Aussies humbled by Western Front tour
Australia's ODI squad honours fallen soldiers at World War I historic sites in Belgium and France.
In May 2018, a century after the end of the war that was supposed to end all future conflicts, Australia's cricketers embarked on a quiet pilgrimage to honour a past generation of young men who fought and fell on the now silent battlefields of Belgium and France.
Months in the planning, the three-day visit sought to evoke an awareness of history beyond that spelled out upon dressing-room honours boards the cricket world over.
"It was a really humbling experience, offering great learning and perspective," said men's team manager Gavin Dovey.
"The idea to do this had been in the pipeline for quite a while. Not only was it a chance to honour and remember those who served our country over 100 years ago, but also an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of our national identity.
"JL (Coach Justin Langer) has made it clear that not only does he want to develop great cricketers, but he wants to develop great Australians. So I'm pleased that what we had been planning for some time aligned strongly to that, because there's no doubt those who served on the Western Front were some of our country's finest.
"It was good for the boys to hear about the soldiers' stories, what they endured and sacrificed, and why and who they did that for – particularly as we start a bit of a new journey together."
In keeping with the excursion's premise as an act of civic recognition rather than an ambassadorial deployment, most of the party donned civilian-wear rather than team travel kit, and the sole ceremonial component was their involvement in the nightly tribute at Menin Gate where a wreath of remembrance was silently laid.
The three-day visit allowed for a deep examination of the scale and the sacrifices of the Western Front campaign that raged for four years from August 1914, in often hellish conditions. By the war's end, it had claimed the lives of more than three million people (mostly young men) with a further 8.4 million wounded on both sides of the conflict.
The 15-man Australia squad, with an average age of almost 28, were steeped in the stories of heroic acts and heinous casualties among the Australian Imperial Forces, whose average age on enlisting for World War I was barely 24.
Their three-day itinerary included locations such as Fromelles (where on a single day's fighting in July 1916, almost 2,000 members of the Australian 5th Division were slain) and Passchendaele (where in two months of fighting in late 1917 amid thick mud that rendered men, machines and animals immobile, more than 30,000 Australians were killed, wounded or gassed)
They visited the Tyne Cot cemetery and memorial (the largest Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery with almost 12,000 Allied servicemen buried within), and Menin Gate at Ypres, which has hosted a rendition of The Last Post every evening since 1929 – save for the four years of German WWII occupation.
Having completed the battlefield tour in the role of Australian citizens more so than cultural attaches, the group returned to London to begin preparations for their opening match against England at The Oval.