GENERAL PETER COSGROVE AC MC (Ret’d)
RESPONSE TO FRENCH AMBASSADOR’S REMARKS
ANZAC DAY 2010
Thank you very much for your kind words. I’m delighted to be able to
offer a few words in reply.
On 4 July 1918, the Australian Corps captured the Somme village of
Hamel on the Western Front. Though it was a small affair, military
historians regard Hamel as one of the most significant battles of the war
because the way in which the Australian commander, General Monash,
combined infantry, tanks, artillery and aircraft became the blue print for
winning many of the much bigger battles to come.
But Hamel was also important for another reason. Attending a session of
the Allied Supreme War Council when news of the victory arrived, the
French Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau, decided to visit the
Australians instead of making his weekly call on a French division.
Gathering around him those who had fought in the battle, Clemenceau
choked with emotion as he spoke to them in English:
When the Australians came to France, the French people expected a
great deal from you because they had heard what you have accomplished
in the development of your own country. We knew that you would fight a
real fight, but we did not know that from the very beginning you would
astonish the whole continent. I shall go back tomorrow and say to my
countrymen: ‘I have seen the Australians. I have looked in their faces. I
know that these men will fight alongside of us again’.
Very warmly received at the time, those words have entered Australian
folklore. Clemenceau was referring not just to the battlefield
achievements of the Australians, considerable though they were. No, he
was also alluding to the bonds that the Australians had forged with the
French people.
In 1915, the Australians and French had both fought at Gallipoli but in
areas twenty kilometres apart. They hardly saw each other. After
Gallipoli, the Australians went to France, where practically none of them
had ever set foot before. It was a whole new world. The lush green
countryside was soothing to their eyes after the harsh, barren Gallipoli
landscape from whence they had come. But what impressed them most
was the genuine feeling in the welcome they received. For me, the words
of Sergeant Harry Preston summed it up:
We received ‘coffee, vino and fruit . . . from the warm hearted French
people, who made us feel that they and their beautiful country were worth
fighting for.
There was sadness, too. The French Army was holding fast at Verdun,
one of history’s most terrible battles. Its demand for men seemed
insatiable. Seeing that only women, children and old men were left in the
villages and farms in which they were billeted, the Australians did
everything they could to help them keep the farms and villages going.
Those Australians were extending the Anzac spirit, at the heart of which
is never letting your friends down. We are reminded of this spirit today.
In March 1918, the war hung in the balance when the enemy broke
through on the Somme. The hearts of the Australians were again touched
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by the plight of the French refugees, who were streaming westwards to
safety. ‘Fini retreat—beaucoup Australiens ici’, they called out to them.
It quickly became one of Australia’s great national statements. The
French shouted back, ‘Vive l’Australie!’ and hugged ‘Nos Australiens!’
Many returned to their villages.
Of all the things that I have read about those tumultuous weeks, one has
always stuck with me. It concerns an incident in which an Australian
soldier saw a mother and her children stacking the belongings from their
house in Villers-Bretonneux into a cart. They were about to join the
refugee throng. The mother was distraught—who wouldn’t have been.
The Australian had his own worries; he didn’t know whether he’d be
alive next day. But he put that aside. Going over to the woman, he simply
said to her, ‘You needn’t go, Ma. The Aussies are here. Best stay where
you are’, and helped carry her belongings back into the house.
I don’t know what happened to the Australian or to those he helped.
Maybe it’s as well that I don’t because this story might have had a sad
ending. But I do know this. In that instant, the woman and her children,
like those villagers whom the Australians had first met two years before,
were also embraced by the Anzac spirit. It is a noble and inspiring
thought.
It’s appropriate that I should have mentioned Villers-Bretonneux, for the
Australians saved it twice in April 1918. The second time was on Anzac
Day. For many years a sign has hung in the town school for all to see. It
reads, ‘N’oublions jamais l’Australie’, ‘Never forget Australia’. The
Australian National Memorial is just outside Villers-Bretonnuex. On its
walls are the names of the 10,982 Australians killed in France during the
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First World War but who have no known grave. About now in France,
Australians and French alike will be gathering at the Memorial for a dawn
service, just like ours at the War Memorial a few hours ago. We are both
honoured and touched that our French friends want to share fully in this
great day with us. It shows that they really mean it when they say,
‘N’oublions jamais l’Australie’.
When the Australians took over the right of the British line after the
Villers-Bretonneux battles, the left of the French line was next to them.
Australian digger and French poilu were soon swapping stories and, dare
I say it, sharing le vin in the International Post, the name given to the
junction of the two lines. And in the advance to victory after Hamel that
ended with the armistice, the Australian Corps liberated 116 French
towns and villages.
That was not the end of our association but the start of it. In the Second
World War, Australian airmen supported French soldiers fighting in Italy.
An Australian squadron
in England flew on the daring low-level attack on Amiens prison on 18
February 1944 that freed French Resistance prisoners about to be
executed. France and Australia both fought in the war to free Kuwait in
1991, after it had been invaded by Iraq. They are now fighting in
Afghanistan to give it a stable and secure future.
Our two countries also have a rich history as peacekeeping nations. In the
1990s they helped bring freedom to Cambodia after nearly twenty years
of civil war. They also brought humanitarian relief to Somalia and
Rwanda. Much closer to Australia, France contributed significantly to
INTERFET, which restored peace and security to what is now Timor
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Leste in 1999. Allow me please, to get personal here, and say how much
I, as the commander of INTERFET, valued France’s help.
And at this moment our troops are working together in the Middle East to
keep the peace between Israel and its neighbours. They are carrying on
the partnership that our soldiers started in France almost a century ago. It
embraced our two peoples then. It still does. Long may it continue to do
so.
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