Robert Lewis writes:
Rodger Shanahan's second-hand criticism of the DVA site for saying "Australians commemorate 25 April 1915 as 'Anzac Day'. It was the day of the 'Landing at Gallipoli' when more than 20,000 Australians and New Zealanders and some servicemen from other countries went ashore at the Gallipoli Peninsula' is not fair.
I went to the site. Yes, the words are there, but they refer specifically to the landing at Anzac Cove on 25 April, not to the Gallipoli campaign generally. The site is specifically about Australians who died on the first day at that place. So we are not 'calling the 35,000 British and French soldiers who landed at Cape Helles "some servicemen"'. and the DVA is not indulging in 'triumphalism'.
Yes, it is parochialism of a sort, but not 'triumphalism'. Rodger should have checked the site for himself, and not just relied on the word of a friend who passed the passage on to him.
