Australia’s Uncomfortable Relationship With Our Military History
Author’s Note: Since this post was published, Ben Roberts-Smith VC has appealed the findings against him.
Juliana Byers
16 June 2023
Dear Reader: This post was written for an undergraduate university assignment in 2023, which required me to use APA7 referencing.
An Australian soldier of the Great War.
Known Unto God.
– The inscription on the graves of thousands of Australian soldiers, who were not identifiable at burial during the First World War.
Every first born son on my father’s side of the family between 1800 and 1940 joined the army (W. G. Byers, personal communication, 1965). Before 1914, the most common reason to enlist was poverty and my ancestors were among the hundreds of poor men from Britain and Ireland who signed up, lured by the promise of stable employment, steady wages, regular meals and guaranteed accommodation (Blake, 2009). My great-grandfather William “Bill” Byers became the last in our line to continue that tradition and there haven’t been any soldiers in our family since 1946.
Bill had first enlisted in 1926, but was discharged during the Great Depression when the army could no longer afford to pay him. He made the best of it and got work on a sheep farm, where he made three very close friends. When war broke out, all four of them enlisted (or re-enlisted, in the case of my great-grandfather) and in 1940 they were deployed. Bill was an infantryman and saw action in both the Pacific and Europe, including a stint clearing bodies from a liberated concentration camp – something which haunted him for the rest of his life. When he returned to New Zealand in 1946, no doubt hoping for a chance to reconnect with his old friends, he discovered they had all been killed in action (W.G. Byers, personal communication, 1965).
William “Bill” Byers (2) with his three best friends, just prior to enlisting in the New Zealand Army in 1940. Photo: Bill Byers, 1940.
From stories I have heard from those who knew him and things I have pieced together from reading his journal, he appears to have struggled after coming home from war: he had difficulty holding down a job, his marriage failed, his relationship with his children deteriorated, and it was only after his second wedding in 1973 that he seemed to feel at peace again.
He died, happy, in 1997.
William “Bill” Byers in 1994 with his great-granddaughters. Photo: David Byers, 1994.
Long after his death, as I was cutting my teeth in historical research, I found the death notice for John Byers (Bebe’s father) who was killed in action in the first world war. I wondered how he would have felt about his son enlisting twenty years later to fight another war on the same ground. Then I discovered that John Byers had also been the son of a soldier… who had been the son of a soldier… and the son of a soldier… and… Well, you get the picture! John would probably have been more surprised that his grandson Brian (my grandfather) didn’t enlist and instead chose to go to university. Granddad became an accountant, as did my father and one of my uncles. Two of my cousins also studied accounting, so perhaps that’s the next thing Byers men will do for a few hundred years, although I’m not sure they’ll go down in history like our soldiering ancestors did.
It was these soldiers, these Byers men who criss-crossed the globe – first in the infamous scarlet of the hated Redcoats, then later in the much more socially acceptable khaki of a modern soldier – who first inspired me to look closely at history.
Especially military history.
Gallipoli Through The Looking Glass
Ask the average Australian about our military history and they’ll probably talk about World War One, the ANZACs and, most especially, Gallipoli. For the record, this well known offensive was a poorly led campaign that ended in a catastrophic defeat, although you wouldn’t know it from the way we talk about it over here. I am not so interested in this sparkling national myth and think the real story of the first world war can be found under the gleaming headstones of the millions upon millions of young men who died for nothing between 1914 – 1918. Of course, the fact that they’re dead means governments can commandeer their voices and bastardise their story to keep the myth alive.
Graves of Commonwealth soldiers at Tyne Cot Cemetery. Photo by the author.
The ANZACs, the politicians who sent them to their deaths declare proudly, were the very embodiment of the Australian spirit. The Australian Defense Force today, they maintain, is a proud continuation of the ANZAC legacy. Never mind that this legacy is more fiction than fact, or that the Australia New Zealand Army Corps was a division of the British army, with British officers, that was fighting for Britain’s territorial ambitions. But you won’t find that amongst the clap-trap about honour, glory, mateship and sacrifice twaddled out every year.
What’s more, as a military historian I can tell you that Australia’s love of military myth-making didn’t stop with Gallipoli. In fact, it continues to this day and we once more find ourselves scrambling to justify a conflict that achieved nothing. In fact, Australia has fought in a lot of nothing wars before and since 1914 – but the most modern of them all was the catastrophic failure that was Afghanistan.
Where Empires (and Reputations) Go To Die
Afghanistan has long been known as the place empires go to die. While this might not be completely true, it does have a nice ring to it and several large empires have met their end there (Pillalamarri, 2017). Australia went to Afghanistan to support America in 2001 and we only left when the Yanks realised their territorial ambitions were set to die there too and high-tailed it out, abandoning their local allies in the process. But, let’s be honest, when’s the last time America cared about leaving behind a violent mess? Vietnam, anyone?
Australia is not innocent in this mess and, as history has proven time and time again, what looks clean and smell fresh while you’re at war starts to look and smell a whole lot like bulls**t by the time you get home. Nowhere has this stench been more apparent in Australia than in the recent defamation case launched by Australia’s most decorated living soldier: Ben Roberts-Smith VC. In 2018, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times published a series of investigative reports which detailed alleged war crimes committed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan. Roberts-Smith claimed that these reports identified him and suggested he was a war criminal and sued for defamation. He claimed the reports were “‘baseless’ and relied on ‘unfounded hearsay and gossip’” (Whitbourn, 2018) spread by “bitter people” (Whitbourn, 2021). Roberts-Smith’s lawsuit recently came crashing down around him when a judge ruled in favour of the newspapers, finding that, on the balance of probabilities, their claims were true and that Mr. Roberts-Smith had committed war crimes (Whitbourn, Alexander, Knott & Mitchell, 2023).
Probably not the outcome he was hoping for.
But what does this mean for Australia, now that the darling of our most elite unit has been found (in civil court) to be a violent murderer, a bully, and a disgrace to the Australian military and this country as a whole?
It’s Not A War Crime When We Do It!
The National War Memorial in Canberra has an entire display devoted to Ben Roberts-Smith. His portrait, his uniform and his medals all hang there, in front of boards telling all and sundry what an outstanding soldier he was. Despite the finding by the civil court that Mr. Roberts-Smith committed war crimes, the National War Memorial has said they won’t be removing the exhibit (Bonyhady & Knott, 2023).
And they’re not the only ones refusing to act!
There has been no word from the government yet on whether Roberts-Smith will be stripped of his Victoria Cross, despite recommendations to the Defense Minister this should occur (Foley & Bagshaw, 2023). The argument that Roberts-Smith should keep his medal because he earned it during a completely separate event to those tested in the allegations is irrelevant: war criminals should not get to stroll around wearing bravery medals! Adolf Hitler won an Iron Cross (Imperial Germany’s highest award for bravery) in World War One, but you won’t see his name on any honour roll in that country, nor should you.
A Victoria Cross. Photo: Pixabay
Of course, I am not claiming that Mr. Roberts-Smith committed anything like crimes on the scale of Adolf Hitler. I am simply pointing out that by allowing Roberts-Smith to keep his VC, we allow him to hide behind a single act of bravery, rather than force him to face up to the fact that he kicked an unarmed prisoner off a cliff, shot a bound detainee in direct violation of the Geneva Convention, and then used that same man’s prosthetic leg as a drinking vessel (McKenzie, 2023). These are not the actions of a war hero who deserves a Victoria Cross!
And it says something disturbing about us as Australians too, that we have been largely silent on the issue.
Is it simply because we’re too shocked to speak out?
Or is the myth of the loyal, lovable, larrikin digger, fighting for truth, justice and freedom from oppression so entrenched in our national psyche that we cannot believe that one of our own would ever do such a thing?
Shortly before I was born, Bill wrote in his journal that governments “loved heroes, but hated soldiers” (W.G. Byers, personal communication, 1993) and it took me a long time to understand what he meant by that cryptic sentence.
But I finally get it.
It was soldiers who brought Ben Roberts-Smith’s crimes into the light, men ten-times more worthy of a Victoria Cross than he, as they stepped across a sacred line in the sand and said: ‘No more lies!’
The heroes have had their moment; it’s time we started listening to the soldiers.
Sources
ABC News [Isobel Roe]. (2023, 6 June) Ben Roberts-Smith’s Dramatic Fall From Grace [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-49fGbLq0k (accessed 16 June 2023).
Australian National War Memorial. First World War 1914 – 18. 2 June 2021. https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/atwar/first-world-war (accessed 16 June 2023).
Bonyhady, N. & Knott, M. War memorial to keep Ben Roberts-Smith display as he quits Seven. 2 June 2023. https://www.theage.com.au/business/companies/ben-roberts-smith-quits-seven-in-disgrace-after-defamation-loss-20230602-p5ddhs.html (accessed 10 June 2023).
Blake, G. To Pierce The Tyrant’s Heart. Sydney. Australian Military Publications. 2009.
First Dog On The Moon. (2023, 7 June). A teacher explains why the Ben Roberts-Smith exhibit has been moved at the war memorial [Cartoon]. First Dog On The Moon. https://firstdogonthemoon.com.au/cartoons/2023/06/07/a-teacher-explains-why-the-ben-roberts-smith-exhibit-has-been-moved-at-the-war-memorial/ (accessed 16 June 2023).
Foley, M. & Bagshaw, E. Marles tight-lipped on Roberts-Smith VC as McCormack says he should keep his medal. 4 June 2023. https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/marles-tight-lipped-on-roberts-smith-s-vc-as-mccormack-says-he-should-keep-medal-20230604-p5ddsk.html (accessed 10 June 2023).
Lake, M. and Reynolds, H. What’s Wrong With ANZAC? The Militarisation of Australian History. Sydney. University of New South Wales Press. 2010.
McKenzie, M. ‘You machine gunned that guy’: A witness tells his truth of a day he will never forget. 2 June 2023. https://www.theage.com.au/national/you-machine-gunned-that-guy-a-witness-tells-his-truth-of-day-he-will-never-forget-20230220-p5cm08.html (accessed 10 June 2023).
Pillalamarri, A. Why Is Afghanistan the ‘Graveyard of Empires’? 30 June 2017. https://thediplomat.com/2017/06/why-is-afghanistan-the-graveyard-of-empires/ (accessed 10 June 2023).
Roe, I. The Ben Roberts-Smith defamation case judgement is 726 pages long. Here are five key findings. 6 June 2023. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-06/five-key-findings-in-ben-roberts-smith-judge-bezanko-judgement/102442100 (accessed 16 June 2023).
Snow, D. Commander to courtroom: Why Ben Roberts-Smith’s reputation is on the stand. 5 June 2021. https://www.theage.com.au/national/commander-to-courtroom-why-ben-roberts-smith-s-reputation-is-on-the-stand-20210604-p57y3s.html (accessed 10 June 2023).
Whitbourn, M. Ben Roberts Smith defamation trial ends after 110 days, millions in costs. 27 July 2022. https://www.theage.com.au/national/ben-roberts-smith-defamation-trial-ends-after-110-days-millions-in-costs-20220727-p5b4z0.html (accessed 10 June 2023).
Whitbourn, M. Fairfax defends Ben Roberts Smith Defamation Claim. 27 October 2018. https://www.theage.com.au/national/fairfax-defends-ben-roberts-smith-defamation-claim-20181009-p508on.html (accessed 10 June 2023).
Whitbourn, M. ‘Corrosive jealousy and lies’ behind Ben Roberts-Smith war crime claims, court told. 7 June 2021. https://www.theage.com.au/national/corrosive-jealousy-and-lies-behind-ben-roberts-smith-war-crime-claims-court-told-20210607-p57yq9.html (accessed 10 June 2023).
Whitbourn, M., Alexander, H., Knott, M., Mitchell, G. Former SAS soldier Ben Roberts Smith Committed War Crimes. 1 June 2023. https://www.theage.com.au/national/ben-roberts-smith-case-former-sas-soldier-committed-war-crimes-20230314-p5crv4.html (accessed 10 June 2023)