When Australia Went to War

One thing I wanted Tom to understand about Australia was the impact of the First World War on that country.

We have both done multiple tours of that war’s Western Front over the years, both together and separately, and we have seen many of the sites where Australians lost their lives, notably Fromelles, where there are two Australian cemeteries: VC Corner, which is notable for its lack of headstones, as it is a monument to 1300 Australians with no known graves and Fromelles Pheasant Wood, where an entirely new cemetery was consecrated in 2010 with the remains of 250 Australian and British soldiers whose bodies were found in a mass grave nearby.

But it is impossible to understand the magnitude of Australia’s sacrifice in WWI without noticing the war memorials in each and every village and town and visiting the country’s state and national memorials as we did in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne.

Fittingly, on our first day in Australia, we sort of stumbled into the Anzac Memorial when we crossed into Hyde Park during our first ramble through the city.

We climbed the steps and viewed the rotunda, which has a sombre motif of death and sacrifice.

What we weren’t expecting was the extensive museum below and behind the shrine, the latter added on the centenary of the war.

The museum displays featured many aspects of the shrine itself, which honours the various fighting forces. But the most interesting and moving display is in a central courtyard where the lost men from every town and city in New South Wales are represented by a glass box filled with soil from that place.

The very helpful museum volunteer noticed me taking a photo of Bungendore and brought up a site on his phone that describes where and by whom the soil was collected in each location. In Bungendore, the soil was taken from the town’s own WWI memorial site by a group of town and state dignitaries.

On the ground in the circular courtyard are the names of all the places in which Australians fought and died in that war, with a glass box containing soil from that place as well.

I had never been to the Sydney memorial before, and was intrigued by the way that they have kept the memory of the First World War alive there in innovative ways.

I well recalled Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance, however, and was anxious for Tom to see it as it had made a big impression on me as a teenager.

In the centre of the huge monument is the shrine, which was modelled on the Parthenon and the mausoleum of Halicarnassus (one of the 8 wonders of the ancient world). Once a year, at exactly 11am on November 11^th, a beam of sunlight shines through a mathematically calculated aperture on one side of the pyramidal roof and illuminates the word ‘Love’ on the marble Stone of Remembrance, upon which is engraved the words “Greater love hath no man”.

Beneath the shrine is an excellent museum that tells the story of Victoria’s soldiers in WWI and WWII, but focusing especially on Gallipoli, as it is the ultimate symbol of Australian sacrifice in that war. Over 8,000 Anzac soldiers were killed in Gallipoli, which was an 8 month long exercise in futility and death.

One of the enduring features of the shrine is the Lone Pine, a tree grown from a seed brought back by an Australian soldier who had fought in the battle of Lone Pine in Gallipoli. Other memorials, some copies of those erected on the Western Front dot the park-like grounds, which abut the Melbourne Botanic Gardens.

Both the Sydney and Melbourne monuments focused on the soldiers of each state who fought in the First World War, but the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, the capital, honours all Australian soldiers from that and all the other wars Australia has fought in since becoming an independent nation in 1901.

The monument, like those in the states, consists of a shrine and an extensive museum that chronicles in great detail not only the First but also the Second World War.

It is positioned on an axis with Parliament House across the waters of Lake Burley-Griffin, with a commanding view of the city.

The avenue leading up to the monument is lined with memorials to separate groups, battles and wars, much like are seen in Washington D.C.

Some moving features of this war memorial include a landing boat from Gallipoli and a memorial to Australian soldiers who died in Afghanistan—folded flags carved of marble with a simple red poppy on top and each serviceman’s details engraved in front.

The shrine is Art Deco in design, with beautiful mosaics, the tomb of an unknown soldier who died in France during WWI, and four huge columns made of different materials: glass, wood, iron and marble, representing air, earth, fire and water.

It is a solemn place, befitting its purpose.

But by far the most moving of all are the walls lining the memorial itself, called the Roll of Honour.

Here, on one side, are engraved the names of every Australian soldier who died in WWI, arranged by branch and unit of service but without rank, symbolising that they all died equally.

It is a sobering sight, as the wall seems to stretch on endlessly, name upon name, with poppies pushed into the wall at various intervals, adding an extra dimension to this physical reminder of the enormity of Australia’s losses.

Over 61,000 Australian men lost their lives in the First World War, in a country whose population at the time was only 4.9 million. Proportionately, Australia lost more men than any other country that fought in that war.

The opposite wall holds the names of all those who died in WWII and subsequent wars—120,000 names in all.

WWI is well remembered and commemorated in England, as the memorial in our own village and in all the villages around us attest. Yet it holds perhaps even more meaning for Australia as the first war it fought in as an independent nation, its men going voluntarily ‘to fight for King and Country’.

Its monuments serve as a place for remembrance for all those who were lost and are buried far, far away in places like Turkey and Europe. The First World War shaped Australia in uniquely consequential ways, and it’s impossible to reckon with its legacy Down Under without visiting the grand shrines and memorials erected in its wake.