The men who killed police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge were black veterans. A historian explains black veterans’ long struggle to live with inequality in their military service, and back home.
Might the rise of heritage tourism and the increasing ease of international travel lead to more of Australia’s military experiences overseas being better understood?
Apartheid South Africa started a war in which it could not maintain a strategic advantage. It misread the quest for national liberation and international opinion that undermined its effectiveness.
Armistice Day provides a moment to reflect on Australia’s self-identity in comparison to other nations that experienced the first world war and commemorate it to this day.
The anniversary of Menzies’ fateful decision to commit troops to the escalating war in Vietnam marks a turning point that is at least as significant as the Gallipoli landings for Australia today.
It is naïve to expect men to kill and die for their country, to live through the horrors of a particularly barbaric war, and to come out the other end unscathed – despite our popular myths.
Protests on Anzac Day, rather than being ‘utterly alien to Australians’, have a long tradition and embody the democratic right to dissent for which the troops fought.
Australia has continually faced a returned soldier crisis. This is something that marked men returning from all the wars of modern memory – from the Great War to Afghanistan and Iraq.
The democratic freedoms Australians hold dear today – freedom of the press, assembly and speech – were won on home soil by courageous women and men who sacrificed much, but rarely recognised for it.
Australians now seem so fascinated by the Victoria Cross that such attention has begun to get in the way of a balanced perspective on its place in military history.