Page 9 - Luce 2015

Australia R emembers ANZAC 1915-2015

Elizabeth Meredith (1951) has told me of her husband’s
wartime role in military intelligence; he was on the deck
of the USS Missouri as the Japanese signed the instrument
of surrender ending the Second World War. Former tutor
and Rhodes Scholar James Watson (2005) once told me of
parachuting among the first Australian soldiers to enter Timor
Leste, at a moment when it was not clear if the Indonesian
military would respond in all-out military assault to the peace
keeping operation.

Australia’s role in more recent conflicts in Iraq and
Afghanistan is contested, in the Dining Hall as in the wider As featured in previous editions, Colonel Dr Ross Bastiaan
community, with an understanding that it is politicians, not AM RFD (1971) has been recognised around the world for
soldiers, who make those decisions about when and where his interpretative plaques which provide historical context to
to fight in the national interest. As Australians continue to battlefields from Gallipoli to Sandakan, helping visitors seeking
serve both here and abroad, the Anzac connection with JCH to understand the major sites of Australian wartime service.
remains real. For but one example, Colonel Sue Mellotte
(2006) combined her role as College Vice-Principal and at Gallipoli. Alan and Rupert had no wives, no children, no
Acting Principal for part of 2007 with her leadership as further careers, no further influence, except in the memories
Commanding Officer of the Melbourne University Regiment. of the generation that survived them. War ended the promise,
Currently Director of the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the future, not just for the dead Anzacs – but also for
Sue (who was awarded the Conspicuous Service Cross for their families, who struggled to move forward, and sometimes
leadership of the Melbourne University Regiment in 2008) is never recovered.
another among JCH women who have given service to their
nation in uniform across many generations. There is, today, a gap in our national narrative, a silence within
families where fathers and brothers returned from the war
A final story reminds us that, as for Australia, so too our and never spoke of the horrors of their wartime experiences.
College is bound directly or indirectly to our wartime There is a silence within generations touched by war, in which
history. As mentioned elsewhere our oldest living alumna, mothers and daughters never spoke truly of their suffering and
Dr Margaret Henderson, was born only months after the their loss. While mostly removed from a frontline experience
ANZACs stormed Anzac Cove on 25 April 1915. Margaret is of Australia’s wars, as the women of Janet Clarke Hall did what
among a generation of Australians who confronted a post- they were allowed to do in the gendered constraints of their
war landscape in which one in every five men of the First time, the impact of war was brought fully home by its impact
AIF had been killed, while many others were permanently upon their families. As Australia reflects on the Anzac legend
damaged, both physically and psychologically, by the horrors and legacy, Janet Clarke Hall would do well to remember
of modern warfare. Her father won a scholarship to our them.
neighbour Trinity College. He had served in and survived the
Great War after joining up as a chaplain in the First AIF. Sadly, Dr Damian Powell
while Margaret’s father came home, her two uncles were not Principal
so lucky. They were Alan, and Rupert Henderson, both killed

From field stations in France and hospitals in Britain, JCH women served their nation in the Great War.
They set a standard for the generations to come.

J anet Clarke Hall 9