Billjim Damascus Screwed by Anzac Centenary Board

unThankful Murdochs » Media HoF owe Mugsar Billjim
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And so we are very disappointed to see that the actual far reaching achievements of the Billjim / Australian Light Horse in WWI, have not been taken seriously by the Anzac Centenary Board originally headed up by former Prime Ministers Bob Hawke and Malcolm Frazer, nor when they were in power, and Minister Warren Snowdon’s Dept of Veterans’ Affairs.

It started off like this…

Their initial Anzac Centenary publication (see extract below) of Key Dates at
http://www.anzaccentenary.gov.au/ [Note their webiste was completely revamped in 2013 – deleting many pages] left out the most significant date in Australia’s military history, namely, 1 October 1918.

Internationally, “Gallipoli” means nothing. In an Internet dominated world, everyone is going to be wondering why the Australian government screwed up on this.

And to add even further insult, our submission clearly shows its by a father and (then) 7 year old daughter, and  is trying to involve the
younger generation, yet they somehow have “Mrs” in their confirmation letter – a term nobody uses anymore, anyway. How could Tara show her Year 2 classmates that letter, and get them excited about the Anzac Centenary?

Actually, it’s all going to look pretty subjective, especially the judging by 5 people from a fairly narrow demographic of Australian society — can’t we also have an Australian People’s Award – the public, importantly, including children (who seem to be forgotten in all this, force-fed by adult diehard Gallipoli Retreat Tragics, at best) go to the official Anzac Centenary website and vote on their favourite Project.

We’ve written to the Minister about all this, it will be interesting to see how this new shaky Labor government handles such matters.

And why not have some Australians like us working on the Anzac Centenary Taskforce who have a long and proven deep affinity with WWI 100th Anniversary Australia (Google 2010) concept and what it really means to the average Australian family.

Ah well, Pete and Tara, will battle on for our forgotten ancestors, whatever happens.

Minister fobs us off

At this point in his tardy reply Andrew Snowdon Minister DVA rates taking Damascus 1 October 1918 as insignificant:

Some very interesting editing in the Report
Since the above the Commission (in March 2011) submitted their Report to the Federal Government, p. 56 for “Tara and Peter Hogan” (No 50 Aug 2010).
Note particularly p. 84, the last page, where you can plainly see (when compared to their earlier publication above) we have forced them to add the key date “1 October 1918” – the Australians beating Lawrence of Arabia to Damascus – the first ever mention of this epochal fact by an Australian Government body.

Interesting …especially when you see how the Commission editors when putting together a summary of our submission for their website have been at pains to leave out the fact that we stated everything culminates with 1 October Damascus. But they cut it off at Beersheba, which has always been pretty much the official line, implying nothing much of significance happened after that.

In other words, they have always had to dance around just what the Australian Light Horse really achieved. So up to this point our leaders have really only allowed us, as a Nation, to focus only on defeats like Gallipoli, or being apart of some Allied operation in the Western Front. When Australians of Arabia (note they also carefully dance around our official title) is about not just the only victory we had, but a big one. It would have a major impact on international affair, and could have elevated Australia to the world stage. The same guys that were humiliated in Gallipoli (I can remember family stories on my mother’s side of an uncle who lost 3 fingers, later realizing many were forced to shoot themselves to get medivacced out) got back to Egypt, linked back up with their horses and began kicking the butts of the same Turks and German commanders.

The Brushoff even extends to the AWM…

Australian War Memorial propogates ‘Lawrence of Arabia’
myth over Light Horse
It’s the ultimate insult isn’t it?
You can just hear the spirit of the Billjim quip,
“Somebody’s head should roll mate”.
It’s almost like a conspiracy. If the AWM can’t deal in facts it sure is an uphill battle and shows why the above is no surprise. They have devoted a whole exhibition to the sham with its own catalogue, “Lawrence of Arabia and the Light Horse”:
http://www.awm.gov.au/exhibitions/lawrence/LoAcatalogue.pdf

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Let the last word be from Gen. Chauvel’s (wonder if the Anzac Centenary Board even know who he is?!) 1919 report – read the whole thing, does it really look like Damascus does not rate with, or even ahead of Gallipoli, considering what transpired after the War, at least deserving to be up there on the revamped (2013) Anzac Centenary homepage:

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http://www.anzaccentenary.gov.au/ – revamped home page (2013)

Also has lots of links and information about the amazing people on the Board payroll, including the amazing new logo – just no Damascus … oh and one other little thing they forgot – an Anzac Centenary Theme Song! Will someone tell them about our reminders and The Billjim Song, or will they just form yet another committee…

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