Australian
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This clip shows Australian veterans from the First World War visiting the graves of fallen comrades and taking part in a ceremony at a war cemetery in France. A veteran is heard in voice-over describing the special quality of mateship in the army. Another veteran emotionally describes how he and his mate Bob were inseparable friends who volunteered for the dangerous Flying Corps so as to remain together. The veteran is shown placing an Australian flag on Bob’s grave in France. The clip includes black-and-white archival footage of the Flying Corps and of the trenches on the Western Front.

Educational value points

• In Australia in 1914, matters of foreign affairs and declarations of war and peace were within the exclusive province of the British Imperial Government. Therefore, Australia entered the First World War after Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914 following German aggression against Belgium and France. Australian Prime Minister Andrew Fisher pledged that Australia would support Britain 'to the last man and the last shilling’. For many Australians the War was seen as a means for the fledgling nation to prove itself, but also to demonstrate an ongoing allegiance to Britain. Public support for Australia’s involvement in the War remained high until casualties began to mount.

• Australian troops served in the main theatre of war, the Western Front, in France and Belgium where they engaged in protracted trench warfare and suffered high casualties between March 1916 and Germany’s surrender in November 1918. The Western Front was the name given by the Germans to a continuous line of trenches that ran for about 700 km from the English Channel to the Swiss–German border. Five Australian Imperial Force (AIF) divisions, each of 20,000 men, served on the Front. In November 1917 the divisions became a single Australian Corps.

• The First World War remains Australia’s most costly conflict in terms of deaths and casualties. Enlistment to fight overseas was voluntary and from a population of less than 5 million, about 330,000 Australian men enlisted. Of these 60,000 were killed, 46,000 on the Western Front, where an additional 130,000 were wounded or exposed to poisonous mustard gas. At the Western Front battlefield of Pozières alone, Australia suffered 23,000 casualties in a period of less than 7 weeks. It is estimated that during the War a total of 9 million servicepeople and 6 million civilians from all sides of the conflict were killed, and that as many as one-third of them have no known grave.

• According to historian Bill Gammage, mateship among Australian soldiers who served in the First World War was 'a particular Australian virtue’ that was 'almost a religion’. In a study of 237 of these veterans Gammage found that one in three nominated this experience of mateship as incomparable. Official war historian CEW Bean defined mateship as a creed that a man should always 'stand by his mate’. Mateship is regarded as one of the defining elements of the Anzac spirit, and in turn one of the foremost characteristics of the national identity.

• The concept of mateship developed in the 19th-century Australian bush where, isolated and vulnerable, the bush workers developed solidarity, loyalty and a levelling, egalitarian collectivism. They were, in any emergency, completely dependent on their mates. The legend of mateship has been immortalised by writers such as Joseph Furphy, and poets such as Henry Lawson and AB 'Banjo’ Paterson.

• Australian soldiers served together for long periods and this, together with the hardships and horror they encountered (particularly during trench warfare), intensified the sense of community and camaraderie among them. One-third of all Allied casualties on the Western Front occurred in the trenches, where men often faced prolonged periods of shellfire as well as direct enemy engagements. Cold, wet and unsanitary conditions led to diseases such as dysentery, typhus and cholera. The trenches were overrun by rats, and parasites such as lice were rife.

• Three squadrons of the Australian Flying Corps (AFC), which formed in 1914, served on the Western Front, mostly under the command of the British Royal Flying Corps. The AFC engaged in photographic reconnaissance and artillery spotting, as well as strafing and bombing raids on enemy positions. Flying was extremely dangerous and on average a pilot flying combat missions on the Front lasted 3 weeks. Many of the flimsy planes were shot down by enemy aircraft or were brought down by mechanical failure. In 1916 Britain’s Royal Flying Corps requested 200 volunteers from the Australian Army to train as pilots.

• There are 1,000 war cemeteries on the Western Front, which are maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Originally the Imperial War Graves Commission, the Commission was set up in 1917 to identify and mark war graves, to make records of war dead and to establish cemeteries and memorials to soldiers who died in the First World War. The huge numbers who died made the repatriation of remains impossible, but the Commission also felt that war graves on the Front should remain as a symbol of the feeling of brotherhood that developed between those who served there together.

This clip starts approximately 21 minutes into the documentary.

A war veteran speaks over footage of a Remembrance Day service.
Veteran 1 We visited various places and where – when lost comrades – mates. Mateship in the army is something entirely different. You know the stories of fellas that went out into No man’s land to try and pull in a poor wounded bloke there and got shot themselves. From my own experience, when you lost a dead cobber, there was a smack in your heart.

Another veteran is shown in his living room, looking through binoculars, and then at the airport, also looking through binoculars. As he talks we see black-and-white archival footage of the Flying Corps and of the trenches on the Western Front.
Veteran 2 In an engineer’s depot, I met Bob Lachlan, and we became very great friends. The officer came along one day and he said, ‘I want volunteers to go to the Flying Corps’. ‘Well,’ we thought, ‘that would be suicide’. So he said, ‘Alright, well if I don’t get any volunteers, I’ll have to detail somebody.’ He might detail one and leave the other one. So we decided we’d both volunteer. We were inseparable pals. You more or less had to make your own fun under such conditions.

We see a photograph of his friend Bob in his army uniform. The veteran is shown walking through a graveyard in France and laying an Australian flag on his friend’s grave. His voice grows tearful and upset.
Veteran 2 When he was killed, it was very, very upsetting. I could see Bob’s face there, as vivid as ever.