On the 100th anniversary of the end of the great war, a large crowd gathered in Sydney’s Hyde Park and fell silent.
At 11am, the minute’s silence stretched into two or three, before and after, hanging in the air. The flags were at half-mast, all of them – the Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and French flags among them. The tears began during the hymns.
It was a bright, clear day on Sunday as hundreds gathered around Sydney’s Anzac memorial to mark the day and hour, in 1918, when the gunfire stopped.
They lined the sides of the pool of remembrance, spilled out over the walkways, stood among the trees. They heard from dignitaries and veterans. Two high school students, Oscar Iredale and Holly Epps, read In Flanders’ Fields, trading verses.
It was a large, diverse crowd, with medal-bearing veterans alongside families and children. French soldiers stood on the steps, the Irish consul-general was with the officials. As the clock approached 11am, the path cleared for Bill Mackay, a living treasure of the Pittwater RSL, and his walking frame.
Marty Morrison, 90, was there to mark the end of the war, having been a peace activist, she said, “since I was 13 years old”.
Born in America, Morrison lived through the second world war, married an Australian diplomat in 1958, and joined the Marrickville Peace Group.
“I became a peace activist when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor,” she said. “I was in California. All of the Japanese were sent to the desert and they stayed there for the rest of the war.
“I was a Sunday school teacher. I was only 13 but I had little children, Japanese children, I was teaching them ‘Jesus loves me’ and all the hymns. They could only take what they could carry in their hands, and they were there for five years.
“I said to a group of Christians at the church, ‘Well of course we will give them lunch before they leave’. The bus was scheduled to leave at 1 o’clock. And a very popular woman, and a good church goer, said ‘What? Give lunch to the enemy?’ And I thought of my children singing ‘Jesus loves me, this I know’, and I became a peace activist.”
Morrison’s uncle fought in the war and she said she wanted younger generations to remember the importance of peace.
“I’m here because I would really like people to realise that we have to stop killing. We have to stop killing people, we have to stop having enemies. It’s so easy to kill people. You just drop a bomb and there goes the country.”
Gavin Jones was there as a historical re-enactor, dressed in the perfect replica uniform of a French pilot, with an original first world war cap and walking-out stick.
“Today we are doing a thing called a ghost walk,” he said. “We walk around silently and represent soldiers, loved ones and relatives that died in the first and second world wars.”
Jones was handing out a card with the name of his own great-uncle.
“He was killed in Northern France in 1915. He was 32 years old. He was with the first 8th battalion of the Post Office Rifles of the British expeditionary forces. He was actually a postman too.”
“We don’t glorify war,” Jones said. “We just honour and respect those who have gone before, and try and educate others who follow, to respect and honour the dead. Because they gave their lives for the freedoms we have now.”
He said it was important to him to be at the 100th anniversary.
“It’s an honour to be here and it means a lot. It’s a century – it’s hard to believe it’s a century. In 2015, the centenary of my uncle’s death, I was the first in my family to visit his grave in northern France. Most of us didn’t know where it was.”
As it neared the 11th hour, the governor of NSW, David Hurley, laid the first wreath. The premier, Gladys Berejiklian, laid the second. The Last Post played at 10.59. Three jets flew overhead. Then Reveille. After the dignitaries dispersed and the ceremonies were over, people began laying their own personal tributes.
