WITH NATHAN FURRY
As Australian War Memorial director Dr Brendan Nelson reminds us, the true legacy of our Anzacs is love and mateship. In expanding on his emotional address that echoed through the line of Anzac Parade, monuments and flags solemnly commemorating conflicts both historic and modern, we know that the lasting testament to our national character is the ordinary Australians who soldiered on during the extraordinary, so that ‘their mates could come home’.
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This Anzac Day, I joined Wee Jasper residents in reflecting upon the ultimate sacrifice Bombardier Leslie Firmin Faulder made 100 years ago during the Somme Offensive.
At Beaumetz Cross Road Cemetery in France, Faulder’s final resting place lies among the row-upon-row of white marble headstones reminding us of fallen Australians who sacrificed their lives so that their sons and daughters could live in the peace we take freely today.
Upon Faulder’s headstone, his mother dedicated the following, simple and sombre words, “Life for Love”. His life ended aged 22. It is not difficult as a 23-year-old to draw upon similar thoughts, feelings and fears that may have followed Faulder in his earlier life and during the war. A member of the 6th Australian Field Artillery Bridge, the 19-year-old butcher enlisted on September 4, 1914, and served as a driver during Gallipoli before being wounded, and later in France, where he was promoted to Bombardier.
Driver A. Sutherland captures the moment the Bombardier was killed in action during an offensive in Doignes at 5pm, April 29, 1917. “He was killed ... through a shell landing in a dugout, they went in for shelter and were both killed instantly.” Another from his unit, signing only as an informant known as ‘Arnold’, recalled the same mateship: “Faulder signed Leslie, but we called him ‘Joe’.”
Finally, those hallowed words of Canadian Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae echo down Anzac Parade, reminding us to never forget the sacrifices, past and present:
