History

MONUMENTS, MEMORY AND A NATIONAL DAY

In a speech to the WA Legislative Council on 17 May 1995, Ross Lightfoot declared that his national day was Anzac day, not Australia Day.

I suspect that his view is a widespread one.

 Why? because the history of our national memory is hard to separate from the history of patriotism.

Australia Day, despite some Aboriginal assertions about being an invasion, was ‘an event for officials, a day for the bureaucracy,’ to quote historian Geoffrey Blainey. There was nothing heroic about a dumping ground for convicts, nor the way they were treated and it has not appealed to the minority.

In contrast Anzac Day, an event 101 years ago and one being commemorated for the 100^th time this year, marked the arrival of a fledgling teenage nation in the pantheon of nations: a participant on the world stage in dramatic and perilous circumstances; a blood ritual where the new nation in the best traditions of Abraham offered up its sons as sacrifice –and on this occasion the offer was accepted.

The national memory is epitomised by not only the national Australian War Memorial, in Canberra, but also by scores of obelisks monuments in countless cities, small towns and even ghost towns.

There like a ghostly sentinel the Australian dead are honoured with ritual inscriptions. These are edifices to the national memory. Anzac Day ceremonies, and speeches follow as surely as night follows day.

All these things are bridge between history and the patriotism of national memory.

But why of all the battles Australia fought has the Gallipoli campaign been the one that has so captured the imagination? It was a not a military success but at rather an orderly withdrawal, albeit it one carried out superbly without loss of life.

History informs us why this campaign endures in memory while the earlier South African War –the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902- became the forgotten war?

Historian Annette Hamilton says it was because the South African war became unpopular as it was a war against farmers and their families; a war where 28,000 Boer women and children died in British concentration camps. Because of this there was a wish to repress the originating moment of the jingoism that erupted from the political machinations of British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain and his Governor at the Cape Alfred Milner, against the legitimate Boer governments of the ZAR (Transvaal) and Orange Free State.

That view was argued at the time by Professor George Arnold Wood a severe critic of Australian colonies involvement in the South African War. Wood said it  was a war “of cowardly revenge and ignoble greed and one that would eventually bring infamy on the English name.”

It was also a war that was dwarfed by the Great War only 12 years later.

 But when Hamilton talks about Gallipoli as a heroic failure she surely goes too far because as Professor Geoffrey Blainey noted “Gallipoli  became an Australian landmark long before it could be interpreted in any sense as a failure or defeat.”

For Blainey the positives rather than the negatives “enthralled” the nation from the start. The withdrawal from the beachfront after eight months and 8,000 dead was not a failure but an impressive draw played out on the enemy’s home ground, to use a cricketing expression.

He has a point: this was not a defeated army swept of the beach but the fighting had reached a stalemate and the withdrawal was a remarkable example of deception and precision.

Surely if Australians hungered to honour a defeat then the fall of Singapore in February 1942 (WW2) would have fed the national psyche in that regard?

So what has inculcated Gallipoli into the national memory? Well Blainey’s talk about impressive draws on enemy soil is obviously one factor; but also Australians were keen to play a role on the world stage; to help open the sea supply routes to ensure Russia could stay in the War against Germany; to knock Turkey out of the war and the German alliance.

Australian aspirations were aided and abetted by distinguished British war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, who had covered the Japanese-Russian conflict of 1904 and the Italian-Turkish conflict of 1911.

According to him Australia “was a race of athletes” and their landing at Gallipoli “no finer feat in this war.”

Australia was thus in the big league, in a major theatre of war, instead of just taking the German outpost of New Guinea German, as we did at the start of the  Great War. So the Digger legend was fired up by positive reporting, by not only the London war correspondent but also by Australian war correspondent-historian Charles Bean, and PM Billy Hughes.

If the Anzacs had been routed instantly then Gallipoli would have been a cause for shame and embarrassment like Singapore became 27 years later?

In fact the reason the AWM was built in Canberra, (during the second war), was because of the pride Australia felt for their contributions in the First World War.

And in that Great War of 1914-18, Gallipoli, of course, only signified the initial phase-it became the generic model for Australia in that war and subsequent conflicts where Australian arms won some great victories.

Monash’s great planned victory at Hamel would later earn accolades from no lesser a British General Sir Bernard Montgomery (of WW2 fame) who called him the greatest general in the First war. Monash planned to take Hamel in 90 minutes in a coordinated strike by artillery, tanks and infantry –it took just 3 minutes longer but in a war where months went by with little gained- apart from massive casualties- here was a different general. He was knighted by George V on the battlefield the first time that had happened for 100 years –and the last time.

But If I could pick just one triumph for the Australian profession of arms then it would be the great charge at Beersheba by the Light Horse, one that enhanced Australia’s military reputation, mightily.

The Australian army did what no other Western Army had done since 1099 when in the First crusade the holy city was taken off the Muslims who had taken it by force in 637.

Unfortunately, the Christians lost it again to Saladin’s hordes in 1187 and in a story that resonates today saw all churches demolished, plundered or turned into stables and granaries.

The 800 Lighthorsemen that charged Turkish guns at Beersheba on 31 October 1917 galloped into history. Described as madmen by the German commander of the Turkish forces the desert charge captured the strategic town of Beersheba –the well of the oath. This was the well that provided water to Abraham, Moses and David. To get there they had to march across days through the waterless Sinai Desert. 50,000 British infantry with tank support had been driven back into the by the defenders.

The Light Horse under Gen. Sir Harry Chauvel had to succeed or perish and 400,000 gallons of water were needed for the men and horses. Where others had failed, including Napoleon, the Light horse prevailed. Centuries of Moslem rule was about to end as this crucial victory presaged the fall of Jerusalem and Damascus to the Allies.it would ultimately lead to the existence of the State of Israel in 1948.

That is why in 2008 the Governor-General of Australia and the President of Israel honoured the Light Horse with a park in their name at Beersheba.

The Great War was thus seen as a just war and Australians were proud of their involvement.

In 1993 the Australian nation honoured the return of the unknown soldier-known only to God- from a French war grave at Villers - Brettoneaux (plot 3, row M, grave number 13). He was one of 45,000 killed on the Western Front or one of 60,000 Australians that perished in all theatres of that war.

For many years (1941-93) the AWM was lacking a centre piece. A six feet statue of a generic serviceman would be replaced with the remains of an unknown warrior. Here we contrasted with South Africa.

There was no such agonising there. Right from its inception the Voortrekker Monument’s cenotaph, of the murdered Voortrekker leader, Piet Retief, was the centre piece in Pretoria.

So finally the long years of waiting to have the appropriate feature point in the AWM was over. As an old war vet Robert Coombs shuffled forward to sprinkle some Pozieres soil on the returned soldier he simply said:”Now you are home, mate.”

The words, and the moment, encapsulated a nation’s thoughts. Not even Prime Minister Keating’s fine speech, earlier, could better the words of Mr Coombs, then, one of our last survivors of WW1.

PERSONAL MEMORIES

So our shrines and ceremonies are a bridge that unites history with memory- both personal and national.

National memory incorporates millions of personal or family memories.

When I think of Anzac Day I think of people close to me.

A  loved grandfather, Pat Crosse.  Pop spent four of his years on the Western Front and he was the most loving and well adjusted man after spending his youth in Hell; ditto for a much loved grand uncle; Cecil, gassed on the Western front and who twice stood for the federal Parliament in the seat of Forrest in the 1930’s

I think of my father, long before he became my father, who was bombed in Darwin. He was the only survivor of a jeep containing five soldiers. When he regained consciousness he had the head of one of those companions in his lap-minus the body.

I think too of Roy Roberts, the man who taught me to swim as a pre-schooler. Roy was a Japanese POW. He was on HMAS Perth which, with the USS Houston, went down with all guns blazing, against a Japanese armada in the Sunda Strait, March 1 1942, in what is now Indonesian waters.

In fact, I tracked Roy down in his Darlington home in October 2010. He was then one of only four HMAS Perth survivors. He died the following April.

Then of course there is Keith Roediger, a distinguished night fighter pilot for the RAF, now in his mid–nineties and his brother. He was described in Air Power over Europe, by author John Herington, as an outstanding pilot. His brother Eric (106),* a prisoner of the Japs and in Tokyo when the A Bombs were dropped, is still alive as I speak.

Both are strong Christians and Keith was recording Christian songs well into his 80’s as well as writing a book. Keith was my church elder for almost 11 years at the Church of Christ,York.

I had both of the brothers to ANZAC Day ceremonies at Carmel College in 2009, as guest speakers. Claude, the middle brother, had died by that stage.

In 1944 Keith was playing cricket against Sussex. They turned out in creams, the airmen in Khaki. They made 176 and the Aussie airmen 4/190. Keith made 48. As they were playing a huge air armada swept over head. D Day was on. It was June 6, 1944.

When I think of Keith I recall the words that King George VI used to address the Commonwealth, at Christmas 1939. Quoting from the words of poet, Minnie Louise Haskins, the King spoke thus-

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: ‘Give me light that I might tread into the unknown.’ And he replied, Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God: that shall be to you than light and safer than a known way.”

As a night fighter pilot Keith Roediger often went into the dark on gut-wrenching work but the King need not have bothered about his pilot. His inspiration was Isaiah 51:12 (I am he who comforts you, who are you that you should fear mortal man?)

Keith had, in fact, put his hand into God’s, five years earlier,aged 13.

It is surely ironic that of all the failed political pacts of the 1930’s, the pact that Keith made with his Maker, in that era, still endures and has provided this great man and warrior with a lifetime of peace.

They are some of my personal memories when I think of Anzac Day-a very small part of the national memory.

Footnote:  *Eric Roediger (106) died in October 2016. I was at his funeral.