Graham Seal

Anzac: The Sacred in the Secular

Anzac is the single most powerful, manifestation of an ambivalence that lies at the heart of sense of national identity. The Anzac mythology provides the energy that drives the cultural script which powers the values, attitudes and beliefs of the Australians.

'‘… and in the morning …’: adapting and adopting the dawn service'

Abstract This article examines the structural malleability of the dawn service and the appeal it subsequently has for adaptation – or appropriation – by interests with a need to express, validate or perhaps procure its strong appeal to popular nationalism. A brief account of the history and mythology of the dawn service is given to indicate its origins and development as the element of Anzac Day with the most consistently popular appeal. A morphology of the ritual structure of the event is provided, with illustrative examples from Western Australia, Queensland and Canberra to show the broad variety of format that the morphology allows, while still retaining what large numbers of Australians apparently consider its integral national significance. Two recent instances of adaptation of the dawn service to ostensibly non-Anzac observances for the Bali bombings and Australia Day are then discussed to illustrate the appeal of the morphology to both official and community interests. The article concludes by arguing that the morphological elements of the dawn service can be adapted into a diversity of ritual frameworks that reflect and reinforce the different but, in this case, intersecting imperatives of government and communities.

‘We're Here Because We're Here’: Trench Culture of the Great War

English-speaking soldiers of the Great War created a large ‘trench press’, a body of periodicals by, for, and about their experiences. They contain a wealth of folkloric material and indications of its significance and functions. While acknowledging the constraints involved in retrieving once-living traditions from the fragmentary survival of mostly makeshift periodicals, this article describes and discusses the processes involved in the creation and development of an especially well-defined folk culture in unprecedented and extreme circumstances. While some elements of soldier folklore, especially song, verse, and language, have been the subject of usually discrete interest by folklorists, this is the first attempt to understand a range of folkloric practice and expression in the context of a particular set of combat circumstances.

Things We Want to Know

The importance of the trench newspapers as mediators of the zones of war and as an outlet of the oral culture of the trench is well exemplified in their roles as rumour sheets and grassroots chroniclers of the conflict. Contemporaneous evidence for oral cultures is difficult to obtain except by direct or tangential documentary references and allusions. Even where such evidence can be obtained, it is often difficult to contextualise it adequately within social groupings and circumstances that have long disintegrated and faded into ‘history.’ In the case of the Great War soldiers’ experiences, the trench press provides almost unparalleled evidence of the oral culture of that time and place. Gossip, rumour and the circumstances in which they originated and evolved are conveniently provided in dated and located evidence produced by, for and about those to whom such communications were vital. Those things that the trench soldiers desperately wanted to know reveal a great deal about their concerns, attitudes and dreams.

Indian Ocean futures: new partnerships, new alliances and academic diplomacy

Much of the job which falls to the editors of relatively new academic journals such as the Journal of the Indian Ocean Region (JIOR) is to forge epistemic and intellectual networks and alliances across an emerging academic field. And there can be no doubt that Indian Ocean studies and associated research ventures are relatively recent pursuits when compared to those works which have focused more heavily upon the Atlantic and Pacific oceanic geopolitical spheres. This is not to say that Indian Ocean interests have only recently emerged, but that rather, over recent decades, the intellectual and critical gaze of the academic Anglosphere has been largely focused elsewhere. JIOR also addresses the necessity of academic diplomacy: building bridges, not just in a purely intellectual sense, but by constructing widespread relationships in terms of ‘real-time’ geography, inventing previously non-existent or under-nourished links in an almost ‘biophysical’ manner between people and key institutions across what was once the Ocean of the South, and which, in the twenty-first Century, is rapidly becoming the Ocean of the Centre, the Ocean of the Future. In this vein, this edition begins with celebrating two such new and vital relationships. To begin with, as the words of the Foreword have already explained, this is the first edition of JIOR which has been officially affiliated with the hallmark, Track One, regional governance organisation for the Indian Ocean region (IOR): the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA). This affiliation has been made possible through the construction of a very close relationship between the Indian Ocean Research Group (IORG) and IORA. Some years ago now, IORG was granted Observer status at IORA meetings, and since this time a richly productive relationship in both intellectual and policy-making terms has emerged. This relationship is now even stronger, with JIOR now jointly endorsed by these two organisations. Of course, the full and independent editorial control of the journal remains firmly with IORG. As explained on the inside cover of this edition: ‘The contents of this journal are based exclusively on the views of the authors and, in no way, do these views reflect the interests or opinions of Indian Ocean Rim Academic Group (IORAG), IORA, or the position of its Member States’. So, let us echo the inspirational words of Ambassador K.V. Bhagirath, SecretaryGeneral of the IORA in his opening statement, in our firm hope that this marks an even stronger period of development for JIOR, and that the journal continues not just to build academic enquiry in the IOR but also continues to be actively engaged in actual regionbuilding. With Australia as the current Chair, a recent tradition of reinvigoration of IORA – led by India, and to be followed by Indonesia and South Africa after the completion of Australia’s term – is continuing at a pace which is credible, innovative and responsible. As mentioned in a previous edition, the IOR, of vital geopolitical importance, is a celebration in terms of its diversity in political systems, cultural institutions and ethno-religious Journal of the Indian Ocean Region, 2015 Vol. 11, No. 1, 2–7, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19480881.2015.1019994

We’re Here because We’re Here

Before August 23, 1914, there was no culture of the trench. After November 11, 1918, that culture ceased to exist, except as an exercise in nostalgia. In approximately four years of war unlike any the world had seen, a new human collectivity was born, grew and ended; the rationale and circumstances of its existence immediately became history. It was a community almost exclusively of men thrown into the most violent and basic of circumstances by the failures of politics. The locus of this culture was the zones of war. Its Anglophone victims were, at first, largely professional soldiers, followed quickly by various forces of citizens, militia, conscripts and volunteers from Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America. The massive scale of the conflict necessitated, for the first time, a state of total engagement in which the home front became an integral part of the war effort. Enmeshed in these novel circumstances, the soldiers of the trench were thrust together in undreamed of circumstances to defend home and hearth against enemy aggression. Little of what they had previously known in their lives and occupations was relevant to the duty they were asked to perform. Those asking them to perform it, the military and their political masters, had no experience of operating with such large numbers of relatively untrained and unsoldierly men and certainly no experience of conflict on such a scale.

The Zones of War

Total conflict makes war the business of the civilian as much as that of the professional, or even the amateur, soldier. On an unprecedented scale from August 1914, civilians were required to support frontline troops. They needed clothing, feeding, supplying and supporting on a vast scale. They needed to be written to, and sent gifts of cakes, socks, cigarettes and anything else they were allowed to have but could not obtain. Previously unimagined levels and duration of medical attention were required. As well as these tangibles, they needed emotional and psychological support, entertainment and mourning. The astounding numbers of the dead left few families without direct or indirect losses, often undermining the financial and emotional viability of domestic relationships. The war became ‘Great’ not only for the immensity of its carnage but also for the impact on the citizens of its belligerents. These circumstances produced a need for some form of public communication between those at the front and those at the home front. Letters were essential but private — apart from the intervention of the censor — messages of love, affection and personal information. But the scale of the war, the difficulty or even impossibility for some of getting home for leave and the intense level of military control imposed on civilians and soldiers engendered a very different mode of communication.

In the Pink

In addition to its role in rumour transmission, the trench press was also a vehicle for complaint. Complaining has always been one of the common soldier’s few pleasures, and the Great War provided ample opportunity to continue and expand this tradition. The chance was seized with enthusiasm. One way of understanding trench journals is as glorified — and sometimes not so glorified — complaint sheets. Regardless of the genre or mode of expression employed, a large proportion of what was printed in these publications took the form of a grievance or a grumble. Few subjects did not come in for jaundiced comment at some time or other, from the ‘chats’ to the food, the mud, the bureaucracy and the sheer madness of it all. As with much else to do with the trench press, the complaint had more than one purpose. It clearly allowed men to let off steam as part of the safety valve dimension of these publications. But beyond that useful though limited function, the complaint was another means of highlighting for those not at the front the many unsatisfactory aspects of the experience. If ‘unsatisfactory’ sounds like an understatement, that was exactly what the grouses and whinges of the trench were: a radically understated amelioration of the realities of life and death at the front. They were pleas for the consideration of their plight.

From the Trenches

Although trench newspapers occasionally published verse or prose that contained highly personal views or renditions of experience, by and large the domain of the trench press is the public rather than the private sphere. Here we may observe the workings of everyday interaction between groups as they go about fighting and attempting to survive the war. The world conveyed in, and reflected by the trench publication is a collective and shared one in which the individual is mostly subsumed by the larger communicative and emotional needs of the group to which he belongs. Such large and diverse bodies of mostly citizen soldiers contained individuals with a vast array of talents, abilities and interests, and some put these to use in the creation of the soldiers’ press.