War, ANZACs, and the Power of Memory: From Rosemary to The Fifth Element

Each year on ANZAC Day, Australians and New Zealanders pin sprigs of rosemary to their lapels. More than a simple herb, rosemary has become a symbol of remembrance. Its strong, lingering scent evokes memory — not only personal, but collective. It grows wild on the Gallipoli peninsula, where so many ANZAC soldiers fought and died in 1915. The aroma for many stirs reflections of bravery and sacrifice, but also of the deep wounds left by war on people, on land, and on the soul.

ANZAC Day is not a celebration of war — it is an act of bearing witness. It asks us to pause and reflect on the cost of conflict, to honour the human spirit, and to carry forward the stories of those who came before. In remembering the ANZACs, we honour not only courage, but the burden carried — a weight passed down through families, communities, national ceremonies, and artistic expression.

Yet one cost of war often remains unspoken: its toll on the Earth itself.

As Jurgen Brauer outlines in War and Nature: The Environmental Consequences of War in a Globalized World, war is not only a human tragedy — it is also an ecological catastrophe. Military actions destroy forests, poison waterways, collapse ecosystems, and leave behind toxic legacies that last for generations. From scorched earth policies and chemical defoliants to bombed-out landscapes and radioactive residues, the environmental footprint of war is staggering. The military-industrial complex ranks among the world’s most destructive polluters. Forests are flattened, soil is sterilised, rivers run black, and wildlife vanishes — casualties rarely counted in war memorials.

This deeper truth adds complexity to remembrance. War is not confined to the battlefield; it scars everything it touches — including the biosphere we all depend on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9cw4pyKMSU

This layered grief is captured powerfully in the 1997 sci-fi film The Fifth Element. As Leeloo — a being of divine purity and immense intelligence — rapidly learns about human history, she encounters war. Not as a sequence of images, but as an overwhelming flood of knowing. Her reaction is not one of shock alone, but of spiritual collapse. She weeps, not because she is weak, but because she understands. And what she understands is unbearable.

It’s a cinematic echo of the emotional terrain that many veterans and civilians must navigate after war: the comprehension of suffering on a scale too vast for language. Leeloo’s paradox — pure and competent, innocent yet deeply aware — becomes a mirror for our own suppressed grief.

The destruction of war is not abstract. It is personal. Emotional. Ecological.

In this way, rosemary and Leeloo carry similar weight. Each, in their own context, symbolises the quiet power of memory — and the pain of knowing. From ancient herbs to modern films, the language of remembrance surrounds us. War is not only fought with weapons. It is felt in hearts, in the silence after a scream, in the shattered soil beneath our feet.

As we mark ANZAC Day, let us remember not only the fallen soldiers, but also the fallen forests. War leaves its imprint not just in history books, but in the air we breathe and the land we walk on.

Rosemary, in this light, is more than a token. It is a reminder — of sacrifice, yes, but also of the urgent need to protect what remains. Remembrance is not just about looking back. It is a call to care — for one another, and for the only planet we share.