Brave firefighters recall courage of Aussie Diggers in Great War

Teamwork and courage were the hallmarks of Australia’s heroic army of volunteers during World War 1 just as it is among those who risk their lives to bravely wage battles with bushfires today.

ON THIS day 100 years ago journalists at The Brisbane Courier were busy preparing a tribute to the heroism and mateship of the Australian diggers. That spirit is just as manifest today among the brave men and women fighting wars with our bushfires.

The 1920 tribute came in excerpts from the recently completed book The Australian Victories in France by Lieutenant-General Sir John Monash, commander of the Australian forces on Europe’s Western Front.

As the Brisbane journalists edited down passages of his book, Monash was in a Melbourne hotel suite secretly ministering to his dying wife.

The Monashes had just arrived home from London, where the general had spent a year following the Armistice overseeing the massive repatriation scheme that saw almost 200,000 troops returned to Australia after the greatest upheaval in the history of the world.

General John Monash (right) in France in 1918 with Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes.

Lady Victoria (Vic) Monash had been severely fatigued on the sea voyage, her nausea and lethargy coming from what would soon be diagnosed as terminal ovarian cancer.

Monash had given his wife everything she ever dreamt of – a title and a place at the table with King George and Queen Mary at Buckingham Palace – but he could do nothing for her now except provide a full-time nurse and reassure Vic that she was the love of his life.

The General kept up a brave public face, though. He had told the journalist Keith Murdoch that his repatriation work would give Australia ``spiritual momentum’’ with almost 200,000 brave men returned home in good condition equipped for industrious lives.

Australia had punched well above its weight in the war, creating the proud Anzac tradition of courage and mateship in a crisis that we still see so evident today in the volunteers waging firefights against an old enemy.

In the Great War of 1914-18, 416,809 Australian men as well as 2,139 women, mostly nurses, enlisted from a population of just five million.

Australian soldiers amid the devastated ruins of Ypres in Belgium in 1917.

Monash led the Australians to one astonishing victory after another over the Germans in the second half of 1918 but more than 62,000 Australians were killed in the four years of fighting and 156,000 were wounded, gassed, or taken prisoner.

The task of returning the soldiers to Australia was a logistic exercise almost as huge as winning the war itself but Monash, the son of poor German-speaking immigrants, had shown throughout his life the brains and determination to tackle any task.

Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes gave him 18 months to complete the job but Monash did it within a year. He and Vic returned home to a tumultuous welcome in Melbourne on Boxing Day 1919.

Monash’s wife Vic with their daughter Bertha.

While the Anzac tradition had been forged on Gallipoli, most of Australia’s fighting actually occurred in Europe.

In his book excerpts published in the Courier, Monash lauded his Australian soldiers, and as if writing of our firefighters today, wrote that the success of Australia’s military campaigns depended first and foremost on Australian volunteers and their ``glorious spirit of heroism.’’

``The democratic institutions under which he was reared … the instinct of sport and adventure which is his national heritage, his pride in his young country, and the opportunity which came to him of creating a great national tradition, were all factors,’’ Monash wrote.

Firefighters battle against a strong wind in an effort to secure houses from bushfires near the town of Nowra in NSW. (Photo by SAEED KHAN/AFP)

``The Australian Army was composed of the flower of the youth of the continent. A volunteer army – the only purely volunteer army that fought in the Great War. The Australian is accustomed to teamwork. He learns it in the sporting field, in his industrial organisations, and in his political activities. The teamwork, which he developed in the war, was of the highest order of efficiency.’’

Grantlee Kieza is the author of the best-selling biography, Monash, published by HarperCollins/ABC Books

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