The Spirit of the Digger
Page 40
(Tim Whitford)
Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium was chosen as a memorial because of the thousands of soldiers who passed through it on the way to the Somme battlefields. It contains and commemorates the names of 54,000 fallen soldiers with no known graves.
(Tim Whitford)
The Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux commemorates all Australian soldiers who fought in France and Belgium during World War I. Unveiled in 1938, it contains 10,765 names, the majority of whom have no known grave.
(Tim Whitford)
Winter at the Rue-Petillon cemetery. Opened early in World War I fighting in 1914, the cemetery continued to receive casualties through to the armistice and contains almost 1500 remains, nearly half of them unidentified.
(Patrick Lindsay)
A Digger guards a Viet Cong tunnel entrance in Vietnam in 1969. Diggers proved themselves outstanding ‘tunnel rats’, fighting their way into labyrinthine tunnel systems, driving out their enemy and securing considerable intelligence.
(Australian War Memorial EKN/69/0023/VN)
Armoured personnel carriers inserting Diggers into wild country in Phouc Tuy province in Vietnam in 1969. The Diggers generally operated by quietly inserting themselves into enemy territory and patrolling actively.
(Graham Dugdale)
Former Chief of the Defence Force General Peter Cosgrove as a youthful lieutenant in Vietnam in 1969. In October that year he won a Military Cross for Gallantry while leading his platoon on patrol in Phouc Tuy province.
(Mike McDermott)
The search for the remains of the missing Diggers at Pheasant Wood, Fromelles.
(Tim Whitford)
Forensic teams found 250 remains of Australian and British soldiers.
(Tim Whitford)
As a result of the detective work of an Australian amateur historian, Lambis Englezos, the search at Pheasant Wood was arranged.
(Patrick Lindsay)
The medallion belonging to Harry Willis.
(Whitford family)
Tim Whitford, the great-nephew of one of the missing Diggers of Fromelles, Harry Willis, grieves at Pheasant Wood in 2009 after hearing that a medallion belonging to Harry Willis had been found.
(Patrick Lindsay)
The control tower at Junction Point Charlie, overlooking the tactical co-ordination line on the border between East and West Timor. The Diggers serving under General Peter Cosgrove’s United Nation’s Interfet Force won acclaim for their actions in securing the independence of Timor-Leste in 1999.
(Patrick Lindsay)
Acknowledgements
My special thanks to:
Lisa Cotton, for her love, support and her photographs. And to: Gordon Chuck, Private J, Trooper Mark Donaldson VC, Don Murray, General Peter Cosgrove, Maj-General Duncan Lewis, Dennis Ayoub, Sandy McGregor, Noel Pallier, Mike McDermott, Ted Love, Terry Beaton, Wally Thompson, Ali Efe, Cpl Brett ‘Woody’ Woodward and the men of Section Two Three Bravo, 5/7 Bn RAR: Billy Boulton, Scott Dudley, Joshua Nicholas, Clint Holdsworth, Brent Thomson, Matthew McMahaon, Wayne Griggs and Nathan Charles, Lieutenant Col Mike Lean, Co AusBatt VII, and Maj Andrew Hocking.
Interviews by the Author
Dennis Ayoub, Vietnam veteran, Sydney
Lance Collins, retired Lieutenant Colonel, Melbourne
Peter Cosgrove, retired General and former Chief of ADF, Canberra
Chris Diercke, Coastwatchers historian, Newcastle
Ali Efe, Turkish historian, Gallipoli
Lambis Englezos, Fromelles and Melbourne
Professor David Horner, military historian, Canberra
Peter Hughes, Bali survivor, Perth
Neville Kidd, military historian, Sydney
Duncan Lewis, retired Commanding Officer, SAS, Sydney
Ted Love, retired Colonel, Sydney
Mike McDermott, Vietnam veteran, Sydney
Sandy McGregor, Vietnam veteran, Sydney
Don Murray, retired Colonel, Sydney
Noel Pallier, WWII veteran, Wollongong
David Orme 'Mick' Smith, Wollongong
Hon Warren Snowdon, Minister for Defence Science and Personnel, Wollongong
Wally Thompson, Vietnam veteran, Sydney
Tim Whitford, descendant of missing Fromelles Digger Harry Willis, Melbourne
Professor Richard Wright, forensic archaeologist, Sydney
Brett Woodward, Sergeant, East Timor
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Since 2002, Patrick Lindsay has established himself as one of Australia’s leading non-fiction authors, having written 15 books, including the bestsellers The Spirit of Kokoda, Back from the Dead, The Essence of Kokoda, The Spirit of Gallipoli, Heart of a Champion, Cosgrove: Portrait of a Leader, Fromelles, Kokoda Spirit, and The Coast Watchers.
Before taking up writing fulltime, Patrick was a newspaper reporter and, from 1981, a prominent television all-rounder on the Nine and Seven networks and Sky News. He is a founding director and chairman of the Kokoda Track Foundation.
Patrick is married to Lisa Cotton and has three grown-up children, Nathan, Kate and Sarah.
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in 2003 by Pan Macmillan, Sydney
This revised edition published in 2011
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Patrick Lindsay 2011
The right of Patrick Lindsay to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Extracts: George Aspinall quotes from Changi Photographer reproduced by permission of ABC Books and the copyright owner; A Military History of Australia by Jeffrey Grey reproduced by permission of Cambridge University Press; Crisis of Command by David Horner reproduced by permission of Australian National University and David Horner; Those Ragged Bloody Heroes and We Band of Brothers by Peter Brune reproduced by permission of Allen & Unwin; An Impression Which Will Never Fade reproduced by permission of Neville Kidd; Recollections of a Regimental Officer by H.D. Steward reproduced by permission of Melbourne University Publishing; The Battle of Long Tan by Lex McAulay, published in 1987, reproduced by permission of Random House Australia; Army Australia and 100 Years of Australians at War by George Odgers reproduced by permission of New Holland Publishers; Warrior Race by Lawrence James reproduced by permission of Time Warner books UK; Tobruk 1941 by Chester Wilmot, The War Diaries of Weary Dunlop by E.E Dunlop and A Fortunate Life by Albert Facey reproduced by permission of Penguin Australia; Official History of the War 1914-1918 by Charles Bean and South-West Pacific Area – First Year by Dudley McCarthy reproduced by permission of the Australian War Memorial; Simply Let Hell Loose, Department of Veterans’ Affairs: Private Gordon Craig, reproduced by permission of Australian Broadcasting Corporation ©2002 ABC Books; A War of Nerves by Ben Shepherd, published by Jonathan Cape, reproduced by permission of The Random House Group Limited; A Valley in France reproduced by permission of Elizabeth Whiteside; The Battle of Maryang San reproduced by permission of Headquarters Training Command – Army; Will We Be Disappointed-After? reproduced by permission of Pat Roberts; The Birth of Sydney by Tim Flannery reproduced by permission of Text Publishing.
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Nationa
l Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Lindsay, Patrick.
The spirit of the digger / Patrick Lindsay.
2nd rev. ed.
ISBN: 978 0 7322 9275 1 (pbk.)
ISBN: 978-0-7304-9295-5 (epub)
Includes index.
Mateship (Australia). Social interaction—Australia. Australia—History, Military.
302.30994
Cover Design by Xou Creative. Cover image (top) by Damien Parrer, October 1942, Australian War Memorial 013469: ‘Men of the 2/16th Battalion now in action on the New Guinea front. These men, who have previously seen service in the Western Desert and Syria, identified left to right are: WX14749 Private (Pte) Daniel Earle O’Connell of Dwanda, WA; L/Cpl F. A. Cunningham; WX4760 Sgt (later lieutenant) David Roe Burges of Meckering, WA; AND WX3286 Signalman Lawrence Cotton.’ Cover image (bottom) by Defence Digital Media 20080523adf8239682_273a. Photo by Corporal Neil Ruskin Navy Clearance Divers Petty Officer, May 2008: ‘Troy Eather, Chief Petty Officer Phillip Shirley with engineers Sapper Michael Brennan and Corporal Glen Barton check the remains of an Improvised Explosive Device found by Sapper Brennan during a route clearance.’
All maps by Laurie Whiddon