ANZAC's Music and Mateship
(By Ann Bray)
Due to
Snap Covid19 Lockdown -
Perth will be having
Driveway Services again
For ANZAC 2021
(originally posted for
ANZAC 2020)
My world as a child revolved around an old ANZAC of the 3rd Light Horse Regiment - my maternal Grandpa Fred. He had retired just before I was born, and being the 5th child of working parents, I spent the majority of my formative years in the gentle care of Fred and Grandma Vera. His closest lifelong friend was his old regimental sergeant (always referred to as Uncle Cyril), who lived less than a mile away. Cyril and Fred had married two young women who were best friends, Ette and my Grandmother Vera. Vera was a country girl from Noarlunga who had been up in the city during the war helping to run Ette’s father’s shop whilst the “boys” were away. Cyril had started courting Ette, and had introduced his shy young friend to Vera on Fred’s return. Cyril like many of the older ANZACs had come straight home after the war ended, but what is not widely known is that many younger ANZACs stayed on in the Middle East long after the official cessation of hostilities (in Fred’s case a very long and difficult extra year).
Mateship was very real to these men. They visited each other constantly, and also visited the increasing number of mates’ widows as the years went by.
Another of an ANZAC’s best mates had been his horse, but these mates had not come home with the men. They regularly visited an old stone water trough memorial to these four-footed mates, found just across the road from the south gate of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens. In Grandpa Fred’s case, when he was older and could afford it, he would buy/rescue an old racehorse and keep this new four-footed mate on a suburban block just across the street from his home. In the 60s, a horse yard was not typical of the Unley suburbs, but there was a large open space not far from his home at the Waite Institute/Urrbrae Agricultural area, where you could still exercise a horse.
The four-footed mate that I knew in the 1960s was his last horse Tony, a cantankerous old gelding that they all loved and fed apples to. My most enduring memory of Tony, is my brother Neil going flying off his back during attempted riding lessons. Grandpa would get back in the saddle, utter a few gentle “Woo Tony”’s, and the horse was quiet again. If I was put on his back and led around the yard, Tony was a lamb. This four-footed mate was quite a conundrum.
In recent years, Mum, Neil and I learnt a lot of what was behind these old ANZACs’ attitude to such a complicated horse, after reading about the now legendary Bill the Bastard. Grandpa and his mates were a part of the night battle of Romani, when Bill the Bastard allowed five men to ride him to safety under fire, when he would normally have thrown off any one of them, that was not his beloved Major Michael Shanahan. The four men rescued that night by Shanahan and Bill the Bastard were Tasmanians. The 3rd Light Horse Regiment was made up of men from South Australia and Tasmania (they were their mates).
What these men craved most was peace and quiet. The sounds around them were gentle conversation, pet canaries singing and the gentle nickering calls of an old horse. The exception to this came when my sister bought a record player/radiogram as a gift for the family, and we joined the World Record Club. We pored over the World Record Club catalogues, aware of our modest budget, and would pick out a record or two to add to our growing little collection. This is how I first heard the sounds of Yehudi Menuhin and Michael Rabin. Over the years we managed to pick out 5 records as presents for Grandpa, with his approval. As a man who lived very frugally he would usually not accept a present over and above a pair of socks.
An old ANZAC’s favourites:
Peter Dawson’s “A Peter Dawson Recital” and “The Boys of the Old Brigade”,
The Band of the Australian Army Band Corp,
The Regimental Band of the Coldstream Guards &
Band of the Grenadier Guards
The South Australian bass-baritone and song writer Peter Dawson was a great favourite of these men. He was also Cyril’s wife Ette’s uncle, making him a part of the extended “ANZAC family”. Late in the day when Grandpa Fred and I were back at my home, I would put on one of these records for him. He would sit quietly in an old arm chair with his boots up on a stool, and listen to these songs of yesteryear. He didn’t want to listen to anything else, it was one of these 5 records or he preferred the sounds of the natural world around him
I still have these precious 5 records, but in the modern world of YouTube, the ANZAC’s favourite voice - Peter Dawson can now be more easily heard.
Clancy of the Overflow was one of these old horsemen’s most loved songs. The following, is a recording of Peter Dawson’s rendition with the London Symphony Orchestra.
The best gift
one old ANZAC
could give to another
- was a laugh.
This wonderful Peter Dawson song from the NZ side of the Tasman would always bring a smile, and in recent years happy laughter from his great-grandsons.
Peter Smith Dawson - "In 1984, Dawson was chosen by the Guinness Book of Recorded Sound as one of the top 10 singers on disc of all time, listed alongside such luminaries as Elvis Presley and the great operatic tenor Enrico Caruso." - Wikipedia
ANZAC - 2020
ANZAC 2020 - Music for Mateship
One of our regular MetSO players is also a prominent Western Australian bugler, much in demand on ANZAC day. The sound of the bugle framed the ANZAC’s day. The bugle calls told them when to get up, eat, mount, walk, trot, gallop, dismount and of course sounded the alarm for action. There was a long and complicated list of calls that a bugler had to know, and play accurately. The bugle spoke the musical language of the camp, and the buglers were highly skilled musicians with sharp ears and an all important role. The ANZAC’s not only had to understand this musical language, they had to be “tuned-in” to it ready to respond at a moment’s notice, both in the camp and on the battle field. Few could know how much the sound of a bugle affected these men, even in their later years.
On ANZAC day in Adelaide in the 1960s, these men were in their late 60s and 70s. The 3rd Light Horse Regiment would assemble in the early morning in the Adelaide South Park Lands for their reunions/services, that were not open to the public. A little later in the morning, there was a public ANZAC parade/march through the streets of the city culminating in a service held at the War Memorial in North Adelaide. The ANZACs I knew would march in the parade (WWI veterans always at the front), but would then return home to be with their families to watch the service on TV. They knew that the bugler playing “The Last Post” would be a deeply emotional trigger for them. We would watch Grandpa march in the ANZAC parade on TV with Grandma, and be ready for his return. He would always be back home surrounded by his family in time for the main service broadcast from the War Memorial. At the sound of "The Last Post”, the ANZACs silently wept.
ANZAC Day, for that generation, was all about mateship and remembrance. The Great War was hoped to be the war that ended all wars, it was only renamed World War I after their sons and daughters we called on to serve in World War II.
2020 ANZAC is going to be different. We will not be able to have our usual larger gatherings.
There is however, a movement called #MusicForMateship (amongst other names) which encourages us to have our own observances in our respective driveways across the country. Although this will be very different for most, it is not so far from what the old ANZACs I knew in the 1960s did - they were always at home for “The Last Post”.