Canine Operational Service Medal Launch

5 mins read
The Hon. Dr Brendan Nelson AO
Poppy’s Café Forecourt, Australian War Memorial

Good Morning and welcome to everybody.

I would like to recognise a very special guest and his wife and that is Rowan Chalmers-Borella and his wife Mary. Rowan’s father was awarded the Military Medal in the First World War and the Victoria Cross at Villers-Bretonneux and today on behalf of the nation we have taken into our collection permanently the Borella Victoria Cross and medal collection.

To the other distinguished guests that are here - none more so than the dogs and their handlers - veterans, ladies and gentleman, welcome to the Australian War Memorial.

In my first year of being the Minister of Defence I almost found myself in litigation with the Defence department. I opened Army News one day and turned to page two and I found that the Chief of Army Lieutenant General Peter Leahy was running a competition to name the first Abrams tank. And so I filled in the coupon and I suggested that it’d be called Sniff. And the tanks are very good at sniffing things out. I had a Jack Russell terrier called Sniff, and I had named her after Slim Dusty’s song Sniff the Digger’s dog from his ‘84 album.

About a week later I got a letter from the Chief of Army and he said ‘Dear Minister, I’m writing to congratulate you on winning second prize in name the tank competition.’ He said, ‘We have decided to name our latest explosive detection dog Sapper Sniff. I enclose a photograph.’ Not a particularly attractive dog might I add. He said, ‘Perhaps your Sniff might like to visit our Sniff and commence a breeding program.’ So my Sniff was not impressed with that.

I also got a little bit of an insight when we were commissioned ‘Elevation of the senses’ here into the inter-service rivalry that still exists in remnants of Defence. When I advised, I won’t name the person, when I advised one of the key individuals from the explosive detection dog army unit at Holsworthy that I also invited the Air Force dogs and handlers he said, “I hope their dogs are bloody well-behaved.” So I can see today that they most certainly are.

This institution as many of you know and many of you feel every single day is in many ways your spiritual home. It is here that we reveal ourselves as Australian. We reveal our character. And as I say to young people a paradox of the Australian War Memorial is that it’s not actually about war. It’s in a context of war. But it’s about love and friendship, love for friends, love between friends, and love of family and love of our country. It’s about honouring men and women whose lives are devoted not themselves but to us and their last moments to one another.

Charles Bean, who was there at the very front through the entire First World War, was asked by a dying Australian at Pozières, one of our 6800 dead, “Will they remember me in Australia?” And from there he conceived and resolved and at its end he’d build the finest memorial and museum to these men of the Australian Imperial Force and the nurses.

In 1948, three years after the end of an even greater cataclysm he articulated the vision for the Memorial. ‘Here is their spirit, in the heart of the land they loved; and here we guard the record which they themselves made.’

It is most certainly not ever forgotten by us and clearly not by you, but a part of that record are these animals. Whether pigeons, donkeys, horses or dogs.

And on those bronze panels for Afghanistan, are the names of forty-two Australians. Forty-one killed in Afghanistan. Were it not for these dogs, their devotion, the courage, leadership and skills of their trainers and handlers, there would be many more names on that roll of honour.

We decided that we would commission a sculpture in honour of the dogs; in this case it’s an explosive detection dog. It was done by Ewen Coates.

The symbolism as I explain to visitors of the Memorial, and as you can see this Memorial is well loved, is that the dog and the handler are equal, eye to eye contact. They are at the same level.

The most important organ the dog has, his nose, is most prominent. The handler is removing the accoutrements, having returned from the operation and that rough terrain reflects the areas where you have been operating in recent years.

The tunnel beneath, the confined spaces through which the animals go and of course as part of the training, and then the reward for finding ordinance is the ball.

And on this side of the sculpture is ordinance reflecting the dangers that are in the risks of undertaken by these handlers and their dogs. And then the names on the front are the dogs killed or missing in action, the EDD’s, including Sapper Darren Smith and Herbie as we all know was killed along with Jacob Moerland on the 7th June 2010.

We have also, I should tell you, made a significant enhancement to our Afghanistan exhibition, it’ll be installed in about three weeks’ time. We’ve added a Special Forces chapter; there is a signification focus on the war dogs, the dogs that have fought particularly with the SAS and also the explosive detection dogs. And as you know our Defence personnel often say ‘I wouldn’t go anywhere without the dogs and their handlers’.

You are welcome here today, you are welcome here every day and I’d also say, and I will say this publically to this audience.

We have an unknown Australian Soldier up there in that tomb, in the Hall of Memory, under the sentinels of those fifteen stained glass windows that are above him. At some stage I would like to bury somewhere on the grounds, one of these dogs and I’d like that dog to represent all of these dogs from the Vietnam War to today.

And what they’ve done, their devotion, putting their own lives in front of the lives of their handlers and the men and women that they seek to protect. I think that would be a fitting tribute and it would certainly be something that would be greatly admired and respected by the broader Australian people.

Thank you.

Last updated: