Great Anzac Stories by Graham Seal

Author:Graham Seal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 9781743430361
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2012-12-02T05:00:00+00:00

Yanks Down Under

After the fall of Singapore in February 1942, Australia turned towards America for strategic support in the Pacific war. Australia rapidly became an extended American base, with hundreds of thousands of US servicemen and women ‘invading’ Australia until the end of the war in 1945. To prepare the American visitors for their Australian sojourn, the Americans issued a booklet titled Instructions for American Servicemen in Australia 1942. It contained information about the customs, attitudes, manners, likes and dislikes of Australians, as seen from an American perspective.

The book acknowledged that Australians had ‘through courage and ingenuity made a living and built a great nation out of a harsh, empty land. They built great cities, organized a progressive democracy and established a sound economic system, for all of which they’re justly proud’. The booklet went on to profile ‘The People “Down Under”’.

And they’re proud too of their British heritage and to be a member of the British Commonwealth—but they still like to run their own business and they take great pride in their independence. They resent being called a colony and think of themselves as a great nation on their own hook, which they are. And it’s natural that they should find themselves drawn closer and closer to Americans because of the many things we have in common. They look at the swift development that has made the United States a great power in a few generations, and compare our growth with theirs. Nearly 40 years ago, an Australian statesman said of the United States: ‘What we are, you were. What you are we will some day be.’ And just a short time ago Australian War Minister Francis Forde said: ‘We feel that our fate and that of America are indissolubly linked. We know that our destinies go hand in hand and that we rise and fall together. And we are proud and confident in that association.’

You’ll find the Australians an outdoors kind of people, breezy and very democratic. They haven’t much respect for stuffed shirts, their own or anyone else’s. They’re a generation closer to their pioneer ancestors than we are to ours, so it’s natural that they should have a lively sense of independence and ‘rugged individualism’. But they have, too, a strong sense of cooperation. The worst thing an Australian can say about anyone is: ‘He let his cobbers (pals) down.’ A man can be a ‘dag’ (a cutup) or ‘rough as bags’ (a tough guy), but if he sticks with the mob, he’s all right.

If an Australian ever says to you that you are ‘game as Ned Kelly’, you should feel honored. It’s one of the best things he can say about you. It means that you have the sort of guts he admires, and that there’s something about you that reminds him of Ned Kelly. Kelly was a bushranger (a backwoods highwayman) and not a very good citizen, but he had a lot of courage that makes Australians talk about him as we used to talk about Jesse James or Billy the Kid.

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