Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Service, in and out of uniform, is a vocation—a calling. We were reminded of this on Monday as we read some of the 103,000 names on the honour roll at the Australian War Memorial during the Last Post ceremony. But some names are not yet embossed on bronze plaques; some heroes are still with us. One of those outstanding Australians is Brigadier 'Warrie' George Mansford AM—a living legend to the Army, to the Australian Defence Force and to the veteran community. Brigadier Mansford is a decorated soldier and general, a patriotic defender of democracy and freedom and an accomplished poet and author of the bookThe Mad Galahs. He is a truly great Australian.

He was born in Guildford in Western Australia 1934. Brigadier Mansford enlisted in the regular army in 1951 and soon after joining the Army served in the Korean War with the 1st Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment; then as a rifleman in the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment in the Malayan Emergency, from 1955 to 1957; and then on a second tour there from 1959 to 1961. These were as well as tours on the Thai border, in Vietnam, in Papua New Guinea and in Singapore. He was commissioned from the ranks in 1964 and served for four decades before finally retiring in 1990—incidentally, the year that I joined the Army.

On his illustrious service record, Brigadier Mansford raised and commanded the Army's battle school, now named the Jungle Training Wing, in Tully in Far North Queensland. The centre reminds its trainees of the rigours of past Australian deployments in South-East Asia. Soon after joining, I was attached to the 1st Battalion Royal Australian Regiment, to one of their infantry platoons, as part of what the Defence Academy—ADFA, here in Canberra—called 'motivational training'. I recall travelling to Townsville and then up to Tully to join in with the jungle training. It was very wet, muddy and stinking hot; it was a great eye-opener to the demands of close country patrolling, fighting and soldiering.

Near the Wing headquarters in Tully there hung a sign with a motivational quote from 'Warrie' George which simply said: 'The oath to serve your country did not include a contract for the normal luxuries and comforts enjoyed within our society. On the contrary, it implied hardships, loyalty and devotion to duty, regardless of rank.' That sense of service as a noble end in and of itself is something I admired immensely in George Mansford's ethos. It's a Kennedy-esque sentiment, a world away from the current recruitment theme that asks what the ADF can do to benefit the recruit—to kickstart their career and serve their needs.

At one Remembrance Day, George asked whether we honoured our past properly, or if we paid only lip service to old-fashioned-sounding words like 'honour' while inwardly cringing at their use? He posed that question and said:

We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.

That's as CS Lewis so aptly observed. By that definition, Brigadier Mansford is as broad-chested a man as I have ever known: honourable, loyal and brave—an exemplar like the thousands whose boots sank into the Tobruk sands, or those who fired with frostbitten fingers in Korea or those who fought infection, dengue and the enemy lurking behind ankle-catching vines in the oppressively humid jungles of South-East Asia, where Australian patriots have signed up to serve. They are heroes, all of them, and models for us all to emulate—as George Mansford himself certainly is.

He once wrote, 'Our precious way of life is worth fighting for.' God bless you and keep you, George. Your duty is done.

House adjourned at 16:59