ABSTRACT
Eric Bogle remembers that the song was conceived in 1971, only two years after his arrival in Australia, at the Anzac Day parade in Canberra. Armistice Day in the UK and Anzac Day in Australia, it transpired, were quite different. Bogle also remembers the mix of emotions that the scene evoked in him – a contradictory sense of admiration for individuals and revulsion for a war that had devastated both them and the communities they hailed from. Both Bogle and Bill Gammage, author of the landmark The Broken Years, who were later to become close friends, harnessed political and historical analysis with psychological insight. They both abandoned grand, national, identity-building or military narratives, in favour of individual human stories. The journey is not yet complete and Bogle's song is resituating itself once again within shifting national attitudes and perceptions.
