Anzac's Dirty Dozen Read Online Free PDF

worth to public knowing much, much better.
    The purpose of tracing Murchison ’s time in Korea is two-fold.The fact that its remarkable story, replete with drama, danger and bravery, is unknown outside specialist circles is testament to the traditional inability for naval history to find resonance with the general public, in stark contrast to the land-based military history. It is in this regard but one vignette of a vast trove of under-appreciated stories. At the same time, Murchison ’s adventure in Korea is a story of a crew and its achievements under very difficult and dangerous circumstances, not an account of the type of singular spectacular and climactic engagement resulting in sunken vessels that has so often dominated what is known of naval history in this country. Murchison is an example of what can and should be done to help rectify the silence that pervades far too much of Australia’s naval history.
    Further reading
    The Naval Historical Society of Australia, < www.navyhistory.org.au >.
    The Sea Power Centre – Australia, < www.navy.gov.au/Sea_Power_Centre_-_Australia >.
    T.R. Frame, Where Fate Calls: The HMAS Voyager Tragedy , Hodder and Stoughton, Sydney, 1992.
    T.R. Frame, J.V.P. Goldrick & P.D. Jones, Reflections on the Royal Australian Navy , Kangaroo Press, Sydney, 1991.
    J. Grey, Up Top: The Royal Australian Navy and Southeast Asian Conflicts 1955–1972 , Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1998.
    N. Lambert, Australia’s Naval Inheritance: Imperial Maritime Strategy and the Australia Station 1880–1909 , Papers in Australian Maritime Affairs, Maritime Studies Program, Canberra, 1998.
    I. Pfennigwerth, Tiger Territory: The Untold Story of the Royal Australian Navy in Southeast Asia from 1948 to 1971 , Rosenburg Publishing, Sydney, 2008.
    â€”— , A Man of Intelligence: The Life of Captain Theodore Eric Nave, Australian Codebreaker Extraordinary , Rosenburg Publishing, Sydney, 2006.
    D. Stevens (ed.), The Royal Australian Navy , Australian Centenary History of Defence, vol. 3, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2001.
    On HMAS Murchison :
    V. Fazio, River Class Frigates of the Royal Australian Navy: A Story of Ships Built in Australia , Slipway Publications, Sydney, 2003.
    R. O’Neill, Australia in the Korean War: Combat Operations , vol. 2, Australian Government Printing Service, Canberra, 1985.
    W.O.C. Roberts, ‘Gun battle on the Han’, Naval Historical Review , 1(2), eptember 1976.

EPILOGUE
    Every page of this book challenges some of the more grievous misconceptions of this nation’s military past. Yet the list is not exhaustive. There remain fables left untouched, and conflicts left uncovered. As long as modern-day Australian nationalism, our sense of self, and collective identity are sourced from the imagery of past military conflicts, we will continue to draw what we need from the past without worrying too much about actually occurred.
    If our contemporary social and psychological need to venerate the concept of ‘Anzac’ continues – as both a national day of celebration and a wider anchor of what it might mean to be an Australian – then the Allied invasion of Turkey in 1915 will persist as the birthplace of the Australian military tradition. Similarly, as long as the name and connotations of ‘Anzac’ are evoked so regularly, and used so widely to re-affirm the ties between Australians and New Zealanders, then the origins of the relationship will be glossed over in favour of modern warm and satisfying feelings of military kinship reflected backwards. Whenever we feel anxious about the moral legitimacy or practical utility of the conflicts in which we have found (and still find) ourselves, then we will fall back into the comforting solace of having been tricked, coerced or blindly stumbled into other people’s wars. There is no guilt, no recrimination and no need for reflection under this mistaken interpretation. In much the same way,