa), but there is never much coverage of the battles over Port Moresby and eventually Borneo.
• That the Aussies might still be bitter towards the Japanese.  I have not talked to any about this, but given the tenor of the displays, I had the same feeling that I had when I went through a museum in Leningrad (when it was still Leningrad).  The displays had pictures of the building before the Germans came and then after ... and there was a group of German tourists behind mine.  So, I wonder how Japanese tourists feel.  Especially after:
• The focus on the Bataan death march has apparently caused the bookend event of another death march at the end of the war in Borneo to be overlooked.  The Japanese force-marched surviving prisoners of war at the very end of the war, leading to only six survivors of a group of more than one thousand.  

On the way out, a couple of more photos.

1. The statue is of Simpson--a young man who became famous for collecting the wounded at Gallipoli and carrying them down the hills with his donkey.  He lasted less than a month, but seems to be known to all Australians from their reactions to his name during the tour.

1.  This is the plaque for a memorial to the guys who died in one of the last atrocities of the war by the Japanese (and yes, the US and others committed atrocities as well, namely the fire-bombing of Tokyo, but one wrong does not justify the other).