Anzac Day: Virtual War Memorial Australia video for school students

The diary of a South Australian World War I hero is the inspiration for a new video which aims to help students understand the horrors of war. Watch the video.

AN animated video based on the diaries and service record of a South Australian World War I soldier is helping school students understand both the horrors of war and the power of research.

Adelaide-based Virtual War Memorial Australia created the video with a goal of capturing the emotions and experiences of more than a century ago for Year 9 students studying 1914-1918 conflict.

The video, directed by award-winning filmmaker Eddie White, was trialled in selected schools last year but is now available to students across the state as part of a VWMA schools’ program.

It tells the story of Yorke Peninsula-born Patrick Ohlstrom, who was 24 when he enlisted at Keswick in 1915. He fought in Middle East and in France the with the 32nd Australian Infantry Battalion, rising to the rank of lieutenant but was severely wounded in a gas attack in May, 1918.

He returned home and studied law, became a partner in the law firm Ward Jessop Ohlstom Mollison, was elected to the bar of the supreme court and was a Burnside councillor before he died in 1940 aged 49, probably from complications from the gas attack.

Saint Ignatius College year nine student Ned Uren with the video animation at the Army Museum of South Australia Monday. Picture: Mark Brake

The video was the brainchild of memorial chief executive Sharyn Roberts and St Ignatius College faculty leader of humanities Steve Uren, a keen military historian and member of an Education Department committee which helps guide the VWMA’s schools’ program.

“As a visual medium, it’s just a good way to get students to understand what their research can do,” Mr Uren said. “For a Year 9 student it can be pretty daunting to look at the jargon in the content (of military service records) and think ‘oh gee, how can I bring a soldier’s story to life’.

“This film shows that as you work through not just the service record, but there’s a host of other different websites and sources you can use, you can build up a biography and a story.

“Kids today are very visual learners and it’s just one way of engaging them. So it’s pitched at students, but it’s also a way of highlighting to teachers that this is what good quality research can deliver for students.”

Teachers across the state now have the option of using the nine-minute video to inspire students participating in a VWMA program in which students research the history of a returned soldier and upload their findings onto the website.

Ms Roberts said the importance of the school program came to the fore on significant days such as Anzac Day and Remembrance Day.

Steve and Ned Uren with the video animation at the Army Museum of South Australia Monday. Picture: Mark Brake

“If nothing else, some of the kids will go to a service on Anzac Day and when they say ‘We will remember them’, Patrick might actually come to mind, or the soldier that they researched,” she said.

“On days such as these it’s not possible to remember thousands of people, but if you can actively remember one or two, or even 10, people, that’s something that’s really significant.

“And then if you pass that legacy and that action behind the words onto the next generation again, that’s how we’ve got the best hope of this being more than just four words that get said.”

White, now living and working in Columbia, said he had been honoured to read and transcribe Ohlstrom’s diaries and then bring those experiences to life.

“Emotionally, when I read his diaries, I was very moved and intrigued and also thoroughly entertained by some of the anecdotes in it,” he said.

“I wanted the film to be reflective of this and not just an information dump of dates and locations – I wanted it to feel as filled with the light and dark moments of life.”

Mr Uren’s son Ned was part of a St Ignatius Year Nine class which watched the video as part of their history class.