ANZAC Day.

In a corner of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra lies a lifeboat that was recovered in the lee of the cliffs at Gallipoli. It is a relic now, a rusted worn-out cutter that was used by the Army during the Dardanelles campaign to ferry soldiers from the troopships anchored in the Straits to the beach at ANZAC Cove.

It is one of two lifeboats used during the landing in 1915 that remain in the care of the memorial. One of them, an exhibit in storage, is a wooden lifeboat from His Majesty’s Transport Devanha and is completely intact. The other - the relic - lies tucked away inoffensively in a corner of the AWM’s Commemorative Hall, just shy of the visitors' desk.

It is full of bullet holes.

This lifeboat is from HMT (A33) Ascot and was used by 13 Battalion AIF during the landings at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. The battalion went ashore under enemy fire, with covering fire provided by HM ships Queen Elizabeth and Chelmer. This lifeboat became stranded on the beach at Anzac Cove and remained there until 14 September 1921, when it was dispatched to Australia.

If you position yourself just at the starboard quarter near the stern of this carefully preserved relic you can view the lifeboat's entire length. The critical damage to its hull is undisguised; the bullet holes are many and of a large calibre. And if you stand there quietly you will be left with the overwhelming impression, for some of the young, enthusiastic, and fearful men that were aboard this boat on that early morning of April 25th, 1915 the damage to them would, as it was to the lifeboat, have been fatal.

On this year’s ANZAC Day we will be asked again to celebrate these men and to honour them for their sacrifice and achievement. Prime Minister Howard said "The Anzac legend has helped us to define who we are as Australians." And many agree.

But in the years after the war, Australia struggled to cope with the needs of its crippled, former soldiers and the wider community found itself profoundly distressed and embittered by guilt and loss. It was exacerbated by the refusal of most surviving veterans to speak about a war that had so drastically altered their character as to turn them into complete strangers.

In response, Australia’s self-prescribed therapy was the establishment of appeals and the building of memorials the intensity of which was so extraordinary that no town, or school or public building escaped the community's need to erect permanent plaques, statues, and cenotaphs as acts of penitence. And now, 104 years later these things are the only things that remain that mark the trauma and grief of an entire Australian generation.

Very little of that is remembered now. Almost none of it is commemorated. And yet it certainly took just as much courage to nurture a veteran’s recovery, wounded or not, in the years after the war as it took for those men to face the bullets and shells of the enemy.

The truth is that the landing at Gallipoli and the subsequent campaigns in Egypt and France were a catastrophe. None of our communities was untouched by the loss of those actions. Australia paid in blood and treasure a price that was utterly disproportionate to its size, and we are still, all these years later, trying to justify. Since that war, it has been a national obsession to remind subsequent generations how important it is to worship the sacrifice of the glorious dead.

But we have never asked ourselves how much more Australia may have achieved had these men and women been allowed to live out their lives in peace.

So the end of WW1 shouldn’t be mindlessly celebrated. We should be angry that these young, inexperienced soldiers were deployed with such utter contempt by other unapologetic, incompetent men who had no connection or stake in Australia. We should be utterly appalled that there has never been an apology from Britain or even an acknowledgement of the war’s complete military ineptitude. History now records the name of Winston Churchill, then the First Lord of the Admiralty and the man who pushed for the landings on the Turkish peninsula as a war hero but in the years after 1915 Churchill’s name was poisonous in many Australian families.

There were moments of heroism, bravery, resilience and extraordinary achievement. Our soldiers were brave, of that, there is no doubt.

But any ANZAC anniversary should be viewed with sadness and anger. That day was not, despite popular belief, Australia’s great moment in the sun. It was an ill-conceived involvement that scarred this country for many years afterwards and led, in part to a prolonged period of social and economic depression. There was a loss of faith, a loss of hope and it was, without doubt, a waste of everyone’s time.

So if you are curious, if you want to know more about that first terrible Australian experience of war go to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra and stand quietly for a moment in the starboard quarter of that relic salvaged from Gallipoli.

We have our own horrors.