Captain Frank Tamsitt from the Royal Australian Infantry Corps delivered a powerful Anzac Day speech.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
First he spoke of the similarities between his his hometown Bungendore and Wellington particularly the march, the service and the crowd.
“In towns across Australia, services just the same are occurring right now.
“At no other point do we all stop as we do today, and it is in country towns that the effect is most visible, towns like Wellington, whose people gave so much, and where the Great War had such a remarkable impact,” he said.
Capt Tamsitt spoke about what inspired so many to volunteer to fight, despite what little they knew of the conflict that would unfold.
“When I joined the Army in 2012, I had been brought up with it. My father and brother both served, I had been to Anzac Day every year. I had followed what I saw in the media of our troops in Timor, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and had spent my childhood reading about Australia’s previous commitments.
“When my great-grandfather enlisted in Dubbo in 1915, he had none of this background. He had moved out from England ten years earlier, and was working on a property in the district.
“The only war in living memory was the Boer War, where the commitment was so much smaller. No Anzac Day, no flash recruiting ads.
“But they did join, in massive numbers. Numbers that are startling. Numbers that dwarf countries so much closer and more involved in the conflict,”
“From a country with a population of under 5 million, we sent 20,000 men in the first contingent in 1914 – almost the size of our current Regular Army.
“This grew to a total of 330,000 serving overseas, with 420,000 enlisting. Enlistments peaked in 1915 but even in 1917, after years of brutal conflict and massive casualties, a further 45,000 enlisted.
Capt Tamsitt spoke about the struggle to recruit today, despite sufficient training and low fatality chances
“They [the Anzacs] went willingly and perhaps blindly, with none of this. But had they known what was ahead of them, would they have acted differently? I doubt it.
“All the evidence points otherwise. Desertions were far higher amongst other armies on the Western Front in WW1, including the French, who were fighting on home ground. Yet ours was the only Army not to inflict the death penalty on deserters.
“I’m not able to divine exactly the past motivations that were involved in that most incredible effort. I would like to think that patriotism and adventure ranked highly. Others would differ. Whatever it was though, it shows there was a unique ‘spirit’ within the Australian psyche that our commitment should be so incredible.”
Lest we forget.