Anzacs -- sun-bronzed men of Anglo-Saxon and Irish descent, right?
Not necessarily, it has become apparent.
Historians have uncovered a vast array of Anzac soldier backgrounds, and want acknowledgment of that multiculturalism brought to the fore.
In a week where a senior member of the Federal Opposition flagged raising the profile of Anzac Day in the nation's schools, it raises the question of who the Anzacs were.
An estimated 30 per cent of Anzac soldiers were born overseas.
Unsurprisingly, most of those were British-born, but there were many from countries as varied as the Philippines and Malaysia to Germany and France.
Historian Jim Claven, a former federal veterans affairs adviser, says Australians are looking for new ways to tell the Anzac Story to younger generations.
He says one way is by re-telling how these Diggers and their families had come from across the world to make Australia their home.
Mr Claven says the Australian army was made up of people from many nations and cultures as well as Australian-born and indigenous Australians.
He says those who volunteered in World War One reflected Australia, an Australia that was unexpectedly multicultural.
"The Goldrush and after that with the industrial development in Australia in the 1880s and '90s, lots of migrants were coming here from all over the world. Just 10 years before 1914, 400,000 migrants arrived to Australia and there were only four or five million people here, so that's nearly a 10 per cent increase in 10 years. They came from all over the world. They came for Scandinavia, they came from France, they came from Brazil, America, they came from Italy, Greece, Malta, India, China. And they came here and when the war broke out, a number of them volunteered."
Jim Claven says migrants to Australia wanted to be part of their new country, and signing up for its army was a major part of that.
Mr Claven says Australians need to understand more about where the Anzacs came from.
"Every Anzac Day we're commemorating the service of people that fight for Australia who volunteer and fight during wars, and the people who support them -- nurses and the like. It's important to understand who those people were and the experience they had. Whether that's in the war, before the war and their experiences after, it's important that we understand that."
One ethnic group with a big stake in Australian history is the Chinese.
The head of military history at the Australian War Memorial, Ashley Eakins, says there was an unknown number of people from China or with Chinese ancestry who served as soldiers in the First World War.
He says that's because enlistment in the Australian Imperial Force was at first confined to those of European descent, although the rules were relaxed as the war went on.
Mr Eakins says two soldiers were particularly outstanding, including perhaps the best-known, Billy Sing, whose father migrated to Australia from Shanghai.
"He ended up being the most outstanding sniper on Gallipoli. Billy Sing became a legend and we're not even sure how many Turkish soldiers he accounted for in his time there, but he was certainly a very effective sniper. He then went on to the Western Front and even displayed his skills there for a while. He came back to Australia a celebrity and then his life, like many returned soldiers, all fell apart in the inter-war years. He died in poverty, his decoration had been lost or sold, and he was virtually an unknown figure when he died."
Ashley Eakins says Billy Sing suffered in part the way many returned soldiers did, from mental and physical effects of the war, but also because of his ethnicity.
"There was considerable anti-Chinese sentiment in Australia at the time when he was growing up, but he overcame that. I mean, nobody is more equal than a soldier in a unit. But I think his return as something of a celebrity presaged a return to civilian life where all of that equal status he'd had and the celebrity that he had was going to vanish very quickly. And of course he came home badly wounded too. He'd received gunshot wounds and he was definitely suffering from gas poisoning from the Western Front as well."
Another Chinese-Australian Anzac that Ashley Eakins says was outstanding was Caleb Shang, known as Charlie.
Mr Eakins says Charlie Shang enlisted in the AIF in 1916 as a clerk, but then became an outstanding soldier.
"He found his mark in the AIF as a runner, a message runner, and a very brave signaller, and also as a sniper on the Western Front. He served in a number of battles and, indeed, became the most highly decorated Chinese soldier that we have any record of, and in fact one of the most highly decorated Australian soldiers. He won the Distinguished Conduct medal not once but twice.
Australian War Memorial data shows Charlie Shang returned to civilian life, married and lived and worked in Queensland.
"He had a relatively successful and prosperous life until the Second World War when again with the threat of Japanese invasion he was made to suffer the occasional racial slur. People might have taken him for Japanese perhaps, or maybe it was just as a result of his Asian appearance. He's never marched in an Anzac Day parade but in 1943 he changed all that and just for this one time in his life he marched. A very modest man, but he put on all his medals and I think he was making a point to the local community about who he was."
Greeks also played a large role in World War One on behalf of Australia.
Historian Jim Claven says their Anzac contribution is not well-known, as most Greek-Australian stories arise from the post-World War Two migration.
"57 AnzacS across the whole war were born in Greece, eight of those fought at Gallipoli. But there was a famous fellow, Georgios Papas from Queensland. He received a Distinguished Conduct medal for gallantry at Gaba Tepe. He was awarded that because he was wounded retrieving (other) wounded people under heavy gunfire. And later on, not long after he'd got his mention in despatches, he was badly wounded and returned to Australia and was discharged. He didn't recover that well from his wounds."
Mr Claven says acknowledging the varied ethnic and cultural backgrounds of Anzacs is a way of expanding the Anzac story to involve more Australians.
He says it also needs to be understood that the Anzac story even has meaning for the country's newest arrivals.
"There are lots of other parts of the Australian community who may have connections to Anzac that we're not really aware of. So for example, if there were people from Vietnam that are in Australia, well their relatives in Vietnam may well have fought alongside Australians at Salonika, say, in Greece in the First World War. There are Senegalese and (other) Africans who fought in the French forces at Gallipoli, who fought alongside Anzacs, and we have recent migrants of African descent."
