ANZAC Day Dawn Service of Remembrance

Now, as dawn approaches, all around Australia and our good neighbour New Zealand, and at countless war cemeteries around the world, Aussies and Kiwis are gathering in most solemn, profound and grateful remembrance of the servicemen and women who have served in our Armed Forces over more than a century. This moment, this occasion, engenders huge emotional effect, nationally and individually, and rightly so.

We particularly, pay rightful homage to those who paid the ultimate price with their very lives, and to those who were and remain injured both physically and psychologically. We remember all who have served and those still serving, and their descendants and families.   

This year we especially recall that a century ago, in 1917, the Great War was still far from over, with ANZAC deaths and casualties on the Western Front counted in the tens of thousands.

At the outbreak of World War One, the conflict was seen as a glorious cause and something of a great adventure for the many young men who volunteered, including enthusiastically here in Queensland, young men who volunteered to fight for what was known as the “Mother Country”.

At the beginning of the war, the number of people volunteering for the Australian Imperial Force was so high that recruitment officers actually turned people away.

But by 1917, after three years of conflict, the War’s grim reality was plain for everyone to see.

Conditions on the Western Front were absolutely appalling; the muddy, bare, waterlogged and crater filled battlefields a century ago, such a stark contrast to the green and peaceful surrounds Kaye and I encountered at the Fromelles and Pozieres centenary commemorations in France last year. 

One hundred years ago, there was no end in sight to the conflict, let alone any prospect of victory, and deaths and casualties were mounting enormously – almost every family in Australia knew someone who had been killed in the war.

And unsurprisingly, as a result, by the mid-point of the Great War, the AIF faced a shortage of men.

To reach its manpower target of 5,500 men every month, the Government sought to introduce conscription. And two referenda seeking compulsory military service were defeated, the first in 1916 and the other in 1917.

Those referenda were bitterly fought, and divisive, both politically and socially. General community disenchantment was again unsurprisingly enhanced by increasing casualty figures coming from the Western Front. 

Amidst this bitter public debate, and with mounting casualties belying expectations of glory, a number of troopships departed Australian shores with volunteer reinforcements, those men, so many so young, only too well aware by then of the terrible conditions awaiting them on the battlefield. What courage! What commitment to this nation, their people!

Thirteen troopships departed Brisbane in 1916, including the HMAT – meaning His Majesty’s Australian Transport – HMAT Marathon, a steamship on loan to the Commonwealth from a British company. The convoy left Pinkenba Wharf on the 27th of October, the day before the first conscription referendum.

On board were 1,082 personnel, including 18 year old Private William Ernest Foster of Morningside, who had enlisted with the Enoggera-raised 26th Australian Infantry Battalion in September 1916.

The HMAT Marathon arrived in Plymouth, England on the 9th of January 1917, a year in which Australians were still to do battle at places which are now etched in our nation’s history. 

That year the ANZACs – including reinforcements – moved into Belgium where the Australians engaged in fierce fighting in the harshest of conditions at Messines, Polygon Wood, Menin Road, Ypres and Passchendaele… and much further afield, at places such as Beersheba in Gaza,  the town famous for the charge of the 4^th Australian Light Horse Brigade a century ago.

Many of these battles were fought so hard and with such losses, so conspicuous that you will find a number of these Western Front place names remembered on the frieze of this Memorial in ANZAC Square.

Queensland soldiers were in the thick of this fighting.

The 42^nd Battalion was raised at Enoggera and after enduring an horrendous 1916-17 winter on the Front Line in France, it then deployed to the Ypres Sector of Belgium.

In two years of fighting on the Western Front 2,954 men served in the battalion, of whom 544 were killed and 1,450 wounded. Imagine the devastating grief those casualties brought to so many Queensland families – and they were just the casualties from one battalion!

Indeed, casualties from Australian divisions engaged over an eight week period in the Ypres battles numbered 38,000, including Private Foster, who, at just 19 years of age, was fatally struck by shellfire during the capture of Broodseinde Ridge on October 4.

Private Foster’s legacy tangibly lives on at the primary school he attended, Bulimba State School, on a World War One Honour Board I was very moved to unveil in August last year.

Let us now pause this morning, all of us, and especially our young 19 year olds, to honour publicly Private William Ernest Foster of Morningside, and all his courageous colleagues who left with him from Pinkenba Wharf on the 27th of October 1916…

As we know the ‘War to End All Wars’ was just a forerunner of another global conflict – World War Two. And this year marks the 75^th anniversary of the year that war came to our part of the world, and indeed to Queensland’s doorstep.

The War being fought in Europe would to that point have felt a long way away from then peaceful Australia. That changed dramatically with Japan’s entry into the war and the swift capitulation of Singapore in early 1942.

Then, 75 years ago, Australia’s isolation was shattered, when four days after the fall of Singapore, 242 Japanese planes bombed Darwin.

The next 21 months saw 97 air raids on 14 towns in northern Australia with Darwin receiving more than 60 percent of the attacks. Also on the front line was Queensland’s own Horn Island, just north of the tip of Cape York, which the Japanese attacked 9 times over 15 months, at the cost of many lives.

Our Townsville, home 75 years ago to one of the most important air bases in Australia, was bombed on three occasions by the Japanese, and Mossman once.

Queensland had been directly touched by war, but the Battle of the Coral Sea and the victory on the Kokoda Trail in 1942 turned the tide for the Allies.

Although final victory was still three years off, Queensland fortunately suffered no further attacks. 

And then but a few short years after the conclusion of the Second World War, 17,000 Australians were yet again committed to war in Korea – and 55 years ago, many Australians again served overseas in the Vietnam War, service marked by great commitment and conspicuous courage.

On these anniversaries we focus on specific examples of the indomitable spirit of the ANZACs. We must also remember that Anzac Day is a day to commemorate all who have served, from the Boer War, through to our many dedicated service men and women serving today.

Charles Bean, journalist, war correspondent, and official war historian, reflected on the ANZACs and posed a question for all of us when he said, “They’re not heroes. They do not intend to be thought or spoken of as heroes.

“They’re just ordinary Australians, doing their particular work as their country would wish them to do it. And pray God, Australians in days to come will be worthy of them.”

As a nation, I believe we are worthy successors of the ANZACs. We are a vibrant, multicultural, tolerant and hardworking society, such as they would have sought. And we acknowledge with both pride and humility, and above that gratitude, that ours is a society built on the immense sacrifices of so many service men and women. These are service people, past and present, who selflessly gave of themselves. Why? So that we may be the nation we are today. May we always, by acknowledging their sacrifice, be worthy of it – and a much better nation, much better people, for that. Lest we forget.