Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to respect the fact that it is Armistice Day and to read onto the record another person’s experience from the Great War, a person whose name I bear as my middle name—my grandfather, Thomas Roche. I had the honour and privilege of reading onto the record the experience of my other grandfather, who was also in the First World War. My other grandfather was highly decorated and went from private to commander of the Royal Artillery. I think Thomas Roche is a reflection of the vast majority of people who went to the war, a person who came from the great body of the Australian people, went away, did their bit and then came home. It was interesting, in reading his records, that he was No. 1637 in the Australian Flying Corps. That is peculiar because 1637 is a very low number in what would become the large number of people currently in the Air Force. It was interesting to see that he was a postal employee from Ryde, New South Wales.

What is even more interesting to see is that he put his age down as 21. When I did the calculations, I realised he was 16. At 16 years old he enlisted to go off to the First World War. Why? He was from a big family. Some of the boys had gone back to the place. He was down in Sydney as a worker in town. He apparently went because his mates joined up and it was an adventure. He talked about his trip over, how he went via South Africa and the great experience of being someone with the ability to go to see the world. Later on, unfortunately, he got to see other things which probably would affect his life, his memories and his relationships with other people for the rest of his life. He would only have been 18 when he got out of the army. He was taken to the Western Front. He was fighting on the Western Front. Because he had been a postal worker, he knew morse code, so they moved him into the air corps so that he could operate wirelesses to guide in what was the very rudimentary form of the air force at that stage.

Fighting predominantly between France and Belgium, it was an interesting experience. Later on, he took my mother back to some of the areas where he operated his radio. He gave discussions about how the aerial from his radio was continually being blown off. He also gave other stories about how once he was walking down a path with three other soldiers, a shell fell and, at the end, there was only him and he could not even find where the other people were. These are the experiences of someone who was just beyond a child at the time. Every family had these experiences and every family should, in these days, be remembered—not just the VC winners but all the people who came from this nation. Australia was so highly represented as a proportion of our population in the services overseas.

After the war, unfortunately, my grandfather got pneumonia and, although the war did not kill him, the Spanish influenza certainly did. An old Army nurse—he said she was an old Army nurse; I imagine she was an elderly lady—had the dedication and persistence to stick with him and see him through his illness, when others apparently had given up. Because there had been so many casualties and more people died of influenza than were actually killed during the war, she actually persisted and had the compassion to stay by him and see him through that period, so he survived. She no doubt saw him as basically a young boy, a long way from home. with no-one to support him. He was full of a laconic and dissident spirit that was reflected so much in Australia. Whilst on leave in England he refused to salute a British officer, so they sent him back to the front. That spirit, I think, is still maintained in Australia—a healthy disrespect for a presumed position that they probably presume they should not have.

Thomas Roche returned to Australia, bringing those experiences back, along with an incredible sense of patriotism for all the people around him and for all the things that they had done. He was affected—and all the people who came back from that war were affected, especially psychologically. I suppose it would now be called post traumatic stress syndrome. Then it was just a case of you having just returned and there was a weight of experience in that. He did not believe in conscription. Even though he was overseas, he fervently disagreed with conscription and did not believe that people should be forced to fight in another country. If your nation was under threat, he had a different view; obviously, then the game was different.

He had two older brothers, Edgar and Henry, who also fought in the war. Henry was in the Air Force and he disappeared. Later on they found him in Russia, working as a painter. That was the experience of so many people. Thomas lost one cousin; he was killed. Another cousin, Tom Arragon, had his leg blown off and he told the story of how he picked up his leg and looked at it. This is the experience of just one particular family who emanated from a town near Adelong in southern New South Wales. It shows the effect this would have had on the Australian people at that time.

My grandfather Tom fought at Messines Ridge where he would have been within sight of my other grandfather, who was actually in the New Zealand Artillery. Later on, they would reflect on exactly where they were and they could identify that they were within almost calling distance of one another. As we move on, there are now so many Australians who have these stories of family members. These people have to be maintained in our collective psyche. It is great today to see so many of the politicians on both sides of the House, and in between, wearing a poppy to represent the sacrifice and communal thought that brings us all together, that makes us believe that there is really only a short distance between us in this chamber. The things that bind us together as a nation are extremely strong and extremely important.

I hope that not just the Thomas Roche from PO Box Ryde, New South Wales, postal employee, is remembered but all the other people who are on those lists who went overseas and served, the tragic consequences of all those who did not come back, the youth who were lost, the opportunities, the fact they could not come back and love and live life and have families—all those things that were compromised in that terrible carnage which was World War I are also remembered. There were those who came back maimed, who, by reason of being maimed both physically and psychologically had their life undoubtedly changed. That is something that we never recognise. We also do not recognise all the families that get broken up by the stresses that come when people return. Of course, it is still happening today. We must be respectful that it is the unfortunate nature of human beings that, at times, they wish to hurt one another. But, in trying to deal with that lesser angel that is in all of us, we should never for one moment forget, disrespect or lose sight of those who make the ultimate sacrifice for the protection of the nation that they love so much and for the protection of the families that they wish to keep safe. On reflection of a minor player in a huge war, Thomas Roche, I just say: lest we forget.