Aboriginal Service in WW1

Protecting Country 

More than 400 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are known to have enlisted in the First World War. Some put this number as high as 800. 118 or just over 20% of these men saw service in the Australian Light Horse during the war. (1)

They joined for mostly the same reasons as non-indigenous soldiers; to seek adventure with their friends and earn money and independence. For many young men, the promise of 6 shillings a day and a trip overseas was too tempting and they expected to ‘be home for Christmas’. (1)

At the outbreak of the war, few Aboriginal people could vote, they were not counted in the federal census and most lived in poverty. Many did not have control of their own money or movement. Some could not visit their own families at Christmas time without the permission of the local ‘Protector of Aborigines’, often the local constable. They could not enter a public bar, marry non-Aboriginal partners or buy property. (1)

In the first few years of the war, Aboriginal soldiers had trouble enlisting and most were rejected as they were not ‘substantially of European descent’. As the war continued and the Army needed more recruits, restrictions were eased and in October 1917 a new Military order stated –

Half-castes may be enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force provided that the examining Medical Officers are satisfied that one of the parents is of European origin. (1)

Aboriginal soldiers fought in integrated units alongside their fellow non-indigenous Australians. They experienced the same hardships and terrors. Fighting in the First World War gave Aboriginal people some equality that they didn’t experience in Australia. They lived, ate, laughed and died with their fellow Diggers.

On the battlefield, everyone was equal. Aboriginal and white Australians fought side by side. But ay equality was stripped upon the return home. Attitudes are not changed. Aboriginal people were still subject to discrimination. They couldn’t go into a bar and have a beer with mates. Their kids couldn’t go into swimming pools etc. Aboriginal people could die for their country but It would be more than 20 years after the war before they could even vote. (Dot Peters, excerpt from digital story. Australian Centre for the Moving Image, 2010)

Five known Aboriginal servicemen are buried at Gallipoli. The number may be higher. Ethnicity was not recorded on enlistment papers so we may never know the true number. (3)

Many Aboriginal servicemen returned to the same discrimination and poor living conditions they had endured before enlisting. They were often denied the rights afforded other veterans and it was not until almost 50 years after the end of the war that Aboriginal people were granted full Australian citizenship. (1)

Returned soldiers could apply for land from the government to start farms. In many cases the land was resumed from Aboriginal people and divided between non-Aboriginal servicemen as part of the Soldier Settlement Scheme. Even though Aboriginal servicemen served in World War One at Gallipoli and on the Western Front, they were excluded from the scheme. Only one NSW Aboriginal soldier was successful in gaining a soldier settlement lot.

Almost half of all reserve land held by Aboriginal people in NSW had been sold by 1927 and most of the remaining lands had been leased to non-Aboriginal farmers. No compensation was paid for the loss of this land. These people who had lived independently for generations had little left. With no money to pay rent, evicted families built shelters on the fringes of towns. With a lack of decent housing and no access to services such as water and sewerage, many children were removed from their families because authorities felt they were ‘neglected’. (2)

One result of this treatment was that the service these men did for the nation helped provide momentum to the growing Aboriginal Rights Movement in the 1930s. They showed the rest of Australia that they, as a people were willing to serve their country for the better.

Today the bodies of those that fell in the battlefields of France and Belgium remain with their mates, thousands of miles away from their ancestral homes.

1933 a former private in the 15th Battalion drew attention to the service of Aboriginal men at Gallipoli when he said ‘I have stood shoulder to shoulder with half castes in Hell’ Pit (Hell’s Spit), on Quinn’s Post, and seen them die like the grandest of white men.’ (4)

‘Protecting Country’ is now the official slogan of the Indigenous recruitment campaign in the Australian Defence Force.

Sources: 

1. Department of Veterans’ Affairs, 2003, Indigenous Service – Investigating he wartime experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from the First World War to the present.

2. http://www.treatyrepublic.net/content/families-seek-recognition-aboriginal-soldiers

3. The Australian War Memorial

4. http://indigenoushistories.com/2013/02/24/aboriginal-soldiers-and-gallipoli/