While most of us know that ‘ANZAC’ stands for ‘Australian and New Zealand Army Corps’, few probably know that it might have been a different story. You might not know that it wasn’t just Australians and New Zealanders that fought under the ANZAC name too.
At the outbreak of war in 1914, thousands of men from both countries rushed to enlist. Contingents were shipped to Egypt later that year for training, as it was thought to be a better option than going straight to the UK and subjecting the recruits to a harsh European winter.
In the end, the detour proved to be a useful one. Instead of going straight to the Western Front to fight the Germans, the Australians and New Zealanders would instead head across the Mediterranean Sea to engage the Ottoman Empire in what is now Turkey. By now, the combined force was being referred to as the ‘Australasian Army Corps’. This was common at the time – the first Olympic teams to be sent competed as a combined Australasian effort.
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Posted by Te Ao Māori News on Tuesday, April 23, 2019
However, this was only eight years after New Zealand had been granted dominion status of her own, and the rampant nationalism of the time meant many of those who had volunteered were unhappy with the name. As a compromise, it was renamed the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, or A.N.Z.A.C. in official military communications in December of 1914.
The force landed at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915, and spent the next 10 months locked in a bitter battle they would ultimately lose. But not all the soldiers who fought for the ANZACs were Australian or New Zealanders, in fact, by the end of the Gallipoli campaign it was a truly multi-national force.
ANZAC also contains elements of the 7th Brigade of the Indian Mountain Artillery, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) Rifle Corps troops, the Zion Mule Corps, four battalions from the Royal Naval Division, the British 13th (Western) Division, one brigade of the British 10th (Irish) Division and the 29th Indian Brigade.
After Gallipoli, the infantry battalions were sent to France, while the ANZAC Mounted Rifles stayed in the Egyptian desert to continue to battle the Ottomans. Eventually, in 1917, the two ANZAC formations on the Western Front were broken up to form the purely Australian Corps, while the New Zealand divisions were absorbed into the British XXII Corps.
The ANZACs reformed in the Second World War when Australian and New Zealand troops fought together again Greece and Crete. Later, in the Vietnam War, Australian regiments that integrated with New Zealand infantry and artillery elements had the suffix ANZAC attached to their designation.
