For Anzac Day 2013

On the evening of Thursday 22 November 1918 Private Marcus Miller arrived in Horsham by train from Melbourne. He was returning home after having seen 1,114 days of active service in the Australian Imperial Force.

According to a report in the Horsham Times the following week, he was welcomed officially by the Mayor, Councillor Knight, and he “looked fairly well in health, despite the fact that when 14 days out from England he contracted Spanish influenza. He was very ill, but is now thoroughly recovered. His right foot is still paralyzed, and he walks with the aid of a stick.”

Marcus was my great uncle – my paternal grandfather’s younger brother. He was born at Horsham, Victoria in 1896 and was the son of James and Margaret Miller.

Marcus Miller (standing left) and comrades

He enlisted in the 22 Infantry Battalion in 1915, which was raised that year as part of the First AIF for service during World War 1. This battalion, which was aligned with the 6^th Brigade 2^nd Division, fought during the Gallipoli campaign and on the Western Front before being disbanded in 1919. The battalion was first formed at Broadmeadows Camp on the 26 March 1915 and saw its first action in September 1915 on the Gallipoli Peninsula.

After completing his training, Marcus Miller was amongst a large group of reinforcements that embarked from Melbourne on 27 September 1915 on board the HMAT Honorata. I am not yet sure whether Marcus actually made it to Gallipoli because, according to the war records, the battalion was withdrawn to Egypt from Gallipoli in December 1915 “and brought back to strength with reinforcements.”

In March 1916, the battalion embarked for France and the Western Front. Again according to the official records,

“The battalion’s first major action was at Pozières, part of the massive British offensive on the Somme. In September/October they were moved to the Ypres sector then back to the Somme for the winter. The battalion spent most of 1917 bogged in bloody trench warfare from Bullecourt to Broodseinde in Flanders. In 1918 the battalion returned to the Somme valley. After helping to stop the German spring offensive in March and April, the 6th Brigade participated in the period of peaceful penetration of the enemy lines.  In the last days of August and September the battalion helped capture Mont St Quentin. The 22nd Battalion took part in the last action fought by the AIF on the Western Front, the battle of Montbrehain, in October 1918.”

Meanwhile back at home a report in the Horsham Times of 7 December 1915 referred to the unveiling by Mr Thomas Young JP at the Horsham Presbyterian Church on the previous Sunday of an honour roll containing the names of 83 soldiers, including Private Marcus Miller, from Horsham and district congregations “who have fought in or are preparing to fight for the Empire”.

The Horsham Times said the church was “decorated with flags and other patriotic emblems” and that the Reverend Thomas Gray “preached a powerful recruiting sermon”. Mr Young, in unveiling the honour roll, spoke of the “gallantry of the soldiers who had gone forth to the call of duty” and stressed the war was a “righteous one”.  Directing his sermon at those men yet to enlist, the preacher said  “delays were dangerous to the cause and dangerous also to the souls of those who did not respond to the call when they were able to respond”.

One can only imagine the horrors that these men, like my great uncle, faced on the battlefields. There was nothing “righteous” about the conflict in which they were engaged. From my vantage point this was a senseless war.

To quote historian Samuel Lynn Hynes in his 1991 book, A War Imagined: the First World War and English Culture.

“A generation of innocent young men, their heads full of high abstractions like Honour, Glory and England, went off to war to make the world safe for democracy. They were slaughtered in stupid battles planned by stupid generals. Those who survived were shocked, disillusioned and embittered by their war experiences, and saw that their real enemies were not the Germans, but the old men at home who had lied to them.”

Nevertheless there was nobility in the incredible bravery and sacrifices of the men sent to fight these battles and that is what we should remember and commemorate on ANZAC Day.

I do not know if my great uncle, Marcus Miller, was “shocked, disillusioned or embittered” by his experience of war. He was one of the lucky ones who survived and returned home, albeit injured, to his family and loved ones.  He married, had children and settled in Ararat, Victoria. Tragically he died in 1930 at the age of 34 as a result of an accident.