Flag Day Part I

June 14

“We meet to celebrate Flag Day because this flag which we honor and under which we serve is the emblem of our unity, our power, our thought and purpose as a nation…

We celebrate the day of its birth; and from its birth until now it has witnessed a great history, has floated on high the symbol of great events, of a great plan of life worked out by a great people.

“We are about to carry it into battle, to lift it where it will draw the fire of our enemies. We are about to bid thousands, hundreds of thousands, it may be millions, of our men, the young, the strong, the capable men of the nation, to go forth and die beneath it on the fields of blood far away,—

“for what?”

Woodrow Wilson, June 14, 1917. Address restating the reasons for U.S. entry into World War I

Flag Day was less than a year old when the U.S. entered World War I.

President Woodrow Wilson had proclaimed June 14th as Flag Day in 1916. The choice of June 14th is largely attributed to a school teacher from Waubeka, Wisconsin back in the 1880’s. Bernard Cigrand proposed the anniversary of the Second Continental Congress’s adoption of the first U.S. flag on June 14, 1777. He wrote articles about the should-be holiday and promoted it locally and nationally through articles and events.

The first National Flag Day was June 14, 1916. The backdrop of the celebrations was the war in Europe in which millions of young men were being cut down by machine gun fire and other wonders of modern warfare technology or (far more) by disease. Americans fiercely debated whether the U.S. should become involved in the European conflict. In April 1917, President Wilson—who had run on a policy of isolationism–asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany and its allies.

It would be a while before troops were ready to be sent to Europe, but America wanted to send a symbol of its presence immediately.

Arthur Clifford Kimber, a 21 year-old Stanford University student and Ambulance Corps volunteer, was selected to carry the flag of the Stanford Unit of the American Ambulance Field Service across the country and then across the Atlantic to France. It was a largely symbolic gesture—the first officially sanctioned U.S. flag sent to the front after U.S. entry in the war.

Before Kimber even left the States, he showed his tenacity by defending the chosen flag from a mob of U.C. (University of California) students in New York. As Stanford’s rivals, the Cal students wrestled the flag from him before a parade down Fifth Avenue. The Cal students took off in a taxi, which Kimber chased by jumping onto the running-board of passing car. He caught up with the taxi at 73rd St, retrieved the flag with the aid of a cop, and made it back in time for the start of the parade…

Flag Day Part II

Victory of Canakkale

March 18

flag_turkey

The long and brutal battle for the Dardanelles is one of the most commemorated campaigns of the 20th century.

Australia and New Zealand remember the Battle of Gallipoli each year on April 25, the anniversary of the first engagement of ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) in World War I.

Turkey, meanwhile, remembers the nine-month campaign each year on March 18—the anniversary of the 1915 naval battle of Canakkale which, had the Allies succeeded, would have paved the way for the capture of Istanbul. Turkey calls March 18th the “Victory of Canakkale”, or the more sobering title Martyrs’ Day.

The Allies’ plan was to combine their naval strength to blast their way through the Dardanelles, a stretch of water connecting the Aegean Sea to the Black Sea. The Dardanelles are 60 km long and a maximum of 7 km wide. At its narrowest point (appropriately named “the Narrows”) overlooked by the city of Canakkale, the shores are separated by a mere 1600 feet.

Dardanelles
Dardanelles

By taking the Dardanelles, the Allies, led by France and Britain, would have a route from the Mediterranean to their Russian Allies, while cutting off the Germans from their ally the Ottomans (Turkey was part of the Ottoman Empire at the time), effectively removing the Ottoman Empire from the war.

However, on March 18, after a month of French and British naval bombardment, the Allied attempt to breach the Dardanelles met a disastrous failure. The fleet failed to clear the minefields strategically placed by the Ottomans and several key British and French warships were destroyed.

It became clear to the Allies that Turkish resistance was too strong for a purely naval victory. They sent in ground troops, including tens of thousands of eager Australian and New Zealand recruits.

Against the armed might of four nations, including two of the most powerful navies in the Western world, Turkish armed forces held their ground for a full nine months. The long campaign and victory in January 1916—like the initial victory on March 18, 1915—fueled national pride and cohesiveness across the land that would be Turkey.

Much of the success of the defense of Canakkale is attributed to the strategic foresight of a young commander by the name of Mustafa Kemal.

After World War I, Mustafa Kemal went on to lead forces in the Turkish War for Independence, and became the founder and leader of the new nation of Turkey. He is probably the most significant figure in the creation of of Turkey as we know it today, and because of the significance of Canakkale, many view 1915—not 1923—as the true birth year of the Turkish state.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk at Gallipoli, 1915
Mustafa Kemal at Gallipoli, 1915

One side won, one side lost. But statistics tell another story.

The Turks and the Allies suffered nearly a quarter million casualties each—that’s over half of all men on both sides who fought in the nine-month battle.

“Those heroes that shed their blood, and lost their lives …
You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country
Therefore, rest in peace.
There is no difference between the Johnnies
And the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side,
Here in this country of ours.
You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries…
Wipe away your tears.
Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace.
After having lost their lives on this land, they have
Become our sons as well.”

— Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, 1934

In Flanders Fields… Remembrance Day/Veterans Day

November 11

One of the most famous poems of war was written in May 1915 by a Canadian doctor stationed at Ypres during World War I. When the Canadians arrived on April 17 they were strangers to trench warfare. The Germans were not.

The Canadians occupied what would prove to be a particularly tragic stretch of grass of the infamous Flanders field. When the Germans attacked, they used every weapon in their arsenal, including poison gas.

The Canadians suffered 6,000 casualties during the April-May 2nd Battle of Ypres, half of them on a single day. Lt. Colonel John McCrae recalled it as

“Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done.”

Dr. McCrae was entrusted with the futile task of treating the wounded. On May 3, the day after his friend and former student Alexis Helmer was killed in battle, McCrae surveyed the poppies of the cemetery field and paused to scribble three verses.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

One of the first people to read it was a young soldier named Cyril Allinson.

“The poem was an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene.”

McCrae would never know peace. He died of pneumonia in January 1918 in northern France, 10 months before the Armistice that ended World War I. In the United States, the anniversary of the armistice is known as Veterans Day. In Europe and Canada, November 11th is Remembrance Day.

Lt. Colonel Dr. John McCrae
Lt. Colonel Dr. John McCrae

Today veterans sell poppies in memory of all those who have served since Flanders Fields.

How the tradition of selling poppies for veterans began: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6133312.stm

ANZAC Day

April 25

Last month the nation of Turkey remembered Victory of Canakkale, the World War I campaign that unified the Turkish spirt and brought together disparate elements that would form the Turkish nation.

But for every victor there’s the vanquished.

The Allies of World War I, including the French, British, Indian, Australian and New Zealanders, suffered a quarter million casualties in the Dardanelles (Canakkale) campaign. At the forefront of the battle, the soldiers of Australia and New Zealand took a disproportional brunt of the death and disease that characterized the fight.

ANZAC stands for Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. ANZAC Day falls on the anniversary of the landing of the first Australian and New Zealand troops on April 25, 1915 on the Gallipoli Peninsula on Turkey’s Aegean coast. The assault was ill-planned and inadequately supplied.

The Turks entrenched themselves on the high ground pouring artillery and machine gun fire down upon the hapless Australian, New Zealand, Irish, French and British troops below.The battleground soon resembled that of the Western Front – both sides peering at each other from fortified trenches, forced to spill their precious blood in futile frontal attacks on well defended positions. — eyewitnesstohistory.com/gallipoli.htm

In the aftermath of Gallipoli a rift widened between the two southern hemisphere countries and the British Empire they had been proud to be a part of. Resentment grew against Allied commanders for the ill-conceived attack that led Australians and New Zealanders like lambs to the slaughter, and for the motives involved in using Australian and New Zealand troops to invade the far-off lands.

About 40 per cent of all Australian males aged between 18 and 45 voluntarily enlisted to serve in the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF), that is about 417,000 men, of whom about 60 000 died in all campaigns and another 160,000 were wounded or maimed. — Geoffrey Partington, Gallipoli – the Facts Behind the Myths

[Still, Partington clarifies, “the British, French and Indian causalities were far greater than those of the Anzacs,” and “the British bore the brunt of the fighting – and the losses.”]

ANZAC Day is one of the most important holidays in both Australia and New Zealand, observed as Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day.

“On Anzac Day, we remember not only the original Anzacs who died on April 25, 1915, but every one of our service men and women who have served and died in all wars, conflicts, peacekeeping, disaster relief and humanitarian assistance missions,” — Australia Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston

For the record, Victory of Canakkale is no celebration in Turkey. It’s also known as “Martyrs’ Day”. The Turks suffered even more casualties than the Allies, around 300,000, in the brutal Dardanelles campaign alone. Today, the monuments and memorials of Gallipoli serve as a grim reminder that in war even the winners pay the price.

ANZAC Memorial, Sydney. Photo by Matthew Lammers