The commanding officer of the Parachute Training School, HMAS Albatross, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Bushby gave the address at the Greenwell Point dawn service address.

Lt Col Bushby looked at the some of the parallels between the Anzacs of 100 years ago and the modern soldier. He spoke of some of the locals who fought in World War I. He bought their stories to life and explained why the Anzac legend should never be forgotten.

Here is his speech – 

….This morning I want to reflect on Anzac commemoration at what is a mid-point in the multi-year Centenary of Anzac commemorative process, I’d like to help us understand the experiences of some of those men in war, explore their legacy in this community and offer some thoughts how our community might responded to modern veterans in the shadow of Anzac.

For reasons of time I will look in detail at some experiences from the First World War but hope that you can draw parallels with the experiences of returned service men and women from other periods of our military history.

Today we mark the 102nd anniversary of the landings at Anzac Cove and throughout 2017 Australia will commemorate the 100th anniversary of many of the bloodiest battles waged in France and Belgium.

Passchendaele, the Mennin Road, Bullecourt and others, names that remain synonymous with some of the worst experiences of the 1st AIF on the Western Front.

Commemoration of 1917 sits somewhat oddly.

In the public memory it is placed halfway between the outbreak of war in 1914-15 and the celebration that accompanied the final victories of 1918.

These two points that provide a defined beginning and a defined end but 1917 is often poorly remembered if, indeed, it is remembered at all.

First, some context - I want to give you a sense of what was going on around here 100 years ago.

By 1917 the excitement that had accompanied the outbreak of war in 1914 had passed.

The Waratah Recruiting March that started in Nowra and recruited men from the towns and villages of the South Coast had concluded, and the men that volunteered to join that march had left Australia and joined AIF in France in early 1916.

Many fought at Pozieres.

The landings at Gallipoli, subsequent campaign in the Dardanelles plus the battles of 1916 had made the harsh reality of war painfully apparent to many local families.

By 1917 it was clear that victory would be neither quick nor easy, and that the Australians would play a prominent role facing the main enemy in the main theatre of the war.

One of these men was Private Reginald Norman Cashman who, according to his enlistment papers, was a labourer and farm hand who was born in Milton and lived in, and enlisted from, Nowra.

He was one of 330 local men from this community who enlisted along with three physicians and three nurses.

Seven were awarded Military Medals and two the Military Cross - 70 never returned. In reviewing the personal stories of so many of these lads you appreciate their sense of community.

Writing from a convalescent hospital in England, Pte Dinny West of Nowra noted to his parents that “I saw a lot of the boys from Nowra the other day. I saw Mr Walsh’s son and he looks well. Also Ethel Graham’s brother, and he is all right. Met Alex Braithwaite, who is just the same but he has had a hard time of it. Have not met Paddy of O’Heir or Dod Weigand. I would like meet Bert Rauch to see how he is getting on. Ted Weblin is still dodging along.”

From this and other letters you can sense their eagerness for news from home and willingness to pass on updates about anyone from the area that they bumped into, knowing full well the information would be spread round the community.

War was not a new phenomenon in 1917.

Men from the Shoalhaven had played a prominent role in the NSW contingent dispatched to the Boer War in 1899, but the scale of the destruction and human cost was unprecedented.

In the aftermath of the war the official historian, Charles Bean, produced his multivolume history as a tribute to the AIF.

Its pages are filled with exquisite biographical details that chronicled the wartime experiences of ordinary Australian soldiers, sailors and airmen - 100 years before 1915 the British had fought the Battle of Waterloo and 10 years before that, Trafalgar.

The glory of war was woven deeply into the Imperial psych. However those wars were distant activities undertaken by relatively small armies and their costs were spread lightly through communities.

Monuments were built, but not for the soldier or the sailor, but for the Admirals and Generals - Nelson and Wellington.

The First World War changed that.

The monuments of this war, both overseas and here in our communities record individual names and the stories that accompany them are told and studied in unprecedented detail.

As a result, our knowledge of the lives of individual soldiers of the First World War is incomparably richer than previous wars.

Family stories have been passed down through generations recounting the stories of local men.

That knowledge however can be a doubled edged sword.

It allows us to know so much more of their experiences, but, as First World War historian Gary Sheffield has noted - sections of the media, literature and popular culture have come to view the First World War as such a uniquely terrible experience that it can not be understood through any historical process or analysis. Instead, it can only be understood through an emotional response. Too often our modern sense of emotional empathy has led to myth making, telling and re-telling the story of Anzac in almost mythical terms – ordinary men transformed, known as heroes for their battlefield exploits, but sometimes as victims. Victims of Imperial politics, victims of cold-hearted and incompetent generals, and victims of a wholly unnecessary European war.

Yet I am not sure that would have been how those men viewed themselves or their experiences, nor was it how their families and communities viewed them at the time.

From 100 years distance it hard to imagine their sense of stoic acceptance of loss, pride in their achievements and a genuine belief in the righteousness of their cause.

The phrases that are inscribed on war memorials and headstones reflect this. “For King and Empire, For the Glory of God and Country, A Duty Done” – to many modern ears these phrases sound jarringly sentimental and a naively inadequate way to express the scale of loss and sorrow.

Yet the dominant themes of pride, stoicism, resilience and community come through in the letters and diaries of the soldiers and their families in a way that is difficult for our contemporary minds to understand.

Myth making is a powerful force in our history that continues to colour aspects of our modern interpretations of military service.

This is the reason why I feel that in 2017 understanding is at least as important as sympathising.

Two years ago we remembered the outbreak of war and commemorated heroic tragedy of our nation’s foundation story at Gallipoli.

Next year we will commemorate the the Anzac Corp’s achievements at Villers Bretonneux, Hamel and Amiens and the centenary of the armistice that ended the war.

These events are linked, but without a unifying story 1917 risks being exclusively remembered through the mythology of pointless sacrifice in mud of France and Flanders.

A richer understanding shows that 1917 was the year that these ordinary men and their allies learned how to win the war.

By the end of that year our forces in the field, in the air and at sea were incomparably better equipped, trained and led than they had been at any previous point in the war.

Training, leadership, experience, all prosaic themes that often conflict with the Anzac story of natural marshal prowess.

A few short stories serve to illustrate this point.

By 1917 our Waratah march participant, Pte Reg Cashman, was still serving in the 1st Battalion in France.

Yet he and his mates fought in a way that was unrecognisable to that employed at Gallipoli only two years before.

His battalion now used a variety of weapons and fighting methods that were uniquely adapted to the conditions of trench warfare on the Western Front.

Lewis light machine guns, rifle grenades and trench mortars, vastly more effective artillery and the tank were all available in large numbers and becoming sufficiently reliable to be useful in helping advancing infantry break into and destroy their objectives.

Cashman and his mates would have benefited from a range of schools and courses established by the AIF’s training organisation that delivered instruction on how to use their new weapons and techniques.

These schools were staffed by combat veterans from the battalions who ensured that the latest skills and knowledge were transferred quickly between the fighting units in France.

A second Nowra man, Lieutenant Ulric Walsh of Junction Street, Nowra was fighting with the 17th Battalion in Belgium.

Walsh had joined the AIF in July 1915 and arrived in France in mid-1916 where he joined the 17th Battalion as a Lance Corporal.

A year later he had been appointed as an officer and was leading his men in action.

For his gallantry he would win the Military Cross, his citation reading in part - While under an intense enemy barrage, with great coolness and a fine disregard for personal danger this officer skilfully controlled the fire of a creeping barrage from the mortars which contributed largely to the success of our counter attack. His prompt action and close operation with the infantry in organising the counter attack displayed fine qualities of initiative and leadership.

Again, Ulric Walsh’s story is instructive.

The things that he was decorated for – coolly controlling a creeping mortar barrage, cooperating with the infantry and organising a counter attack are not only technically difficult, but were simply not possible at earlier points in the war.

The equipment and the techniques had not yet been invented.

Secondly, Australians were not born with the natural ability to do these things.

Walsh learned to perform these skills at one of the officer training courses established in France and England that newly commissioned officers were made to attend.

Walsh was typical of the type of officers that increasing came to lead the Australian Diggers from 1916.

Older pre-war militia officers who had led the troops at Gallipoli were increasingly either promoted to more senior appointments that suited their age and experience or relieved and sent home.

In their place a younger cohort of combat hardened veterans like Walsh would lead the 1st AIF to final victory in 1918.

The son of another prominent local family, Alfred Seymour Shepherd, enlisted in 1915 and was eventually commissioned into the Royal Flying Corps.

100 years ago today, 25 April 1917, he took up his first appointment to 29 Squadron.

Within two months had been awarded the Military Cross and the Distinguished Service order and remains one of this country’s first flying aces and a pioneer of military aviation.

At sea, the crew of HMAS Sydney successfully launched the first Australian naval aircraft from a cruiser, both allowing it to counter the threat of zeppelins and initiating the story of Australian naval aviation that remains associated with Nowra today.

By the war’s end 332,000 Australians served, over 60,000 paid the ultimate sacrifice.

Of those who returned, roughly two thirds carried physical wounds, not counting those who carried the invisible but real scars on their souls.

The mental wounds that Wilfred Owen described as the ‘foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were’.

It is sadly true that some WWI veterans came back disenfranchised and isolated from their communities by their experiences.

During the depression some subsisted as ‘swaggies’, often living up behind the Nowra Showground and doing odd-jobs.

The Nowra sewerage system, and Ben’s Walk were two municipal infrastructure schemes employed to put these veterans to work.

Yet once again we need to be cautious with myth making and any perception that war inevitably led to all veterans being irreparably broken by their service experience.

It sadly was the case for some, but thousands more returned to communities like this one to lead lives of quiet dignity and integrity.

Reg Cashman survived the war and returned to Australia in July 1918.

He married Ada Mary Taylor in 1923 and raised a family and ran a local business. He died in Camden in 1983.

Ulrick Walsh also survived the war.  He returned to Nowra, married and had two sons.

He ran a dairy farm and led the local Militia during the inter-war years.

He ran for Federal Parliament vowing ‘to vigorously urge the development of the electorate’. He died in 1962.

Everyone in this community had a connection.

The Peppers, the Bices, the Braithwaites, the Dudgeons, the Borrowdales, the McLeans, and the Thomsons.

They taught in our schools, built our houses, roads and local buildings, ran businesses and farms and served their communities on boards, councils and political offices.

Many never spoke publicly of their wartime experiences.

But the same virtues of integrity, courage, mateship and a commitment to family and friends that sustained them in trenches enriched the life of the nation that they returned to.

In many respects it was their contributions to their communities on those days other than that ‘one day of the year’ that serves as their most enduring legacy.

Anzac Day was the focal point for commemoration, but their commitment to honouring the sacrifice of their mates and supporting those who returned from war was yearlong.

Responding to Modern Veterans - there are those dissenting voices that express concern that this nation’s ongoing commemoration of Anzac Day conflates commemoration with glorification of war.

I don’t share this view. Anzac commemoration was historically about looking after soldiers, honouring their memory and understanding the Australian experience of war and warfare through sober reflection on the destructiveness of war.

Stanley Savige founded Legacy in 1923 with the express aim of providing a way for his colleagues in business to assist ex-servicemen.

In 1925 Legacy decided to commit itself to the care of dependants.

The support our uniformed and ex-service personnel receive today is predominantly the result of the advocacy of successive generations of veterans’ groups like Legacy and the RSL.

I do, however, wonder how the experiences of modern generations of returned servicemen can be better incorporated into the Anzac story.

Today, given the much smaller size of the military, knowing a veteran or the family of a veteran of the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan is less common.

It is a paradox that we have a modern veterans’ community with more operational service experience than at any point since the Vietnam War yet the public’s knowledge of life in a patrol base in Afghanistan, or in a frigate in the Persian Gulf or on a humanitarian relief operation in our own region is often less well understood than the events of over 100 years ago.

To make this challenge more difficult, many of the experiences of modern conflict don’t fit easily with the stories of Anzac. Consequently many modern veterans find it difficult to relate to the Anzac story.

There are fewer great battles and fewer still decisive victories.

The tasks they performed often bear scant resemblance to those performed by their Anzac forebears.

But modern veterans must find a way to relate these experiences to a public that remains eager to understand the experiences of Australians at war.

It is certainly true that enhanced public understanding makes the homecoming experience of veterans far less difficult.

The experience of returning home does hold some parallels.

While far fewer modern veterans have returned home with physical wounds it is sadly true that some return home bearing the mental scars of their experiences.

Thankfully we are far better now at recognising this and ensuring that these conditions are treated as legitimate wounds of war.

As in earlier years in the Shoalhaven, veterans of East Timor, Afghanistan, Iraq, Maritime Enforcement Operations in the Persian Gulf and a myriad of peacekeeping operations run local businesses, share our sporting teams; send their children to our schools and share our community their partners and families.

The challenges that they faced were unique, but the same virtues of integrity, courage, teamwork, mateship and a commitment to family and community has enriched their lives and that of the nation that they returned to.

The importance of veterans supporting one another, regardless of generation, remains as vital as it has ever been.

The people we have lost, those who have been scarred mentally and physically are not just representative of sacrifice – but also of promise.

How many contributions to art, science, literature, engineering, sport and industry were forgone as a result?

We owe it to these and subsequent generations of Anzacs to understand their stories and realise that promise on their behalf.

There are many in our communities who continue to exemplify the very best of Australia and the Anzac legacy of service.

Like the men and women on parade here today and the over 3000 soldiers, sailors and airmen currently serving on 10 different operations around the world.

Wars involve ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

They reveal humanity at is best and its worst.

Given this brief insight into the experiences and stories among just this community it is not hard to see why Anzac legacy continues and why we value it so deeply.

It must reinforce our collective responsibility is to work to realise the promise represented by those we have lost, to value our families and our communities and recognise the best of humanity in each other.