28 April 2023
Australian military history can be found in the green fields and stone churches of the United Kingdom. On Anzac day, ADF personnel serving in the UK visited the graves of soldiers who fought and died for Australia in the two world wars, laid to rest miles away from home.
The Commander of the Australian Contingent Operation Kudu, Major Samuel Hand, was one of the personnel who joined soldiers from the New Zealand Defence Force to pay his respects.
“I have been reflecting on the Australian servicemen and women who once trained here in Southern England to fight wars of freedom in Europe,” said Major Hand.
“It is a surreal realisation that, just over 100 years later, we have returned to the same region to train soldiers, once again, for a war in Europe.”
Having attended six different Anzac day services over two days, the Australian Army contingent felt they had observed rare pieces of Australian history.
One story lies in farmland near the village of Compton Chamberlayne, Wiltshire where Hurdcott camp once stood as a home for Australian soldiers for training and recovering from illness and wounds.
“Despite the unpleasant 17-week task of constructing a map of Australia on a hillside, the diggers posted in the camp came to look upon the map with fondness and longing for home,” the Australian Army padre presiding over the service said.
To this day, thanks to the Map of Australia Trust, you will still find the familiar outline of Australia originally created by the soldiers. Returning to this location over a hundred years later, Australian Army soldiers conducted an Anzac Day service.
At a similar camp in Fovant, the Australian Rising Sun was carved into the down by Australians, still proudly displayed on the hillside for all to see thanks to restoration from the Fovant Badge Society.
“Those shallow trenches of white chalk rubble still stand today - like the many war graves scattered across this land - as a memorial, not only to those who never made it home but as a perpetual reminder of our union with the British people, with whom we stand and work to this present day, in opposing unjust tyranny and defending freedom,” the padre said.
Villages across England once housed wounded Commonwealth soldiers, and their cemeteries became the final resting home for Australia's dead. Now, although miles away from Australia and New Zealand, these communities pause to commemorate Anzac Day each year.
One such service, hosted by the Royal British Legion, was held among Commonwealth graves at St Nicholas Church, Brockenhurst.
Veterans and government officials, families and servicemen and women from Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom came together to pay their respects.
Bringing British tradition to the service, the words of the Kohima Epitaph were spoken:
“When you go home tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow, we gave our today.”
