Australian animals in war memorial

We pause here on sacred ground - sacred for France, sacred for Australia.

With awkward humility and abiding reverence, we gather here at Pozieres, free and confident heirs to a legacy born of idealism, forged in self-sacrifice and passed now to our generation.

It is here much that is precious was lost – and gained.

It is here that Australia’s official First World War correspondent, Charles Bean was witness to 23,000 Australian casualties in just six weeks – 6,800 dead, five Victoria Crosses.

It is here that Bean twice narrowly missed death himself on 31 July, his diary recording what he saw before him:

Everywhere were blackened men, torn and whole – dead for days.

Of what happened here, Bean would write:

The men are simply turned in there as into some ghastly mincing machine.

Private Archie Barwick of the 1st Battalion described 24 July 1916 here:

…… men were driven stark staring mad ….any amount of them could be seen crying…. sobbing like children, their nerves completely gone.

Of the artillery barrage they endured here, Bean wrote:

The shelling at Pozières did not merely probe the character and nerve of the Australians; it laid them stark naked as no other experience of the AIF ever did.

Lieutenant John ‘Alec’ Raws 23rd battalion dug the new front line here for the 2 August assault:

The wounded and killed had to be thrown on one side…..we dug on amid a tornado of bursting shells….I was buried twice, thrown down several times - buried with dead and dying.

The ground was covered with bodies in all stages of decay and mutilation…..after struggling free from the earth, I would pick up a body by me to try to lift him out with me, and find him to be a decayed corpse.….The horror was indescribable.……I would have given my immortal soul to get out of it……

Of the ruin of the Pozieres Windmill which lies here, at the centre of the gripping struggle by Australia here in July and August 1916, are Charles Bean’s immortal words:

Pozieres is more deeply sewn with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth.

It is here that a mortally wounded Australian asked of Bean, ‘will they remember me in Australia?’

It is here that Bean would conceive and subsequently resolve at the war’s end to build the finest memorial and museum to these men of the Australian Imperial Force and the nurses.

It is to here that Bean would return in 1917 to collect the first relic for the Australian War Memorial.

But here and in the theatres of war across the western front, Middle East, Gallipoli and elsewhere, they were not alone - far from it.

The Australians who fought, suffered and died here were volunteers.

The animals that served and supported them were not.

Men could speak of what they endured.

Their animals could not.

Nerve shattering, pounding artillery, relentless gunfire, snipers, disease, mud, water and brutal weather, both man and animal endured.

In all this they were bound in trust and the comfort one gave to the other.

Charles Bean wrote:

…..the animals came to know when a shell was coming close; and if, when halted, the horses heard the whine of an approaching salvo, they would tremble and sidle closer to their drivers, burying their muzzles in the men’s chests.

As the war industrialised with tanks, planes, machine guns, trains and trucks, it still relied heavily on the suffering and sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of horses, donkeys and oxen.

Teams of 6 to 12 horses pulled field guns, often through literal mud bogs.

The dead and wounded were carted away in horse drawn ambulances.

Some 6 million horses were engaged by all sides, as many as half died - from starvation, disease, enemy action, exhaustion and drowning.

Horses, donkeys, mules, pigeons, camels, dogs, cats, canaries and glow worms – all were used across the theatres of war.

Major H M Alexander described the dead mules on Brighton Beach at Gallipoli with Gaba Tepe peninsula in the background:

Many mules were killed outright, and many others lay where they had fallen, unable to rise. They had to be shot…..the beach was strewn with dead animals – a pitiful sight.

British Brigadier General Percy Crozier served in Britain’s great battles here on the western front:

If the times are hard for human beings, on account of the mud and misery which they endure with astounding fortitude, the same may be said of the animals. My heart bleeds for the horses and mules.

Their place in military history is often overlooked, but the men of the Australian Veterinary Corps gave their all. Stoic, hardworking, they unselfishly worked among the horrors of war, supporting army units and their animals.

The Corps enabled the 1st Australian Imperial Force to fight in two theatres, each with its own peculiar veterinary problems - an extraordinary achievement.

Armed with an Agriculture Diploma from Hawkesbury Agricultural College, Ernest George Chudleigh enlisted for service with the AIF at the age of nineteen.

He recruited into the 1st Veterinary Section of Australian Army Veterinary Corps (AAVC) and embarked for Egypt.

Before embarking for the Western Front in March 1916, Chudleigh was promoted to the rank of veterinary sergeant and posted to 2 Field Artillery Brigade, 1 Division.

Mentioned in Despatches during operations at Zillebeke and Sanctuary Wood on 31 July and 1 August 1917, for his work in 'rendering first aid to animals of his own battery and wounded', Chudleigh wrote home to his mother three weeks later.

He wrote not of his heroics, but his horses:

….I have some very bad cases at present, big wounds and nasty, bad feet. One foot in particular I think is nearly a shooting case. He picked up a piece of high explosive in the foot, and it has gone septic – rotten job. I had to destroy one the other day, hit in the rump with a piece of bomb which is extremely poisonous, tetanus set in – more rotten still.

In April 1918 at le Peuplier, Chudleigh was awarded the Military Medal.

Intense enemy shelling had caused fire and damage within the battery's wagon lines. Chudleigh frantically rescued both soldiers and horses 'with a total disregard for danger.'

Another soldier, Ron Cavalier described the action for which Ernest Chudleigh received his Military Medal:

……Ern Chudleigh was at the Wagon line with the horses….it was very dark. Fritz started to shell the back areas with 5.9 shells. Some fell close to the wagon line and the men were roused from sleep.

Just as they got up the shells dropped on the wagon line, killing two of my men and setting fire to a lot of charges near the horses. Many horses were killed and wounded and Ern, working with the Captain removed a tree from off some of the men & then rushed off to his horses which were making the most frantic efforts to free themselves, being quite panic stricken.

Ern walked quite calmly among them undoing their chains & letting them go, bandaging up the poor beasts that were wounded and shooting the very serious cases such as broken legs

He then calmly walked into a burning shed filled with horses and assisted to extinguish the fire.

Captain Reginald Heywood was a veterinary officer of the AAVC summed it up best when he wrote of the horses in July, 1918:

They (the horses) are invariably treated like cup horses. There’s no need to ask about them, they’re ‘Diggers’

Visitors leaving the galleries of the Australian War Memorial pass through a long corridor. On one wall hangs a series of large photographs of Australian service men and women of different eras, snapshots of lives given in the service of our nation and its values.

Visitors have taken to placing poppies on the photographs. One is more heavily laden with this symbol of love and memory than any other.

It is a photograph of two young soldiers and a dog.

Photographed in Afghanistan, Sapper Darren Smith and Jacob Moreland are leaning back in their smiling at one another, relaxing before going back in search of Improvised Explosive Devices. Between them, looking attentively to camera is ‘Herbie’, Sapper Smith’s beloved explosive detection dog.

A short time late, all three were dead.

Darren and Herbie died together. They are buried together.

Darren and Jacob are among 42 Australians named on the Australian War Memorial’s Roll of Honour, lives given for us and our freedoms in Afghanistan. The list would be longer but for the service, devotion and skill of these remarkable dogs.

Whether it is our exhibits, statues, artefacts, relics or commemorative days, the story of animals is a powerful way of telling the stories of the men and women whose lives and service stand behind the Memorial.

Animals, so loyal and trusting stimulate the imaginative capacity within us to see the world and its conflicts through the eyes of others.

Saint Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals is here, a feature of this memorial. He prayed in the early 13th century that:

I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.

That is what was given to these animals whom we remember and what they in turn, gave to us – consolation, understanding and love.

This memorial we dedicate here today is not to war.

It is to love.

Love for friends and between friends and of the animals that served, suffered and died with them.  

It is a celebration of the bond that existed here between man and animal, where life hung by a gossamer thread and where each needed one another.

Whether horses, dogs, pigeons or camels, the bond between animal and man, the devotion to one another and the resources invested in them speaks to the innate good in all of us, even in the worst of all possible times.

Respect for our own humanity can be found in respect for animals, our animal heroes – for that is what they are.