Australia and WWI: proportion or propaganda

Mateship was not unique to the Australian army. The German, British and French armies all had strong traditions of mateship fostered and exploited by the military hierarchy as a morale boosting and motivational tool to achieve difficult outcomes.

Bean, as part of his mission, swept post traumatic stress under the carpet, yet most of the troops who returned from overseas service suffered from it. Bean knew but it did not fit the stereotype of the Digger he had created. In this he was aided by the Repatriation Department who sought to limit the number and type of war service claims.

Bill Gammage in his book, 'The broken Years', says that in 1939 there were 49,157 WWI veterans still in hospital.

No nation was ever built as a result of war. Nations are built as a result of individual endeavour combining into collective enterprise overseen and guided by good governance of a type we have not seen in Australia for some time.

WWI gives the lie to Christianity as a civilising influence. For those at the front forced to endure days of high explosive shell fire - to the point that they cried with terror, went temporarily or permanently mad, defecated and urinated involuntarily and then crawled out of trenches to face machine gun fire of between 500-700 rounds per minute - it could be said that they were in Dante's Inferno. Christianity failed to prevent the Armageddon of WWI and some might argue that it contributed to its onset.

The story of war, particularly the First World War should be told as it was and not as part of a propaganda exercise to get the Australian public to accept, yet again, the deployment of Australian forces to war on the sole discretion and authority of a Prime Minister who does not have the courage to send Australians overseas to fight Ebola in case they return with the disease and threaten his comfort zone.