The question is always - are the battle grounds at places like Gallipoli, Kokoda and Long Tan worthy of enshrining in our folklore, or, is the sight of a young Aussie backpacker draped in the flag at 4am on the Gallipoli Peninsula unhealthy nationalism?

There is a sense of youthful adventure surrounding our involvement in the Great War, in spite of its absolute futility. The nostalgia of young diggers and their mates sent to foreign lands.

The romance and tragedy of the movies The Light Horsemen and Gallipoli.

On Sunday night the ABC will screen Anzac Girls; a nurse's perspective of the carnage at Gallipoli and the Western Front.

The generals' war to end all wars - where tonnes upon tonnes of human flesh were an expendable commodity. The contemporary euphemism for this madness is called "collateral damage".

Interesting that none of the battle grounds mentioned could be described as outstanding victories, but we revere them.

Anzac Day will always move us to tears. The ABC TV promos of Anzac Girls can move you to tears before it is even screened.

We'll watch the premiere on Sunday with a box of tissues.

We've just commemorated the first shot fired in World War I.

Today some of us remember Hiroshima and the unspeakable suffering of about 150,000 civilians at 8am on August 6, 1945.

The rise of nationalism catapulted Germany and Japan into a world war where 60 million died.

Wars are usually started by totalitarian states, where nationalism is more easily manipulated and fermented.

To suggest that Anzac Day will ultimately rewrite our history as some nationalistic craze is rubbish.

Australia has never invaded a country to occupy and annex it.

Not even Vietnam or Iraq qualify, for all their flaws as failed campaigns.

The thousands of young Australians who regularly crowd the Gallipoli Peninsula and get up to attend dawn services back home are hardly conscripts to the glory of war.

In spite of all the efforts of revisionists wanting to make us feel like pawns for nationalism, as if we're 21st century fodder for neo-fascism, Australians will remember their war dead, and will be bloody well proud to.

Only those who have never seen a battlefield glorify war.

An uncle who spent four years in a Japanese POW camp never came back with tales of heroism and nationalism, but rather a grim silence.

He never marched on Anzac Day.

The nay sayers raining on the parade of Anzac Day were probably those idiots who spat at troops coming home from Vietnam, as if it's the soldier's fault that he is sent to hell - and back if he was lucky.

At Hiroshima a whole city perished in a flash. The nuclear attack has never been repeated.

The Peace Dome and museum in Hiroshima are reminders that war is a stupid exercise of power.

Just being at the very spot where the world once ended is enough.

No, Anzac Day is no Nuremberg rally for hegemony. Anzac Day is simply a statement of who we are and who we were.

Only a fool glorifies war, but only another fool kids themselves that through history they could have remained a pacifist.