Remembrance Day has always been for Australians a quieter affair than Anzac Day, particularly as Anzac Day in recent years has taken on a brassy, bragging style. Most of us now do not even pause at 11am on 11 November. But perhaps there will be quietness during the day to think some thoughts about killing and dying. We may also unearth some clues about our life as a nation.
The American jurist and Civil War veteran, Oliver Wendell Holmes, famously said, 'We have shared the incommunicable experience of war'. Holmes spoke for all veterans of his war and all other wars. Yet if the experience of war is 'incommunicable', we still talk and write an awful lot about it. If you type the single word 'war' into the Amazon search box, you get more than half a million entries.
If something is 'incommunicable' then why so much communication? Holmes himself provided part of the answer: 'We have felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top ... In our youths, our hearts were touched with fire.' Those who have gone through the fire, who have been passionate to this full measure, empathise with others who have done similar things and felt similar emotions. On the other hand, these men and women often find it difficult to pass on the experience to those who were not there.
Wives, families and observers have frequently remarked upon the reluctance of veterans to talk of their wars. Most writing about war comes from people who did not serve in the conflict being written about. The American Civil War continues to attract a steady stream of volumes. World War I has generated thousands of books, with many more to come during the centenary. Then there is World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and numerous other smaller conflicts, all with their own literature.
Why? Wars change history, often in unexpected ways. They are fascinating and exciting, with battles and sieges, the birth and death of nations, great and flawed leaders, masses of men under arms, heroism and cowardice, courage and cruelty, the broad sweep of grand strategy, military campaigns requiring analysis and explanation, individual human stories evoking sadness and regret. There is Lincoln and Antietam, Gallipoli and Edith Cavell, the Western Front and the Unknown Soldier, Anne Frank and Dresden, 600,000 Americans in Vietnam and Kim Phuc, Ben Roberts-Smith VC and Waziristan villagers taken out by