As Australia changes, remembering Remembrance Day becomes more important

Ron Webb has stood post at the Sydney Cenotaph on Remembrance Day for 14 years, a quiet tribute to friends he lost in Vietnam half a century ago.

On Tuesday, as thousands gathered at 11am to remember the Australians who died in World War I, the 78-year-old former Army engineer looked around with a sense of satisfaction.

“It’s marvellous,” he said. “It’s great that people want to remember all those women and men who gave their lives for their country. I do it in remembrance of a couple of mates I lost overseas.”

Webb and three other attendants guided wreath layers at today’s service, from Governor Margaret Beazley to Western Sydney teenager Syedda Nazeeya.

A proud nation

The popularity of Remembrance Day long after the war ended — one estimate put the crowd at Canberra’s War Memorial in the thousands too — shows Australia remain proud of its veterans and is determined not to forget its wars despite their terrible power.

“War is the most destructive of all human endeavours,” Brigadier Rob Calhoun told the audience in Sydney.

It can also be one of the most unifying. Brigadier Calhoun observed that, in 1914, the fledging nation of Australia committed 420,000 soldiers to World War I, a conflict mostly fought on the other side of the earth. Some 62,000 did not return, a death toll that outnumbers Australia’s combined losses from every other war.

Among them were members of Brigadier Calhoun’s 2nd Division, who fought at Gallipoli and on the Somme, two of the bloodiest battlefields in Australian history.

The horrors of World War I prompted Sydneysiders to erect the Cenotaph in front of the general post office on Martin Place. The location was a place closely associated with the war, for it was the site of patriotic rallies and a popular place to enlist.

Afterwards, the immense pride at Australia’s contribution to the victory was underpinned by a sadness that transcended ideology, age and class.

A new Australia

From those forces, a unique Australian identity emerged. That trench-forged national character can be seen today in the way Australian sporting teams compete on fields around the world, in the work of artists and writers, and in a patriotic and robust democracy that combines confidence and independence with strong links with its historical military allies.

On August 8, 1927, 10,000 people gathered to see the Cenotaph altar stone dedicated and listen to a speech by Lieutenant General Sir Harry Chauvel, a Gallipoli veteran.

Although that original audience was probably three times as large as Tuesday’s ceremony on the same spot, 107 years have passed since hostilities ceased on the 11th day of the 11th month at 11am.

While the size of the audiences was heartening, they were fragile too.

Australia has changed greatly this century. Not since 1893 have so many people living in Australia been born overseas, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. At 30 per cent, the proportion is double the US, long the leading Western example of a nation built by immigrants.

While this influx has brought huge talent, creativity and new perspectives into Australian life, foreign-born Australians may not, for obvious reasons, feel the same emotional connection to Simpson and his donkey as those who were taught the story of the doomed stretcher-bearer at Gallipoli in primary school.

History lessons

One little-discussed component of promoting social cohesion in this new Australia should be to promote an understanding of military history, including landmark battles, key military figures and the effects on Australia’s national development.

While watching Peter Weir’s film Gallipoli cannot be made a citizenship requirement, there are other options. The enlarged Canberra War Memorial will be visited by millions of Australians after it opens in 2028. There will be large new exhibit galleries and aircraft and vehicles from all three services.

(The project began under former War Memorial chairman Kerry Stokes, the chairman of Seven West Media, which publishes The Nightly.)

In NSW, the Government has introduced a innovative scheme to promote the study of Australian military history at the HSC level. Each year 20 students spend two weeks travelling to battlefields and militarily significant sites in Australia and overseas accompanied by three history teachers.

This year the students went to the site of the Battle of Kapyong during the Korean War, a fight so important that a company at the Duntroon officers’ training school bears its name. They visited the chapel at Singapore’s Changi Prison, a place synonymous with the suffering of Australian prisoners at the hands of the Japanese during World War II.

Among those present was Ms Nazeeya, a Macarthur Girls High School student with a love of history and sense of its significance.

“This opportunity is a powerful way to honour the sacrifices of those who served and reflect on how they shaped the history and values of our country,” she said.

Another person reflecting on history at the Cenotaph today was Eddie Cudd, a British paratrooper in the 1960s. Mr Cudd’s father fought at Passchendaele in France in 1917, a three-week bloodbath also known as the Battle of Ypres that cost Australia 38,000 casualties, including the life of Frederick Tubb, a Victoria Cross recipient.

Mr Cudd said life had taught him that sometimes peace was more difficult to win than war. “You can’t forget the time of the Great War but the peace is the hardest thing,” he said.

I think he meant that the difficulty of building a prosperous and harmonious society out the immense human suffering of a world war is not always recognised.

Which may be the most compelling reason to never forget the men who fell in Flanders fields where poppies now grow.