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From: Bryn Dolan
Date: 2/21/2002
Time: 1:29:39 PM
Remote Name: 61.25.30.102
I agree with whoever answered the post originally. Commemoration of events such as Gallipoli and Singapore is not the same as 'celebrating' them. People died during these times and if we take a little time out of our lives each year to remember them, that doesn't seem too much to ask. Anybody who prefers not to join in is entitled not to. We do sometimes lose sight of the fact, though, that in the larger scheme of things, both these took place in wars in which we were the 'winners', and winners usually do celebrate.
As for those who took the law into their own hands, why is that in itself necessarily a bad thing? Why do we never hear a bad word against, for example, Peter Lalor of the Eureka Stockade, or some of the soldiers at Gallipoli who are said to have summarily executed snipers and 'spies'? Is the difference that they survived, or that not many people are aware of the incidents, while the others mentioned (Breaker Morant and Ned Kelly) became controversial because they were executed and therefore became easier targets? It could be, and is, often, argued that all had been pushed too far and had hit back against injustice.
Someone mentioned in the case of Handcock, Morant and Witton, that Nuremberg destroyed the defence of following orders. At the time of the court martial in question, Nuremberg was 43 years and two world wars in the future, and can not by any stretch of the imagination be said to have had any bearing on what happened in 1902.
Has anybody read 'Shoot Straight You Bastards' yet?
B Dolan www.anzacs.org