Australia loves a soldier. We carve them into bronze. We cast them in eternal mid-stride, chin up, rifle slung, staring nobly into a horizon that never answers back. We etch their names into marble walls and sandstone cenotaphs. We stand in silence at dawn every 25 April, poppies pinned, heads bowed, children fidgeting in too-large blazers while someone recites For the Fallen in a voice heavy with borrowed grief.
We don’t just remember them. We ritualise them.
And somewhere along the way, we packaged them.
The Anzac isn’t just history. It’s branding. It’s a national trademark guarded by legislation. The word “Anzac” itself is legally protected in Australia under federal law, its commercial use tightly regulated by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. You can’t slap it on a cereal box or beer label without permission. It is sacred — but it is also managed, curated, marketed.
That’s the paradox.
We say the Anzac story is about sacrifice, mateship, courage under fire. And it is. But it’s also a carefully maintained national identity product — exportable, digestible, teachable in a Year 5 assembly with a PowerPoint and a solemn trumpet recording of the Last Post.
The soldier, in this mythology, is uncomplicated. Noble. Brave. Stoic. Photogenic in sepia.
But real war is not sepia. It is noise, dirt, adrenaline, confusion, fear, brutality, and sometimes — moral collapse.
And that’s where the myth starts to fracture.
Because Australia loves its soldiers.
But only the ones who stay in the frame.
The Construction of the Anzac Ideal
The Anzac legend was born in catastrophe.
When Australian and New Zealand troops landed at Gallipoli in April 1915, the campaign quickly descended into stalemate and slaughter. More than 8,700 Australians died in that campaign alone. By the end of World War I, over 60,000 Australians were dead from a population of fewer than five million.
The scale of loss was staggering. So was the need to make sense of it.
From those cliffs and trenches emerged a narrative — not of strategic triumph, but of character. The idea that even in defeat, the Australian soldier displayed unique qualities: egalitarianism, larrikin defiance, mateship under fire, quiet courage.
Historians have long debated how much of this was organic and how much was constructed. But the story stuck.
Over the 20th century, Anzac Day grew from a veterans’ commemoration into one of the most important civic rituals in Australia. After a period of declining attendance in the 1960s and 70s, the event experienced a resurgence from the 1990s onward. Pilgrimages to Gallipoli became rites of passage. The Australian War Memorial in Canberra became both shrine and museum, blending historical documentation with immersive storytelling.
The state supported this revival. Funding increased. Educational materials expanded. The Anzac story was woven into curricula. Politicians of all stripes invoked the “Anzac spirit” in speeches ranging from defence budgets to disaster responses.
The soldier became not just a historical figure — but a moral reference point.
And like all reference points, it needed to remain stable.
War in the Modern Era: Afghanistan and the Return of the Hero
When Australia committed troops to Afghanistan in 2001 following the September 11 attacks, it marked the country’s longest continuous military engagement.
Over the next two decades, more than 39,000 Australian Defence Force personnel served in Afghanistan. Forty-one Australians were killed. Many more were wounded — physically and psychologically.
Special Air Service (SAS) soldiers, in particular, came to occupy a rarefied space in the public imagination. Elite. Secretive. Highly trained. Operating in remote provinces under intense conditions.
Among them was Ben Roberts-Smith — a former SAS corporal awarded the Victoria Cross for Australia in 2011 for actions in Afghanistan.
He was not just decorated. He was elevated.
Media profiles celebrated his bravery. He was named Australian Father of the Year in 2013. He became a senior executive at a major media company. He stood at the centre of Anzac Day events. He was photographed shaking hands with prime ministers and governors-general.
He became a living embodiment of the Anzac ideal — modernised for the War on Terror era.
Recruitment campaigns referenced courage and service. Veterans were honoured at sporting events. The narrative was clear: the Anzac spirit lived on in these men.
Until it didn’t.
Allegations, Litigation, and the Collapse of Certainty
In 2018, investigative reporting by major newspapers alleged that Roberts-Smith had been involved in the unlawful killing of Afghan civilians during his deployments.
He denied the allegations.
In 2020, he initiated defamation proceedings against the publishers, arguing the reports were false and damaged his reputation.
What followed was one of the most closely watched civil trials in Australian legal history.
In June 2023, a Federal Court judge found — on the civil standard of proof — that several of the allegations were substantially true. The ruling concluded that Roberts-Smith was involved in the unlawful killing of unarmed Afghan men in specific incidents described during the trial.
He has consistently denied wrongdoing and has sought to appeal aspects of the judgment. The case did not involve criminal charges; it was a civil defamation proceeding. But the findings were devastating to the public image that had been constructed over a decade.
The most decorated living soldier in Australia had become the most controversial.
And the national reaction was telling.
From Hero to Headline
When Roberts-Smith was awarded the Victoria Cross, the country celebrated.
When the allegations surfaced, the country recoiled.
Some defended him vigorously, arguing he had been unfairly targeted. Others insisted the allegations demonstrated systemic issues within elements of the Special Forces.
What was striking was not disagreement. Democracies can handle disagreement.
What was striking was the speed with which the narrative flipped.
The hero myth had no room for ambiguity. So when ambiguity arrived, it wasn’t absorbed. It shattered the frame.
This wasn’t just about one man. It was about the fragility of the Anzac brand in the face of moral complexity.
The Brereton Report and Institutional Reckoning
In 2020, the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force released a summary of the Afghanistan Inquiry, led by Major General Paul Brereton.
The report found credible information that 39 Afghan civilians and prisoners had been unlawfully killed by Australian special forces between 2005 and 2016. It referred 19 current or former soldiers for potential criminal investigation.
The findings sent shockwaves through the defence community.
The report described a small cohort of soldiers responsible for the alleged crimes and emphasised that the majority of personnel served honourably. But the damage to the myth was significant.
For decades, Australia had told itself that its soldiers were uniquely ethical. The Anzac spirit was not just brave — it was morally superior.
The Brereton findings forced a confrontation with a harder truth: war corrodes. Elite units can develop insular cultures. Leadership can fail. Institutions can falter.
The response from political leaders was careful, sober, and measured. There were apologies to the Afghan people. Commitments to reform. Ongoing investigations.
But beneath the official statements lay a deeper cultural shock.
The myth had cracked.
The Burden of Moral Injury
It is easier to commemorate sacrifice than to confront moral injury.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among veterans is widely recognised. But moral injury — the psychological distress resulting from actions, or the lack of them, which violate one’s moral code — is harder to narrate.
Australia has grappled with rising veteran suicide rates. A Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide was established in 2021 and has examined systemic failures in support services, transition processes, and mental health care.
The statistics are sobering. Studies have indicated that ex-serving ADF members have higher rates of suicide than the general population, particularly among younger veterans.
Yet Anzac Day speeches rarely dwell on this.
We prefer the dawn service to the discharge paperwork. The trumpet to the tribunal.
The myth celebrates courage in battle. It struggles to accommodate trauma in peacetime.
Power, Responsibility, and National Amnesia
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: we give soldiers extraordinary power.
We train them to use lethal force. We deploy them into volatile regions. We demand aggression when necessary and restraint when possible — often in split-second decisions.
We call them heroes when they act decisively. We prosecute them when that decisiveness crosses legal lines.
Both are necessary.
But what is rarely acknowledged is the cognitive dissonance built into this arrangement.
We elevate soldiers as moral exemplars while asking them to operate in environments defined by moral ambiguity.
Then, when allegations arise, we behave as if we are shocked — as if war was ever clean.
None of this excuses unlawful conduct. Accountability is essential. But accountability should not coexist with amnesia.
We cannot pretend that the conditions of modern counterinsurgency warfare are comparable to a parade ground.
The Commercialisation of Memory
Anzac biscuits. Dawn service merchandise. Branded campaigns invoking “the spirit.”
There is an entire ecosystem built around remembrance.
Corporate sponsorship appears at major commemorations. Tourism campaigns promote Gallipoli pilgrimages. Politicians invoke the Anzac spirit in debates far removed from military service.
The word “Anzac” is legally protected — yet culturally commodified.
The line between reverence and branding blurs.
This doesn’t make remembrance insincere. But it does complicate it.
When the soldier becomes a symbol, he or she must remain symbolically pure.
Human frailty threatens the product.
Disposable When Inconvenient
Roberts-Smith is not the first soldier to be lionised and later scrutinised.
Vietnam veterans returned to a country divided over the war. Many felt alienated. Some were publicly criticised. The Anzac myth did not comfortably integrate a war widely perceived as controversial.
Afghanistan veterans now face their own complex legacy.
The national narrative prefers clarity: hero or villain. Pride or shame.
Real soldiers exist in between.
When they return injured, traumatised, or accused, they complicate the story.
And complexity is bad for branding.
The Cost of Simplification
Simplifying the Anzac story makes it teachable. It makes it unifying. It gives young Australians a shared civic ritual.
But simplification also erases.
It erases the Afghan civilians named in investigative reports. It erases the internal struggles of veterans. It erases the moral grey zones of modern warfare.
The result is a national identity that is strong — but brittle.
Strong enough to inspire.
Brittle enough to shatter when confronted with evidence that does not fit the script.
What Would an Honest Memory Look Like?
An honest national remembrance would not abandon the myth. Myths have power. They bind communities. They transmit values.
But it would expand it.
It would acknowledge that courage and wrongdoing can coexist within the same institution.
It would teach children that heroism is not the absence of flaw, but the presence of accountability.
It would honour the majority who serve ethically while confronting the minority who do not — without collapsing into denial or hysteria.
It would speak as openly about veteran suicide and moral injury as it does about Gallipoli.
It would resist turning soldiers into mascots.
Loving Soldiers Beyond the Frame
Australia does love its soldiers.
We turn up at dawn. We donate to charities. We tell stories of sacrifice.
But love tested only in ceremony is easy.
The harder test is what we do when the narrative becomes uncomfortable.
Do we abandon the individual to protect the myth?
Do we defend blindly to preserve pride?
Or do we hold two truths at once: that service deserves honour, and that accountability protects that honour?
Ben Roberts-Smith’s legal saga exposed more than allegations against a single man. It exposed a national tension between reverence and reality.
The Anzac legend will endure. It is too deeply embedded not to.
But if it is to survive honestly, it must expand beyond bronze statues and curated speeches.
It must make room for the full human cost of war — including the parts that don’t photograph well.
Because soldiers are not brand assets.
They are human beings sent into situations most civilians will never experience.
And if we are going to ask them to carry the burden of war, the least we can do is carry the burden of truth.
– By The Hollow Centre
