Forgotten in the line of fire

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This was published 10 years ago

Forgotten in the line of fire

Aboriginal soldiers' stories are finally being told.

By Steve Dow

Australia's World War I story has been written often over a century: the deaths and casualties never equalled; more than 60,000 men killed and 156,000 wounded, gassed or taken prisoner.

Douglas Grant's tale is the spine of a whole chapter the nation forgot.

Serving: Private Douglas Grant, left, with Private Harry Avery and an unidentified British soldier.

Serving: Private Douglas Grant, left, with Private Harry Avery and an unidentified British soldier.Credit: Australian War Memorial P01692

Born to Aboriginal parents and raised by a Scottish taxidermist, Grant enlisted in the army and served with distinction: he was taken a prisoner of war by the Germans, learnt the language and became an interpreter for the Red Cross.

As many as 1000 Aboriginal Diggers served in World War I but the numbers are contentious, the director of a new stage show, The Black Diggers Project, Wesley Enoch says.

Studio portrait of 4259 Private George Combo, an Aboriginal serviceman from Mogil Mogil, near Collarenebri, NSW, who enlisted on 21 May 1916.

Studio portrait of 4259 Private George Combo, an Aboriginal serviceman from Mogil Mogil, near Collarenebri, NSW, who enlisted on 21 May 1916.Credit: Australian War Memorial. P00889.

This is because Aborigines, denied citizenship and unable to leave Australia without the government's approval, rarely declared their racial identity when signing up. The Defence Act 1909 prevented most of those who were not of "substantially European descent" from enlisting.

"Half-castes may be enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force provided that the examining medical officers are satisfied that one of the parents is of European origin," the act stipulated.

It is still undecided if a character named after, or based on, Grant will be used as a narrator in The Black Diggers Project, but Enoch says the show's creative team is "particularly excited" about Grant.

"There's something about his story, about the outsider who becomes the interpreter, which we think is a lovely spine for the show," says Enoch, who is preparing the production for a premiere at the Sydney Festival in January.

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Studio portrait of Trooper Horace Thomas Dalton, 11th Light Horse Regiment.

Studio portrait of Trooper Horace Thomas Dalton, 11th Light Horse Regiment.Credit: Australian War Memorial. P00889.

"We have a number of stories from real servicemen. We're finding we can't tell all of these stories, so we will have to create composite experiences.''

In January 1916, Grant, born about 1885 in the Bellenden Ker Range in Queensland, enlisted as a private in the 34th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force.

His parents had been killed, possibly in a tribal conflict, and in 1887 Robert Grant, then chief taxidermist at the Australian Museum, reportedly found the toddler in a bush gunyah (an Aboriginal meeting place) while on an expedition in Queensland.

Grant sent the boy to live with his parents in Lithgow, NSW and later adopted and raised him with his biological son, Henry, schooling him in Annandale. Douglas Grant grew up speaking English with the Scottish burr of his adoptive family.

He eventually died alone, down in La Perouse, a kind of heartbroken man.

He trained, and then worked as, a draughtsman at Mort's Dock & Engineering Company in Sydney for 10 years.

After his first enlistment, when Grant's unit was about to leave the country, a government official, citing the 1909 legislation, ordered Grant to stay behind, "much to his disgust and to that of his comrades", the Western Champion in Parkes reported, "for he was one of the most popular fellows in the company".

Grant enlisted again and in August 1916 left for France to the join the 13th Battalion. He was wounded and captured on April 11, 1917 in the first battle of Bullecourt. He was taken as a prisoner of war to a camp at Wittenberg and later at Wunsdorf, near Berlin.

Grant was given relative freedom in the camp and was repatriated to England in 1918. Back in Australia, he worked as a labourer in Lithgow and was active in returned servicemen's affairs. He returned to Sydney in the 1930s after the deaths of his foster parents and foster brother.

"We can't work out if he was a resident, or employee, or both, at Callan Park [a mental asylum]," Enoch says, "but he did lecture circuits and talked about his experiences, and had a radio program.''

Grant played the bagpipes, had a knowledge of Shakespeare and poetry, and was said to be proudly Australian, but he later felt rejection and turned to alcohol.

"He eventually died alone, down in La Perouse, [at Prince Henry Hospital in Little Bay] a kind of heartbroken man," Enoch says.

Part of the forgetting of Aboriginal servicemen may have had to do with the "national amnesia" about World War I, given the massive losses of life, he says.

"We erected the monuments to remember, but we wanted to forget everything else, and that perhaps included Aboriginal servicemen."

There were stories, says Enoch, that when Aboriginal men would enlist, their children would be taken away and put on a mission.

National interest in the place of returned Aboriginal servicemen and their camaraderie with white soldiers occured only as a result of their serving together in World War II, he says, leading directly to the 1967 constitutional referendum, which allowed the Federal Government the power to make law for indigenous people, previously held by the states, and requiring their inclusion in official population estimates.

"But there wasn't the same story after World War I," says Enoch. "There was some impediment after World War I that disallowed the acknowledgement of Aboriginal servicemen in a basic human rights way.

"That's why I find the story fascinating, because we have almost written out Aboriginal servicemen from the World War I history."

The full Sydney Festival program for 2014 will be launched on October 23. sydneyfestival.org.au

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