Each year on the 11th of November at 11 o’clock many Australians stop and observe a minute’s silence to remember those soldiers who served and died in the line of duty. Observed since the end of World War I, while many know the name Gallipoli or the Western Front perhaps only some know where they are or what happened on these battlefields, or why Australian soldiers were there. We say Lest We Forget without really knowing.

Perhaps it is enough to know it was war, more than a hundred years ago, not very glorious with new weaponry that could mow down 19,240 men in one day. The long list of Yass and District names on the tablets in the vestibule of the Memorial Hall seldom gets a glance.

Yet of the 517 names on the World War 1 tablet 99 died and probably at least twice as many came home injured and scarred in every way. Those young Yass men who survived and returned are long dead, and those who died in this bloody war, are just names except to the families that still have a photo of a young man in uniform on a shelf somewhere that did or would once have become a great grandfather to them.

Can we remember the old young faces of the returning men, the names, the families without husbands and fathers, the courage of a generation of young men from the Yass district, who went to fight not really to protect their own country, but for Britain the mother country and what she stood for?

In 2009, the Yass and District Historical Society put together a photo gallery from their extensive collection of over 400 images of men and women of the Yass district who enlisted during the Great War. It was based on photographs taken by local photographer Alfred Shearsby and others. This tribute to local men and women can be found online here.

Someone who was there and wrote vividly about his experience was Siegfried Sassoon, an English soldier assigned to the trenches of the Western Front in France and a poet.

In April 1917 he was wounded and returned home. He survived the war, unlike many others.

It became known as the Great War, but it wasn’t really great; it was also, hopefully, called the War to end all Wars, but alas it wasn’t. Now it’s called World War I because just twenty years later in 1939 World War II broke out and it all had to be done again.

Despite being decorated twice for his near suicidal exploits, Sassoon would have us remember the gut-chilling fear behind the courage. He writes with great bitterness against the glorification of the horrors of war:

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go.

It is a strident voice from the past but he knew. When we pause to reflect and remember, it is important to know what war really is and to respect and remember the sacrifice of those who went without knowing at all.

By Judith Davidson

Photo: Yass Soldiers World War I (YDHS Archive Collection)

Back: Abe Smith, Maurice Bush, Darcy Thompson, Patrick McGrath, TJ Lines, Lance Hogg.

Front: (name unknown) Fred Grocott, Frank Ledger, Cecil Dyball, Jack Pennay.