Robert Jeremy, The Lord Howe Island Signal
We are here on this day to remember so that we do not forget. In this small community, so many of us will have family or friends who have served or are serving their country and so this day will have its own special meaning for each of us.
Gallipoli is usually the leading story on Anzac Day, but I want to talk about Anzac Day through a wider lens and remember all those affected by The Great War.
One member of my family lost to the War was my Great Uncle, Arthur Leslie Dignam, who served with the AIF in France. He went to serve with eight others from the Island. He fell, badly injured, at the battle of Pozieres in 1916. He was lucky to come out of there alive. At Pozieres, over six blood-soaked weeks, the Australians captured and lost the village of Pozieres. They suffered 23,000 casualties, and within that 6,800 dead.
The Australians suffered as many casualties in the Battle of Pozières in six weeks as they had in eight months during the Gallipoli campaign. The number 23,000 rolls easily off the tongue, but let it sink in – 23,000 fallen in just six weeks. The Australian official historian Charles Bean wrote that Pozieres ridge “is more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth”.
Arthur was stitched up and returned to the front, only to die of fatal wounds inflicted a few months later in the devastating and pointless Battle of Flers on the Somme.
Like so many other battles, countless dead and wounded. No ground gained.
Like Gallipoli, Pozieres and Flers were military folly, costing thousands upon thousands of young lives and erasing the futures that Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Britain and France would have enjoyed had that generation of young men lived.
These follies and human losses began to fray the tether that bound Australia to Britain, and gave birth to a growing sense of our own national identity and values embodied in the ‘Anzac Spirit’.
For Australia, the shock of the losses in World War I was hard to bear, and it is worth pausing to observe that we are fortunate to live in a country that does count its dead. Regrettably, still to this day, some nations do not – they value unquestioning service to country more than anything else and care not how many die at their command.
We are witnessing just that in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. That uncaring ethos was alive and well among the European Powers before World War I, but by the end of the War it was, literally, dead and buried.
To my mind, World War I was the greatest human tragedy ever to befall us. Gallipoli was one scene in the tragedy. There were many others in which Australian lives were sacrificed. In August 1914, carnage on an unimaginable scale was unleashed by reputedly civilised nations.
Called The Great War, not because it was grand or magnificent, but because its fires consumed the length and breadth of the civilised world.
Also known as The War to End All Wars, because it was so calamitous and the lessons so painful that no one at the time could contemplate it ever happening again.
The Great War was not fought for a worthy cause. There was no grand strategy.
No evil tyrant to repel.
No slavery to be abolished.
No moral principle to defend.
Great nations had for years squared off against one another, posturing, assembling massive armies and navies, listening too much to their generals who busily prepared war plans, and forming alliances that made no rational political sense, lined up like a row of dominos. And so an unwarlike event … the random assassination of an Austrian Duke by a crazed Serbian … provided the excuse for war and once the generals had lit their fuses, the dominos fell and there was no turning back.
We do not assemble on Anzac Day to romanticise war. We stand here because of the individuals and families caught up in it. There can be no doubt that, despite the tragic ineptitude of leadership, those who endured and those who died showed great fortitude, courage and valour.
And it is right that we should honour them – and their families who bore loss – here today and every year hereafter. It is also right that we should always, always, return to the lessons of The Great War which are enduring even though it was fought so long ago.
History does not repeat itself, but we are shaped by it and therefore it has parallels. And for our own sakes we need to learn from the past so that we do not find ourselves in that same vortex again.
This little book of poems was given to me by my grandfather, Richmond Jeremy. He served as a physician with the Australian Medical Corps in the Mediterranean theatre in World War II.
I know that he was affected by what he saw because he never spoke about it. Rupert Brooke was a famous young English poet who was taken from us in World War I. He wrote this.
The Dead
These hearts were woven of human joys and cares, Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
And sunset, and the colours of the earth.
These had seen movement , and heard music; known
Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.
There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,
Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
And wandering loveliness. He weaves a white
Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
A width, a shining peace, under the night.
LEST WE FORGET
See all the photos in the issue.
This article appeared in The Lord Howe Island Signal, 30 April 2024.
