Читать книгу The Other Side of the Trench - G. S. Willmott - Страница 4

When I was a young boy living in Melbourne, Victoria, my first introduction to the Great War was when my father, Sam, showed me the spurs and leather leggings that my Grand father wore as part of his uniform when he was in the 4th Australian Light Horse. I used to try to wear them around the back yard pretending I was in the Light Horse myself - a very romantic notion. The fact that they kept falling off my skinny little eight-year-old legs was irrelevant.

My next experience with the Great War was when my mother, Vida told me about her brother Harry who died in the war four years before she was born. It was she who told me her mother’s hair turned white over night when she learnt of Harry’s death. My mother knew that Harry died in France but she was unaware exactly where. She was also aware the Harry had lied about his age and was only sixteen when he got shipped off to Gallipoli and then over to France to die at the Battle of Fromelles.

The term “Missing” is not a very confronting term; it can apply to your dog or cat to your favourite piece of jewellery or even when a footballer has a bad game he is mentioned as “Missing in Action”. In war terms missing means a soldier has been buried alive from a shell explosion or ripped in half by an enemy machine gun or bayoneted to death and left to die in the most slow and agonising way. All these soldiers have never been found their photos sit in an old frame on the mantle piece in a living room of a house far away from where he now lies.

These are the men and boys that we follow through this story. All had parents, some had sweethearts none had a future.

My Mother also told me that her uncle also called Harry Daniel, died in the war in 1918 and was a hero; he received the King George Military Medal for Bravery in the Field.

So my interest in the Great War stemmed from having my Grandfather and two uncles serve in the war.

Both Harry Daniels have no known grave.

My mother gave me a framed collection of World War One medals in 1980 along with my father’s World War Two medals and they have always taken a pride of place in the rogue’s gallery in our house since. Amongst those medals is Uncle Harry’s Military Medal for Bravery in the Field Also Young Harry’s Gallipoli Medal is a prized possession.

I have never served in the military; the closest I got was joining The Church of England Boys Society the CEBS whose uniform looked very similar to an air force uniform. I have always detested the fact that Governments can make the choice to send our young men and women to fight in wars that are usually fought for greed and gain. There are exceptions such as the Pacific War against the Japanese, where Australia was under real threat.

So why write a book about the First World War, my first and only book thus far?

In April last year I read an article by Ian McPhedran. The article was based on the experiences of his friend and fellow author, Paul Daley, and well known photographer Mike Bowers’ experiences while on a research trip to the Western front for their new book.

Their French guide Dominique Zanardi discovered a Digger in an excavation trench:

“Now, on Saturday, we find ourselves standing in the bitter wind, the mud sucking at our boots, beside a one-meter newly excavated drainage ditch outside Mouquet Farm near Pozieres - the scene of a bitter three-week battle in August 1916 that claimed 11,000 Australian casualties - as Mr Zanardi gingerly passes us bones that we, in turn, place in a hessian sack.

He uncovers the soldier’s boots, still holding the bones of his feet, and places them on the side of the ditch. As we carefully carry the rest of the man’s remains from the ditch to the bag containing his skull and his jawbone, his arms and his legs, one thought dominates: dignity and glory do not belong to the battlefield.

As with the many thousands of others who lost their lives in the terrible fighting on the Somme during World War I, the battlefield has claimed this soldier’s identity. And were it not for Mr. Zanardi he would probably have stayed anonymously beneath the sticky mud of the Somme for an eternity.” Paul Daley The Age January 2011

This story really moved me, Paul and Mike tried to notify the Commonwealth War Graves Commission but, being a weekend the Commission was closed. The Mayor of Pozieres, Bernard Delattre, was planning to remove the body from the site on the day to prevent it from being reinterred by the bulldozer. He called the Australian Embassy in Paris to inform them an Australian Digger had been uncovered but had no response.

I decided to try to do something about this situation and subsequently formed Let Them RIP: I created a web site www.letthemrip.com to make the public aware something very wrong was happening to our ‘missing’ soldiers. I also wrote many emails to a number of politicians, including the Prime Minister, to try to implement procedures that would minimize our soldiers and the soldiers from the belligerents in the Great War being simply covered over when unearthed by ploughing and excavation work.

I have over four hundred emails in my sent file and have not received any real support from the Australian Government or the New Zealand Government. Only one independent MP, Andrew Wilkie, has demonstrated support by addressing a question to the Prime Minister in Federal Parliament. The question was asked, the answer was given and now they think the issue is buried, never to be raised again.

After six months of trying to get some action I decided to write this book with the encouragement from Ian McPhedran and Paul Daley, two very successful authors.

The fact is 300,000 are still missing on the Western Front and 18,000 are Australian.

If you bring the casualty rates of the war into today’s terms, the world’s population is currently over 7 Billion, the population in 1918 was 1.8 Billion.

Can you imagine 160 million slaughtered over four years in our world today?

Missing 1.5 million in 2012 terms.

That’s why I wrote this book.

I hope you enjoy the experience.