Serving their Country: A Short History of Aboriginal ... - Australian Army

HISTORYServing Their Country:A Short History of Aboriginal and Torres Strait IslanderService in the Australian ArmyThere were, of course, Aboriginal men who did manage to enlist; some passedas Italian or Maori (for whom ‘non-European’ did not matter). Others who knewthe local recruiters managed to circumvent the regulations. After the devastating23,000 casualties at Pozières and the failure of the first conscription referendum,changes in March 1917 allowed Aboriginal men with one white parent to enlist.Numbers of Aboriginal enlistments jumped, especially in Queensland and NewSouth Wales (although Western Australia continued to enforce the pre-March1917 discriminatory regulations). By the end of the war, an estimated 800 to 1000Aboriginal men had served. Historian Timothy Winegard summarises the statistics:‘Of these known [545] soldiers, 83 were killed, 123 wounded and another 17became prisoners of war. Including the POWs, the casualty rate is 41 per cent ascompared to 65 per cent across the entire AIF.’ 7Each Aboriginal soldier had his own story to tell, whether he worked breaking inhorses for the Australian Light Horse, fought in the trenches at the Somme or wascaptured in Palestine. One of the more high profile Aboriginal soldiers from theFirst World War whose story illustrates the way that Aboriginal and non-Indigenousservicemen forged bonds of brotherhood was Douglas Grant. Grant was anAboriginal man raised in a white family in Sydney. He enlisted in 1916 after hisadopted father pulled a few strings with the NSW Aborigines Protection Board.His enlistment received considerable press attention, with The West Australian reporting:Douglas has many accomplishments. He writes a splendid hand, draws well,recites Shakespeare with histrionic ability, plays the Scottish bagpipes,and can earn a very good living any time by following his profession – that ofa draughtsman. This brief history demonstrates what may be done with anaboriginal when taken early and trained. 8Douglas Grant visited Scotland and served on the Western Front before beingtaken prisoner in May 1917. The Germans managing the prisoner of war camprecognised Grant as intelligent and honest and placed him in charge of thedistribution of Red Cross parcels. A fellow prisoner from Esperance, Western Australia,later wrote fondly of Doug: ‘what he used to say to Fritz when they called him a“swatza Soldaten” you would not be allowed to print.’ 9 After the war Grant returnedto Australia, working in a paper factory then a small arms factory and eventuallyserving as a messenger and errand boy at the Callan Park Mental Asylum in Sydney.For three years he served as secretary of the Returned Soldiers’ and Sailors’Imperial League — now the Returned and Services League (RSL) — in Lithgow,where he used his position to fight discrimination. In one protest againstAustralian Army JournalCulture edition 2013, Volume X, Number 3 Page 14

HISTORYServing Their Country:A Short History of Aboriginal and Torres Strait IslanderService in the Australian Armysegregated sporting facilities, Grant wrote, ‘The colour line was never drawn in thetrenches.’ 10 Through the course of the 1930s Grant’s standard of living deterioratedas he faced discrimination in securing housing and employment. He died in 1951at the La Perouse Aboriginal settlement in Sydney.Grant was a high-profile Aboriginal veteran who maintained some friendshipswith the ex-service community. Yet even Grant’s relationships were few and farbetween, and consequently his advocacy and the support of his peers had littleimpact on the discriminatory policies and practices confronting Aboriginal people.Indeed, most First World War Aboriginal ex-servicemen received little public orprivate support on their return to Australia. They were denied access to soldiersettlement schemes, in some states the Native Welfare Departments quarantinedtheir wages and pensions, sometimes they were denied access to military funerals,and the treatment they and their families received at ANZAC Day services andin the local RSLs varied depending on the attitudes of the local community.Essentially, while in Europe and the Middle East the Aboriginal soldier was a valuedbrother, back in Australia he returned to an unequal life and was gradually forgottenby all but his kin and closest mates.Much of the First World War experience repeated itself at the outbreak ofthe Second World War, but ultimately the mass scale of that conflict meantthat Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander service personnel would have alarger presence and a wider impact on the culture of the Army. In 1940 theCommonwealth Government again barred enlistment of persons ‘not substantiallyof European origin or descent’ but, as in the First World War, there were someAboriginal men who managed to skirt the rules. Japan’s entry into the war andthe immediate threat to Australia led to the easing of enlistment restrictions.Essentially, because Australia needed all its available manpower, the race ofenlistees suddenly did not seem important. At least 3000 Aboriginal people and850 Torres Strait Islanders served in the Second World War, and again theirnumbers were highest in the Army. Indigenous Australians served in all theatresof the war, including Greece, North Africa and New Guinea. Indigenous soldierswere also among those captured at Singapore who became prisoners of war inChangi and on the Thai-Burma Railway. 11What really set the Second World War apart, however, was the strong participationof Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander soldiers defending the ‘Top End’. In May1941 the government approved the formation of the Torres Strait Light InfantryBattalion (TSLIB). The TSLIB was a group of approximately 440 regularly enlistedAustralian Army JournalCulture edition 2013, Volume X, Number 3 Page 15

HISTORYServing Their Country:A Short History of Aboriginal and Torres Strait IslanderService in the Australian ArmyTorres Strait Islander men whose job was to patrol the Torres Strait and to providemechanical and logistical support for ships passing through. This unit receivedlavish praise from superiors and visiting officers, yet its members received less paythan non-Indigenous men serving alongside them. Moreover, like the experience ofmany First World War Aboriginal men, part of their wages was quarantined by theQueensland Chief Protector and became part of what is now referred to as‘the stolen wages’. It was only in 1982 that surviving members of the TSLIBreceived back-pay — valued by then at over $7 million. 12Another all-Indigenous force was the Northern Territory Special Reconnaissance Unit(NTSRU), commissioned in mid-1941 and formed in February 1942. From February1942 to April 1943, anthropologist-turned serviceman Dr Donald Thomsonorganised and commanded a group of 51 Yolngu men in Arnhem Land,training them to use traditional bush tactics and weaponry to fight a guerrilla waragainst potential Japanese invaders. The group operated within a traditionalframework using spears rather than guns. They embarked on patrols of Arnhem Land,constructed outposts and were prepared to launch assaults on Japanese troopswho attempted to land. They received no payment except for basic trade goodssuch as fish hooks, wire and tobacco. The force disbanded in April 1943 whenthe course of the war reduced the threat of invasion, and other white units werecreated to patrol the sparsely defended north. It was not until 1992 that survivingmembers of the NTSRU and families of deceased veterans were awarded backpayfor their service. 13While the TSLIB and NTSRU were the only formal Indigenous units in the Top End,there were other Aboriginal men and women employed by the Army. Some workedin labour camps set up by the Army, moving ordnance, constructing shelters,preparing food and cleaning. Others who were resident at missions workedwith local Army or RAAF servicemen clearing and constructing runways, movingsupplies or serving as coastwatchers, rescuing downed Australian or American pilots.The North Australia Observer Unit (NAOU), a scouting unit formed across the TopEnd from Queensland to Western Australia, employed local Aboriginal men astrackers. For all the duties that local Indigenous men and women performed,they received little recognition or pay, primarily because they were not formallyenlisted in the Australian armed forces. 14The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander contributions to the Second World Warbrought even more cross-cultural exposure to individual white service personnel.Among the more high profile servicewomen was the poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal,formerly known as Kath Walker. Oodgeroo enlisted in the Australian Women’sAustralian Army JournalCulture edition 2013, Volume X, Number 3 Page 16

HISTORYServing Their Country:A Short History of Aboriginal and Torres Strait IslanderService in the Australian ArmyArmy Service (AWAS) shortly after the fall of Singapore in February 1942,where two of her brothers were taken prisoner. Oodgeroo considered militaryservice a liberating experience from a life of oppression. She comments,‘There was a job to be done, just to get it done, and all of a sudden the colourline disappeared, it just completely disappeared and it happened in so manydifferent ways too.’ 15 She made lifelong friendships; in one speech Oodgerooremarked, ‘[in] the army, I was accepted as one of them and none of the girls Itrained with cared whether I was black, blue or purple. For the first time in my lifeI felt equal to other human beings.’ 16 Being accepted as an equal was an eyeopeningexperience.Oodgeroo also claims that she gained an education through the Army. She wrote:‘I joined the AWAS principally because I did not accept Fascism as a way of life.It was also a good opportunity for an Aboriginal to further their education. In factthere were only two places where an Aboriginal could get an education, in jail orthe Army and I didn’t fancy jail! Everyone was very nice to me when I joined up.’ 17Oodgeroo worked first as a switchboard operator. She was adept at her job,promoted to the rank of corporal and made responsible for training newswitchboard operators. She was also sent to work in the AWAS pay office. 18Already the acquisition of these skills and the experience as a trainer was preparingOodgeroo for a life beyond simply working as a domestic servant. Apart fromon-the-job training, Oodgeroo also took advantage of the educational opportunitiesoffered to ex-servicewomen to acquire more practical work skills. She explains:You see, Aboriginals weren’t entitled to any extra concessions of learningand it was the Army who changed the whole thing around. They said if youjoin the Army, you are going to go into the ‘dimwits’ course and you canlearn … And as soon as I got out of the Army, of course, I went into the‘dimwits’ course and did a stenographers course, shorthand, typing andbook-keeping. But it was the only thing open for us, to improve our lot. Soa lot of people [mostly men] went because they wanted to improve their lotand hoped to God they’d be still alive when the war was over so they couldtake advantage of this extra thing. 19Oodgeroo’s story is a familiar one among many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanderveterans of the Second World War for whom the Army opened doors to newopportunities. Even so, there were thousands of others for whom the return tocivilian Australia also marked a return to discrimination.Australian Army JournalCulture edition 2013, Volume X, Number 3 Page 17

HISTORYServing Their Country:A Short History of Aboriginal and Torres Strait IslanderService in the Australian Armynon-Indigenous compatriots than in previous conflicts. Coolburra and Wilson’sfriendship was so strong that in 2001, when Coolburra was facing renal failure,Wilson donated his kidney. 23Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have continued to serve in theAustralian Army in the decades since the Vietnam War. They have been involved inpeacekeeping missions such as Somalia, Cambodia, East Timor and the SolomonIslands, and they have also served in Iraq and Afghanistan. From the 1980s,recognising the important contribution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanderpeople during the Second World War, the Australian Army once again turned to theirlocal knowledge to defend the Top End. In 1981 the Army established The NorthWest Mobile Force (NORFORCE), a Reserve unit based in the Northern Territory.More than 60% of NORFORCE’s membership is Aboriginal, its members primarilydrawn from remote communities across northern Australia. Similar units formedin the 1980s were the Pilbara Regiment and the 51st Battalion, The Far NorthQueensland Regiment. These units conduct surveillance operations and are alsotrained to defend the Top End in the event of invasion. They have built significantpartnerships with remote Indigenous communities and represent the new directionthat Army has taken since the 1980s, actively promoting a role for Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islander soldiers. 24Of course there have been some racial tensions within the armed forces.There are ex-servicemen and women who report instances of being taunted orbullied by either peers or superior officers because of their race. Some incidentshave been reported in the media, including photographs of soldiers dressedas members of the Ku Klux Klan published in 2004. Reports of racism in theArmy are more common among ex-servicemen and women who served innon-combat roles, suggesting that the life-or-death nature of war is a significantcontributing factor to racial harmony. It was not until the early 1990s that the ADF,in response to complaints from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander servicepersonnel, formally adopted policies to deal with racial vilification. Since the 2000sthe ADF has actively committed itself to Reconciliation in a variety of ways.The Department of Defence launched its first Reconciliation Action Plan in 2007;its 2010–14 plan pledges that ‘Defence will be genuinely committed to abroadened membership base and actively involved in realising strategies thatencourage and foster Indigenous participation and potential.’ 25 In 2008 theDepartment of Defence established a Defence Directorate of Indigenous Affairs aspart of its Indigenous Employment Strategy. The Directorate’s job is to work withIndigenous communities and to provide advice on Defence Indigenous personnelAustralian Army JournalCulture edition 2013, Volume X, Number 3 Page 19

HISTORYServing Their Country:A Short History of Aboriginal and Torres Strait IslanderService in the Australian Armyand policy matters. The Indigenous Employment Strategy also promises that‘each Commanding Officer has the responsibility to ensure that his/her personnelhave access to an environment that is genuinely committed to diversity in theworkplace and accepts the differences that set each person apart from the next.’ 26The long history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participation in the Armyhas benefited the Indigenous service personnel themselves, the Australian Armyand indeed all of Australia. In early conflicts the Army provided a glimpse ofequality; after both the First and Second World Wars Indigenous veterans wereat the forefront of the fight for Indigenous civil rights. As Aboriginal and TorresStrait Islander men and women continued to serve, they forged friendships withnon-Indigenous personnel. Interpersonal relations such as these broke downstereotypes and turned non-Indigenous service personnel into allies in the fight forIndigenous rights. Until recently, the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islandersoldiers have been overlooked. As Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ex-servicepersonnel have fought for recognition, the Department of Defence, Departmentof Veterans’ Affairs, Australian War Memorial and historians have all come toappreciate the significant role Indigenous Australians have played in the ADF,and likewise the significant status of military service within Aboriginal and TorresStrait Islander communities. Diversity in the Australian Army — and the place ofAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander personnel in that diversity — has not beenwithout its challenges, but permeating the stories of Indigenous ex-servicemen andwomen is a sense of pride in their service defending kin and country.Australian Army JournalCulture edition 2013, Volume X, Number 3 Page 20

HISTORYServing Their Country:A Short History of Aboriginal and Torres Strait IslanderService in the Australian ArmyTHE AUTHORDr Noah Riseman, recipient of the 2009 C.E.W. Bean Prize in Military History,completed his PhD at the University of Melbourne in 2008. His thesis presenteda comparative analysis of Yolngu, Papua New Guineans and the Navajo CodeTalkers in the Second World War and was revised and published in 2012 by theUniversity of Nebraska Press as Defending Whose Country? Indigenous Soldiersin the Pacific War. Dr Riseman is currently a Senior Lecturer in History at theAustralian Catholic University in Melbourne. He is a Chief Investigator on twoAustralian Research Council projects examining the history of Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islander military service, with a particular focus on the post-SecondWorld War era. Any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander current or ex-servicepersonnel who are interested in participating in these projects are encouraged tocontact Noah at Noah.Riseman@acu.edu.au.ENDNOTES1 David Cook, interview with Noah Riseman, 20 January 2010, Raymond Terrace, NSW; NoahRiseman, ‘The Stolen Veteran: Institutionalisation, Military Service and the Stolen Generations,’Aboriginal History 35, 2011, pp. 57–77.2 Gary Oakley, interview with Stan Grant, Awaken, National Indigenous Television, 12 April 2013.3 Department of Veterans’ Affairs, ‘Indigenous Commemorative Events,’ online, available from:http://www.dva.gov.au/BENEFITSANDSERVICES/IND/Pages/ice.aspx (accessed 10 July 2013).4 Hugh Smith, ‘Minorities and the Australian Army: Overlooked and Underrepresented?’ in ACentury of Service: 100 Years of the Australian Army, proceedings of the 2001 Chief of Army’sMilitary History Conference, Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey (eds), Army History Unit, Canberra,2001; Anthony Bergin, Robert Hall, Roger Jones and Ian McAllister, The Ethnic Composition ofthe Australian Defence Force: Management, Attitudes & Strategies, Australian Defence StudiesCentre Working Paper No. 11, University College, University of New South Wales, AustralianDefence Force Academy, Canberra, 1993.5 Patrick Mitchell, ‘Hamilton historian proves Aboriginal soldier served in Boer War,’ ABC Ballarat,online, available from: http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2012/11/12/3630724.htm (accessed31 March 2013).6 ‘Claims 50 Aboriginal trackers left behind during the Boer War,’ PM with Michael Colvin,ABC Radio, 31 May 2010, online, available from: http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2010/s2914322.htm (accessed 23 August 2012); Stefan Ambruster, ‘Hunt continues for AboriginalBoer trackers’, SBS World News Radio Australia, 28 May 2012, online, available from:http://www.sbs.com.au/podcasts/Podcasts/radionews/episode/217171/Hunt-continues-for-Aboriginal-Boer-War-trackers (accessed 23 August 2012).7 Timothy C. Winegard, Indigenous Peoples of the British Dominions and the First World War,Cambridge University Press, UK, 2012, p. 230.Australian Army JournalCulture edition 2013, Volume X, Number 3 Page 21