'The Anzac Book' and the Anzac Legend: C.E.W. Bean as Editor and Image-Maker

Abstract

One of the most powerful and influential images in the national consciousness is that of the 'Anzac'. Gallipoli, rather than the battlefields of the Somme or Flanders, created the image of the Australian at war. Perhaps this was almost inevitable, for Gallipoli, the first military challenge the AIF had to face, was invested with a special significance, and the people of Australia looked forward with an indecent eagerness to seeing their soldiers tested in battle. The men who waded ashore on that April morning 'carried with them, albeit unknowingly, the hopes and self-doubts of those at home. Gallipoli also possessed a spatial unity which served to exaggerate everything by magnified attention. The few hundred acres of Anzac Cove and the surrounding hills and gullies commanded a nation's attention which was no less intense than the Turkish gunfire, and the heroic endurance which the soldiers displayed in the pursuit of an almost impossible task, merely enhanced the symbolic significance of the Gallipoli misadventure.