AS WELL AS fulfilling the need to memorialise the dead, acknowledge the wounded and allow the living to grieve for their loss, the concept of Anzac has always been a vehicle for the public expression of a sense of national identity. From the moment the news broke revealing what had happened on a small stretch of Turkish coast on the morning of 25 April 1915, Anzac has been bound up with the sense of what it means to be an Australian. At first, this involved patriotic speeches and protestations of loyalty to the British Empire and the motherland. Late in World War I as the enormous casualties mounted ever higher this began to give way to a less enthusiastic view of the ‘crimson thread of kinship’, as politician Henry Parkes, the ‘father of Federation’ and premier of New South Wales once described the Australian links with Britain.
By the time of World War II, these ties were still there but were growing weaker. The fall of Singapore to the Japanese in 1942, with the consequent reorientation of Australia’s strategic and political alliances towards the USA, marked the fraying of any serious political connections between Australia and Britain. Through all these social, political and economic changes, the figure of the digger and his role as the hero of Anzac have continued to move many Australians deeply. In remembering, publically and privately, the deeds of those who have fought for Australia, at home and abroad, the country acknowledges its sense of self in the most powerful possible manner.
As a volunteer force, the AIF was full of colourful characters. One or two featured in The Anzac Book, including ‘Wallaby Joe’ in a tale related by W. R. C., 8th Australian Light Horse. Joe, or whatever his real name might have been, was, according to the story, one of the first to enlist when Australia went to war.
His real name matters little; suffice it that he was known among his comrades as ‘Wallaby Joe.’
He came to Gallipoli via Egypt with the Light Horse. Incidentally, he has ridden nearly a thousand miles over sun-scorched, drought-stricken plains to join them.
Age about 38. In appearance the typical bushman. Tall and lean, but strong as a piece of hickory. A horseman from head to toe, and a dead shot. He possessed the usual beard of the lonely prospector of the extreme backblocks. Out of deference to a delicate hint from his squadron commander he shaved it off, but resolved to let it grow again when the exigencies of active service should discount such finicking niceties.
His conversation was laconic in the extreme. When the occasion demanded it he could swear profusely, and in a most picturesque vein. When a bursting shell from a ‘75’ on one occasion blew away a chunk of prime Berkshire which he was cooking for breakfast, his remarks were intensely original and illuminative.
He could also drink beer for indefinite periods, but seldom committed the vulgar error of becoming ‘tanked.’ Not even that locality ‘east of Suez,’ where, as the song tells us, ‘There ain’t no Ten Commandments and a man can raise a thirst,’ could make his steps erratic.
He was very shy in the presence of the softer sex. On one occasion his unwary footsteps caused him some embarrassment. Feeling thirsty he turned into one of those establishments, fairly common in Cairo, where the southern proprietors try to hide the villainous quality of their beer by bribing sundry young ladies of various nationalities and colours to give more high-class vaudeville turns. The aforementioned young ladies are aided and abetted by a coloured orchestra, one member of which manipulates the bagpipes.
A portly damsel had just concluded, amidst uproarious applause, the haunting strains of ‘Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay.’ She sidled up to Joe with a large-sized grin on her olive features.
‘Gib it kiss,’ she murmured, trying to look ravishing.
But Joe had fled.
Henceforth during his stay in Egypt he took his beer in a little Russian bar, the proprietor of which could speak English, and had been through the Russo-Japanese War.
When the Light Horse were ordered at last to the front, Joe took a sad farewell of his old bay mare. He was, as a rule, about as sentimental as a steamroller, but ‘leaving the old nag behind hurt some.’
On the Peninsula and under fire his sterling qualities were not long in coming to the surface. Living all his life in an environment in which the pick and shovel plays an important part he proved himself an adept at sapping and mining. At this game he was worth four ordinary men. No matter how circuitous the maze of trenches, he could find his way with ease. He could turn out all sorts of dishes from his daily rations of flour, bacon, jam, and biscuits. An endless amount of initiative showed itself in everything he did. His mates learned quite a lot of things just by watching him potter about the trenches and bivouacs. His training at the military camps of Australia and, later, in Egypt, combined with the knowledge he had been imbibing from Nature all his life, made him an ideal soldier.
He was used extensively by his officers as a scout. As the Turkish trenches were often yards from our own, needless to say the scouting was done at night, the Turks’ favourite time to attack being just before dawn. Often during these nocturnal excursions a slight rustle in the thick scrub would cause his mate to grasp his rifle with fixed bayonet and peer into the darkness, with strained eyes and ears and quickened pulse.
‘A hare,’ Joe would whisper, and probably advise him to take things easy while he himself watched.
This went on for some time until one night his mate came in alone, pale-faced and wild-eyed. Interrogated by the officer on duty, he informed him that Joe had been shot.
We brought the body in. He had been shot through the heart—a typical affair of outposts.
Tucked away in one of the innumerable gullies, a little grave, one among hundreds, contains a body of one of nature’s grand men. On the wooden cross surmounting it is the following:
No.008 Trooper J. Redgum,
20th Australian Light Horse.
Killed in Action.
In English tradition, 25 April is St Mark’s Day, and the evening of 24 April—‘St Mark’s Eve’—is associated with ‘porch watching’. In this old custom, villagers maintain a vigil in their local church in order to observe the shades of those who will die in the village during the coming year enter the church at midnight—and not come out again. The first Australian organisation to form in support of Anzac Day was well aware of this tradition and noted it in their deliberations about the best way to observe the new calendar event. In January 1916 the Anzac Day Commemoration Committee in Brisbane raised funds for building war memorials by selling lavender-coloured silk ribbons embossed with the lion of St Mark, who was one of Jesus’ disciples and author of one of the gospels.
But the first Anzac Day observation in Australia had already taken place six months before 25 April 1916. It happened in South Australia on 13 October 1915. The Labor state government decided that the sacrifice of the troops still on Gallipoli was sufficient to justify re-christening the eight-hour holiday Anzac Day. When it came, the day had the flavour of a patriotic festival, with a procession headed by the Royal Australian Naval Brigade and band, followed by returned soldiers and new recruits. The usual trade union march followed on behind, featuring floats on patriotic themes. There were more festive activities, including air balloons, military kites, mock arrests of MPs and, the grand finale, a ‘tram-car crash’. Two old trams were sent careering towards each other from opposite ends of a specially raised track. Together with some explosive additions, the resulting smash and fireball apparently satisfied the 15 000 spectators reported to have turned out for the show, ‘watching two tramcars melt into a shapeless mass of twisted iron and splintered wood’. Not surprisingly, a lot of money was raised for the war effort and the idea was adopted in Victoria, where Melbourne had an Anzac Day on 17 December 1915 and Ballarat on 14 January 1916.
As these stories suggest, the first anniversary of the Gallipoli landings was immediately established as a popular day of national observance. But it was not celebrated in a broadly similar manner as it is today, nationwide. Instead, a variety of local customs, ideas and activities were tried out. In London there was a grand parade of Australian and New Zealand troops, making the streets ring with ‘coo-ee’ and ‘kia-ora’. Most Anzacs, though, were still at the front line. Charles Bean recorded one observation on the western front:
Many of the Australian units marked the day by holding athletic and military sports meetings. The spectacle of five teams of enormous Victorians in a tug-of-war, on a corner of the Somme battlefield where old shell-holes had been filled in, and the whole brigade seated round as in an amphitheatre, was worth travelling leagues to see. Another brigade had a Hindenburg race, confined to men who lately reached and for some hours occupied the Hindenburg line . . . By a strange coincidence, this was won by a Western Australian who is reputed to have been the first man to reach the line in the fight.
In Egypt, the troops began the day with a religious service ending with ‘The Last Post’, then celebrated the day with a party. This was followed by ‘a skit on the memorable landing by a freak destroyer manned by a lot of corked blackfellows hauling ashore a number of tiny tin boats full of tiny tin soldiers. It was screamingly funny’, according to General Sir John Monash, who also said that 15 000 diggers swam naked in the Suez Canal. Monash concluded his account by describing the event as ‘this famous day—OUR DAY’.
And while most cities and larger towns attempted some sort of acknowledgement of the day, most activities depended on community, veteran, religious and service groups rather than official government organisations. In fact, state and federal governments were curiously lukewarm about Anzac Day during the war and for a few years afterwards. For the 1917 Anzac Day, Prime Minister Billy Hughes did not even bother writing a new speech. He delivered the same one he had given the year before—in London. It was not until the community began to ask pointed questions in the press that officialdom finally joined in, from the early 1920s. From then, the day began to assume the more organised character that it has had since the 1930s, at which time the innovation of the Dawn Service began to be incorporated into most Anzac Day commemorations. Over the years following, the day has tended towards the more or less standard form that Australians know well, though local variations and developments are often featured, especially since the continuing popular rediscovery of the day from the 1990s onwards.
After the war ended in November 1918, it was not too many months before people began returning to the ‘holy of holies’, as one journalist called Gallipoli. In 1919 a ceremonial return of British troops took place under the terms of the war settlement. There were visits from the war graves representatives of the many nations who had taken part in the campaign, and the Australian war correspondent Charles Bean also returned seeking information for what was to become the official history of Australia’s Great War experience. Bean had been at the initial landings and remained on Gallipoli for almost the whole campaign, so his return was a poignant event. He arrived in May 1919 and was interviewed by a journalist, his observations providing for the first time some insight into what it had been like for the Turks.
In compiling my history of the war, said Mr. Bean, the authorities in London thought it would be of advantage for me to visit Gallipoli, in order to ascertain what the real strength of the Turkish positions had been, and how far the Australians had penetrated on the first day of the landing, at Ari Burnu. I took with me several members of the Australian Historical Mission, including Captain Wilkins, M.C., photographer, Captain Lambert, the well-known Australian painter, and Lieut. Buchanan, in addition to a party of surveyors and draftsmen, and we worked continuously for three weeks. We did not land at the same place as we did when the famous landing was made at Anzac beach, but at Chanak, where the Turkish ports inside the Dardanelles are situated. From there, with a working party, I went through the ruins of Maidos, the town which was blown and burst by the guns of the Queen Elizabeth the day after the landing. There was nothing of it left. Some big shells evidently fell into the town, and set fire to the buildings; then the Turks pulled down the houses, using the material for making dug-outs. The Turks were great on salvage. We found the hillside for miles around the Turkish positions at Anzac littered with empty bully beef tins. The Turks took all the stores we left behind, and we were told that for months after the evacuation our beef was a common article of diet in Constantinople.
EARLY AUSTRALIAN SUCCESS.
We reached Anzac . . . from the Turkish side, from the district of Gun Ridge, the position which faced us for the whole eight months we spent at Anzac, and which had been our objective from the first day of landing, but which was never reached. Later we found traces of a few men having reached the lower, seaward side of Gun Ridge. We arrived at the certitude, from the traces we found, that a few Australian scouts reached this slope within a few hours of the landing. Little bits of kit were lying about, and on seeing spent cartridge cases, conviction stared us in the face that some Australians on their first day reached the farther slopes of Pine Ridge, which they never again approached. A few possibly reached Battleship Hill. All these positions have been marked on our survey plans, and if more perfect maps of the country had been available when we landed, or if the ‘digger’ had at that time possessed the wonderful experience which he achieved during the last six months of the campaign in France, we might have reached Gun Ridge and held it, or at least a part of it. As it was, the outstanding fact that struck us, as it must strike all beholders, was that it was marvellous that they went as far as they did.
THE TURKS ’ SIDE OF LONE PINE.
As soon as our party reached the top of Gun Ridge . . . we found ourselves looking into the Turkish side of Lone Pine. We were faced by the shelves on which the Turks had built their shelters and dug-outs. There was a little more green grass about than our minds pictured to exist at Anzac, as we knew the locality, except that every particle of timber or metal had been removed by the Turks. The place was otherwise unchanged. A road wound up the southern side of Lone Pine, and we rode along this road, but owing to there being trenches everywhere it was very difficult to get about, except on foot. Of course, we carefully examined the trenches, and they struck us as representing the most complicated and intricate maze of trench digging that we had ever seen. Our official photographer, who probably had visited more battlefields in France than any one else, agreed that he had never seen there anything approaching the work of the Turkish sappers. The trenches were all well conserved, and in such a state that if one got into them it was difficult to get out. On the top of the hill we came out on a square patch of grass, which we recognised at once as the ‘daisy patch,’ and which was some times known as ‘dead men’s field.’ This position, over which the troops charged at Lone Pine, is unfortunately crowded with unidentified graves of our men, who were killed in the famous charge.
MARKING OF ANZAC GRAVES.
The work of marking the graves of those Australians who fell at Anzac is being extraordinarily well done by the small Australian party which is on the spot. Between 5000 and 6000 graves have already been identified, with absolute certainty, and when those of some of the 20,000 odd who lost their lives in No Man’s Land have been placed with some accuracy one of our duties will be concluded.
FAMOUS BEACHY BILL BATTERY.
Mr. Bean was to look for Beachy Bill, the famous battery which used to enfilade the beach from the south. There were 50 theories that ‘Bill’ was dug back into the slope of the hill, in the olive grove behind Gaba Tepe. Some people said that ‘he’ was on rails, with a disappearing trap door, and others merely pictured ‘him’ in a deep cave, but . . . we found ‘him’ in the oak grove, south of the Aama Dere. It was exactly like any other German battery, the system of the ordinary open emplacement being fairly well camouflaged. There were about 30 gun positions, a dozen of which were new, and around every one of them there were marks of our own gun fire, and round some of the others, one especially, the ground was almost as much cut up as it would be round a battery in France. Beachy Bill certainly consisted of one battery of 5.9 howitzers, and two or three batteries of 4.2 guns and 75s. The only other place where Anzac was cut up by shell fire in a manner in any way comparable to the fields of France was on the slopes of Battleship Hill where the big guns of the Queen Elizabeth, Bacchante and other warships got onto the Turks on the first few days after the landing.
Another group of British, New Zealanders and Australians visited the Gallipoli battlefields in 1934 and were addressed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938), Turkey’s first president. Atatürk has an important role in the Anzac story. As a young military commander he was largely responsible for the success of the Turkish resistance to the Anzac attacks at Gallipoli (Gelibolu).
In a remarkably generous speech to the visitors, the president said of the Anzac dead:
Those heroes that shed their blood
And lost their lives.
You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.
Therefore rest in peace.
There is no difference between the Johnnies
And the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side
Here in this country of ours.
You, the mothers,
Who sent their sons from far away countries
Wipe away your tears,
Your sons are now lying in our bosom
And are in peace
After having lost their lives on this land they have
Become our sons as well.
This text has been inscribed on the Ari Burnu Cemetery memorial and on memorials in New Zealand and Australia.
Visits to the Gallipoli battlefields in search of graves or other indications of the last resting place of loved ones began very soon after the war ended. These visits quickly became known as ‘pilgrimages’, an indication of the Australian and New Zealand attitude that this sparse area of rock and sand had become sacred ground.
During the war, diggers had often complained of the tendency of civilians to ask what the soldiers considered to be stupid questions about the front line. It seems that the same problem occurred after the war. ‘The Silly Things Diggers Were Asked After the War’, or some version of it, appeared in more than one old soldiers’ publication.
Jones: ‘You’re looking fine, old chap. I suppose if war started again you’d be anxious to have another go at them?’
Mother: ‘I suppose you delighted in splashing about in the water in the trenches?’
The Flapper: ‘It must have been great fun chasing the Germans with an eighteen-pounder, wasn’t it?’
Tommy (aged five, longingly): ‘Was there plenty of good mud over there, uncle?’
Aunt: ‘I suppose those Germans are awfully ugly, aren’t they?’
The Business Man: ‘Now, what would be the number of tins, approximately, of course, of bully beef eaten per day?’
Maude: ‘Wasn’t it delightfully lovely living in those dear little dugouts?’
As the postwar years stretched out, so those who survived increasingly felt the need to relive their experiences. The 1920s and 1930s were thick with boozy reunions of old soldiers. These featured the telling of the old yarns yet again and the singing and reciting of song and verse from the trenches, the troopships and the estaminets. So powerful was the need to maintain or revive wartime memories that new items were composed and published long after the events to which they referred. ‘The Digger’s Alphabet’ was written in 1931 by C. R. Collins, soldier, physical education trainer and avid writer on all matters digger. This particular ‘Digger’s Alphabet’—it was one of many similar poems—might well have been composed anytime between 1916 and 1918, but for one or two postwar references. It is full of digger lingo, old rumours and memories of long-ago transgressions. Such compositions, despite their anachronistic nature, were also a form of memorial.
THE DIGGER ’S ALPHABET
A for the Adjutants, dashing young blades,
B for the Batmen who dodged all parades.
C for the Clink, aftermath of the spree,
The home of the birds who go making too free.
D for the Digger, the casual brute,
Who sauntered past ‘Birdie’ and didn’t salute.
E for the ‘Eggsers’ who turned their hats down,
‘The married man [sic] have to’, we told the whole town.
F for the Furphies, related with zest,
Especially the one of the long-promised rest.
G for the Gunner, a decent old sport,
Except for his habit of dropping ’em short.
H stands for Hindenburg, sturdy and hale,
Till Monash and Co. put a twist in his tail.
I for intelligence, reigning serene,
The reason the blighters were tabbed out in green.
J stands for Jerry, and Jacko the Turk,
Who kept all the diggers in regular work.
K stands for Knighthoods that Generals got,
Except when the profiteers collared the lot.
L for the Legends we told all the flappers,
Of boomerang farms and the jackeroo-trappers.
M stand [sic] for Mademoiselle. It appears
That she lived in the town we pronounced ‘Armenteers.’
N for the Nips that were seldom repaid,
Horseferry Road was the nub of this trade.
O for the O.B.E.s dished out in millions,
To actors and women and other civilians.
P for the Padre, the shifter of sin,
When you nipped him for gaspers you’d get the whole tin.
Q for the ‘Quack’ with his quick Number Nine,
And also the Quarter-bloke, dodging the line.
R for the Ration-state, figured and cinched,
Except for the Rum that the Quarter-bloke pinched.
S for the Sisters, the pride of the show,
But how they endured us, I’m hanged if I know.
T stands for ‘Two-up’ the national game;
When Princes have played it, are we much to blame?
U for the U-boats that scuttled in flight
Whene’er a destroyer would steam up in sight.
V for the ‘vin blong’ estaminets sold,
A potent prescription to keep out the cold.
W for War Books, so smutty in places,
All written by ladies or blokes from the bases.
X for the marks that they put upon casks,
To empty the same were our happiest tasks.
Y for the Y plus the M and C.A.,
The one little show that could make the war pay.
Z for the Zeppelins, purveyors of hate,
And also for Zero, the dread hour of fate.
Will Longstaff ’s famous painting, ‘Menin Gate at Midnight’, also known as ‘The Ghosts of Menin’, was painted in 1927. Longstaff had been present at the unveiling ceremony of the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres in Belgium and, according to one story, had been so affected by the experience that he walked along the Menin road and received the vision depicted in the painting, which he completed in a single marathon creative session after his return to London. He is also said to have been inspired by a woman he met on his walk. Mrs Mary Horsburgh had worked in a British canteen during the war, and she told him that she could feel ‘her dead boys’ all around her.
In the aftermath of World War I, the unprecedented immensity of grief on all sides produced an atmosphere of religious and spiritual emotion in which works like Longstaff ’s—if not as well known—were produced. Longstaff ’s powerfully symbolic representation of spectral soldiers hovering over a cornfield and moving towards the gate, with poppies in the background, evokes a general tone of mourning. It was immediately popular and remains so today.
The Menin Gate leading onto the road along which many Allied soldiers marched for the last time is known as ‘the Memorial to the Missing’ and has special significance for Australians and New Zealanders, as so many of their troops passed beneath it, never to return. The gate is specifically dedicated to those British and Commonwealth soldiers whose graves are unknown. Each night since 1928, with a break during World War II, there has been a memorial observance known as ‘the Last Post Ceremony’ at the gate, usually attended by thousands of tourists, local dignitaries and members of the armed and civic services.
But the spirits of Australian soldiers do not all lie on the battlefields of the Great War.
In July 1916 a wounded Australian soldier from the fighting at Pozières was travelling on a Red Cross train bound for a Yorkshire hospital. When the train reached Peterborough, Thomas Hunter was too ill to continue the journey. He was transferred to the Peterborough Infirmary where he died a few days later and was buried in the hospital grounds. This may have been simply another sad fatality during a war in which hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers died but for the intense local reaction, then and since.
The death of Sergeant Hunter, a 36-year-old Gallipoli veteran, so far from Australia and from family, friends and comrades, drew the sympathy of Peterborough’s wartime community. The mayor arranged for a civic funeral ceremony, which was attended by crowds of local people, many bearing wreaths. An appeal for funds to build a memorial was generously supported, generating income sufficient to build a substantial grave and to have a bronze plaque made and erected in Peterborough Cathedral. A desire to propagandise the war effort was probably the official inspiration for this reaction. It was a time of intense patriotism in which expressions of loyalty to king, country and the British Empire were regularly voiced in newspapers and pulpits and played out in public events. A poem published in the local newspaper summed up these ideas and the language used to express them.
Blood of our blood, son of our race,
Imperial and strong,
He came in all his youth’s fair grace—
One of a glorious throng
Of heroes from the southern land
Linked in our empire’s chain;
One of the famous Anzac band
From the far-distant main.
With British pride, in British soil,
Amidst our own dear dead
We laid him, freed from warrior’s toil,
In a true warrior’s bed.
His tomb, as long as it shall stand,
Shall keep alive his worth,
And link this spot of Motherland
With those who sent him forth.
But there was also genuine popular sympathy for the death of the ‘Lone Anzac’, as he was being called. Wreaths carried messages of sympathy from ‘a soldier’s mother’ and ‘for someone’s darling boy’. Although he had migrated to Australia from his native County Durham in 1910, Hunter had an adopted family in Australia who wrote to a local family requesting that ‘you will sometimes visit our darling’s grave and think of his sorrowing father, mother and sister, fourteen thousand miles away, who seem to miss him more each day’. There was still considerable local interest two years after his death. The 1918 Anzac Day observance involved another subscription plea for further decorations to Hunter’s grave and bronze memorial, while services were conducted in his memory at both these locations.
It seems that this local enthusiasm for the lonely Anzac faded away in the postwar years. But in September 1931 the first recorded manifestations of Thomas Hunter’s ghost were reported in the Peterborough Museum, once the Peterborough Infirmary. The wife of the building’s caretaker saw and heard a figure climbing the stairs. It was a man of about thirty with brown hair and wearing a green or grey suit. The figure walked through a closed door, down the corridor and then vanished. There were further sightings of the ghost over the next decades. These seem to have ceased in the 1970s, although unexplained cold spots and mysteriously moved furniture have been reported in the building.
Now, each Anzac Day since the 1980s, the Royal British Legion and the Peterborough community have commemorated the Lone Anzac. Members of the Australian High Commission or Australian military attend the event, together with hundreds of locals and civil dignitaries. During the ceremony, the stone cross that adorns his grave is covered with the Australian and British flags, and a special prayer is said.
Who was Howard Hitchcock? He was a wealthy businessman who was also mayor of Geelong, Victoria, from 1917 to 1922 and the person whose vision, money and perseverance led to the building of the world’s largest and longest constructed war memorial. As World War I dragged to an end, Hitchcock and a group of Geelong-based associates conceived the idea of building a road along the Victorian coast from Anglesea to Warrnambool. The road would open up land along the way, provide work for returned soldiers and also be a memorial to the sacrifices they and their comrades had made. Construction of the Great Ocean Road, as it would become known, began in 1919 and lasted for another thirteen years. The little-told story of the road is an epic of financial struggle, hard labour and controversy.
Officially, the Great Ocean Road runs for just over 240 kilometres (estimates vary) between Torquay and Allansford, though for most people it is the 75 kilometres of stunning sea and coast between Apollo Bay and Eastern View that constitutes the road. In 1917, this area was no more than a scattering of fishing villages accessible only by sea or a rough bridle track along the top of the cliffs. In partnership with the Victorian government, Hitchcock and others formed the Great Ocean Road Trust and surveying of the route began the next year.
To build the road it was necessary for the returned soldiers to live in camps. It was a hard and hazardous job and a number of workers died or were injured in accidents, mainly involving the explosives needed to push the road through the rocky terrain. A former worker on the road, Frank Fletcher, recollected that the men had to carry the detonators for the explosives on their knees as they bumped across the rough ground in carts, as this was the gentlest and least dangerous way to carry them. In the case of the returned soldiers who suffered from shell shock, the explosions brought back the trauma of war. Battlefield memories also played a role in the names the workers gave various parts of the road, including Shrapnel Gully and Sausage Gully.
Most of the work was done with pick and shovel and other hand tools, with very little mechanical assistance. The going was so hard that the labourers were only able to cut around three kilometres of road a month, and the workforce is said to have turned over twenty times during the thirteen years of building. This may have been related to the harshness of the supervision. According to folklore, if a man let a wheelbarrow fall down the steep cliffs he would be made to climb down and retrieve it. Certainly much of the work depended on the labourers hanging from the dangerous cliffs on ropes.
Not only was the work dangerous, but there was also little opportunity for recreation after work, and appeals were made for donations of reading materials for the men. By the time the road was finished in 1932, around 3000 returned soldiers and depression ‘sustenance’ or ‘dole’ workers had laboured on the project. There were justified celebrations when it was over, though Hitchcock did not live to see his vision fulfilled, suffering a fatal heart attack in 1931. His chauffeur is said to have driven Hitchcock’s car with his seat left empty in the cavalcade that drove along the road at the opening.
The Great Ocean Road has been progressively widened and improved, although landslides remain a danger. Today it is one of the world’s great scenic drives, featuring a number of commemorative features, including a memorial to Hitchcock. The imposing Memorial Arch at Eastern View is a reminder to motorists that they are passing along a unique Anzac memorial.
Perhaps the most revered symbols of Gallipoli are the ‘lone pines’ and the many trees that have since been grown from their seeds. Today, trees grown from and descended from the seedlings brought back home can be found in parks, gardens, schools and in the vicinity of memorials all around Australia. The trees gain their powerful significance from their relationship to the battle that raged between 6 and 9 August 1915 around the single pine tree remaining on a plateau at the southern end of Anzac.
During this battle, the 1st Brigade AIF initially attacked the heavily fortified Turkish trenches, parts of which had been roofed with pine logs. Although the first attack succeeded very quickly, it took another four days of bloody hand-to-hand fighting before the Turks were finally routed, resulting in 2000 Australian casualties. Turkish dead or casualties were estimated at 6000 to 7000. Seven Victoria Crosses were won during the battle. One of the survivors, Hugh Anderson of the 1st Brigade, wrote home about his part in the battle a few months later. Like many young men, he had enlisted, as he wrote, ‘for the adventure’.
We knew several days before that we were to charge the Lone Pine trenches. I was glad as I had come over for the adventure and this seemed what I was looking for.
We were issued with a white strip of calico to sew on to each arm and a big patch for the back, this was for the artillery to show where our men were, and also made a good mark for Johnnie as we soon found to our cost. We were then told what we were to take over with us and our officer gave us a rough sketch of the trenches and told us what was expected of us, and what we had to do.
On August 6th we paraded just after 3 o’clock in battle order and marched round to our trenches opposite the Lone Pine. The whole of the first division was to do the job, the 1st Battalion formed the first line and were in our advanced firing line, the 2nd Battalion were in the main firing line in the firing positions, and the 4th Battalion were in the bottom of the trench just behind them. The 3rd Battalion were the reserves and came over twenty minutes after we started. The brigade went in a little over 3000 strong and came out something over 400, so the casualties were very heavy.
We got to our positions about 4 pm and the artillery commenced bombarding the Turkish trenches and they returned the compliment and the crash and scream of shells was deafening for a little over an hour, the smell of explosives was very strong and the suspense of waiting tried our nerves. I was nervous I can tell you and put up many a prayer for courage. I bet others did also.
About 5 pm the officers were all there with watch in hand calling 3 minutes to go, 2 minutes to go, 1 minute to go half a minute to go and shut his watch and three shrill blasts of a whistle. Out scrambled the boys from advanced line up through holes in the ground, the trench being a tunnel. Over the parapet go the 2nd Battalion and we are close behind. I will never forget that picture, I was well up with the rest racing like mad, all nervousness gone now. The shrapnel falling as thick as hail, many a good man went down here although I never noticed it at the time.
We reached the Turkish lines and found the first trench covered in with logs and branches and dirt heaped on top. There was a partial check, some men fired in through the loop holes, others tried to pull the logs apart. Out runs our officer, old Dickie Seldon, waving a revolver, ‘This won’t do men! On! On! On!’ and running over the top of the trench he came to the second trench and down into it the crowd followed.
I got alongside of Captain Milson of Milson’s Point. I slid down into the trench, the Turks ran round a corner and got into a large cave place dug in the trench side as a bomb proof shelter. The first man to follow was shot dead, here we were checked. Captain Milson took command. A bomber came on the parapet and commenced throwing bombs round the corner among the Turks. Very soon he was shot in the arm, and said he was useless and threw his bags of bombs down to us, several rolled away and out rushed a Turk to try and get them. I shot at him but never hit, and he got back quick.
Milson started throwing, and I was next to him lighting bombs for him. He then proposed getting a party the other side of this possie and bombing from both sides and asked if we would follow him. We all said ‘yes’ so he threw a bomb and dashed across. A dozen Turks shot him and he fell dead the other side. I was next and as I ran I threw my rifle into the possie and pulled the trigger. I suppose they had never got time to load as I never got hit, but no one followed and I was there alone with no bombs and only my rifle. I shouted to them to come on but they were not having any.
I felt a little dickie I can tell you, but I kept firing into the possie from where I was, some of the Turks were firing at me, and I knew it but I could not get away. Wack! Like a sledge hammer on the head and down I went across Milson’s body and several Turks, some of whom were only wounded, and groaned and squirmed from time to time. I bled pretty freely and then I got a crack on the shoulder from a shrapnel pellet which hurt badly but did not do much damage.
Our men meanwhile were still bombing away and one bomb went off near my head, and I got bits of it in the hand and face and was knocked unconscious for a while. The next I remembered is a rush of feet and being trampled on. I lay very still and there was a big shooting and bombing match going on all round and back rushed the Turks over me leaving a heap of dead and wounded. I was very dry and tried to get Milson’s water bottle, my own being empty, but could not. I tried to get my rifle but it was jammed between the bodies. Milson’s revolver was handy, and I ought to have used that as I had a good view of the Turk’s possie from where I was, but I did not have brains enough at the time.
Soon I heard someone call behind me ‘Hullo Australia’ and I crawled down the trench and found Seldon with one eye shot out, but still going, leading a party and I explained the position to him and he sent me away to a temporary dressing station while he went and fixed up the Turks. They captured 15 Turks and 1 German Officer for that position.
I got my head bandaged and a drink of rum and felt better, I picked up a rifle and was going round to the firing line when I came across Crichton’s body with a frightful gash in it, further on our Corporal’s with a bayonet hole through his back and chest. I went on and was set to dig in the now captured trench. There was only a man every 20 yards or so and we had to pass messages to head quarters for reinforcements and sandbags. They were still fighting on the flanks, the right most especially under Captain Scot, he got a DCM for this. I was taken off to collect arms and ammunition from the dead and it was heavy work.
As darkness come on reinforcements arrived, and I went into the firing line and stood on guard with them. While I was working and hot my head did not trouble me, but when it was cold it started to ache, and I had a bad time all night. I left the trenches on Saturday and how I was sent to Lemnos you already know.
Anderson was badly wounded during the fighting but recovered to fight on the western front. On 5 May 1917 he was killed in the second battle of Bullecourt. His grave is unknown.
It seems that the Turks may have used both native Turkish pines (Pinus brutia) and Aleppo pines (Pinus halepensis) to construct their fortifications. The two Australian soldiers said to have carried seeds from the battleground back to Australia brought different species. Lance Corporal Benjamin Smith brought a seed or seeds of the Pinus halepensis, which were eventually propagated at Inverell in New South Wales in 1931, while a Sergeant Keith McDowell brought a Pinus brutia, which was propagated at Warrnambool in Victoria in 1930. A lone pine also grows on the Paeroa Golf Course in New Zealand, thought to be descended from the Warrnambool Pinus brutia seed. Other New Zealand lone pines are said to grow at Te Mata in the North Island and in the South Island at Dunedin.
The significane of the ‘lone pine’ lies in its symbolic importance for Australians, New Zealanders and Turks. On Gallipoli itself, the large Lone Pine Cemetery contains the graves of 986 men. The memorial within the cemetery bears the dedication:
To the Glory of God and in lasting memory of 3,268 Australian soldiers who fought on Gallipoli in 1915 and who have no known graves, and 456 New Zealand soldiers whose names are not recorded in other graves on the Peninsula but who fell in the Anzac Area and have no known graves; and also of 960 Australians and 252 New Zealanders who, fighting on Gallipoli in 1915, incurred mortal wounds or sickness and found burial at Sea.
The Korean War was fought between North and South Korea from 1950 to 1953. It was a hard and bitter war involving not only Koreans but also British, American and Australian troops. Casualties were high, including 339 Australians. One of these, Sergeant Vince Healy of the 3rd Royal Australian Regiment, was killed in action during ‘Operation Woodbine’ on 7 March 1951. The 25 year old was buried in Tanggok War Cemetery at Pusan, South Korea, and became another statistic of another war.
Also a casualty of the fighting was a member of the South Korean forces. Lieutenant Kim In-Hyung was killed near Pusan on 18 September 1950. The night before, his wife dreamed she and her husband were walking together towards a pond. When they reached it, she went to the left and he went to the right. She called out to him but he did not answer. Mrs Kim later discovered that her husband had died the next day. With two children to support, she worked hard in the difficult years of South Korea’s postwar reconstruction. In 1961 she chanced to read a newspaper report about an Australian woman who had saved for years so that she could visit her son’s grave at Pusan. The woman had carried some Australian soil with her to place on the grave and had returned home with some Korean soil. She was the mother of Sergeant Vincent Healy.
Mrs Healy could never afford to return again to visit her son’s last resting place, but her story so touched Mrs Kim that she began to visit Sergeant Healy’s grave twice a year. She took fresh flowers and prayed for all young men killed in war, making an 800-kilometre round trip between her home and Pusan. Mrs Kim also made efforts to locate and contact Mrs Healy. These were eventually successful and the two grieving mothers wrote frequently to each other. In 1998, after seeing a documentary about the death in action of Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Green, commander of the Australian forces in Korea, Mrs Kim also began to visit his grave and started a correspondence with his widow.
This seemingly extraordinary story came to the attention of the Australian authorities. At the Australian War Memorial and in Sydney on Anzac Day, 1999, Mrs Kim was honoured as a special guest of the Australian government. She was officially thanked for her selfless devotion to the memories of two Korean War diggers who did not come home.
The long aftermath of Fromelles
One recent aftermath of the Battle of Fromelles in France (19–20 July 1916) is a reminder that wars do not end when the fighting stops. An unnamed ‘Sergeant of machine guns’ wrote down his experience of the attack and recorded his hope that the event would not be forgotten.
The general opinion of the boys was that we were attacking to relieve pressure on the Somme—that is, to make a demonstration and get the Huns to rush men and guns up and so weaken the other parts of the front. In this, I believe, we were very successful. Our bombardment opened at roughly ll a.m. and gradually increased in violence until the air was filled with a tornado of flying missiles spreading death and destruction among the enemy opposite. Mind, we never had this our own way, for the enemy also opened out with a terrible fire on our line and communications. Of the next few hours, waiting in the front line, waiting for the word to go over, I will say little, but the boys lived a lifetime during those hours. Men endured, suffered, and died. God! shall one ever forget of the multitude of brave men? Some were mere boys, some were older, but all faced death and mutilation, cheerfully singing favourite music-hall songs and ‘Australia Will Be There’.
We received the order to go over about 6 p.m., and with a wild, ringing, hearty Australian cheer over the boys went. Personally I had to go over with the guns half an hour later to consolidate and hold ground won, and had the opportunity of watching the progress of the boys on my left. Two of our brigades made rapid progress across No Man’s Land, and with fine dash soon captured the front line, but unfortunately, owing to the long distance across No Man’s Land, and also a terrific barrage and enfilade machine-gun fire, my brigade was pressed back. Line after line went out into that land of death. What a thrill went through me to see them! Darkness set in and all night the battle ebbed and flowed. Our troops on the left did great work and captured three lines of trenches, and had established good communication, but owing to the reasons I gave our brigade was not so fortunate. The individual acts of bravery that night it would be impossible for me to relate, but I leave them to the reader’s imagination.
Early next morning, owing to the Huns flooding one part of the captured line, our troops had to fall back to our original line, and thus ended one of the most daring and self-sacrificing demonstrations ever made during this war. When I say ended, I mean the offensive part of the action. For days brave men were going out into No Man’s Land rescuing our wounded. I feel that in writing this I can only, in a small way, bring before our home folk the bravery of our boys on the glorious 19th of July, and I should like to assure those who lost loved ones during that action (and our casualties were heavy) that they can feel proud of their boys who so cheerfully and bravely laid their lives on the altar of sacrifice for the great fight for freedom which we are now waging. Australians, don’t forget July 19, for on that day another great chapter was written in the glorious book of Australia’s glorious history in the Great War. Of the success of the action I will say little. We captured some hundreds of prisoners and inflicted very heavy casualties on the enemy. We never held the ground won, but if it was for the purpose of drawing troops and guns from another part of the line, then the action was successful; but we probably shall never know. It was officially described as a raid on a large scale, but in reality it was a battle, in which, on both sides, there must have been 60,000 troops engaged. I trust July 19 will not be forgotten, but that it will be a day kept up in some way as a tribute to the fallen—lest we forget.
The sergeant and his comrades were right in their speculation that their role was a diversionary one. Although not forgotten, the action at Fromelles was often overlooked due to its location away from the main fighting at the Somme and the fact that it was quickly overshadowed by the fighting at Pozières. The bodies of the Allied soldiers killed at Fromelles were buried by the Germans in mass graves, which were discovered after the war. The bodies were exhumed and reinterred in cemeteries including the VC Corner Australian Cemetery and Memorial established close to Fromelles in the 1920s.
But in 2007 a previously unknown burial site was discovered through the research of Lambis Englezos and subsequently excavated in 2009. The remains included those of 203 Australians, many identified through DNA testing. A new cemetery was established in which the bodies were individually reinterred. The final digger, identity still unknown, was buried on 19 July 2010 with full military honours and in the presence of the governor-general, British dignitaries and clergy. Descendants of those soldiers who had been identified were hosted at the ceremony by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, some of them reading letters sent by the soldiers before the battle. Many of these letters were heavy with foreboding about the outcome of the day.
Early in February 1942, a ship’s life raft washed ashore on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. In the raft—known as a ‘Carley float’—was the badly decomposed body of a white male in the remains of a boiler suit. The body was examined by the local doctor and then buried with military honours in the old European cemetery. An inquest was arranged, though the findings were apparently lost when Japanese forces occupied the island at the end of March that year. Over the succeeding years the rough grave itself also disappeared.
But a question remained unanswered—where did the raft and its grim cargo come from?
There has been a strong belief that the body was that of a sailor from HMAS Sydney (II), sunk with all hands by the German raider Kormoran in one of the great mysteries of Australia’s wartime experience.
On 19 November 1941, Sydney apparently approached the auxiliary cruiser HSK Kormoran, which was disguised as a Dutch merchant vessel. Before the true identity of Kormoran could be determined, the German ship fired on Sydney at close quarters. The Australian ship, badly damaged, fired back, disabling the raider. The ships drifted apart. Sydney went to a long-unknown grave and Kormoran was scuttled, her surviving crew escaping in lifeboats. No survivors or even evidence of the Sydney were ever found, unless the Christmas Island sailor was one of them.
The seemingly inexplicable elements of this tragedy were many. Did the Australian commander, an experienced sailor, bring the Sydney too close to the disguised raider? How was it possible that all hands were lost without trace? Was the crew of the Kormoran covering up a wartime atrocity? Where did the stricken ships finally sink to their last resting places? And was the body on Christmas Island the only remnant of the tragic event?
These questions, and the many different answers to them, echoed through the national community for decades. Numerous searches for the Sydney were mounted by military and private groups, research was undertaken and conspiracy theories developed. In the meantime, the families of the Sydney’s sailors continued to grieve and to wonder where their loved ones lay.
In 2008, a Royal Commission was established to inquire into the fate of the Sydney and the ongoing mystery of the unknown sailor. The commission considered all the aspects of the case, surveyed the records, publications and other relevant documents, and made the most intensive efforts possible to establish the facts, publishing a weighty volume of its deliberations and findings in 2009.
Even as the Royal Commission deliberated, the wreck of HMAS Sydney II was finally found in March 2008. The news was announced shortly after notification that Kormoran had also been found. There are numerous memorials to the Sydney and her crew around Australia, the most impressive at Geraldton in Western Australia, where there is also a memorial to the Unknown Sailor. In 2006 the remains of the Christmas Island sailor were rediscovered and reinterred with full military honours on the mainland in the Geraldton War Cemetery, beneath a gravestone inscribed:
A Serviceman
of the
1939–1945
War
HMAS Sydney
The original Christmas Island gravesite has also been marked with a plaque. Efforts are being made to determine whether the unknown sailor was from the Sydney using DNA testing. At the time of writing no results have been announced.
The story of the Long Tan cross is rich with the ironies of war, peace and memory. It began in the heat of the fiercest fighting of the Vietnam War during the ‘Tet offensive’, in which Communist North Vietnamese forces mounted large-scale attacks on American, Australian and South Vietnamese positions.
On 18 August 1966, members of D Company 6th Royal Australian Regiment engaged a much larger force of approximately 2500 in the Long Tan rubber plantation in South Vietnam’s Phuoc Tuy province. Many D Company soldiers were National Servicemen, led mainly by professional soldiers. Rain fell throughout the three hours of the savage battle. It ended when the North Vietnamese forces withdrew, leaving 260 dead, with many wounded. Australian casualties were eighteen dead, with twenty-one wounded. D Company was awarded a US Presidential Unit Citation for ‘extraordinary heroism while engaged in military operations against an opposing armed force’.
On the third anniversary of the battle, members of the regiment erected a white cross at the site. Designed by Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM) WO1 James ‘Jimmy’ Cruickshank, the distinctive cross with its central lozenge was built by the unit’s Pioneer Platoon. After the war, it seems that the cross fell into decay and was removed to the Bien Hoa museum. But in 2002, as a result of ongoing efforts by the Australian Veterans Vietnam Reconstruction Group (AVVRG) and other bodies, a new cross was erected and unveiled at the same site, recognition by the Vietnamese people of the significance of the memorial for many Australians.
Long Tan has increasingly become the focus of commemorative visits by Vietnam veterans, their families and other Australians, both on Anzac Day and on Vietnam Veterans’ Day (18 August), also known as Long Tan Day. Other Long Tan crosses have been erected in various locations throughout Australia. One can be found in 80 Mile Beach Caravan Park, near Broome, in Western Australia, which was unveiled on Vietnam Veterans’ Day 2009. The impressively simple structure is in the form of a white wooden Long Tan cross, memorial plaques, military insignia and a flagpole set in a grassed garden, all enclosed in a white picket fence. The inscriptions on the cross is ‘Lest We Forget’. The plaque at the bottom of the memorial reads:
THIS MEMORIAL WAS BUILT BY
THE VIETNAM VETERANS OF
80 MILE BEACH TO HONOUR
THOSE MEN AND WOMEN WHO
PAID THE SUPREME SACRIFICE
IN ALL THE WARS AND CONFLICTS
This memorial was instigated by regular holiday-makers Ray and Coral Miles and further developed by holidaying volunteers so that they would have somewhere local to observe Anzac Day and Vietnam Veterans’ Day. Some materials were donated by local businesses. Up to 300 people now attend the Dawn Service there on 25 April, with large numbers attending on Vietnam Veterans’ Day.
While built by and for Vietnam veterans, the memorial honours Australians who have died in all conflicts.
Certain plants and flowers have long been associated with mourning and remembrance, including the violet and the aromatic herb rosemary. These may be worn at funerals and at ceremonies commemorating the dead, or they may also be woven into commemorative wreaths together with other plants and placed at graves, or other markers of memory. In the Anzac tradition, some flowers have become powerful symbols for remembering the war dead.
Although rosemary has long been associated with remembrance, a specifically Australian and New Zealand floral custom is the wearing of a sprig of rosemary on Anzac Day. The hillsides of Gallipoli were covered with this herb, and for those who were there its pungent aroma became associated with the wartime experience itself. Rosemary subsequently became a commemorative emblem. Those who display medals—their own or a forebear’s—on Anzac Day may wear rosemary beneath them. In recent years, the wearing of rosemary on Anzac Day has become a very widespread custom, necessitating the growth of a small cottage industry engaged in preparing wearable sprigs.
Arrangements of symbolic flowers and/or leaves have a long history and are particularly associated in Western societies with death and mourning. Wreath laying at memorials, graves and plaques was one of the earliest components of Anzac Day observances and remains a central element. Wreaths have often consisted of native flowers, although, in recent years, wreaths consisting of red poppies—previously more closely associated with Remembrance Day—have become popular at Anzac Day ceremonies. Simple bunches of flowers may also be placed at wreath-laying ceremonies, particularly by children.
Perhaps the most potent symbol of the Great War, the poppy is used for commemorative purposes around the world. Soldiers in France and in Belgium (often referred to as ‘Flanders Fields’) were impressed by the springtime blooming of these flowers in the devastated wasteland of the battlefields. It was not hard to make a connection between the blood red petals of the poppy and the blood-soaked ground on which millions had fought and been killed. The significance of the poppy was captured by a Canadian army doctor, John McCrae, who scribbled a few hurried verses after seeing a good friend die in the Second Battle of Ypres, Belgium, in spring 1915, and sent them off to the English magazine Punch. On its publication in December 1915, McCrae’s ‘In Flanders Fields’ caused a sensation throughout the English-speaking forces and home fronts, so simply but powerfully did the verses capture the sentiments of the moment.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow [‘grow’ in some versions]
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
McCrae died in 1918, worn out from his unremitting labours as an army doctor. But his unpretentious poem lived on and is the basis for much of the meaning attached to the poppy. In Australia, the poppy (usually made of paper or plastic) is worn or displayed on Remembrance (originally Armistice) Day, 11 November. An Australian custom had evolved in which a poppy is placed next to the name of a relation on the Wall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, forming an unofficial but moving visual commemoration.
In the gardens around Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance, a custom combining the symbolism of both the poppy and rosemary can be seen. The wire ‘stalks’ of artificial poppies are wound around the tips of rosemary bushes growing in beds surrounding the memorial and its Eternal Flame of commemoration.
Through two World Wars the Cheer-Up Society of South Australia brought comfort and practical assistance to soldiers and their families. The society was formed in November 1914 by businesswoman Alexandrine Seager (1870–1950). Mrs Seager had recently visited her son George in camp with the AIF at Morphettville, South Australia, and came away determined to play her part in the war effort. She appealed to the women of South Australia to support her, and rapidly established a large and expanding network of ‘the highest type of womanhood’ who would provide food, conversation and companionship to often lonely young recruits awaiting shipment to the front. Her stated aim was straightforward: ‘to make life brighter for the gallant men’.
One of the society’s first activities was to establish ‘The Cheer-Up Hut’. At the beginning this was simply a tent, but it was soon replaced by a wooden structure located behind Adelaide Railway Station; from here the ‘hut’ later moved to Elder Park on the banks of the River Torrens. As the war progressed, society members also greeted soldiers returning from Gallipoli, the Middle East and the western front. By 1919, an extraordinary 200 000 soldiers would be fed and entertained in these makeshift premises by volunteer women from the society dressed in their bright white uniforms.
The Cheer-Up Society quickly became involved in fundraising to pay for these practical measures, as well as with recruiting for the war. Mrs Seager’s husband, Clarendon, was a recruiting officer and all her three sons fought with the AIF. On 2 July 1915 the Violet Day appeal was established, with the aim of obtaining funds to build a permanent clubhouse for the Cheer-Up Society. Violet flowers have long been associated with death, and this symbolism was adopted by the society as a fitting floral tribute for eternal remembrance of the war dead. Violet bouquets set in purple ribbons printed with the phrase ‘In Memory’ were sold in the streets of Adelaide, together with memorial buttons.
The day was launched with great fanfare and ceremony. Eminent members of the community spoke, bands played and the event concluded with the strains of ‘The Last Post’. Violet Day was a success and became an annual observance throughout the war and long after. A collection of verse written specifically for the day was sold under the title Violet Verses. Alexandrine, herself a keen amateur poet, contributed a memorial poem:
Today we wear the clinging violet
In memory of the brave,
While ever thoughts of fond but proud regret,
Come surging wave on wave.
All proceeds went towards the work of the society, to which Mrs Seager devoted all her considerable energy and organising ability. The Cheer-Up Society also received funding from various other community groups, including the Country Women’s Association. Later in the war, the society entered show business, sending troupes of professional performers to tour the battlefields and entertain the troops.
Not content with these considerable good works, Mrs Seager was primarily responsible for the foundation of the South Australian Returned Soldiers’ Association, funded initially by funds from the Cheer-Up Society. She served as vice-president of the RSA from 1915 to 1919, when she resigned the office to a returned soldier.
In 1920, the work of the Cheer-Up Society was deemed to be no longer necessary and it was dissolved, although Violet Day continued, the date moving in 1928 from July to August. Alexandrine Seager returned to community work again during the Great Depression of the 1930s, although arthritis forced her to retire in 1937.
But only two years later the Cheer-Up Society was reestablished, as a new generation faced up to the challenges of all-in war. The gleaming white ladies of the Great War now became ‘Cheer-Up Girls’ in uniforms similar to those of nurses. Like their predecessors, they volunteered to provide soldiers—including visiting Americans—with company, dance partners and a meal. After the war, the Cheer-Up Society carried on until 1964. Violet Day was held for the last time in 1970.
The energetic and dedicated founder of the Cheer-Up Society and Violet Day had no involvement with the new organisation. Alexandrine Seager died on Kangaroo Island in 1950 and was buried at Kingscote. Her husband had already passed away, but their three daughters attended the funeral, along with two of their sons. George had been killed at Gallipoli.
Ceremonies of commemoration—religious or secular—usually feature songs, poetry and speeches. These may take the form of hymns or other sacred songs, and appropriate verse and fitting words, whether delivered as sermons or addresses. Instrumental music is often an important element of such events, together with silence in the form of personal prayer or reflection. Certain combinations of these elements have become characteristic of all Anzac commemorations.
A ‘gunfire breakfast’ is said to have been a basic meal taken by British soldiers when under fire, often featuring a tot of rum to instil bravery in the men. When the Dawn Service became a popular feature of Anzac Day observances during the 1930s, Returned Services Clubs instituted the custom of taking a light meal and glass of alcohol before attending the service. It was regarded as being symbolic of the meal that the first Anzacs took while waiting to leave the troopships and land on the beaches of Gallipoli.
While this ritual began as a private returned soldiers’ observance, the gunfire breakfast or similar event is now a frequent feature of pre– or post–Dawn Service events on Anzac Day. As the day has increased in popularity over the last decade or more, so the late gunfire breakfast tradition has spread, being used to fill the time between the ending of the Dawn Service and the start of the morning march that takes place in many cities and towns. As many families now attend, the gunfire breakfast may often take the form of a sausage sizzle or similar non-alcoholic alternative.
The ‘Ode’ that is recited at the Dawn Service is derived from the Laurence Binyon poem ‘For the Fallen’ (1914).
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
These lines gradually became the orthodox form from at least 1921, with the addition of ‘Lest We Forget’ from Kipling’s ‘Recessional’ (1897), a poem popular in the Boer War period and after, particularly as a hymn. These lines are recited at Anzac Day ceremonies, with the participants repeating ‘We will remember them’ and, after a pause, usually intoning ‘Lest we forget’ in the manner of the ‘amen’ at the end of ‘The Lord’s Prayer’.
Althought moments of silence had long been a feature of memorialisation for tragedies such as mining accidents, they were not a feature of wartime commemoration until World War I, the first conflict in which the sacrifice of the many had been recognised. The one- or two-minute silence that is a feature of most Anzac observations is thought to have evolved from a suggestion for five minutes of silence to mark the end of the war, made in the London Evening News of 8 May 1919 by Australian journalist Edward George Honey (1885–1922), using the pen name Warren Foster.
Nothing resulted from this, but some months later a South African politician, Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, suggested to the king’s secretary that a few moments of silence be observed by British Empire countries each Armistice Day. According to tradition, the king used the Grenadier Guards to experiment with a commemorative silence and discovered that five minutes was too long a period. Just before Armistice Day 1919, the king proclaimed a two-minute silence so that ‘the thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on reverent remembrance of the glorious dead’. Since then, the silence has also become part of the Returned Services League clubs’ nightly 9 o’clock remembrance ritual and of Anzac Day ceremonies.
‘The Last Post’ is a simple but evocative military bugle call signifying the end of the day. It has become an aural symbol of Anzac Day commemoration, and is usually followed by a one- or two-minute period of silence, which is then concluded with the bugle call ‘Rouse’—usually referred to, incorrectly, as ‘Reveille’, which is a different call.
Other customs derived from military tradition may feature in Anzac Day events, including the all-night ‘vigil’ over a war memorial that is to be the focus of the Dawn Service. The ‘march’ or ‘parade’ is also of military origin.
On 19 November 1933, Hugo Throssell VC took out his old service pistol and shot himself dead. He had come to loathe the war in which he had fought so gallantly and was an outspoken pacifist. This, together with financial problems, made him an outcast among those who had previously been his friends and acquaintances. Throssell’s journey from idealistic young man and VC winner to such a bitter end was one of many tragedies in the difficult postwar decades of the 1920s and 1930s.
Born at Northam, Western Australia, in 1894, Throssell—together with his brother Frank, known as ‘Ric’—joined the 10th Light Horse at the outbreak of war. As a Second Lieutenant, Hugo Throssell arrived on Anzac in time for the disastrous attack at the Nek in early August 1915. He was one of the few survivors, and resolved to revenge the 10th Light Horse. His opportunity came a few weeks later at Hill 60.
Less than a kilometre from the beach, the low, scrubby bump had been held by the Turks against all previous attacks. It effectively divided the British forces and the Anzacs. The commanders believed that taking the hill would allow the Allies to merge into a more effective force against the Turks. Late on the night of 29 August, Throssell led his men into a long trench, most of which was held by the enemy. While his men built a barricade, Throssell acted as guard and killed five Turks. A bomb fight began in which over 3000 missiles were hurled by both sides. The Australians kept their bombs on short fuses to make sure the Turks would not throw them back before they exploded, in ‘a kind of tennis’. The deadly game went on until dawn, when the Turks launched three unsuccessful charges. Throssell was wounded twice but continued to fight, yelling encouragement to his men despite the blood covering his face, caused by shell splinter wounds. After finally seeking medical assistance, he returned to the fighting as soon as he was treated—until ordered out by a medical officer.
The battle for Hill 60 is one of the lesser-known disasters of Gallipoli, largely forgotten in comparison to chilling stories like those of the Nek and Lone Pine. By the time Throssell and his light horsemen arrived at the Hill 60 engagement, the 4th Brigade had lost almost three-quarters of its strength, the 9th and 10th Light Horse units had suffered almost total casualties, and only 365 men survived from the four regiments of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles who had already tried to take the position. The actions of Throssell and his men, while only one part of a larger attack, succeeded in holding their section of the trench against greatly superior forces. Throssell was awarded the only VC ever to be won by a light horseman, but Hill 60 remained firmly in Turkish control at the cost of 2400 casualties. The Anzacs were depleted and exhausted.
A British historian of Gallipoli, Robert Rhodes James, wrote that ‘For connoisseurs of military futility, valour, incompetence and determination, the attacks on Hill 60 are in a class of their own’. The pointless slaughter made plain to any but the most pig-headed that the Gallipoli campaign could not succeed. General Hamilton was relieved of his command of the campaign and replaced by General Charles Monro. Monro immediately understood the hopelessness of the situation, a view backed by Lord Kitchener, British supreme commander, when he came to see for himself in November. A little over a month later, the Anzacs had left Gallipoli.
Throssell recovered from his wounds in Egypt, during which time he contracted meningitis, an affliction that would trouble him physically and mentally for the rest of his life. Promoted to captain, he was again wounded in the second battle of Gaza in April 1917. His brother went missing in the same battle and Throssell crawled out into no man’s land, whistling their boyhood signal in a hopeless attempt to find him. Hugo Throssell continued fighting in Palestine and was at the head of the 10th Light Horse guard of honour when Jerusalem fell to the British and Australian forces in 1917.
After the war, Throssell married the radical Australian writer Katharine Susannah Prichard in London. They returned to Australia to farm and engage in political activism. The war hero and the Communist author had an exotic appeal in the politically troubled 1920s. But with the onset of economic Depression in the following decade, Throssell failed in a number of business ventures and the family went heavily into debt. While Prichard was pursuing her political convictions in the Soviet Union in 1933, Hugo Throssell shot himself, believing that his war service pension would benefit his wife and son. He left a note on the back of the will he had written a day earlier: ‘I have never recovered from my 1914–18 experiences, and with this in view I appeal to the State to see that my wife and child get the usual war pension. No one could have a truer mate’. Captain Throssell was buried with full military honours.
The Victoria Cross remained in the family until 1983 when Hugo and Katharine’s son, Ric, presented it to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The RSL subsequently purchased the medal and donated it to the Australian War Memorial, where it rests today, as part of an extensive collection of Australian VCs.
Hugo Throssell, VC is commemorated in a number of road names in the southwest and in a memorial outside Fitzgerald’s Hotel in Northam. In the 1950s, local Greenmount residents raised funds for a playground dedicated to Throssell in the park opposite the home he and his family had occupied. At the same time, a memorial bus shelter was erected outside the park. The shelter is in the form of a small granite rotunda with a tiled roof. The dedication reads simply:
To the Memory of
Captain Hugo Throssell V.C.
1914–1918
Why build such a memorial, particularly so many years after the Great War and Hugo’s suicide? No-one now seems to know. But it is perhaps significant that it commemorates only his war service, rather than his life. This tragic story of one Anzac and his medal connects the national and the local, highlighting the continuing complexities of war, heroism, peace and memory.
An anonymous reflection on the Great War by someone who must have been there captures the mixed emotions of nostalgia, regret and sorrow that characterise the aftermath of every war. It is titled simply, ‘Do You Remember?’
. . . the day you enlisted, when you waited in a queue
(They called it a ‘line’ in those days). The first visit to the QM store,
Trying on your first digger hat and your army boots,
Your first night in camp between army blankets,
Your first leave in uniform—feeling a little self-conscious.
Our first long route-march, when you grumbled because the others grumbled.
But thought it was not so bad, really.
The soft-drink merchants on the road and the ten minute halts.
Your first resentment at being put on menial fatigue.
The bloke who kept the troops in good humour on the march.
The bloke who always had a yarn about ‘a bloke and a tart’.
The bird who’d never close the door or a tent flap
And who’d step all over you with muddy boots coming in.
The first march through town and the friends on the footpath.
Your last glimpse of the Australian shore before ‘going below’.
The flying fishes in the spray at the stern.
The crown and anchor on the hatch.
The cry of ‘mess orderlies’.
The blue of the Indian Ocean—the heat of the Canal.
Your first morning on Egyptian soil—‘Gibbit piastre, Mister?’
Your first trip to Cairo or Alexandria—‘Clean boots, Mr McKenzie?’
The route-marches in the sand, and all-night manoeuvres.
The cart-wheels of figs and the lovely-complexioned women of Lemnos.
Your days on Anzac—the beach and the steep climbs, with the queues for chlorinated water.
Beachy Bill—the Turkish Howitzer at tea-time—‘his’ snipers.
Your first look at France and your first feed of ‘deux oeufs’.
Your first ‘ride-up’ in cattle trucks—‘Eight chevaux, forty hommes’.
The Froggies and the cess-pit in the farmhouse yard.
The whine of the bullets and the splatter of machine guns.
The raiding parties, wiring and digging, and the saps.
The duckboards going up the line.
The first night spent within easy reach of Fritz.
The first raiding party, and the ‘hop-over’.
The minutes leading up to zero-hour at dawn.
The cry of ‘stretcher-bearer wanted on the right’.
The winter of 1916–17 and the mud of the Somme.
The trench with the hand of a Fritzy sticking out.
The trench with the floor of ‘ballooned’ dead Fritzes.
The first gas masks and the sinister ‘plop’ of the gas shells.
The rum issue and the occasional strawberry jam amongst all the apricot tins.
The swagger breeches bought from Tommies for twenty francs.
The coffee-stall halfway up, with its empty tins for cups.
The day you were hit (secretly glad to be out of it for a while).
Your first day with an army nurse taking care of you.
Blighty, the theatre and the music hall stars, to say nothing of Leicester Square.
Trips to the places you always wanted to see; the Beefeaters at the Tower.
Armistice Day, 1918, La Guerre fini.
Do you remember? Can you ever forget?