The ANZAC Spirit Has Never Been More Needed

Commentary On May 4, 1940, my father embarked on the first voyage of the Queen Mary, since her conversion to a troop ship, to sail to the Middle East to fight the Axis powers. On board were 5,000 other members of the AIF—the Australian Imperial Force. My mother, like many others, followed the ship in a small boat as far as the Sydney Heads to wave farewell. Nobody then believed that the crisis would be over soon and that the boys would come home by Christmas: just getting there took several weeks and was fraught with danger. My mother told me years later that most people were pessimistic about the prospect of victory....