Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a privilege and an honour to be able to speak in this great parliament of Australia on the 100th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli. We would not have the democracy that we have today if it had not been for the extraordinary valour and sacrifice of our serving men and women through the wars that we have engaged in since the turn of the 20th century.

I have to say that in my electorate I am extraordinarily proud of this year's work—and it will go on for several years to come—in remembering those who enlisted in the First World War. We are a rural, regional community, so we had a bigger proportion of men, and some women as nurses, volunteering compared to urban areas. There were, in fact, seven Victoria Cross awardees from my electorate of Murray. One was awarded his Victoria Cross in the Boer War, but that particular recipient, our magnificent Maygar, was also an enlistment in the First World War. Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Maygar from Euroa served bravely. He was wounded in the Battle of Beersheba after being on Gallipoli peninsula, and that is where he is buried, in a cemetery in Israel. He was the last of the officers to evacuate the Australian troops off Gallipoli and he made the comment that he did that without losing an Australian, but it was a shame that there had not been that level of efficiency and effectiveness during the campaign.

I want to describe our seven Victoria Cross awardees. Sadly, only three survived the war. There was Captain Frederick Tubb from Longwood. He survived the Lone Pine battle at Gallipoli, where he won the Victoria Cross, only to be killed in Belgium. He is buried in Belgium. His dear mate, also from Euroa, Corporal Alexander Stewart Burton, who has no known grave at Lone Pine, was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross. Those two men showed extraordinary valour.

One of the tragedies of the First World War was that when men—often brothers or cousins, even fathers and sons—enlisted, they were very often given consecutive numbers and sent to the same brigade and the same unit; so if they were sent on a suicidal mission, such as at the Nek at Gallipoli or at Lone Pine, they all died together. The tragedy of my electorate of Murray is that there are tiny, beautifully kept surviving cairns—or sometimes bigger cairns in places that are now just districts where there is no town left at all—and memorials listing the two and three brothers who died at the same shocking episode or within days of one other. I cannot imagine the horror of the families receiving the first information, then the second, then the third that three of their sons had been killed. That is not an uncommon experience of the First World War in the small district communities.

Another First World War Victoria Cross awardee from Murray was Lieutenant Frank McNamara from Rushworth. He was in the infant Air Force. He had an extraordinary show of courage when he landed his plane—he had been wounded himself—and rescued a fellow airman in his own small plane that had been downed behind enemy lines. He could not get the other person's plane working again. He rushed back to his own plane and, despite his injuries, managed to get this airman into his plane and rescue him, all behind enemy lines and under fire. Lieutenant Frank McNamara survived the war, extraordinarily, and went on to have a brilliant career in the Air Force and in the Second World War. He became an Air Vice Marshal in World War II and finally died in Britain in 1961.

Then there is my great uncle, Albert Chalmers-Borella, Victoria Cross awardee, who grew up around Boort. He also miraculously survived the war. He was a mate of Albert Jacka, our seventh Victoria Cross winner, who was also from the same area. I will come back to Lance Corporal Albert Jacka, because he was the icon or pin-up boy for recruitment in the First World War. He was an extraordinary man. The general opinion of the day was that he should have been awarded two Victoria Crosses. He was an extraordinary man who sadly died of his injuries at the age of 39. He died trying to improve the lot of the veterans, the returned First World War soldiers.

Finally, let me mention, amongst our Murray electorate Victoria Cross recipients, Private Robert Mactier, who is buried in France. He received his Victoria Cross posthumously. He was from Tatura, a small town not far from Shepparton. He carried out an extraordinary deed of courage in the face of enemy fire, taking out machine-gun posts, going from post to post before he was finally killed at the third machine-gun post under enemy fire.

We are so proud of our seven Victoria Cross winners in Murray. I have produced a booklet which gives their citations in full and describes their lives. But of course, we must remember all of our first World War I veterans, the survivors of the war and the volunteers who never came back. We must remember that the losses decimated some districts to the point where they never recovered as district entities. I mention places like Maloga and Prairie—tiny little places that lost a generation. And then we must remember that their sisters never married—there were not the numbers of men returning for them. Their fiances had been killed, or they never had the chance to marry. They were often called maiden aunts or spinsters—that was the terminology of the era. 'Spinster' is an unkind term, I think, but there were so many maiden aunts of that generation.

I need to refer to the fact that it was not just a case of the half million volunteers who went off to the First World War from our tiny nation of just four million people. We acknowledge them, of course. There were an extraordinary number who never came back. But the toll on the returning men's mental and physical health continued unabated, with many experiencing trauma well after the war. I want to refer to the words of Albert Jacka, that great Victoria Cross winner. In 1929, he said:

Whenever you see four returned soldiers, you should think of one more soldier who did not return. Out of those four who returned, three were wounded at least twice. I do not think that the public takes into account the tremendous effect that the war had upon men who returned. More than 22,000 soldiers have died since their return, and this is some indication of the terrible effects. Thus, when you see a returned soldier in court, or 'down and out', do not judge him too harshly, but remember the terrible experiences through which he has passed.

Let me remind us: in 1930 30,000 Australian returned servicemen had died since the Armistice—30,000! That is approximately seven returned service soldiers dying every day. And when you think about those seven dying every day into the twenties and the thirties in Australia, you have to think of their wives, their mothers and fathers and their sisters and brothers who nursed and cared for those returned men—mostly men. Families looked after their appalling physical injuries and the stress and trauma that they were trying to survive emotionally.

There were so many suicides. Amongst the Victoria Cross awardees—I will not mention his name—was a Western Australian awardee. He was in desperate financial straits and went to pawn his Victoria Cross in a pawn shop. He was offered 10 shillings, so he shot himself—tragic! The good thing is that the Western Australian media said at the time that this was a courageous soldier who died for his country. They did not reflect on the sad loss that he had taken his own life in such desperate circumstances.

Remember the stretcher-bearer, born in Ireland—a Victoria Cross recipient who died in a straitjacket 15 years after the war, never having recovered from the fact that for four days he was out bringing wounded back from no man's land on the Western Front. It was four days without rest and it broke him physically and emotionally. He ended his days in a very unhelpful mental institution in Victoria, a great Victoria Cross awardee. And the great Pompey Elliott, who took his own life at the age of 65. It is those sorts of impacts.

I do not think that I need to remind people about the horrors of war, but we need to remember the sacrifice those extraordinary men and the 2,000 nurses contributed as volunteers to make our country great. Their character is what we now embrace as the ideal for all good Australians. I will never forget my grandfather, Alfred Hayward Thomas Bawden MM of the great 4th Light Horse of northern Victoria, who died too young in his early sixties. Lest we ever forget.

See this speech in context