{"id":27811,"date":"2015-04-21T19:08:59","date_gmt":"2015-04-21T09:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nofibs.com.au\/?p=27811"},"modified":"2019-04-13T23:56:12","modified_gmt":"2019-04-13T13:56:12","slug":"lest-we-object-burgewords-comments-on-anzacday-anzac100","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/lest-we-object-burgewords-comments-on-anzacday-anzac100\/","title":{"rendered":"Lest we object: @burgewords comments on #AnzacDay #Anzac100"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"British<\/a>

Conscientious objectors often served as stretcher bearers, like these British men on the Western Front,\u00a01917.<\/p><\/div>\n

This Anzac centenary, it\u2019s probable we will not hear the words \u2018conscientious objector\u2019 uttered much in the mainstream coverage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

BURIED not far beneath the commemoration of the Anzac Day centenary is a silence into which few voices will respectfully speak.<\/p>\n

I join those few not to disrespect the First World War\u00a0fallen and those who remember them – the slaughter and waste of war is too indelible to play word games with – but to fill\u00a0a few silences\u00a0alongside an international movement on a trajectory to one day rival Anzac.<\/p>\n

My journey of discovery started where the Anzac legend was handed over by the last servicemen\u00a0who\u00a0carried the baton – with Britain and Australia\u2019s oldest\u00a0living First World War diggers.<\/p>\n

Both Claude Choules<\/a>, and Harry Patch<\/a> lived to within a few years of the Gallipoli centenary, long enough to share potent memories and deeply-felt convictions about something which barely rates a mention on the day we have loaded with a century of war – they came to make\u00a0no secret of their pacifism.<\/p>\n

\"Anzac<\/a>

Anzac Day march at Manly, 1922. State Library of Queensland<\/p><\/div>\n

For half the time Australians have been rising early on Anzac Day for dawn services, followed by marches, church services and games of two-up at the pub, Claude \u2018Chuckles\u2019 Choules refused to join the remembrance.<\/p>\n

If anyone had a right to march, it was Claude. After lying about his age to get into the armed forces, he served in Britain\u2019s Royal Navy in the wake of two brothers\u2019 service at, and survival of, Gallipoli.<\/p>\n

He subsequently served with the Royal Australian Navy during the Second World War, settled here, and, after fifty years of service, took up fishing and ballroom dancing.<\/p>\n

It was left to his children to articulate his feelings about armed conflict, not long before his death in 2011.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0stupid waste of time and energy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cHe used to say that while he was serving in the war he was trained to hate the enemy, but later he really grew to understand that they were just young blokes who were the same as him,\u201d Claude\u2019s son, Adrian Choules, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said wars were planned by old men and fought by young men and that they were a stupid waste of time and energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harry Patch used much stronger language. \u201cWar is organised murder, and nothing else\u201d this British tommy (or \u2018digger\u2019) asserted to former British prime minister Tony Blair in a BBC television documentary.<\/p>\n

In the thick of the Western Front for months, Lance Corporal Patch saw his comrades torn apart, times he waited almost a century to recount when working on his book The Last Fighting Tommy<\/i>, published\u00a0shortly before his death in 2009.<\/p>\n

Both Patch and Choules broke\u00a0ranks publicly about the realities of combat only when enough time had passed that they must have wondered what the point of their service had been in a world still intent on waging war.<\/p>\n

But there were many others who did not stay silent so long.<\/p>\n

\"trowbridge2_1.0-fig05_019\"<\/a>This Anzac centenary, it\u2019s probable we will not hear the words \u2018conscientious objector\u2019 uttered much in the mainstream coverage.<\/p>\n

Those who declared their disagreement with government war policy – often known as \u2018C.Os\u2019 or \u2018conchies\u2019 – faced imprisonment, torture, hard labour, capital punishment, and widespread public shaming throughout the wars of the twentieth century.<\/p>\n

Often refusing active service on religious grounds, conchie stories are often limited to shadowy characters in war dramas, opening anonymous envelopes to white feathers, labelling the recipient a coward.<\/p>\n

The mythmaking masked a variety of reasons men would not willingly succumb to war recruitment. Many went to war but bore stretchers instead of arms, or worked in field hospitals, where it was not always possible to escape the labels.<\/p>\n

Governments with conscription legislation during the First World War, such as Britain and New Zealand, pilloried conchies with a level of desperation. The limp-wristed charicatures in the propaganda made little secret of the homosexual aspersions cast on men who refused to fight.<\/p>\n

This, despite the many gay\u00a0men who willingly served in theatres of war.<\/p>\n

For those who agreed to fight but eventually abandoned their posts, the death penalty was a stronger disincentive, although Australia\u2019s anti-conscription stance (despite two closely-fought referenda under Prime Minister Billy Hughes) meant Australia\u2019s voluntary forces were not subject to being shot for desertion, like hundreds of British and five New Zealanders.<\/p>\n

Instead, Australian deserters\u2019 names were published in the newspapers.<\/p>\n

Despite the efforts to stamp out the conscientious objection movement, it became so potent after another war that the world slowly started to wake up to the concept of pacifism as a choice.<\/p>\n

It took the definition of what constituted a war crime. At the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-6, carried out by the International Law Commission of the United Nations, a much firmer legal entity was defined for the refusal to participate in conscripted killing.<\/p>\n

By the Vietnam War, conchies began a serious coming out process. The most famous of this era was Muhammad Ali, who said of his resistance to being drafted: \u201cI ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong, no Viet Cong ever called me Nigger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Australian teacher and conscientious objector William White made a stand in Sydney in 1966 when he refused to report for military service under Australian conscription laws.<\/p>\n

\"William<\/a>

William White’s arrest in 1966. Photo: John Fairfax<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI am opposed to a state’s right to conscript a person,\u201d White said. \u201cI believe very strongly in democracy and democratic ideals, and I believe that it is in the area of the state’s right over the life of the individual that the difference lies between totalitarian and democratic government.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy opposition to conscription, of course, is intensified greatly when the conscription is for military purposes. In fact the National Service Act <\/i>is the embodiment of what I consider to be morally wrong and, no matter what the consequences, I will never fulfill the terms of the act.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many Australians have a conchie in the family, and it is fitting we remember them too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

White\u2019s voice added fuel to the Moratorium Protests that swept across Australia in May 1970, when an estimated 200,000 people marched to end the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

His image, being\u00a0dragged by a pack of police from his home, caused embarrassment to authorities but\u00a0embedded a greater sense of resistance in ‘the conchie’ than the cartoons disseminated fifty years prior.<\/p>\n

Thirty\u00a0years after White’s imprisonment, conscientious objection was ratified in a United Nations Commission on Human Rights resolution, which was subsequently extended to include those already serving in military forces who \u201cmay develop conscientious objections.\u201d<\/p>\n

On May 15, the\u00a0annual commemoration of\u00a0the world\u2019s conscientious objectors will take place. It\u2019s an international grassroots movement allied to other twentieth century groundswells in racial, gender and gay rights.<\/p>\n

Many Australians have a conchie in the family, and it is fitting we remember them too.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s Anzac Day first, a day on which it\u2019s only fair to leave the last word to someone who was able to join the dots between fighting and objecting – Harry Patch.<\/p>\n

\u201cPoliticians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n


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This Anzac centenary, it\u2019s probable we will not hear the words \u2018conscientious objector\u2019 uttered much in the mainstream coverage. BURIED not far beneath the commemoration of the Anzac Day centenary is a silence into which few voices will respectfully speak. I join those few not to disrespect the First World War\u00a0fallen and those who remember […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":27812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3434,514,1711,585,854],"tags":[1718,2425,2429,2430,2427,2426,2433,2432,2428,2435,2434,2431,2424,2351],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/STRETCHER-BEARERS.jpg?fit=799%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3t0mw-7ez","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27811"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}