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intheshadowofwar · 3 years

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21st June - Australian War Memorial, Canberra

The morning was fairly brisk in Canberra today, but there was no wind, and the sun was out. All in all, it was pretty good for a winter’s day in the National Capital.

We started the day at the Desert Mounted Corps memorial, just north of the intersection between Anzac Parade and Constitution Avenue. This memorial is actually a replica - the original, situated in Egypt, was destroyed in 1956 during the Suez Crisis. Apparently the Egyptians didn’t like having a British imperial monument in their country while the British Army was invading them; who could have seen that coming? It’s an interesting sculpture - equestrian, but portraying the common soldier instead of a general (General Chauvel being reduced to a small bronze inscription a little way away.)

From here we headed to the St. John the Baptist Church, just a little way from Anzac Parade. It’s usually closed on Mondays but the Minister was kind enough to let us in. In here there are a number of very personal memorials by the families of Canberra to the dead of the World Wars (and, in one case, the Boer War.) We paid particular attention to Lieutenant Charles George Campbell RFC, who was shot down over Cambrai in 1917 - his body was never found, and his mother continued to write to him long after his death. I thought for a moment of the poor mailroom clerk at the RFC who kept having to sort through them. We also got a glimpse of Fred Ward’s stained glass windows, made from salvage from the front in France, and passed Lady Bridges’ grave (the wife of General Sir William Bridges) on the way out.

We looped back to the Boer War Memorial, discussing the commemorative minefield of what was a dirty imperial war, before I carried on with a select group to the Vietnam Memorial. I can only describe this as an assortment of three pillars resembling a warped, post-modern obelisk. It is a good example of a ‘post-heroic’ monument, focused upon the suffering of war rather than the heroics.

(If anyone thinks I’m being a little vague, I hasten to tell them that keeping a journal is actually an assessment for this course, and I don’t want to share my deeper reflections with my classmates. Remember, plagiarism is a crime and the ANU can and will put you in their dungeon. It’s under Harry Hartog Books, I’m told.)

Time was creeping up on us, and we thus hastened to the cafe outside the memorial, where we spoke with former Assistant Director Michael McKernon. A fascinating man, he spoke of the current state of the memorial with what I can only describe as a sense of righteous fury, and explained the process of repatriating the Unknown Soldier in 1993; a tale that was often funny, sometimes farcical, but ultimately deeply moving. He ended with a little note about the final part of the ceremony - the laying of soil from the front by a First World War veteran onto the coffin - but what he told me felt like a very personal story, and I don’t feel right sharing it. We finished by discussing the hope that the memorial may one day discuss the Frontier Wars, and then paused for lunch.

After lunch and a brief stop in front of Lutyens commemorative stone, we went to the Ataturk Memorial, which must be the only monument to a dictator in Australia (for as much as people will simp for Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, he was a dictator.) We stood in front of the beautifully fascist-looking imprint of Kemal’s face and spoke of memorial diplomacy and how Gallipoli is seen in Turkey; particularly the conflict between the Kemalists and the followers of Erdogan.

We proceeded inside the Memorial, looking at a few art pieces - the striking indigenous piece on frontier war at the entrance to the galleries, and two pieces by George Lambert covering the Landing at Anzac and the catastrophic Battle of the Nek respectively. The memorial plays battle sounds over them to ‘enhance’ the experience. It does not enhance the experience.

We then split to perform the dreaded ‘group work’. My group, the imaginatively-named ‘Melbourne’ cohort (I wanted to rename it the ‘Montgomery’ cohort but I figured the other groups would object to being named ‘Haig’ and ‘MacArthur’) studied the sculpture ‘the Stretcher Party’ by Lt. C. Web Gilbert, portraying a particularly bedraggled pair of Germans carrying what I can only describe as the Australian Adonis on a stretcher. The Australian doesn’t even look that wounded - I was reminded of a scene from the Simpsons in which a young Mr. Burns hitches a ride on a stretcher during WWII. He’s not dead, he’s dead tired.

At the end of the day, I had the privilege of laying a wreath at the Last Post Ceremony. I was allowed to write my own message on the card, but I reckon I’ll keep that between myself and whoever picks up the wreaths when they eventually go away. (Where do they go, do you think? It is a mystery.) In all seriousness, it was a great honour, and one of the things I think the Memorial does very well.

Tomorrow will hopefully be a little less busy - we’ll be doing a lectorial at ANU, visiting the Uni’s memorial to the Myall Creek Massacre, and then proceeding to the National Archives. It’s been a beautiful start, and hopefully it will proceed as it has so far.

#war #first world war #second world war #boer war #vietnam war #australian army #german army #mustafa kemal atatürk #australian national university #frontier wars #unknown soldier #australian war memorial #religion

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