Black Diggers: challenging Anzac myths

One question comes to my mind .Could the white Anglos won their world wars without the black power of so many forgotten fighters from the Colonies.? 

I think not.  

Black Diggers: challenging Anzac myths

Hundreds of Indigenous servicemen fought for the British empire in the first world war – but are forgotten by many. A new play aims to challenge the cultural caricature of the Anzac digger

Paul Daley

A century after the first world war, Australia has come to eulogise its Anzac diggers for their supposedly unique capacity for mateship, resilience, egalitarianism and sacrifice.

In the broad Australian consciousness, they have also been defined as white and of European Christian extraction – the son or grandson of pioneers, or perhaps even a migrant from the old country. But like so much about the clichéd Australian Anzac, this entrenched cultural caricature overlooks the extraordinary experiences of minorities who fought as Australian sons of the empire – not least those of Aboriginal and Torres Strait lslanders.

Now a new play about their experiences is opening at the Sydney festival. Directed by Wesley Enoch and written by Tom Wright, Black Diggers draws on both traditional archival materials – letters and diaries – of Indigenous soldiers, and a rich vein of oral histories about the servicemen told through the generations.

More than 400 Indigenous Australians fought for the British empire in the first world war. Photograph: PR

According to the Australian War Memorial, more than 400 Indigenous Australians fought for the British empire in the first world war. This is probably a conservative estimate: thanks to curious Commonwealth rules about who was eligible to fight – Indigenous volunteers had to prove to recruiting officers that they were, despite appearances, of “substantially European descent” in order to be considered for enlistment – the actual number of Indigenous men who served in that war will remain the source of conjecture.

In late 1914 and 1915, when the first of some 420,000 Australians signed up – 39% of the males aged 18 to 44 from a total population of 4m – Indigenous applicants were often rejected. Then, after the tragic folly of Gallipoli in which 7,600 Australians were killed came the catastrophe of the European western front where 50,000 more perished. As domestic Australian support for the war waned, recruitment officers became colourblind.

Ironically for the Aborigines – their land stolen and people massacred after British colonisation in 1788, refused recognition as Australian citizens, voting rights or control of their earnings – it became possible to find emancipation of sorts by joining the 1st Australian Imperial Force and fighting under the British flag against the Germans and Turks.

As domestic Australian support for the war waned, recruitment officers became colourblind. Photograph: PR

Wesley Enoch, director of Black Diggers, says the stories of Indigenous servicemen in the 1st AIF have been mythologised within their own communities much like those of the other Anzacs.

“Some of these stories are now almost 100 years old but these soldiers have become lion-like heroes to their people, like golden-haired boys – so it will be very interesting to see how [Black Diggers] shifts and changes attitudes,” says Enoch, who is of Murri descent.

“The general myth-making in Australia around world war one and especially Gallipoli is enormous, and the fact that Aboriginal people were at Gallipoli at that time and that we are now writing that experience into the broader public narrative is a very big thing for us.”

Nine Indigenous actors will explore the experiences of those black servicemen, playing more than 100 characters, each a composite comprising the experiences of some of the men who actually served.

“On one level the experience of the black digger bears more similarity to his white comrade than a point of difference,” says writer Tom Wright.

“Nine-tenths of the things that they went through are things that all AIF members went through. The cultural shock and the literal shock of war was shared by all of them – but you could make the generalisation that for many of these black servicemen in the first world war it was the first time that the colour of their skin had actually started to fade away.”

Many Indigenous servicemen recorded, 40 or 50 years later, that the war made them suddenly no longer just black, explains Wright: “‘The same bloke back in my home town who would once cross the street or chuck me out of the pub, was shaking my hand and looking after me because they needed me’.”

That was really the big cultural realisation for Indigenous soldiers, he says. “Suddenly they felt needed and suddenly they felt like they had status within their own country.”

But that egalitarianism rarely extended post-war. Some Indigenous servicemen returned to discover that their ancestral lands had been carved up and given as settlement blocks to white ex-soldiers. Many, once they returned to the jurisdiction of the protectors, were denied their back pay and other entitlements – including access to re-settlement land.

There was no universal experience for the black digger. “You could be one of the blokes who came off a mission in Western Victoria and you would go home and suddenly discover that a lot of the land that your family has been farming since the arrival of the white man has been taken away to give to soldier settlements … or you could be a soldier who arrived back in northern NSW and you could suddenly find that you’re not welcome in the RSL even though you’ve got your medals on,” Wright says. “By the same token, at a town over the hill the RSL could be acting as an advocate for the Aboriginal community and making sure they get equal rights.”

'Nine-tenths of the things that they went through are things that all AIF members went through'. Photograph: PR

Black Diggers is a timely production for 2014, which marks the centenary of the first world war. Coming after significant scholarly research on the plight of Aborigines in the conflict, it gives audiences the opportunity to reflect on the way in which Australia has stereotyped its Anzac story in recent decades.

One of the characters is based on Aboriginal Douglas Grant, who was orphaned as a boy and adopted by Robert Grant, a Scottish taxidermist and anthropologist who worked for the Australian Museum, and raised with his other son Henry in Sydney.

Douglas Grant’s natural parents died either in a tribal battle or in a massacre committed by white pastoral settlers (recent evidence strongly suggests the latter) near the Bellenden Ker Ranges in Queensland when he was a boy. Grant was well educated, spoke – like his father and brother – with a Scottish accent, and worked before the war as a draughtsman.

He enlisted in the 34th Battalion in 1916 and was wounded and captured during the 1st battle of Bullecourt in April 1917. The Germans imprisoned him for the rest of the war in Berlin, where he was kept with other dark-skinned soldiers of the empire, from India and Africa.

Acting as a go-between for the Red Cross and other prisoners, Grant became such a curiosity to the German authorities that the sculptor Rudolph Markoeser carved his bust in ebony.

He was also something of a celebrity on his return to Australia, with his own radio show in Lithgow for a while, and often spoke publicly on a diverse range of subjects, including Shakespeare. But he didn’t cope with the transition back to civilian life, drinking heavily and living the later part of his life at the Callan Park mental asylum (where he also worked as a clerk) and the Salvation Army’s men’s quarters. He died in 1951.

“He was a fascinating human being, but when he returned to Australia, Douglas Grant really failed to find his place,” Enoch says. “You are left with the impression that he was very disappointed with what he thought was going to happen in his life and what actually eventuated.”

• Black Diggers plays at Sydney Opera House 17-26 January. Tickets from $62/56