Remembrance Day Address 11 November 2016 – Mr Ross Coulthart
Sometimes schools expect students to attend events that can seem a little bewildering and remote, like this event: Remembrance Day. We all know that it is a very solemn day. On the 11th hour of the 11th month we stop in silence for one minute and remember everyone who has served and suffered in Australia’s wars and armed conflicts.
But back when I was 16 or so, I can remember my school had ANZAC Day services and Remembrance Day commemorations and at first they just seemed – dare I say – a little boring and irrelevant to my self-absorbed life. It’s very hard to be asked to remember when we haven’t experienced it. All of us have been blessed that during our lifetimes there haven’t been the huge catastrophic wars and conflicts that generations before us suffered and so maybe that distance makes us forget a little just how lucky we are.
So as a teenage boy I knew a lot of young men from my school had served in wars like the First and Second World Wars but it all seemed like ancient history…until one day when I was day dreaming during a Latin class.
In our school hall, we had pictures of all the top sporting teams over the years covering the walls going right back to the 1870’s. And one day I found myself staring at these photos that sat just outside my classroom door.[first XV Pics] They’re the First Fifteen rugby teams from my school from 1912 through to 1914 and my old school, who sent me these pix, tells me the pictures still sit right there where I saw them as a teenage boy. When I first looked at these images from over a century ago it struck me they were boys like me and that these boys would no doubt have been called up, conscripted as soldiers, whether they wanted to b or not, a few years later during the First World War. I wondered, what had happened to them?
I was very lucky I had a great history teacher and he taught me how to get information from the Government’s Army archives. I could type in their names at the museum and I could get the original service files for any of these young fellas who served in the war – and I discovered almost all of them joined up to fight for their country after they left school. And, as I read deeper, what I learned shocked me. Nearly one in four of the boys from my school died in the war and almost all of them that did survive suffered wounds that they had to put up with for the rest of their lives. On Gallipoli alone 32 boys died from my school…32!
Coming back to this 1912 First XV picture, nearly everyone here served in the First World War. And almost everyone in this picture was killed or wounded. I know these two lads [KNIGHT& WILLIAMS] both died on Gallipoli. And these two [HERBERT & HINDLE] died fighting on the Somme in France against the Germans. It especially shocked me that in the 1914 photograph of the First XV this boy Charles Frederick Bone had actually lived in a street I lived in for a while. I discovered from his army file that Fred Bone was probably just 16 when he posed with his mates in the First XV in 1914 and then he’d joined up a few weeks later. [Bone Army Pic] It really shocked me that a kid like me – just 16 or 17 years old had probably lied about his age and rushed off to fight in a war. He’d landed at Gallipoli and he’d been badly wounded.
But then he was sent to France and at a place called Armentieres he was killed by a German sniper in 1916. He had only just turned 18. This is his grave. So spare Fred Bone a thought. Remember his sacrifice.
Now if you had been students here at St Caths a century ago during WW1 many of you would have had brothers, fathers, sweethearts who went away to war. Out of the 700 boys who served from my school about 160 died and I’m sure the losses were very much the same here at boys schools here in Sydney. I’m very grateful to Evangeline Galettis, St Cath’s archivist, who helped me investigate St Catherine’s First World War experience for the detail I can give you now…
So let’s go back in time. Imagine it’s a century ago here at St Cath’s. You’re a student here during the First World War. As the war wages on from 1914, your school magazine records boys who’ve died in the fighting who have a connection to the school. In 1915 there’s a teacher named Mrs Debenham who loses her son Herbert at Gallipoli. And there’s also a student called Edith Chapman whose elder brother dies at Gallipoli. Remember their loss.
And spare a thought for poor Gwen Gribble. In 1917, she’s a 15-year-old scholarship student from Coonamble here at St Caths when she gets dreadful news. Unbelievably, she’s sat down and told by the headmistress that she’s just lost a second brother in the fighting. Imagine losing two brothers in a war. I’ve searched their service files at Australia’s National Archives and they show her eldest brother Norman enlisted just a month after the war began and within 18 months he was killed at Gallipoli – just a month after the landing. Gwen’s only 13 when she gets that horrible news. Norman was married and when he died he left a wife and two children behind… One of whom was a baby girl he never got to see.
Then two years later Gwen’s second brother Clement is killed. In March 1917 Clem is standing in a trench on the frontlines at a French town called Beaumetz when he’s hit by an artillery shell. It must have been devastating for a young girl like Gwen to lose two brothers in two years. So remember them as well.
If you had been here in World War One, one of the girls here with you would have been Lillian Smairl. Lillian was here at St Caths until 1916. She won the Science Prize and the Good Conduct Prize and she captained the tennis team and when she left school she became a nurse. In World War Two Lillian was working in London when war was declared with Nazi Germany. So she joined up as a nurse with the Royal Naval Corps and she worked out of the Chatham Naval Base which was frequently bombed by the Germans. One of the darkest days in the history of the 2nd World War against Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany was when the British Army was in full retreat in northern France in May 1940. In an amazing naval operation, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were rescued from the beach off Dunkirk. I don’t know if any of your have ever read the book called ‘The Snow Goose’ by Paul Gallico. I loved it when I was a kid. It tells the story of a young girl called Fritha during this Dunkirk evacuation. A desperate time when as well as the Royal Navy, British private citizens volunteered to sail their private boats – the ‘little ships’ – across to rescue the boys on the beach and the Germans machine-gunned and bombed them constantly. There were many thousands of wounded soldiers when they got to England and it was actually St Catherine’s old girl Lillian Smairl who was in charge of the receiving station for those injured soldiers during the evacuation of Dunkirk.
She came under enemy fire from German aeroplanes while she was tending to the soldiers and she was wounded in the leg. But heroically she refused to leave her post because she wanted to save as many of these wounded young men as possible. Lilian was so brave she won a very special medal – the Royal Red Cross – and the King personally presented it to her at Buckingham Palace. Lillian though walked with a limp for the rest of her life but she still enjoyed swimming at Bronte Beach. So please remember Lillian Smairl.
Now there is just one other photograph I want to show you [Sad Digger]. This photograph was among the thousands of glass plates we found a few years ago in a village called Vignacourt in France. Writing a book about these WW1 photographs and trying to find out who the soldiers were, we became obsessed with this image. He kept on popping up in other images.
He is so young and he looks so sad – we needed to give him a name. Through a long and torturous research process we eventually found him. His name is George Gordon Gilbert. George was actually English from the then working class town of Birmingham. No doubt from a poor family, he came to Australia alone in search of work while just a 16 year old.
Not long afterwards, when war was declared, he signed up with the Australian Army but provided no contact details here in Australia. Perhaps he was homesick and saw it as a chance to get free passage back home to England. He gave his age as 19 but, like so many, he died. He was probably just 17 at the time.
Young George was a signaller and took part in some of the worst battles on the Western Front including the action at Pozieres. No wonder he looks so sad! Sadly, on August 23, 1918, less than three months before the war ended, the trench he was in came under direct enemy fire. He took a direct hit from a shell and died instantly. He was barely 20 years old.
Unlike many of the other photographs in this amazing collection, not one person has come forward to claim young George. In all probability he has been forgotten. But of course he should be remembered!
It is so important that today we do remember – not just George, not just those who were connected to St Catherines, but all those who died and all those who served and fought in the terrible wars Australia has been a part of. To remember them is to honour them and for far too many, remembering is all that is left of them.