Thursday, August 21, 2008

War Myths

Australians only have a very limited range of images within which to imagine the ANZAC experience, as is demonstrated by this staggering introductory paragraph to an article about an unknown soldier in today's Age:

'
EVEN though it was just a skeleton, there was still something that said Australian larrikin about the soldier's remains that lay as he fell on a shell-blasted Belgian battlefield 91 years ago.'

I'm not sure how a skeleton suggests that deeply Australian quality, larrikinism - and neither is the writer, who is of course completely unable to substantiate this claim in the following paragraphs.

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