Something to THINK ABOUT …

THE CENTENARY OF THE GREAT HOMECOMING

Over the last four years, year by year and battle by battle, we’ve commemorated the centenary of world war one. This year marks the Centenary of the Great Homecoming … the start of the aftermath of that war, the realisation of the cataclysmic damage that it caused and the first steps of our nation’s long, slow and painful recovery.

This year also marks the centenary of the official end of the war, in June 1919, when the Versailles Peace Treaty was finally signed. The armistice of the 11thof the 11th1918 that we commemorate each year as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day was actually just a truce for a ceasefire.

Two days before our then Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, was to sign that treaty in Versailles, the delegates were told that they would have to affix their national seals in wax on the document when they signed.  Now, that was a problem for Billy Hughes and his team: Australia had no seal of its own. So Hughes scoured the Paris antique markets, trying to find something suitable, without any luck. Finally, someone had a wonderful idea: they fashioned a seal from the tunic button of a digger’s uniform. And so Australia’s first treaty as an independent nation was signed with a symbol of the 60,000 diggers who died in the conflict.

Sadly, even before the world began its recovery from the war, it was hit by the global spanish flu pandemic, which killed 50 million people around the globe - almost three times more than the war!  It was actually the opposite in Australia: our war deaths outnumbered flu deaths by five to one.

Today, one hundred years later, it’s hard for us to imagine the devastating impact the first world war had on countries all around the world. It wiped out the flower of an entire generation.

Remarkably, clear evidence of that devastation still lingers on those battlefields today.  And each year in north-eastern France and Belgium they gather what they call ‘The Iron Harvest’, the annual collection of rusted unexploded ammunition, gas shells, shrapnel, etc ploughed up by farmers. 

Bomb disposal teams collect around 900 tonnes of this deadly harvest every year in France and another 250 tonnesin Belgium. That’s not surprising when you realise that the battle for Verdun alone lasted 303 days and left just under a million dead and a further 1.25 million injured. It worked out at 1000 dead for every square metre of territory fought over.

Today the central area of that battlefield has been declared as zone rouge or red zone the definition of zone rougeis: “completely devastated, damage to properties 100%, damage to agriculture 100%, impossible to clean, human life impossible”.  Experts claim it will take 500 years before some areas around the Somme are free from that deadly harvest 

Against that background of death and destruction, the ANZACs’ contribution stands out starkly. Our WWI Diggers suffered proportionally more deaths, wounds and illnesses than the armies of Britain, Germany, France, the United States or Canada. And this damage was visited on more than half of the eligible Australian males between the ages of 18 & 55.

One Australian scholar, Dr David Noonan, who forensically researched our records, believes that just three percent of diggers who served in theatres of war in WWI were left unscathed 

One in every four Australian families lost a husband, a son or a brother in that war … imagine how many more lost a cousin, an uncle or a friend. In fact, experts now reckon every second Australian family suffered a loss from that conflict.

The scale of the first world war was simply astonishing … 65 million men took up arms from around 50 nations … and over four years, 37.5 million people were killed, wounded, taken prisoner or went missing. At the time our population was fewer than five million … so, roughly 2.5 million men. Of these, 416,000 enlisted. One street in the then working-class suburb of Paddington, Bent Street, had 30 houses. It sent 29 men off to war.

To put things in perspective: based on our current population, it would be the equivalent of two million enlisting, with 300,000 killed and almost a million wounded.

Some experts now believe that the 62,000 Diggers who died in the conflict were joined by at least that number again of returned veterans who died in the first decade after the war: those who succumbed to their illnesses or injuries, or, who took their own lives.

And then there were the missing … 23,000 diggers were listed as missing … those who simply disappeared in the deep fog of war. Imagine their families? … dealing with the nagging doubt of not knowing what had happened to their loved ones.

The story of the missing diggers from the battle of Fromelles shows how the war even today has a lingering impact on hundreds of Australian families. At Fromelles, a tiny village in north-eastern France, the Diggers fought their first battle after Gallipoli and their first on the Western Front in France, on 19 July 1916.

It was an unmitigated disaster. Of the 7000 diggers who attacked, almost 2000 were killed and 3,500 were wounded or captured - in 12 hours!  To this day, the worst night in Australia’s history! We lost more killed on that day than we did in total in the Boer, Korean and Vietnam wars and all subsequent conflicts.

Of the 2000 who died at Fromelles, almost 1,300 were declared ‘missing’ and their families were thrust into that terrible netherworld, not knowing how their loved ones had died  or even whether they had died at all.

Some mothers kept their front veranda lights on for the rest of their lives in case their sons came home.

Thanks to the work of a Greek-born, retired Melbourne art teacher and amateur historian, Lambis Englezos, we learned that the Germans had buried 250 Diggers who were killed at Fromelles in a mass grave. Since then, using DNA-matching with descendants, 166 of those 250 Diggers - or two-thirds of them - have now been identified and given graves and headstones in the newly-created pheasant wood military cemetery in Fromelles.

In fact, another seven missing Fromelles Diggers will be given an official burial and headstones on this year’s anniversary of the battle, as the work of Lambis and his team continues.

Sadly, the impact of the war on many of those who actually survived and returned home was almost as devastating as it was to those they left behind in France. One young man’s story illustrates this perfectly.

Rowland Lording was born in Balmain. He’d just turned 16 when he enlisted on 19 July 1915. He trained as a signaller and served in Egypt before arriving in France just in time to take part in the battle of Fromelles. Young Rowley was dragging signal wire across no man’s-land when a machine-gun burst caught him and shrapnel penetrated his back, leaving him with massive wounds to his chest and arms and semi-paralysed. 

He was given up for dead but, against all the odds, he survived and was dragged back to his lines by his mates. He was bedridden in England until January 1917, then returned to Australia. Rowley Lording endured 53 operations over the next 15 years, with six ribs removed and his right arm later amputated. 

Despite living in constant pain, Rowley married, had three children, built an accountancy business, founded the 30th Battalion Association, worked for limbless soldiers and wrote a truly remarkable book about his experiences in 1935. 

Sadly, in trying to combat his constant pain, Rowley became addicted to morphia and his life began to unravel and he died in 1944, aged just 45 - another uncounted casualty of ‘the war to end all wars’. For so many veterans, like Rowley Lording, the war never ended.

So how did Australians deal with their grief? The reality was that few Australian families would ever be able to visit the grave of their loved ones on the other side of the world. Travel in those days was a genuine luxury 

So we built memorials. Cenotaphs and memorials sprung up in every town and suburb across the nation, immortalising the names of the fallen and giving grieving families a sacred place where they could honour their loved ones and where they could project their emotions and memories in their own ways. So why is it important for us to reflect on a war that ended more than 100 years ago? Because “to understand where we are going we must understand where we’ve come from.”

Perhaps the one universal lesson we can take from the Great Homecoming of WWI is that everyone exposed to war is affected by it. Sadly, we see this in all our returned veterans … from WWI through to Iraq and Afghanistan … some recover … many do not … and many pay the ultimate price for their patriotism, either during the conflict or in the years following it 

And what do they ask of us?  Simply, that we always remember them and their sacrifice … 

Lest we forget

www.patricklindsay.com.au

AUSTRALIA'S OWN COLONEL KURTZ FROM 'APOCALYPSE NOW'

Lt-Col Barry Petersen MC at Hellfire Pass in 2008

Something to THINK ABOUT …

Late last month Australia quietly lost one of its finest warriors, Lt-Colonel Barry Petersen MC, the man whose Vietnam War exploits many believe were the inspiration for the central character in Francis Ford Coppola’s movie ‘Apocalypse Now’, played by Marlon Brando.

Petersen always pointed out that the movie was based on Joseph Conrad’s classic novella, ‘Heart of Darkness’, and it was. 

But many believe Barry Petersen’s remarkable service at least in part inspired the Brando character, Colonel Kurtz, a rogue officer commanding a guerrilla army, who draws his nemesis Captain Willard, played by Martin Sheen, further and further into the heart of darkness, all the time wrestling with growing ethical dilemmas. 

In reality, Barry Petersen’s achievements amongst the tribesmen in the highlands on the border between Vietnam and Cambodia surpassed those of the Kurtz character because Petersen’s operation was spectacularly successful and, unlike Kurtz, he maintained his sanity and his discipline throughout his service.

In 1963, 28-year-old Captain Barry Petersen was a member of the elite Australian Army Training Team, the first of our soldiers committed to the Vietnam War.

He’d already served in the Malayan Emergency and his experience there training Malays in counter guerrilla tactics against the communist insurgents, saw him seconded to the American CIA and running an independent field operation based out of the Darlac Provincial capital of Ban-Me-Thuot, supplied and funded by the CIA.

Within twelve months he’d amassed a guerrilla army of more than 1000 Montagnard tribesmen who caused havoc with their ‘hit and run’ tactics against the Viet Cong (the North Vietnamese Communists) along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Petersen was revered by his Rhade tribal warriors. He learned their language, adopted their customs and native dress and led them in battle. They made him a tribal chieftain and gave him the name Dam Sam, after a legendary Rhade tribal warrior who was undefeated in battle.

Indeed, Petersen and his Montagnard army were so successful that the Viet Cong placed a bounty on his head. Petersen played up their successes, even creating a tiger badge for his troops, who became feared as the ‘Tiger Men’ of Truong Son Force.

The Australian’s success also raised the ire of his CIA handlers who thought he had too much power and set about reigning him in. For their part, the Montagnards hated both the South and North Vietnamese, who had suppressed them for centuries, and they distrusted the motives of the Americans. In late 1964, they threatened to revolt against the South Vietnamese.

Petersen intervened and convinced his Tiger Men to stay out of the fight. It was an extremely dangerous task and he was later awarded the Military Cross for his bravery in the action.

But that was the final straw for the CIA and Petersen’s handlers warned him that if he didn’t leave the highlands of his own volition, he’d have an accident and leave in a body bag. 

It took orders from his Australian commander before Petersen left his Tiger Men army, after an elaborate tribal farewell ceremony that confirmed the suspicions of some of his colleagues that he had ‘gone native’.

Barry Petersen served another tour in Vietnam as a major with an Australian unit but he knew his future promotion path was limited and he retired from the army as a Lt-Colonel. 

He settled in Bangkok and worked to help Montagnards who fled Vietnam and set up a consultancy business which strengthened his reputation as an ‘international man of mystery’, with deep connections with the region’s many spooks 

In 2002 I interviewed Barry Petersen for my book, ‘The Spirit of the Digger’, and found him a humble man who was intensely proud of his service and of that of his Montagnard comrades.

Former Governor-General and commander of the SAS, Major-General Mike Jeffery, said: “Barry Petersen was one of the very best of the Australian military profession because he took on such and difficult and unique task.”

Petersen’s Montagnard regalia rests in the Australian War Memorial.

Vale Barry Petersen MC

RSLs MUST USE WAR CHESTS TO HELP OUR STRUGGLING DIGGERS

RSL Sub-branches in NSW alone have as much as $500 million in cash languishing in bank accounts at a time when thousands of veterans, especially recent ones, desperately need their help.

The money is held by about 350 Sub-branches scattered around the State, the majority outside the Sydney Metropolitan Area. 

By consolidating a substantial portion of these funds, the RSL could develop and operate programs to make a dramatic impact on the urgent problems of homelessness and mental health being faced by thousands of veterans.

But too many of these Sub-branches operate like independent island-states in an archipelago of anarchy, controlled by well-meaning amateurs with a vision limited to their own areas and, sometimes, their own interests. 

And they’re disconnected with the modern veteran, as evidenced by the fact that, of around 80,000 returned veterans who qualify to be members, only a 1000 or so have joined their local Sub-branch.

I say this out of concern as a long-term and continuing supporter of the RSL movement. My father was one of the founding members of the Sub-branch where I grew up and I’ve admired the spirit and good works of the movement all my life. I’ve filmed and written about veterans and their problems and their contribution to our nation for more than 40 years. But I fear that unless there’s a major rethink, the movement will become obsolete.

NSW’s Sub-branches represent about 40,000 members and they theoretically report to RSL NSW which manages a vast and disparate portfolio of assets, including 150 properties, one of which is the 97-room Hyde Park Hotel, that it owns and operates.

RSL NSW has a substantial interest in RSL LifeCare, whichcares for 7000 individuals in independent living, community care, assisted living, dementia and nursing homes and additional extensive services. In 2016 RSL LifeCare recorded a $42m surplus from total revenue of $218m, had total assets of $1.3bn, net equity of $405m and no material external debt.

RSL NSW is currently struggling to set its house in order after a massive failure in its stewardship, highlighted in an Inquiry by the Hon Patricia Bergin SC, that she handed to the NSW Government in January last year.

Bergin found that “widespread ignorance in each of the entities of the Act, the Regulations and the terms of the respective fundraising authorities exposed during the inquiry is a deep cause for concern.” And that “… there was no transparency in respect of the use of funds raised from the public that the statutory regime was designed to achieve.”

This played out against the “chilling statistic of 41 suicides of veterans in the first six months of 2016” which Bergin pointed to as “the stark reality of the urgent need for support and expert assistance for those returning from combative deployments and/or transitioning out of the Defence Forces to civilian life.”

It’s hard to imagine a more devastating failure by the revered organisation at a time when young Diggers are crying out for its support. 

Indeed, Bergin referred former RSL NSW State President Don Rowe’s “reprehensible conduct” (expenses, his resignation and its aftermath) to the NSW Police. In January this year, Rowe was charged with fraud and he will face court next month.

Happily, RSL NSW is under new management and they are working hard to recover the trust of its members and the community. But that will take years and a massive restructure.

In the meantime, Diggers are dying in alarming numbers and a wildly disproportionate number are living on our streets. If the Sub-branches could shake themselves out of their lethargy and consolidate, say, half of the cash they’re sitting on into some form of safe (ideally, government guaranteed) impact investment, it would generate at the very least $10 million a year. 

Combine that with a dollar-for-dollar matching arrangement with government and you have a war chest capable of making inroads into our veterans’ most urgent problems … now, when it’s needed most!