Akerman: Lest We Forget? Canberra is only too happy to forget brave men who died for this country
Lest We Forget must be a Canberra joke as many heroes and heroines unrecognised by governments and their useless but ever-growing bureaucracies, writes Piers Akerman.
Opinion
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Yes, we do have heroes and heroines today, as NSW police Inspector Amy Scott, dead security guard Faraz Tahir, his friend Muhammad Taha and bollard man Damien Guerot, and his wingman Silas Despreaux, among others, plainly showed at Bondi Junction just one week ago.
We may never know the names of all those who risked their lives in their attempts to block or pursue the deranged Joel Cauchi as he slashed and stabbed his way through the Westfield complex but, whoever they are and whatever the circumstances that placed them there last Saturday, thank you.
Too often in this age the only acts of bravery acknowledged publicly are those captured by CCTV or by the ubiquitous digital phone cameras which millennials automatically activate when confronted by a smashed avocado on toast or a maniac slashing at passers-by.
It certainly makes it easier for politicians to identify worthy recipients (though too often for purposes of photo-bombing at awards ceremonies).
But the harsh reality is that many heroes and heroines go unrecognised by governments and their useless but ever-growing bureaucracies.
The saga of the struggle to recognise heroic Tasmanian seaman Teddy Sheean, who died after strapping himself to his Oerlikon 20mm cannon and firing on attacking Japanese aircraft to protect those in the water on December 1, 1942, is a case in point.
Sheean managed to shoot down one of the Japanese bombers but was killed when HMAS Armidale sank.
Sheean’s family and supporters fought for 78 years for his heroism to be recognised with a Victoria Cross.
Canberra’s recalcitrant approach to historic claims hasn’t changed despite its belated backflip on Teddy Sheean.
There may be many others but surely deserving of attention is Bruce Dowding, an agent of the British MI9 who worked with the French Resistance only to be betrayed by a Briton and subsequently executed by the Germans by guillotine in June, 1943. The young Francophile hoped to further his studies in France when he left his teaching post at Melbourne’s Wesley College in 1938.
When war broke out he volunteered to serve in the Royal Army Service Corps as an interpreter, was captured by the Germans but escaped from Fort Saint-John, Marseille, in 1941 and joined an MI9-run escape and evasion organisation spiriting downed British airmen from Vichy France back to Britain.
Dowding was among a number of Resistance fighters betrayed by Abwehr double agent Harold Cole and designated a political prisoner under Hitler’s notorious Nacht und Nebel (night and fog) decree.
Dowding was tried with seven Frenchmen and, on April 16, 1943, sentenced to death.
Five years later, the French government approached the Australian government with an offer of a posthumous Cross of the Chevalier of the Legion of Honour – but then the paper shufflers took over.
The Australian Embassy in Paris passed the offer to the Department of External Affairs, who sent it to the Prime Minister’s Department and Defence. That department sent it back to External Affairs, who wrote back to the Australian Embassy … what happened after that is unknown.
The current Labor Veterans Affairs Minister Matt Keogh has dismissively told Dowding’s nephew, the former WA Labor premier Peter Dowding: “It seems the Australian authorities could have done more at the time”.
That’s it.
Bruce Dowding was betrayed once by a renegade Pom and again by his own government. Lest We Forget must be a Canberra joke.
PS: Nephew Peter Dowding, with Ken Spillman, has written an excellent account of this hero’s life Secret Agent, Unsung Hero.
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Originally published as Akerman: Lest We Forget? Canberra is only too happy to forget brave men who died for this country
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