Thanks for your thoughts on Bean, Bob. I suppose I’m really asking from the point of view of a historian of Britain. I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head who wrote the British official histories, except the air-related ones, and that’s obviously because of my particular interests. I’m not British but I don’t know that the average historically-aware Briton would do much better? Historiography has moved on since then. Maybe in Britain the official histories didn’t key into the popular “myths” about the war (mud, futility, lions led by donkeys, etc) in the way that Bean’s did in Australia (a nation comes of age, blood sacrifice, …)? I don’t know if there’s an Australian Dan Todman but we could probably do with one.

http://www.daylife.com/photo/07cG1PD26D2Vb/Helen_Clark

Let me assure you that this pic does not do it justice. It is actually much large than this scaling would indicate.

Here’s an official blurb giving some commemorative details about the statue and bridge you won’t find written elsewhere:

http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/newsevents/2008_04_anzac.html

I suspect the Official History is not much read these days even though it is still talked about, but the AWM has been in modern times year after year Canberra’s number one tourist attraction. That’s thousands of Australians brushing up against Bean’s name in the AWM. Bean said of the AWM, “Here is their spirit.” Well, Bean’s spirit is there too.

I’ll add a third reason. Bean’s WWI contemporaneous work was published in the Sydney Morning Herald, and leading up to ANZAC Day and Remembrance Day the SMH nowadays trots out pieces of Bean’s work - thus keeping his name consistently in front of the wider public, let alone minority historians. The 4-page ANZAC Day supplement in the Sydney Morning Herald a few weeks ago held almost two full pages of Bean reprints.

John Laffin’s fine book “We Will Remember Them: AIF Epitaphs of World War I” records on p. 95 the epitah on the headstone of Private E. J. Taylor, 22nd Battalion:

LOVES GREATEST GIFT, REMEMBRANCE

Bean promulgated that gift.

Bonus Bean link - Robert O-Neill’s (1980) preface to Bean’s Official History:

http://www.awm.gov.au/histories/ww1/intros/preface.asp

That photo on p. 2 of your last link is amazing when you compare it to one taken at Lone Pine this year!

In the couple of weeks lead up before ANZAC day there were prominent messages on the electronic signboards on approaches to the bridge saying something like, “26 April, bridge will be closed to traffic and public from xxam to xxpm.”

I remember thinking, “Closed to the public? Why would they close the unveiling of the stature to the public in addition to being closed to traffic?”

I know that particular bridge has some security concerns attached to it - but certainly the organisers could have made it much clearer to the general public about what was going on and that public access would be denied. However in 25 years this little PR disaster will be forgotten, and those two statues will still perform their silent sentry duty in full view of thousands every day.

With respect to the cult of ANZAC Day and how it is currently observed, the reasons are very complex, and partly attached to a jingoistic nationalism which has been growing in this land for a decade or more. Certainly the reportage of Charles Bean has been highlighted, and it certainly may have much to do with it. But the focus on that portion of Bean’s work to the exclusion of much of this other work about the Western Front cannot fairly be blamed on Bean (not that Pete Matcham is trying to “blame” Bean)

Bean’s book, Letters From France can be read here:

http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/8/3/9/18390/18390.htm

and amongst his fine writing Bean includes this passage:

######

In Gallipoli there were brigade headquarters in the actual fire
trenches. From the headquarters of the division or the corps you could
reach the line by ten minutes’ hard walking, any time. It is a Sabbath
day’s journey here–indeed, the only possible way of covering the longer
distances regularly is by motor-car or motor-cycle, and no one dreams of
using any other means. Nearly the whole army, except the troops in the
actual firing-line, lives in a country which is populated by its normal
inhabitants.

And–wherein lies the greatest change of all–the troops in the trenches
themselves can be brought back every few days into more or less normal
country, and have always the prospect before them at the end of a few
months of a stay in surroundings that are completely free from shell or
rifle fire, and within reach of village shops and the normal comforts
of civilisation. And throwing the weather and wet trenches and the rest
all in, that difference more than makes up for all of them.

“You see, a fellow must look after himself a bit,” one of them said to
me the other day. “A man didn’t take any care how he looked in
Gallipoli; but here with these young ladies about, you can’t go around
like what we used to there.”

#####

So Bean, at the time, considered the Western Front much more accessible than Gallipoli.

[ New Zealand readers may like to check Chapter 9 of the book for Bean's description of a wood-chopping contest, won by a Maori team ]

Also considering Bean’s account of the Western Front elsewhere, I admire his description that Pozieres Ridge was “more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth.”

If my countrymen and women don’t know that, it certainly is not the fault of Charles Bean. But again, surely, those like me who believe sacrifices made in war should be remembered and commemorated can be pleased that commemoration at Gallipoli on 25 April is no longer the province only of a few representatives as it was in April 1976 when just eleven people were there in body as this Office of Australian War Graves report by Janis Lloyd testifies:

http://www.dva.gov.au/media/publicat/2004/OAWG_Journal_2004/OAWG_Journal_05_feature_articles.pdf

I’ll just say in response to Ian Deans comment “… Gallipoli was the first, and one of the bloodiest, battlefields and so it earns special recognition. …”
that a) Gallipoli was not ‘one of the bloodiest’ battlefields either generically or for Australia specifically, and b) the predominance of the campaign for Australia and NZ has I believe more to do with C W Bean’s reportage (see Reconsidering Gallipoli, Jenny Macleod), and the topography of the battlefield which allowed the ordinary troops to see, describe, and most importantly, photograph, what was going on. Whereas the Western front was miles and miles of sod all from the infantryman’s eye level.

The bridge is one of Sydney’s busiest, and the statue will once again remind those who see it of the bonds between our countries wetted in blood.