R EVIEW
November Monthly Luncheon Heartstrings aching for the absent boy : Reappraising Australia’s Commemoration of WWI
by Dr Ross McMullin In August 2014, the centenary of the start of the Great War was commemorated in numerous events. But it was not just the anniversary of the outbreak of the conflict that made early August a strikingly appropriate time to reflect on Victorian losses during the war. Many Victorian casualties resulted from the offensive at Gallipoli in early August 1915, notably at Lone Pine and the Nek. Early August 1916 was the middle of one of the worst months in Australian history, when immense casualties were being amassed in repeated attacks at Pozieres. And in early August 1918, Australians spearheaded an immense assault that was so comprehensively successful that General Ludendorff concluded that only one side could now win the war, and it was not his. But another result of this decisive assault was, inevitably, many more Victorian losses. Moreover, in early August 1917, artillerymen in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) were being hammered at Ypres and incurring substantial casualties. And while that was happening, numerous Victorian families were still struggling to cope with the aftermath of the disaster of Fromelles. This was the utterly futile attack on 19th July 1916 that produced in one catastrophic night 5,533 Australian casualties — dead, wounded, taken prisoner or missing. A large proportion of these casualties were Victorians, perhaps as many as 40 percent. There were a lot of Victorians missing after Fromelles. Many of 16
them were still classified as missing over a year later. In early August 1917, then, many Victorians were still in desperate anguish about their soldier’s fate and were clinging desperately to the faint hope that he might have somehow survived that fiasco more than twelve months earlier. How did the bereaved at home cope in these circumstances? Some, of course, did not. A stark example concerned the family of a talented 22-yearold officer, Major Tom Elliott, who was originally from Sydney, excelled at Duntroon Military College, and distinguished himself in the AIF in a Victorian unit before becoming a casualty at Fromelles. His mother, Mary Elliott, was officially informed that Tom was wounded, then officially informed that he was missing, and only later officially informed that he was dead. She concluded from this sequence of events that the authorities were not certain about Tom’s fate, so she kept hoping that he might be alive. To Mary, abandoning hope meant abandoning him. She kept pressing the authorities for clarification: ‘it is an awful thing to leave a mother in doubt… the suspense is awful’, she told them. ‘I can’t make anything of the war but that it is wrong, wrong, wrong, from beginning to end’. The strain, the relentless suspense, was overwhelming. Mary struggled to cope. She resorted to alcohol, and
