There was a time in the 1960's when it was feared that Anzac Day was in decline. It wasn't something I experienced at the time but read about later, when doing an assignment on The One Day of The Year. Far from fading though, Anzac Day has become increasingly popular. It seems to me that the memorial is not only better attended but has assumed a more prominent role in our national discourse; the meanings we ascribe to identity and the manner in which we do so.

It is more than just making a silk purse out of a sow's ear, for Gallipoli was undoubtedly a terrible military defeat. There is little good can be said about the First World War, period - its absurd beginnings and appalling conduct. The Dardenelles is a great exemplar of botched planning and execution. But perhaps most military campaigns carry aspects of this. After all, even modern campaigns with all the latest tech can still find themselves situated in 'the fog of war'.

For Australia, the meanings of Gallipoli - the first mass commitment of soldiers in a military conflict - emerge from a desire for a greater independence from our colonial origins. Remembering that Australia as a nation was only a decade and a half old, it is easy to understand how blood lost in war would assume such primal significance. And there follows the story-telling, memorialising and mythologising.

It is a good day and worth having and keeping. And it is well for those who do keep it, for those who travel to historic sites and are wrapped in the balm of its solemnity, to understand it. The contents of the stories are as important as the candles we light, the feelings we have. The truth is always more complex and significantly more disturbing than the cenotaphs and the speeches. These things are bound together and we separate them at our peril.

Lest We Forget.