Every Canadian schoolkid learns about the bravery of Canadian soldiers at Vimy Ridge or Juno Beach or the great sacrifices at the Somme, Passchendaele and Ypres. Naturally, every country has their own stereotypical tough moments and finest hours. What were you taught about your country?
I ask as I reread Churchill’s memoirs, which state:
“What combination of events could ever bring back again to France and Flanders the formidable Canadians of the Vimy Ridge; the glorious Australians of Villers-Bretonneux; the dauntless New Zealanders of the crater-fields of Passchendaele; the steadfast Indian Corps which in the cruel winter of 1914 had held the line by Armentieres?”
and realizing that our education did not mention Armentieres or Villers-Bretonneux at all…
Absolutely, and there are many other examples of this in WW1 battles of attrition. I am familiar with the general outline of both world wars (a personal interest, not that this was particularly well taught), and of course know about battles like Gallipoli. What is do not know is what battles are emphasized when teaching in other countries or summarizing national touchstones.
For Taiwan, it’s pretty slim pickings since Taiwan has seen essentially no armed conflict in the last sixty years, nor any huge battle but - in the 1950s, there were air battles that resulted in lopsided Taiwanese air victories over Chinese MIGs, due to American-provided Sidewinder missiles (one museum in Taiwan reported it as 30 kills for Taiwan vs. only 3 losses, which seems a bit too rosy to me).
Prior to that, there was also the Battle of Guningtou. Although relatively small, this battle gave a huge morale boost to the Nationalists after years of humiliating and demoralizing defeats at the hands of the Communists, and combined with other ongoing events of the time, also put a halt to Mao’s plans to conquer Taiwan.
The only reason any Australians know about Villers-Bretonneux, is because the locals still remember, and include the Australians in their memorials and in their remembrance ceremony every year. That gets occasional coverage in the Australian press, not in Australian schools.
If you’re talking about WWI, South Africans remember Delville Wood:
On 15 July 1916, the S.A. Infantry Brigade under Major-General H.T. Lukin was ordered to clear the wood at d’Elville, north-east of the village of Longueal, France, of enemy soldiers, thereby covering the flanks of the British Brigade.
The South Africans occupied the wood on that day, but the problem was not so much to take the wood, as to hold it. Despite fierce counterattacks and artillery bombardments from German divisions, the SA brigade refused to surrender.
The brigade was relieved on 20 July after six days and five nights of ferocious fighting. Only 750 soldiers remained of the Brigade’s 3 433 soldiers, the rest had either been killed or wounded.
The brigade suffered nearly 80% casualties, and of those, four times more were killed than wounded.
Australian war history is dominated by ‘Anzac-ery’ which has almost become a default religion. Any opinion even slightly dissenting from the ‘glorious story’ as primarily pushed by media figures is howled down and the proclaimer of that opinion is ritually sacrificed on the altar of public opinion. A pilgramage to the Gallopili beaches has become a rite of passage for many young Australians, and the Turkish government has no problem with this, and the site contains more Australian memorials than Turkish (and the Turks actually won this battle).
Some Australians don’t even know that Gallipoli was primarily a British and French campaign - the British actually suffered more than 3 times the Australian casualties and the French about the same as the Australians.
The Gallipoli campaign lasted 11 months and the Australian forces had about 8000 deaths. At Fromelles in 1916, Australian forces suffered over 2000 deaths in one night.
Germany has stopped glorifying battles after 1945 almost completely, so if you’d ask Germans which was the most glorious battle in German history that was won, most would draw a blank. Maybe one or the other would remember Sedan in 1870, the battle that directly lead to the unification of Germany, but we don’t like to indulge in old victories over a country that has turned from arch-enemy to close friend after 1945. The one battle that everybody remembers though is Stalingrad, and it stands for the pointlessness of war in general and the manic ideology that stood behind it. Many will also think of Verdun, another symbol for the endless horrors of pointless wars.
How about Leipzig? The largest and probably most important battle of the Napoleonic wars (much more than that pale retread at Waterloo), and it had Germans on both sides!
With one German contingent, the Saxons, even changing sides in mid-battle!
Sure, we remember Leipzig, there’s even the Völkerschlachtdenkmal, though that was already erected in a time when patriotism was much more pronounced, in 1913. Today, such a monument is considered kind of tacky by many. Historically, Napoleon’s occupation and the liberation by the German states is regarded differently and more varied, as it’s pointed out that it was a backlash for civil liberties and personal freedoms the French occupation had brought to the German states. The French occupation and the wars of liberation are also seen as the seed of German unification that finally came in 1871.
Israel has had a few in its short history. While the Battle of Tel Hai in 1910, the Battle of Latrun and breaking the siege of Jerusalem in 1948, and the Valley of Tears, where one understaffed tank brigade held off and basically destroyed an entire Syrian division in 1973, are strong contenders, I’d say the clear winner is the Battle of Jerusalem in 1967 - no other military event has had such as strong impact on the national psyche. Of special note was the Battle of Ammunition Hill, a company-level assault on a heavily-fortified Jordanian position that got its own popular song.
