Commando News Magazine edition 8 2021

John Leopold Howard had taught English, French
and German at St Petersburg University for 20 years.
He fell out with the Soviets after seeing several people
shot dead by the Red Guard and fled to London with
his wife in 1920. He came to Perth in 1927 and lectured
at the University but lost that job when the Depression
hit. Drifting to Melbourne, he pawned all his
belongings and now worked for 25 shillings a week
sustenance. Too poor to afford the tram fare, every day
he walked from North Melbourne to the Shrine in hope
of work. This was a fall from grace typical of the
Depression: a cultured gent from a wealthy family
who’d once ‘supped with Russian nobility’, seen an
empire fall and the terror of revolution.
“Unemployable, a penniless old
man. ‘I am a professor,’ he says, ‘a
professor with a shovel.’ He shrugs his
shoulders. ‘It all seems so stupid…’”
The Herald, 14 December 1933
One gang of relief workers struck it lucky in May
when someone’s pick hit a solid gold Albert chain in
the dirt. They dug up a small fortune in gold jewellery:
a watch for the chain, 25 brooches and pendants, three
silver thimbles. it was thought the cache was somehow
connected to staff at Government House, 50 yards
away. The gang disbanded when the work dried up
and apparently never presented their find to police—
perhaps making them the best-paid of the Shrine relief
workers.
Lifting up the sculptures for the Tympana in June
signalled the end of construction works and in
November the Shrine was duly dedicated in the Royal
presence. The vaunted £250,000 cost of the project
did not include £60,000 paid in sustenance to the
Shrine’s relief workers. Some were still at work on the
landscaping in 1935.
Last July at
the end of a
Shrine guided
tour, Catherine
Smith came for -
ward to tell me
that her grand -
father was one of
the men who had
built the Shrine.
Leo Thomas
Nolan, a 31-yearold
builder from
Malvern, built
the steps. ‘it’s
some thing we
have always been
Leo Nolan and family Leo worked as a
foreman at the Shrine during the 1920s
Image courtesy of the Nolan family
very proud of.’
Leo’s daughter
(Catherine’s
mother) Gwen recalled her dad was a foreman whose
job was to oversee the quality of workmanship on the
stairs. Anyone who visits or works here knows that the
Shrine has a lot of very beautiful stairs. Leo Nolan joins
the very select band of Shrine construction workers
who we know by name. For the rest, the building itself
is their testa ment. Before it was completed, David
Vaughan spoke of the ‘justifiable pride’ of the workers:
Shrine construction site late 1932
SLV (H91.160/396)
“We realised that the men who built
such a memorial would leave behind
them a monument to themselves as
well as to their fighting countrymen…
a structure that will tell the story of part
of this generation till the world ends.”
Peter Luby is a writer and Visitor Experience Officer
at the Shrine of Remembrance.
COMMANDO ~ The Magazine of the Australian Commando Association ~ Edition 8 I 2021 41