SACRIFICES DEFINE US
A MESSAGE painted in a small rock among the pebbles in a memorial at a Gold Coast cemetery tells of a mother’s grief at the loss of her soldier hero son.
It is a poignant reminder of the anguish of parents, siblings and friends, and of the impact on the wider community when a life is cut short in sacrifice for our country.
On Anzac Day the nation’s thoughts have long focused on Gallipoli, and we contemplate how those months on a strip of sand on the other side of the world over a century ago came to define who we are.
But while the grieving mother’s few words of loss and longing are similar to those of a parent more than a century ago when news filtered back of loss of life in Turkey, or on the Western Front, they are in fact a modern parent’s words of pain, lamenting a son who died in Afghanistan – our longest war. Victoria Cross recipient Cameron Baird’s final moments came in a battle just as significant in forging our nation’s character as any other.
As well as the original Anzacs, today we honour the memory of all Australians who have served. We think of the Diggers sent into battle at Villers-Bretonneux in France – a savage fight a century ago that turned the tide of the war on the Western Front. Australian losses totalled 2473.
We think of all those who died at Fromelles, which like Gallipoli was to be a diversion for a campaign elsewhere – known simply and infamously as “The Somme’’ – yet sent 7000 Australians and the 61st British Division charging across no-man’s land into the perfect killing field for the German machinegunners. In 24 hours, 5533 Australians were killed, injured or captured, equal to all Australian casualties in the Boer, Korean and Vietnam wars.
In World War II, as Australia fought for its existence, our nation was supported by the US in stopping the Japanese. But as well as the great air and sea battles that determined the course of the Pacific War, we remember today the men who fought in mud and blood in what became our finest hours in that war, when Australian troops stopped the Japanese on a jungle track at Kokoda, or when Australian forces defeated the Japanese at Milne Bay. We also think of the Borneo campaign. We recall the horrors of the Burma Railway and the Sandakan Death March.
We remember a rag-tag bunch of airmen who flew a handful of Kittyhawk fighters to intercept the Japanese aircraft attacking Port Moresby. The fighter pilots’ story is all but forgotten, yet they took on the invaders for 44 days in air battles fought over jungle and sea.
Selfless bravery deserves to be honoured today, but our nation is also defined by the humanitarian efforts of our military when it assumes the role of peacekeeper.
Australian troops led the UN effort to stop a bloodbath in East Timor when vigilantes and elements of the Indonesian military ran amok after the independence vote in 1999. Our peacekeepers fly into remote regions across Asia and the Pacific when natural disaster strikes, extending our hand of friendship and compassion.
No one wants war, and that message is reinforced time and again on Anzac Day.
But we have much to be proud of and it is important to remember in our troubled world why we maintain a defence force.