Lest We Forget

It's ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand.

Let me be the first to pay my respects to those who fought and died while serving our two countries.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

Lest we forget.

Well said, Hass . . .

Aye, total respect.

Lest we forget anyone who laid down their life for the greater good.....

To whom it may concern, I do not forget nor forgive.

To err is human to forgive divine.....

I prefer Wilfred Owen's sentiments.

Move him into the sun--
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it awoke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds--
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved,--still warm,--too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
--O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

I find it almost impossible not to well up when I hear the last post.

And to give this thread a cricket feel:


Medal honours a special talent cut down in prime


Jamie Pandaram
April 25, 2008


WE'LL never know how many accolades and milestones Norm Callaway could have achieved on the cricket field; most men killed by the age of 21 have barely had a chance to leave their mark.

Sometimes, though, importance is not in the achievement but in the glimpse of genius. It reminds aspirants never to waste an opportunity because men like Callaway were denied.

Callaway was special no matter how you look at it; he probably wouldn't have been the best cricketer to play for his state, NSW, but then again …

He got one chance, against Queensland in February, 1915, and with it he hit a record that remains today: the highest score by a debutant for NSW.

His innings, a savage 207 on an SCG pitch that had been unkind to the visitors - Queensland scored 137 in the first innings and 100 in the second - was played in the style of a man who perhaps sensed time was not on his side.

The following year Callaway enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force and left the country on October 7. On May 3, 1917, he was killed at the second battle of Bullecourt in France, aged 21.

Only now has this largely unknown figure been honoured. A medal in his name has been created by his home district, the Murrumbidgee Cricket Council, for the outstanding under-21 player in the region. Callaway was born in the Riverina town of Hay.

The inaugural Norm Callaway medal was awarded to Brent Lawrence, the Narrandera Carpheads club captain.

"I knew that I was in line to win something but I didn't think it was as prestigious as this award," Lawrence told the Narranderra Argus newspaper.

The man behind the idea, West Wyalong representative manager John Scascighini, said he was inspired to honour Callaway's legacy after watching his own son, Jack, move from an under-21 representative side to a domestic career in England.

"I didn't know Norm Callaway, he died 28 years before I was born," Scascighini said at the medal presentation. "But three things I do know about him: he was a fine cricketer, he had a sense of adventure and he loved Australia."

Callaway's 207 was compiled in 214 minutes and included 26 boundaries. He came in at 3-17 put on 256 for the fifth wicket with Charlie McCartney as NSW won by an innings and 231 runs. He had earlier scored 129 against Victoria in the colts competition to earn selection for NSW.

Callaway joined Paddington when he moved to Sydney but then joined Waverley in 1914-15 and was second in the season's averages behind Alan Kippax. In the 1915-16 season, he scored 705 runs at an average of 58.75.

Well done Hass. Cheers to all those who served and their families.

They were talking this morning to the grandsons of another AIF man who was killed at Bullecourt - apparently that was an absolute bloodbath, even by WW1 standards.

Bullecourt is also where the British generals learnt what not to do with Tanks. In a very expensive way.

On a not so related subject, not sure if the Australian troops in WW1 were the only ones on both sides to be an all volunteer force, or if that held for NZ as well.

Fine thread. Fine words Hass and Furriner.

I'm pretty sure Australia was the oonly participant in WWI to have an all volunteer army. It also did not have a death sentence for desertion.

Conscription was avoided only at the cost of a tumultuous and bitterly divisive domestic debate, essentially between the middle class and Protestants, who mainly supported it , and the working class and Catholics, especially those of Irish ancestry, who were mainly opposed.
This division in Australia could stll be experienced half a century later, and was evident in the Australian cricket team during the 1930's.

peterg wrote:I'm pretty sure Australia was the only participant in WWI to have an all volunteer army. It also did not have a death sentence for desertion.

Not true:

"It is often alleged that 'Australians could be not shot'. In fact Australian military law was virtually identical to that of the British, and 113 Australian soldiers were sentenced to death, three for cowardice, two for striking a superior, two for disobedience and the rest for desertion. No sentence of death on an Australian was ever carried out as, alone amongst the Dominion forces, the Australian government had reserved the power to confirm a death sentence not to the commander-in-chief of the theatre but to the Governor-General of Australia; this was Sir Ronald Munro-Ferguson (who was himself British not Australian), and he invariably commuted the sentence to imprisonment."

G.Corrigan, "Mud, Blood and Poppycock: Britain and the First World War." (2003).

Corrigan goes on to write:

"There were occasions when the Australian generals would have dearly liked to shoot a few of their men, whose superb fighting record was counterbalanced by appalling discipline. With seven per cent of the strength of the BEF, the Australians provided twenty five per cent of its deserters, and when they were out of the line drunkenness, fighting and theft were rife. Statistically an Australian soldier was nine times more liable to serve a term of imprisonment than his British counterpart, and these were sentences handed down by Australian courts martial, composed of Australian officers. In March 1918 nine out of every thousand Australians on the Western Front were in prison, compared to one in every thousand British. In December 1918 there were 811 Australian soldiers serving sentences in military prisons, compared with 1,330 British and a combined total of 314 Canadians, New Zealanders and South Africans. Outwardly Australians laughed all this off, attributing it to the independent, happy-go-lucky attitudes of the freeborn Australian jackaroo (despite most Australian recruits coming from cities), but inwardly the Australian army absorbed the lessons, and discipline in the Second World WAr was much better."

[Much of this improvement has been ascribed to the changes in officer training, particularly at junior and nco level that took place in the Australian forces between the wars]

Whilst I yield to noone in my admiration and respect for the sacrifices and courage of the ANZACS in both World Wars, as well as Korea and Vietnam upto Iraq and Afghanistan currently we should not always allow the legend to obscure the facts including that almost three times as many British troops were killed at Gallipoli as Australians and that more French soldiers were killed there than Australians (the Gallic contribution to that benighted engagement has been oddly overlooked in the many books and films about it that have been produced at both ends of the Antipodes).

As far as conscription is concerned, according to this the Australian government had introduced boyhood conscription before WWI and in 1911 a Labour Government had introduced compulsory military training for all males aged between 12-26. The Australian Government narrowly failed to carry two referenda in 1916 & 1917 introducing compulsory military service but did carry legislation afterwards to prosecute anti-conscription campaigners. Among those arrested was John Curtin who, as Australia's Prime Minister during WWII, instituted compulsory military service for all men from 18-35 and single men upto the age of 45. Conscription was reintroduced between 1951-9 and again between 1964-72 when it was phased out by the incoming Whitlam Government (12 years after it had been withdrawn in the UK).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Australia

Perhaps this article gives a better description of the Aussie soldier than that slander you have posted Allan D.
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:dJPQONzPtPsJ:www.firstaif.info/42/line2/discipline.htm+Australian+soldier+shot+for+desertion&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=au&client=firefox-a

During Third Ypres Lieutenant P. King of the 2/5th Bn. East Lancashire Regiment, was stuck with a small left-over of his company in the mud near Poelcapelle. The men were exhausted, had been under constant fire for two days and desperate for relief, but no one seemed even to know that they were there.

Lt King had already began to wonder whether his company had been secretly chosen to be a suicide force. King wrote

"Suddenly, to my great surprise, I heard voices behind me and I looked back and there were three very tall figures, and one was actually smoking. I could hardly speak for astonishment. I said, 'Who the hell are you? And put that cigarette out, you'll draw fire!' He just looked back at me. 'Well, come to that, who are you?' I said, 'I'm Lieutenant King of the 2/5th East Lancashire Regiment.' At which he said: 'Well, we're the Aussies, chum, and we've come to relieve you.' And they jumped down into the shell-hole.
Well, naturally, we were delighted, but of course there are certain formalities you've always got to carry out when you hand over, and I was a bit worried about that. So I explained, 'There are no trenches to hand over, no rations, no ammunition, but I have got a map. Do you need any map references?' He said, 'Never mind about that, chum. Just f--k off.'
They didn't seem to be a bit bothered. The last I saw of them they were squatting down, rifles over their shoulders, and they were smoking, all three of them. Just didn't care!"
End
That's the Aussie spirit.They were volunteers,and as such,they did a fine job.
Typical English attitude,fighting from trenches,but there is still certain formalities to be carried out.

Allan D


There's a bit to reply to in your most recent entry.

However I'm off down the coast - something us larrikan Aussies often do - and I'll be blessedly away from the internet for a week or more

To Noelene:

I didn't think that my post would make me "Pommie of the Month" somehow!
If you read my post carefully you will see that Corrigan pays tribute to "the superb fighting spirit" of the Australian Imperial Forces. I would add that out of over 330,000 Australian military personnel who served overseas in WWI 65 were awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest gallantry award (since replaced in 1991 by the Victoria Cross of Australia for which an award has yet to be made), some 10.38% of the total awarded to all British and Dominion forces, with a further two being won during the Allied Intervention in Russia which immediately followed on from WWI and is sometimes included with it on war memorials (10.62% of the total for both conflicts). All these awards were made on the recommendation and approval of the commander-in-chief of the theatre concerned, always a Brit, and often the much-maligned Douglas Haig.

However your link does confirm Corrigan's point, whilst giving slightly different figures, that Australians were sentenced to death by other Australians and only reprieved by a Brit, a Scot no less, who lived in Australia only while he was Governor-General and returned home immediately he finished his term of office:

"Though liable to be executed for mutiny, desertion to the enemy or treachery, the 129 Australians (including 119 deserters) that were sentenced to death during the war (117 in France) were not shot. The 1903 Australian Defence Act stipulated that the Governor General of Australia had to confirm the sentences passed by courts-martial - and he never endorsed the sentences. Although Haig made strong representations for power to inflict the extreme penalty upon Australian soldiers, the sanction was continually denied."

Ronald Munro-Ferguson

To peterg:

Hope you have a great time and wish I was there. No doubt you will have lots of opportunity to indulge your "jackaroo" spirit. Looking forward to hearing from you on your return.

Finally, in my defence, I should like to pay tribute to the courage and bravery of Australian forces not in just the six conflicts I mentioned in my previous post but also the 2nd Boer War in South Africa 1899-1902, the Borneo campaign in the 1960s and the intervention in East Timor in 1999 led by General Cosgrove, which undoubtedly save the lives of many thousands from further genocide. I think there could be no better tribute than to post this link. These are truly the bravest of the brave:

Australian VC Winners

Its a few days late ... but I'll add my respects to both the fallen and the survivors -who'se numbers sadly decline year on year.

It's worth repeating - Britain owes a huge debt of gratitude to both Australia and New Zealand for their assistance in conflicts over the years.

RIP the fallen warriors

we WILL remember them.

It is sort of good that the numbers are declining and not increasing. While death from age is inevitable of course, the fact that there aren't more marchers each year shows that there have been fewer Wars since.

And that is probably the greatest thanks that we can give - showing them that their sacrifice wasn't in vain.

Growler wrote:It's worth repeating - Britain owes a huge debt of gratitude to both Australia and New Zealand for their assistance in conflicts over the years.

RIP the fallen warriors

we WILL remember them.

Whilst I don't want to start another dogfight over this it should also be pointed out that had Britain succumbed in 1940 Australia, like the United States, whilst probably not themselves invaded, would, in Franklin Roosevelt's words, "have been living at the point of a gun". The conflicts against Japan in WWII, in Korea, Borneo in the 1960s (all of which Britons participated and died in) as well as Vietnam (in which Britons did not participate) were as much, if not more, about Australia's security as Britain's as is Iraq and Afghanistan today (despite what the anti-war brigade would have you believe) and so I think it's more appropriate to remember a shared sacrifice in defence of common ideals than argue about who was assisting whom. I'm sure nobody in the Japanese POW camps gave a monkey's about which country you came from.

As for your last two statements all I can do is echo them.

Lest we forget Lance Corporal Jason Marks, who died today in Afghanistan, serving for the Australian Forces.