Names on casualty list shattered families in every community

FOR the last three years Australians have commemorated the centenary of those events the victors curiously styled The Great War.

The vanquished Germans more realistically styled it Weltkampf – world war.

If the constant recognition of 100-year-old events has created commemoration fatigue in some Australian communities, imagine what three years of war would have done?

From the first action in German New Guinea in September 1914, through the eight months of the Dardanelles campaign, the bloody battles in Western Europe and the Middle East, the names on the constant casualty lists impacted every Australian community.

For too many families their loss was permanent, a husband, father, child or sibling who would not be returning and would lie forever in foreign soil too far and too difficult to visit.

For too many families there was the telegram informing them their next-of-kin was simply missing in action, bringing even less closure.

Those dead soldiers’ effects were simply up as they were, sometimes smeared with battlefield mud still attached and returned to their next of kin.

For too many families, those broken in body and mind returned home to an uncertain future, grim reminders what the war had already cost and would continue to cost until the guns finally fell silent in November 1918 when an armistice was declared.

Australians will commemSince

1902, after an engineering feat remarkable for that time, the Tans Pacific submarine telegraph cable came ashore to a hut which still stands at Main Beach just north of Narrow Neck.

It connected Australia to the telegraph cable which crossed Canada, paralleling the Canadian Pacific Railway, then across the Atlantic to Britain.

The Cable Station which received and sent messages was located in Bauer Street, Southport.

In 1914 the German cruiser SMS Nurnberg severed the cable, threatening that link, but it was quickly repaired.

Apart from its strategic value keeping the Australian and British governments in regular contact, it performed a more sombre task.

Via this cable came reports of the great battles, the landing at Gallipoli and the casualties suffered.

Australians would first learn of these momentous events through news reports sent via the cable and its multiple repeater stations, where the messages were painstakingly received and repeated to ensure their accuracy.

From army HQ in Melbourne the dreaded telegrams were then despatched to families notifying them their nextof-kin had been killed, was wounded or missing.

Thus many Australian families had their hopes and dreams shattered, their loss unimaginable to us 100 years later.

Sadly 20 years later it would start all over again.

Lest we forget.