Dean of Identity | Mr Charles Brauer

Commemoration of Armistice Day 1918 

Written by:  Mr David Giles

In 1915, if reporters had been able to show the civilian population in Australia exactly how terrible modern warfare had become, perhaps there would have been demands from home to stop the Great War’s bitter slaughter sooner. Today, we have access to every event, live-streamed to the phones in our pockets. 100 years ago, in place of moving images and instantaneous broadcasts, what the protesters against the war had at their disposal was the written word. Never have the words of poets been more forcefully felt than those penned by the men who had seen and heard, smelt and tasted, who had touched and been touched by battle. The people I describe here as ‘protesters’ were not pacifists or conscientious objectors: they were soldiers, often decorated with medals for gallantry in the field. They had joined up as volunteers, believing in the cause of protecting the weak against the brutal. As the war ground on, destroying millions of lives for no tangible gain, what the soldier-poets describe over and over again is the sense of waste. 

Perhaps the greatest of the Great War poets writing in the English language was Wilfred Owen MC, himself cut down by machine gun fire at the age of twenty-five. He died on 4 November 1918, just seven days before the killing stopped. His sonnet, Futility, includes the unforgettable phrase, Was it for this the clay grew tall?

Move him into the sun— 
Gently its touch awoke him once, 
At home, whispering of fields half-sown. 
Always it woke him, even in France, 
Until this morning and this snow. 
If anything might rouse him now 
The kind old sun will know. 

Think how it wakes the seeds— 
Woke once the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides 
Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir? 
Was it for this the clay grew tall? 
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil 
To break earth's sleep at all?

The wasting of talent, of courage, of hope and possibility, seem criminal to us today. To honour that courage and remember that hope, we launched the commemoration project at Terrace this term, marking the 100th anniversary of the Armistice in 1918. Families have sent us hundreds of names that have been added to the College’s archives, remembering the ancestors of boys here at the College now. The stories have been deeply moving; far too many have included the phrase, “He has no known grave.” Perhaps the most touching single artefact was the photograph we were sent of a dried poppy, brought home from the war in France. 

Lest We Forget.