Part 2(Post was too long apparently)

The Second battle, that of the Kokoda trail is seen as a small ragtag force of reserves outnumbered and fighting their way back to safety against a Japanese foe that hugely out numbered them until finally reinforcements from the regular army(the 6th and 7th Divisions that had been send back from North Africa for this purpose) arrived and saved the day. There is a feeling that the British were using us and did not care about the defence of Australia at all, hence why there were reserves defending Australia in the first place and not the 6th and 7th Divisions. But again, once you look into this, in the initial stages the numbers were fairly even, sometimes we were slightly outnumbered but sometimes we outnumbered them, we were also fighting a retreat through dense jungle and hilly terrain, the perfect environment for that and fighting against a poorly equipped enemy with a terrible logistics system while we had support from the US and a better system of supply and equipment to begun with, some estimates say that over 90% of Japanese forces that died in the Papua New Guinea theatre died of sickness and disease, they suffered horribly from their terrible logistics. Once the 6th and 7th Divisions arrived we then quite significantly outnumbered them. As for weather the British really cared so little and were willing to see us invaded, it was unlikely ever to happen even had we lost Papua and New Guinea and as Chief of the Imperial General staff Field Marshall Sir Alanbrooke told his Australian colleague and noted in his war diary when we kept pestering about having our forces returned, the war was not going to be won or lost in Australia anyway yet if Britain fell Australia would fall with her.

As for the Anzac Spirit, I think all enlisted men fit that description, they are all going to be poor working class type lads and you ALWAYS here about this notion of fighting for the man beside you and keeping a sense of humour in every army. Also interestingly only 13.1% actually came from Agricultural backgrounds according to information on the Australian War Museum website and most of them would not be from the 'outback'. This makes sense as farmers played a vital function.

Is this more of an Australian thing or do other nations have certain near mythological battles like this too or a certain legendary Soldier ethos as well? I'm particularly interested in seeing whether tiny and unimportant nations have them, like Hungary for example, they lost both world wars and nobody hears much about them in either war, yet they most have some internal views on certain battles that they took part in.