'THEY HAD NO CHOICE'
The 2017 Connecting Spirits Community Tour introduced a number of new sites and areas of focus one including the acknowledgement of the role of animals in war over the years. Our youngest member Charlotte Treloar who is an accomplished horse rider, did a brilliant effort with her research into the part played by many different animals in W.W.1 including two very famous Australian horses. As part of her moving and beautifully presented commemoration to the horses of war, she read the poem by 'Banjo' Paterson called 'The Last Parade'. As she read A.B Paterson's words in front of the Hyde Park memorial to all animals of war, all of us added another layer to our knowledge of the Great War. Thank you to the youngest member of our group Charlotte Treloar.
THE LAST PARADE by A.B (Banjo) Paterson
With never a sound of trumpet,
With never a flag displayed,
The last of the old campaigners
Lined up for the last parade.
Weary they were and battered
Shoeless and knocked about:
From under their ragged forelocks
Their hungry eyes looked out.
And they watched as the old commander
Read out to the cheering men
The Nation's thanks, and the orders
To carry them home again.
And the last of the old campaigners,
Sinewy, lean and spare-
He spoke for his hungry comrades;
'Have we not done our share?'
'Starving and tired and thirsty
We limped on the blazing plain;
And after a long night's picket
You saddled us up again.
'We froze on the wind-swept kopjies
When the frost lay snowy-white
Never a halt in the daytime,
Never a rest at night!
'We knew when the rifles rattled
From the hillside bare and brown,
And over our weary shoulders
We felt warm blood run down.
'As we turned for the stretching gallop,
Crushed to the earth with weight;
But we carried our riders through it-
Sometimes, perhaps, too late.
'Steel! We were steel to stand it-
We that have lasted through,
We that are old campaigners
Pitiful, poor and few.
'Over the sea you brought us,
Over the the leagues of foam:
Now we have served you fairly
Will you not take us home?
'Home to the Hunter River,
To the flats where the lucerne grows;
Home to the Murrumbidgee
Runs white with the melted snows.
'This is a small thing surely!
Will you not give command
That the last of the old campaigners
Go back to their native land?'
They looked at the grim commander,
But never a sign he made.
'Dismiss!' and the old campaigners
Moved off from their last parade.
Of the 100,000+ horses that left Australian shores, only one was brought home 'Sandy' : the horse of Major General Sr William Bridges. There has been a common mythology that all the horses left behind were shot. This is not accurate as their fate was quite varied. Many were sold on to the locals and the British Army however those that were deemed to sick and unfit were destroyed. Despite this the end result for these loyal and hard working animals of war must have created many layers of grief for their military masters.
And as the memorial in Hyde Park in London so poignantly states:
THEY HAD NO CHOICE...
