Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am so grateful for this opportunity to speak about the 100th anniversary of landings in Gallipoli. It is, in fact, one of the real privileges in my two years in this House to be able to make such a contribution. I say that because I very genuinely believe that Anzac, and the story of Anzac, matters, and that Gallipoli very much matters. I will speak about some of the reasons why I really believe that.

I also believe that it is very important that, when we talk about war, we do not gloss over the horrors and the realities of the experience of being in a war. As members of parliament, in particular, I think it is important for us to really reflect on the realities of this experience because we, in this chamber, hold the power to send our young men and women off to war. In thinking about making some remarks today, I have been reflecting about what it must have been like for the young men. There are some accounts that I want to share with the House. They are diary entries from soldiers who were there at the Gallipoli landing. The first entry is from an anonymous soldier. He said:

Arrived with the rest of the fleet. It was pitch black … everyone is in a state of eager excitement. Transport boats are lowered, all men are lined up on deck and the orders issued … At 3:10am countless numbers of small craft push off shore … the whole side of the mountain seems to be sending forth tongues of flame and bullets rain upon us—seven in our boat are killed and God knows how many in the others. Fifty yards from sand and to wade ashore with the feeling that you are one of the first to put foot on Turkish soil … silent forms lay scattered on the beach everywhere …

In reading through the accounts of these young men—and they are mostly men—one of the great tragedies is how different the sense of expectation about landing at Gallipoli, which they had been led to believe, would be from what actually happened. Another young soldier, Athol Burrett, says:

Imagine our surprise when instead of finding open trenches we saw only holes in the ground at intervals of 10 yards or so … a few men managed to get down the holes into the trench. Many of us just rushed over the front line and got into the rear trenches right among the Turks. Then started the most gruesome, bloody, and fierce hand-to-hand fighting of the whole war.

For foreigners who come to Australia and hear us talk about Anzac, I think it is often a source of real confusion to them—that we could, with all of the absolute horrors that were occurring on the shore in Turkey, celebrate this as a national event and as a foundation moment for our country. But when you read on further and look more into other accounts, the way that the young people at Gallipoli responded to what must have been the most shocking adversity that any of us in this House could imagine is something so extraordinary to behold.

I will read now a letter from Private Roy Denning. He says:

In the early hours of the morning of the 26th April 1915 I heard the officers going along amongst the men, saying ‘stick to it lads, don’t go to sleep’ and the cheerful reply would be ‘No sir, we won't go to sleep’, and my heart swelled with admiration. I knew what the ordeal of the strenuous day before had been, and knew what pluck and determination was necessary to keep awake and alert throughout the long weary hours of the night, therefore I thought I was justified in being proud of being Australian … give me Australians as comrades and I will go anywhere duty calls.

Many of us in this House have had the privilege of studying Australia's history at some of the great universities around our country, and I am one of them. As history students we are taught constantly that romanticism is to be avoided at all costs. I completely agree, because if we do not really understand how events occurred then we cannot learn anything from them.

But when you look into the history of Gallipoli, one of the most exciting, happiest kinds of feelings that you get from it is that all of the romanticism that we associate with this event in our history actually has a foundation in truth. These accounts really speak to that. The sense of egalitarianism that we so celebrate amongst one another as Australians really was there at Gallipoli, whatever account you read—whether it is Australians reporting on how Australians treated one another or soldiers from other countries talking about how the Australians related to one another in the trenches—there is this constant theme of mateship and friendship, and the fact that there was never the vast chasm between officer and soldier that we saw in so many foreign armies.

You hear and you read real accounts about the incredible bravery shown by these soldiers in the face of extraordinary bad luck and adversity. In a way, I think, when we look back on Gallipoli, the idea that this was the moment when these qualities were infused with what it was to be Australian really is true; this is really actually what happened there.

One of the other things that I felt, reading a lot of these letters and accounts, is that while we can reflect with good feelings about the Australian spirit when we think about how soldiers treated one another, there is no doubt that so many of these soldiers did not come away with a great love of war. That was really the feeling that you got from these letters; that there was a real sense of sadness about the loss that they saw around them. I think we saw that with the conscription debates that were had in 1916 and 1917. Something historians often comment on is that they believe one of the big differences between the 1916 vote, which was very narrowly lost, and the 1917 vote, which was much more strongly lost, was that so many soldiers had returned to Australia and shared their experiences of what it was like to be in war, and they did not want to see other young Australians have to go overseas and fight like they had. There were many marks left on these young men that stuck with them for life, and we owe them something very significant for that. What we owe them, of course, is never to forget their service.

I was lucky, like all in this House, to spend a great deal of time commemorating the event of the 100th anniversary of the landing in Gallipoli with my local community. One of the things that we did was to go to our local RSLs and talk to veterans about their memories and recollections of war. They were not World War I veterans, but they were still great servicemen. We talked to Francis Meyer, who is 98 years young and full of life, who is a founding member of the Clayton RSL. He talked a lot to us about how Anzac Day, on which he recalls his own service record, is a real time of reflection for him and a moment when he can pay tribute to his fallen mates. I want to mention Tom Dusting, who was 92 years old and, very sadly, lost to this world just a few weeks ago. We talked to Tom and you could hardly come across an Australian with such a keen sense of humour and such a fighting spirit. Again, Tom told us that on Anzac Day he often thinks about his fallen mates. It was a really important opportunity to pay respect to the people in my community who had served their country in military service.

I want to mention the really strong feelings of bipartisanship in my local area in how we commemorated this event. I have lots of people from different sides of politics who represent my local area. In all of these events we shared the wreaths that we laid in front of the memorials. I hope I speak for everyone when I say that when we are commemorating service and thinking about war and our nation's history, these are things that all of us on all sides of the House can celebrate together.

I say again that, as members of parliament, it is important for us to understand this history, to think about it and to really realise the enormity of what we are doing when we send young Australians off to war. Gallipoli is important for lots of reasons, but one of them is that 8,000 young Australians lost their lives fighting on a foreign shore, and we should never forget that.

I will finish by again quoting from a letter that a young soldier wrote after the war. He said:

Thinking over the times I have been through, and of the pals I have fought with and whom I have lost, I feel proud that I was one of them in the big venture, they laid down their lives in. I need hardly say, that this life being as it is, devoid of all that a man holds dear in life, and that makes life worth living has not altered me. I have witnessed joy at its highest, sorrow at its deepest, my views on life, comradeship etc has broadened. I think I am telling the truth when I say that I also know the principals on which a man's life can be based … It is easy enough under normal conditions to live rightly, but on active service, a man being months at a time among horrors unspeakable, and away from the soothing influences of home life, it is very hard, and one must learn by experience and I am sure it is the best way of forming the base to the life one wishes to live.

This is the Anzac spirit, which I am so proud has become synonymous with all that is Australian. Lest we forget.

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