Jocko Willink: 'Take ownership, take extreme ownership', TEDx Nevada - 2017

27 April 2017, University of Nevada, Nevada USA

War Is a nightmare. War is awful. It is indifferent, and devastating and evil. War is hell, But war is also an incredible teacher. A brutal teacher. And it teaches you lessons that you will not forget. In war you are forced to see humanity at its absolute worst, and you are also blessed to see humanity in its most glorious moments. War teaches you about sorrow and loss and pain, and it teaches you about the preciousness and the fragility of human life. And in that fragility, war teaches you about death. But war also teaches you about brotherhood, and honour, and humility and leadership. And unfortunately war teaches you the most when things go wrong. And for me, one of the most impactful lessons that I learned from war was in the spring of 2006 In the city of Ramadi Iraq, which at the time was the epicentre of the insurgency. Where brutal and determined terrorists ruled the streets, with torture, and rape, and murder. And it was in one neighbourhood of that city, during an operation that I was in charge of when all hell broke loose, We had had multiple units out on the battlefield, fighting the enemy. We had friendly Iraqi soldiers. We had US Army soldiers and US Marines along with small elements of my Seal team.

And then the fog of war rolled in, with its confusion and chaos and mayhem, and with its gunfire and enemy attacks and screaming men and blood and death. And in that fog of war, through a series of mistakes and human error and poor judgement and Murphy's law and just plain bad luck, a horrendous fire fight broke out. But this fire fight, it wasn't between us and the enemy. This fire fight, tragically was between us and us. Friendly forces against friendly forces, fratricide, the mortal sin of combat and the most horrific part of war. And when it was over and the fog of war lifted, one friendly Iraqi soldier was dead, two more were wounded, one of my men was wounded and the rest of my Seals were badly shaken . And it was only through a miracle that no one else was killed. And it was reported up the chain of command what had happened. That we had fought and wounded and killed each other. And when we got back to base things didn't get much better. There was a message waiting for me from my commanding officer. And it said, 'shut down all operations'. It said that the commanding officer, the master chief and the investigating officer were inbound to my location.

And they told me to prepare a debrief to explain exactly what had happened on the operation, and what had gone wrong. Now, I knew what this meant. It meant that somebody had to pay. It meant that somebody had to be held accountable. It meant that somebody had to get fired for what had happened. So I began to prepare my debrief, and in it I detailed every mistake that was made and who made it. And I pointed out every failure in the planning and the preparation and the execution in the operation. And I pointed out who was responsible for that failure. There was plenty of blame to go around. There were so many people that I could incriminate with guilt, but something wasn't right. For some reason, I just couldn't put my finger on who was at fault and who specifically I should blame for what had happened. And I sat and I went over it again and again, and I struggled for an answer. And then when I was about 10 minutes from starting the debrief, that answer came and it hit me like a slap in the face. And I realised that there was only one person to blame for the confusion, only one person to blame for the wounded men and only one person to blame for the dead Iraqi soldier. And I knew exactly who that person was.

And with that knowledge, I walked into the debriefing room with my commanding officer and the master chief and the investigating officer were sitting there waiting for me along with the rest of my men, including my Seal that had been wounded, who was sitting in the back of the room with his head and his face all bandaged up. And I stood up before them and I asked them one simple question, 'Whose fault was this?' One of my Seals raised his hand. And he said, 'it was my fault. I didn't keep control of the Iraqi soldiers I was with. And they left their designated sector and that was the root of all these problems'. And I said, no, it wasn't your fault. And then another Seal raised his hand and said, 'it was my fault. I didn't pass our location over the radio fast enough. So no one knew what building we were in. And that's what caused all this confusion. It was my fault.' And I said, 'no, it wasn't your fault either'. And then another Seal raised his hand. And he said, 'Boss, this was my fault. I didn't properly identify my target. And I shot and killed that friendly Iraqi soldier. This was my fault.' And I said, 'no, this wasn't your fault either. And it wasn't yours or yours or yours. I said, as I pointed to the rest of the seals in the room. '

And then I told them that there was only one person at fault for what had happened. There was only one person to blame. And that person was me. I am the commander. I am the senior man on the battlefield and I am responsible for everything that happens. Everything. And then I went on to explain to them some new tactics, techniques, and procedures that we were going to implement to ensure that this kind of travesty never happened again. And I will tell you something, it hurt, It hurt my ego. It hurt my pride to take the blame. But I also knew I knew that to maintain my integrity as a leader and as a man, I had to take responsibility. And in order to do that, I had to control my ego so that my ego did not control me. And you know what? I didn't get fired. In fact, my commanding officer, who had expected excuses and finger pointing, when I took responsibility, when I took ownership, he now trusted me even more.

And my men, they didn't lose respect for me. Instead, they realised that I would never shirk responsibility and I would never pass that heavy burden of command down the chain and onto them. And you know what? They had the same attitude. Unlike a team where no one takes ownership of the problems and therefore the problems never get solved, with us, everyone took ownership of their mistakes. Everyone took ownership of the problems. And when in a team takes ownership of its problems, the problems get solved. And that is true on the battlefield. It is true in business and it is true in life.

So I say, take ownership, take extreme ownership. Don't make excuses, don't blame any other person or any other thing, Get control of your ego. Don't hide your delicate pride from the truth. Take ownership of everything in your world, the good and the bad, Take ownership of your mistakes. Take ownership of your shortfalls, take ownership of your problems, and then take ownership of the solutions that will get those problems solved. Take ownership of your mission. Take ownership of your job, of your team, of your future and take ownership of your life

And lead. Lead, Lead yourself and your team and the people in your life. Lead them all.

To victory.

Thank you.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljqra3BcqW...

Frank-Walter Steinmeier: 'If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere', 75th Anniversary of end of WW2 - 2020

8 May 2020, Berlin, Germany

\Seventy-five years ago today, the Second World War came to an end in Europe.

8 May 1945 marked the end of the Nazi reign of tyranny, the end of night-time bombing raids and death marches, the end of unprecedented German crimes and the end of the Shoah, that betrayal of all civilised values. Here in Berlin, where the war of annihilation was conceived and from where it was unleashed, and whither it returned with the full force of destruction – we had planned to commemorate this day jointly with others.

We had planned to commemorate the day together with representatives of the allies from East and West who made huge sacrifices to liberate this continent. Together with our partners from every corner of Europe that suffered under German occupation, and yet were willing to seek reconciliation. Together with the survivors of German crimes and the descendants of those who perished, so many of whom reached out to us in reconciliation. Together with everyone around the world who gave this country the chance of a fresh start.

We had planned to remember, too, with the older generation in Germany who experienced that period themselves. Who as children knew hunger and violence, who were driven from their homes. After the war, it was they who rebuilt this country, both in the East and in the West.

And we had planned to commemorate this day with the younger people of today, who, three generations later, ask what the past can teach them now. To them I say, ""It is you who are the key! It is you who must carry the lessons of this cruel war into the future!"" For this reason we had invited thousands of young people from around the world to Berlin today, young people whose grandparents were enemies, but who themselves have become friends.

That is how we had planned to mark this 8 May together. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has compelled us to commemorate this day alone – separated from those who mean so much to us, and to whom we are so grateful.

Perhaps this state of being alone will return us in our minds to 8 May 1945. On that date the Germans really were alone. Germany had suffered military defeat, political and economic ruin, and moral collapse. We had made enemies of the entire world.

Today, 75 years later, we are forced to commemorate alone, but we are not alone! That is today’s good news. We live in a vigorous and well-established democracy, in a country that has been reunified for 30 years, at the heart of a peaceful and united Europe. We are a trusted member of the international community and reap the fruits of cooperation and partnership around the world. We Germans can definitely now say that the day of liberation is a day of thanksgiving!

It has taken three generations for us to admit it wholeheartedly:

8 May 1945 was indeed a day of liberation. But at the time the vast majority of Germans did not perceive it as such.

The liberation of 1945 was imposed from outside. It had to come from outside – this country had descended too far into the evil, the guilt, it had brought upon itself. Likewise the economic reconstruction and democratic renewal in the western part of Germany were only made possible by the generosity, far-sightedness and readiness for reconciliation of its former foes.

But we, too, played a part in the liberation. In our internal liberation. This did not take place on 8 May 1945, on a single day. Rather it was a long and painful process which involved facing up to the past, investigating what people knew and what they had colluded in. Raising painful questions within families and between the generations. Fighting to stop silence and denial from prevailing.

It took decades – decades in which many Germans of my generation gradually learned to find their peace with this country. Decades in which our neighbours came to trust us again, decades that allowed a cautious resumption of relations, from ever closer union within the European Communities to the treaties concluded in the course of West Germany’s Ostpolitik.

And it was in these decades that the people of Eastern Europe’s courage and desire for freedom grew until they could no longer be kept behind walls – leading to that gladdest moment of liberation: Germany’s peaceful revolution and reunification. These decades of struggling with our history were decades that allowed democracy to mature in Germany.

The struggle continues to this day. Remembrance never ends. There can be no deliverance from our past. For without remembrance we lose our future.

It is only because we Germans look our past in the face and because we accept our historic responsibility that the peoples of the world have come to trust our country once more.

And this is why we, too, can have confidence in this Germany. This is the core of an enlightened, democratic spirit of patriotism. No German patriotism can come without its cracks. Without a clear awareness of light and darkness, joy and sorrow, gratitude and shame.

Rabbi Nachman once wrote: ""No heart is as whole as a broken heart."" Germany’s past is a fractured past – with responsibility for the murdering of millions and the suffering of millions. That breaks our hearts. And that is why I say that this country can only be loved with a broken heart.

Anybody who cannot bear this, who demands that a line be drawn under our past, is not only denying the catastrophe that was the war and the Nazi dictatorship. They are also devaluing all the good that has since been achieved and denying the very essence of our democracy.

""Human dignity shall be inviolable."" This first sentence of our constitution is and remains a public reminder of what happened in Auschwitz, of what happened in the war and during the dictatorship. It is not remembrance that is a burden – it is non-remembrance that becomes a burden.

It is not professing responsibility that is shameful – it is denial that is shameful!

But what does our historic responsibility mean today – three-quarters of a century after the fact? The gratitude we feel today must not make us complacent. We must never forget that remembrance is a challenge and a duty.

""Never again,"" we vowed after the war. But for us Germans in particular, this ""never again"" means ""never again alone"". This sentence is truer in Europe than anywhere else. We must keep Europe together. We must think, feel and act as Europeans. If we do not hold Europe together, also during and after this pandemic, then we will have shown ourselves not to be worthy of 8 May. If Europe fails, the ""never again"" also fails.

The international community learned from this ""never again"". After 1945, it forged a new foundation out of all it had learnt from this catastrophe, it built human rights and international law, rules to preserve peace and cooperation.

Our country, from which evil once emanated, has over the years changed from being a threat to the international order to being its champion. And so we must not allow this peaceful order to disintegrate before our eyes. We must not allow ourselves to be estranged from those who established it. We want more cooperation around the world, not less – also when it comes to fighting the pandemic.

""8 May was a day of liberation."" In my opinion, these famous words of Richard von Weizsäcker’s have to be reinterpreted today. When they were spoken, they constituted a milestone in our efforts to come to terms with our past. But today they must point to our future. For liberation is never complete, and it is not something that we can just experience passively. It challenges us actively, every day anew.

In 1945 we were liberated. Today, we must liberate ourselves.

From the temptations of a new brand of nationalism. From a fascination with authoritarianism. From distrust, isolationism and hostility between nations. From hatred and hate speech, from xenophobia and contempt for democracy – for they are but the old evil in a new guise. On this 8 May, we commemorate the victims of Hanau, of Halle and Kassel. They have not been forgotten in the midst of COVID-19.

""If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere."" These words were spoken by Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin on Holocaust Remembrance Day in the German Bundestag earlier this year. If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere. But today there is nobody to liberate us from these dangers. We have to liberate ourselves. We were liberated – freed to be responsible for our own actions!

I am well aware that this year 8 May comes at a time of great upheaval and great uncertainty.

Not just because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but very much exacerbated by it. We do not yet know when and how we will emerge from this crisis. But we know how we entered it: with great confidence in this country, in our democracy, in what we can shoulder together. That shows how very far we have come in 75 years. And it gives me hope for all the challenges ahead.

We cannot come together for a commemorative event because of coronavirus. But we can grasp the silence. We can pause to reflect.

I ask all Germans to remember silently the victims of the war and the victims of National Socialism. Wherever your roots may lie, take a moment to revisit your memories, your family’s memories, the history of the country in which we all live. Think what the liberation of 8 May means for your life and your actions.

75 years after the end of the war, we Germans have much to be thankful for. But none of the positive achievements since that date are safe in perpetuity. 8 May was not the end of the liberation – preserving freedom and democracy is the never-ending task it has bequeathed us!

Source: https://www.bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs...

Brendan Nelson: '... at least they'll remember me in Australia', 'Tragedy & Triumph 1917', National Press Club - 2017


19 September 2017, National Press Club, Canberra, Australia

Australians all let us rejoice…for we are young and free.
We pause here ‘in the heart of the land they loved’, free and confident heirs to a legacy born of idealism, forged in self-sacrifice and passed now to our generation.
We do so a century from our nation’s most tragic, damaging year - 1917.
It was the worst of times.
It was the worst of times.
Barely a year later we emerged victorious - but inconsolably mourning 60,000 dead. Yet from this wrenching cataclysm, embittered, deeply divided - we remained true to our democracy.
We had our story.
We were Australians.
Our young nation’s innocence was brutally lost in the bloodbath at Fromelles and hard-earned victory of Pozieres in 1916.
The bitter conscription referendum rendered us a deeply divided people facing the new year of 1917.
The AIF began in the snow of Bullecourt and finished in the quagmire of Passchendaele, the cost - 77,000 casualties; 22,000 dead and missing.
We were three years into a war in which victory seemed an ever receding horizon. No solace to anguished families in humble homes where telegrams and letters spoke to suffering, death and lives given.
The harsh realities of British military leadership were revealed to the man who was witness to it all - Australia’s official war correspondent, Charles Bean:
“Bullecourt”, he said, “more than any other battle shook the confidence of Australian soldiers in the capacity of the British command”.
He saw the struggles of the ordinary soldier, men simply ‘flicked aside’.
Aghast, he watched in April the 4th Australian Division torn to pieces attacking into a hail of machine gun fire and German artillery at Bullecourt.
Of the 3,000 men from the 4th Brigade, 2339 were killed, wounded or taken prisoner.
In May, Bean returned to Pozieres where a mortally wounded Australian had asked him: Will they remember me in Australia?
Here he collected the first artefact for the Australian War Museum he had conceived - The ‘Centre way’ trench sign.
These were the sacred relics of triumph and tragedy, of heroism and bloody sacrifice.
As Bean searched amongst the detritus of the Pozieres battle, the Australian War records Office was established at AIF Headquarters in France. Birth had been given to what would become the Australian War Memorial.
The Americans joined the war in April, but not the battlefield for another year.
Russia was seized by a Bolshevik revolution. Lenin would rule by year’s end.
Prime Minister Billy Hughes left the Labor Party, splitting it asunder to triumph in an electoral landslide. Australians wanted a wartime leader.
Ireland’s independence revolutionaries stirred negative Catholic opinion led by Bishop Daniel Mannix.
Months of Industrial warfare broke out in August, 97,000 striking workers crippling transport and industry.
Hughes crushed the unions with sweeping powers. Cynicism and anger spread.
Recruitment stalled. Hughes ran a second pre-Christmas conscription referendum. Again, a majority of Australians voted No.
But it was the events in Europe that would weigh heaviest on any residual Christmas cheer.
One word from 1917 would describe inconsolable grief and mourning for an entire generation of Australians.
Hell on earth now had a name – Passchendaele.
The ‘suffering of Christ’ - and suffering it was.
This small Flanders village - lent its name to a series of battles that would epitomise the war of brutal attrition, of suffering inflicted on so many for so little.
For purists - the Third Battle of Ypres.
With the French army in exhausted turmoil, British operations shifted north into Belgium.
General Douglas Haig dusted off his plan to force the Germans from the Belgian coast.
His first objective was the strategically important Messines Ridge.
On 7 June, after months of tunnelling the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company detonated 1 million pounds of TNT at Hill 60, part of the coordinated, explosive prelude to the battle.
Captain Robert Grieve VC of 34th Battalion recorded the melee:
Suddenly Bedlam was let loose….impossible to describe the inferno. The earth seemed to vomit fire…. shaken as though by an earthquake – the air screamed shells and snapped bullets, above all was the roar of the guns, crackle of machine guns and the hum of aeroplane propellers.
The official photographer, Frank Hurley wrote:
Until my dying day, I shall never forget this haunting glimpse down into the mine crater on Hill 60 – three hideous, decomposed fragments of corpses of German gunners…. one tragedy of thousands
At the No. 2 Australian Casualty Clearing Station near Messines Ridge, 21 Australian nurses were told casualties would be light.
Within 18 hours, 2,800 patients were admitted.
Sister Mimie Procter wrote:
It was a nightmare….blood, blood, blood everywhere and suffering.
Sister Ada Smith:
Droves of dying men….nearly all head cases…. unconscious or else raving in delirium….
Recorded as one of the great set-piece victories of the war – Messines still inflicted 6,800 Australian dead and wounded. Two Victoria Crosses.
In July, Sister Alice Ross-King was blown into a blood soaked crater getting to the ward tent.
Trying to get a delirious patient into bed:
I had my right arm under a leg which I thought was his, but when I lifted I found to my horror that it was a loose leg with a boot and a putty on it…..one of the orderly’s legs had been blown off and landed on the patient’s bed.
The Passchendaele campaign began on 31 July.
The Germans had seven weeks after Messines to fortify their defences in the Ypres-Salient. They built concrete pill boxes, bloc houses, machine gun nests, barbed wire and fortified field artillery batteries.
Over 15 days in late July, the British fired 4.3 million artillery shells from 3,000 guns into the north, attacking on 31 July with a creeping barrage in front of troops with tanks – 27,000 casualties in a day.
Then it began to rain.
With the intricate drainage system of the Flemish lowlands destroyed, the battlefield was a quagmire.
The weather improved in early September as the five Australian Divisions were brought together in support of the imminent battles.
General Herbert Plumer’s ‘first step’ on the road to Passchendaele was the Menin Road.
Side by side, the 1st and 2nd Australian Divisions attacked in the centre flanked by 11 British Divisions.
It went to plan, the advancing barrage winning ground occupied by the infantry.
In less than three hours across a 12 kilometre front, all objectives were taken.
Another 5,013 Australian casualties, two Victoria Crosses awarded.
Clinical enough a description, but the ‘mad photographer’, Frank Hurley wrote:
The way was gruesome, awful beyond words….the dead and wounded lay about everywhere, the ground had the appearance of having been ploughed by a great canal excavator and then re-ploughed… through this the wounded had to drag themselves - and those mortally wounded pass out their young lives …
…the battlefield on which we won an advance of 1500 yards was littered with bits of men….. literally drenched in blood
Charles Bean described the men coming out of the line on the Menin Road:
…..looking like a dead man looks. A man of the 20th Battalion had a wound inside the thigh still bleeding…..passing, he grinned, “We got the bastards good on the second ridge”.
Plumer’s second ‘step’ was at Polygon Wood on 26 September. The 4th and 5th Australian Divisions attacked with the British.
The intensive artillery preparation and the ‘creeping barrage’ was the best ever. The infantry came in behind five layers of bombardment described by Bean as:
….roaring, deafening, it rolled ahead of the troops like a Gippsland Bushfire
Of the 55th Battalion Bean wrote:
Captain Cotterell led its advance, walking easily, cigarette in mouth, map in hand, behind him the thick line of “worm columns” each led by an NCO. All pillboxes were immediately outflanked……from some came whimpering boys, holding out hands full of souvenirs.
Walter ‘Jimmy’ Downing of the 57th battalion was in the thick of it:
…We were caught in the barrage…no time for caring as we stumbled past reeking bodies….. heads down as though in a hurricane of rain, not ripping steel.
…..men running, staggering, bent low…. dropped into shell holes, tautened faces…. crouching as they burrowed for dear life….on all sides the groans and wailing of mangled men.
A sergeant ran around his platoon…..the top of his skull was lifted from his forehead by a bullet, as on a hinge, and his body fell on two crouching men, washing them with his blood and brains
…bodies, living and dead were buried, tossed up, and torn fragments buried again…..the most awful sound, the muffled voice of a man buried under three feet of dirt, was heard…. dig me out!
….relieved, we were a pathetic band….all hysterical to varying degrees, the strong supporting the weak, we walked through Polygon Wood…
Sinclair Hunt of the 55th Battalion was a school teacher from Croyden, Victoria:
...though we suffered much….the capture of Polygon Wood was a most difficult operation brilliantly executed.
Hunt was killed a year later in France.
Polygon Wood came at a price – 5,770 Australians dead, missing and wounded. Two Australians were awarded the Victoria Cross.
The strategic, elevated Germen held Buttes was captured. Upon it today stands the memorial to the Australian 5th Division overlooking its men’s headstones beneath.
Plumer’s third step was Broodseinde Ridge.
Launched in teeming rain on 4 October, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Australian Divisions attacked with the New Zealand Division as part of the British offensive.
The Germans fought tenaciously from their pillboxes - machine gun fire, vicious bombing duels and hand to hand combat.
Private William Vincent fought in the 21st Battalion:
At 5 am a very heavy artillery barrage started and we went forward about 2 miles, our lads falling in dozens….we dug in for our lives and held it…we lost heavily.
But in Plumer’s bite and hold strategy, success had to be consolidated. Guns and ammunition had to be brought forward; units replenished with reinforcements, communication and supply re-established.
Although most objectives were achieved, mud made ‘hold’ impossible - another 6,400 Australian casualties. Two Victoria Crosses.
Morale was haemorrhaging.
Private Dudley Jackson, a Lewis Gunner with the 20th Battalion came out of Broodseinde with just 25 in his company and only two men left in his own platoon.
Victories at Menin Road, Polygon Wood and Broodseinde had cost Australia 17,000 men to advance 3.6 kilometres.
Then it rained, and rained, and rained.
On October 9 in conditions of utter misery and driving rain, with two British divisions the 2nd Australian Division attacked the slopes below the Passchendaele village - the battle of Poelcappelle.
It marked the month of brutal attrition.
With any hope of a breakout washed away by unrelenting rain, Generals Plumer and Gough told Haig they were happy to end it here.
Haig pressed on, determined to annexe the last piece of high ground for winter.
After Plumer’s headquarters briefing, Bean wrote:
They don’t realise how desperately hard it will be to fight down such opposition in the mud, rifles choked, Lewis Guns out of action, men tired and slow…
After five days of continuous rain, the battlefield was a morass. Mud crippled everything. Bogged tanks and guns were useless; weapons clogged; high explosive shells buried and guns simply sank when fired.
The attacking Australian battalions which had held the front lines since Broodseinde were walking dead - days under fire in appalling conditions, struggling to lay cables and tramways.
In Bean’s words, of those not suffering severe trench foot or melting away to the rear, many ‘temporarily deserted’.
When finally they attacked, the Australian battalion strength averaged just seven officers and 150 men. Yet into battle they went, 1200 men lost from heavy flanking enemy fire. Nothing gained.
Even more futile was the second Australian assault against the Passchendaele Ridge on October 12.
The 3rd and 4th Australian divisions would attack with the New Zealanders and British.
No tanks, aircraft and heavy artillery - nothing could move.
Entire field companies tried desperately to extricate guns from the mire.
Bombardier Frederick Corder of the 7th Australian Field Battery wrote:
…the guns had been bogged for three days until we put 26 horses onto each gun…. ploughing through mud up to the horses’ stomachs.
Even then, it could take 17 hours to get shells up to guns.
And yet, they kept at it, Bean writing of them:
Australian soldiers hung on to their agreed task – whether their own death or the destruction of the world should come.
The night before the assault of the 3rd Division, Corporal George Mitchell wrote a last letter to his family in Thebarton, Adelaide:
Tomorrow many men must go to their God. And if I die – I die.
We must all die. Best we can do - is to die with good grace.
The Anzacs advanced with almost no artillery protection - the 3rd Division sustained 3,000 casualties by nightfall.
One who ‘went to his God’ that day, was Corporal John ‘Jack’ Ison whose Sergeant Major later wrote to Ison’s father:
When I lost him I lost a friend….we went through Gallipoli, Egypt, France, Pozieres, Belgium, the Somme and again at Ypres together….I miss Jack as much as my own brother. I know it is an awful thing to part with one’s son….but you have no idea of the troops’ suffering…
…It really is a mercy from God to take us….at times I have asked God to take me from this life.
The New Zealanders advanced into a thick belt of uncut barbed wire on the Bellevue Spur, torn to shreds by deadly machine gun fire spewing from German pillboxes.
Lt G M Carson of the 33rd Battalion recounted his battle:
On the night of the 11th we marched off at 6.30 pm and walked until 5 am on the morning of the 12th….we had lost men like rotten sheep…
…we attacked at 5.25am and fought all day, at times bogged up to our armpits….lots drowned
Sergeant T. Berry tried to save a man up to his neck with a chain of rifles:
We heard screaming from another crater....he went down gradually….begging us to shoot him. But we couldn’t …who could shoot him?
We stayed with him, watching him go down in the mud.
Private Bert Fearns of the 2/6th Lancashire Fusiliers described conditions:
……our whole battalion was moving up this single duckboard track. As it got dark you had to make sure to keep close to the fellow in front as the track meandered around the lips of shell holes.
…shells started coming in, bunches of men got separated…. falling off the boards and shouting….we were not to stop; if one man stopped we all stopped.
You could hear those poor blokes calling out from the darkness….pitiful….mud like wet soap….we knew the poor devils would die….
We met a party of pack mules coming…..the track was meant to be one way….the poor things were shot by our officers to clear the path.
We just kept going, hour after hour.
Finally, we took shelter behind a big concrete pillbox (the left hand one at Tyne Cot Cemetery) and I fell asleep on my rifle….I didn’t care if I lived or died; a bullet would have been welcome.
…..I was woken by an explosion….in a cemetery on the edge of the railway cutting; I just emptied my rifle into a dark mass of men.
I then crept into a pillbox and fell asleep – on the shoulder of a dead German officer…. next day I was awoken by a voice:
“You the Lancashire Fusiliers?” - well piss off! We’re Australians here to relieve you”.
Lieutenant Wade Fisher of the 42nd Battalion was 23 years old. Assigned to relieve the ‘Manchesters’, he went ahead of his men:
I got to one pillbox to find it a mass of dead….I passed on to one ahead and found about fifty men of the Manchesters. Never have I seen men so broken or demoralised, huddled up close in the last stages of exhaustion and fear.
Fritz had been sniping them all day and accounted for fifty seven – the dead and dying lay in piles.
Fisher and his men went back in again on October 13:
We got up to our positon somehow….the fellows dropping out unconscious along the road. They have guts….
We found the line yards behind where we had left it, shell stricken and trodden ground thick with dead and wounded
…some of the Manchesters were there, seven days wounded and not looked to.
My men walked over to them….and gave all their food and water - all they could do.
That night my two runners were killed sitting next to me….I was blown out of my shell hole twice, so shifted to an abandoned pillbox.
....twenty-four wounded men inside, two dead Huns on the floor….the stench was dreadful.
The images of Frank Hurley and Hubert Wilkins came to exemplify the entire campaign.
On 12 October, Frank Hurley took the most tragically poetic photograph of his career at the Ypres-Roulers railway cutting:
Every twenty paces or less lay a body. Some frightfully mutilated, without legs, arms and heads, and half covered in mud and slime….we pushed on….. shells….bursting all around….ten or so telephone men - all blown to bits.
Under a questionably sheltered bank lay a group of dead men. Sitting by them in little scooped out recesses sat a few living, but so emaciated by fatigue and shell shock, it was hard to differentiate.
The exhausted and demoralised Anzac Divisions were finally relieved on October 18 by the Canadians who made the final assault on Passchendaele.
They clawed forward to capture the Passchendaele Ridge on 6 November.
For Haig, no more could be achieved in Flanders. His break-through had failed – miserably.
After three months the British line advanced 8 kilometres, only to expose it to German artillery. British losses stood at 275,000 dead, wounded and missing.
Thirty five Australians had been killed for every metre of ground taken.
Nine of 61 Victoria Crosses awarded, were to Australians.
Barely five months later, in three days the Allies lost Passchendaele and all the ground won in the Third Battle of Ypres.
Mounted on the German concrete blockhouse at the centre of the Tyne Cot cemetery today, is the cross of sacrifice. Amidst manicured lawns and 12,000 graves, including those of 1369 Australians, it bears a plaque:


This was the Tyne Cot Blockhouse
Captured by the 3rd Australian Division
4 October 1917


A world away in the Middle East, the Anzacs fought a vastly different war.
The Turks had effectively been driven out of the Sinai Peninsula and seaward approaches to the Suez Canal.
But they held a fortified defensive line running from Gaza near the Mediterranean Coast towards the town of Beersheba, 45 kilometres inland to the South East.
Any allied advance into central Palestine was blocked.
Two costly assaults in March and April 1917 failed to capture Gaza.
Craving a fresh offensive, General Sir Edmund Allenby arrived to command the Egyptian Expeditionary Force.
An artillery and naval bombardment of Gaza would mislead the Turks into expecting a frontal assault.
Meanwhile, a flanking move against Beersheba presented the Turks with a feint, but would be the main attack.
The dramatic charge by the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba on 31 October was the climactic opening to the 3rd Battle of Gaza.
On the morning of 31 October, 3 British Divisions supported by 100 artillery guns attacked Beersheba. The well-fortified Turks resisted ferociously, slowing the Allied advance to a standstill.
Mid-afternoon it was obvious that the town had to be taken before sunset or face failure for lack of water.
Beersheba’s 17 wells were deep.
Allenby instructed General Harry Chauvel to take Beersheba.
Chauvel ordered Brigadier General William Grant’s 4th Light Horse Brigade “straight in”.
The NSW 12th Light Horse Regiment would take the town with the relatively untested Victorian 4th.
In lengthening late afternoon shadows, one of history’s great cavalry-style charges was about to take place.
But these were mounted riflemen - no swords or lances.
Some slung rifles over their backs, riding bayonet in hand. Others couched rifles beneath arms, bayonets fixed, stock braced against the thigh.
Their mounts were mostly ‘Walers’ – hardy, stocky, sure of foot and able to carry heavy loads long distances. The tired horses were desperate for water.
Six kilometres from Beersheba, hidden from the Turks by a low ridge across a front of 1100 metres, 800 Light Horsemen formed up.
By squadrons in three lines, 300 to 500 metres apart, they were ready.
Saddle-worn, overloaded and parched, the horses began to fidget, tossing their heads. They’d caught the excitement.
At 4.30 pm they moved forward at a slow trot.
Cresting the ridge, the formation tightened and began to canter. A kilometre on they were in a gallop, 5 metres apart.
Two kilometres from the town, it was on - a reckless, headlong charge down the long gentle slope to Beersheba.
The thirst crazed horses pinned back their ears and flared their nostrils, eyes widened, heads outstretched and mouths frothing, tails flying.
Turkish rifles, machine guns and artillery opened fire. Bullets twitched the horses’ ears. Horses and men at the front fell.
Expecting the Light Horse to stop and dismount to attack, the Turks held most fire until too late.
As the first wave approached the trenches, the Turks opened up with everything including grenades.
The official historian, Henry Gullet described the Light Horse sweeping over the deep, wide trenches like ‘steeple chasers’.
As they did, Turks slashed at the horses’ bellies with bayonets.
Some Australians dismounted and fought in savage hand to hand battles. Others rode on into Beersheba.
By nightfall the town, wells, reservoirs and ammunition dumps were captured and horses watered.
The Australian Light Horse had ridden not only into Beersheba, but to history.
The charge captured the war weary world’s imagination.
Gullet wrote:
The enemy was beaten by the shear recklessness of the charge, rather than by the very limited fighting powers of this handful of Australians.
One soldier said:
It was the horses that did it; those marvellous bloody horses.
Grant proudly told his men:
(This is) the greatest cavalry ride in the history of warfare
Victory had cost 31 Australians dead, 36 wounded and 70 horses dead.
The capture of Beersheba turned the eastern flank of the Turkish defensive line. Gaza fell to the British on 7 November as the Turks withdrew to Palestine.
It is tempting, human beings that we are, to settle for the broad brushstrokes of history.
Our comfortable lives breed easy indifference to individual sacrifices made in our name, devotion to duty and Australia.
Trooper Robert Morley was killed in the Charge.
A 26 year old farm hand from Taralgon, on reading the Gallipoli casualty lists in 1915, he enlisted with his brother Charlie.
Buried the day after the charge, a grave marker plate was made from an old tank by his Warrant Officer, Jim French.
His widowed mother, Sarah saw five of her children die at home during the war.
She had already given five of her sons to the AIF.
George had been killed at Pozieres, Robert at Bersheeba. Edward died of wounds at Bullecourt while Archie, severely wounded, returned to Australia.
Charlie returned home on compassionate grounds in 1918.
Sarah chose the epitaph for Robert’s headstone at the Bersheeba war cemetery.

GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN
HE LAID DOWN HIS LIFE FOR HIS FRIENDS

As the Morely tragedy unfolded, Passchendaele shattered the Seabrooks in Petersham, Sydney.
William and Fanny Seabrook had given their three eldest sons, George, Theo and William to the AIF.
On the 20th of September 1917 – one hundred years ago, in the battle of the Menin Road, the 17th Battalion attacked near the village of Westhoek.
Lieutenant William Seabrook was hit by a phosphorous shell that killed or wounded the full section of the platoon he was leading.
In the early hours as William was stretchered from the battlefield, George and Theo were both hit by a single artillery shell - killed instantly.
George was 25 and Theo, a year younger.
William died a short time later. In the breast pocket of his tunic was a photograph of his mother, Fanny. The fragment that killed him had gone through the photo.
He was 21 years old.
One day, one family, three sons – all dead.
George and Theo’s bodies were never found. Their names are on the Menin Gate Memorial to the missing in Ieper (Ypres). Two of 6,191 Australians so named.
At her kitchen table, Fanny Seabrook penned William’s epitaph for the grave she would never see in the Lijssenthoek cemetery:

A WILLING SACRIFICE
FOR THE WORLD’S PEACE

Despairing, she wrote to the authorities about Theo and George:
….if you could explain to me we would be much obliged….. losing three sons in one battle…we are heartbroken.
In a later letter to her member of parliament:
Having given our three boys as a sacrifice to the country…. I will never recover….my husband is a complete wreck…I have put my property up for sale….there is no other way. Mr Seabrook has been raving about our three boys and has delusions….please pardon me for telling you all these things, but I have no one to confide in.
In 1928, Fanny Seabrook was among the 1 million Australians who clogged the streets of our towns and cities to glimpse William Longstaff’s painting, Menin Gate at Midnight.
That was the closest she and they would ever get to the dead son, husband or father.
In May 1928, the friend of an Australian mother, inconsolably grieving her missing, only son wrote asking for a photograph of the Menin Gate:
…his mother is very old and feeble and it would give her great …comfort, to know her son’s name is inscribed among those heroes and is not forgotten….. He was all she had.
Years later, Charles Bean wrote:
….many a youngster when he was hit out there at Passchendaele… in his last few minutes of life, when he knew that the end had come….thought: “well….at least they’ll remember me in Australia”.
And we do.
The daily Last Post Ceremony at the Australian War Memorial is our offering, to give meaning where there is none.
This simple gesture, including reading of the life, love, service, suffering and loss of just one of them, is our national tribute.
It is an expression of loss, suffering and love reaching into us all.
Pilgrims bound by a single, reverent emotion pause with awkward humility as stillness descends.
The Last Post sounded in the commemorative area, cloaked by the Roll of Honour, arrests the soul.
The silence that surrounds it is the most powerful sound heard.
In that silence, I always look up to the names of these young lives - silent witnesses to the future they have given us.
I am reminded that we are all equal in death.
I am reminded that we are Australians, that there are truths by which we live that are worth fighting to defend.
As the doors of the Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier close, we are stirred by the most fragile yet powerful of human emotions - hope.
We are all driven to believe in a better future. Sustaining that precious belief, we honour them best by the way we live our lives and shape our nation.
Sarah Morley and Fanny Seabrook, in their despair and inconsolable grief, asked, ‘why?’
In the tragedies of 1917, the Seabrook brothers, Robert Morley made their ‘willing sacrifice for a better world’ and ‘the love of friends’.
A century on, they ask of every Australian, are we prepared to make our sacrifices for others and for a better world?
In reflection Bean wrote:
Wherever they fought – the Australians were sustained by a belief in their worth.
We are Australians defined less by our constitution than we are by our values and our beliefs, the way we relate to one another and see our place in the world.
We are shaped most by our triumphs and our failures; our heroes and villains; the way we have endured adversity and how we will face adversities coming, responding to new, emerging and unseen horizons.
From this worst year, we emerged with a greater belief in ourselves and a deeper understanding of what it means to be - Australian.
For we are young, and we are free.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5ZRT-b8mR...