In Cudgewa, in the Upper Murray valley, a small obelisk stands in an empty paddock. It is dedicated to Corporal Walter Briggs, who, at the age of 30, had died âfighting for his countryâ in South Africa. When built, it stood in the school reserve and in the centre of the village. The site had been chosen to remind future generations of what sacrifice in war should mean.
Walter Briggs was a big man, over six feet in height, hence his nickname âDotâ. In February 1900, he had driven his brother, and other successful volunteers for the Fourth Victorian Contingent, from Cudgewa to the Tallangatta railway station in his âexpress wagonâ after a farewell attended by over 200 people. In late 1900, he volunteered for the Fifth Victorian Mounted Rifles (VMR) with his mate, Robert Carlisle, from Granya.
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Carlisle was accepted, but Dot was rejected because he was overweight. He paid his own passage to South Africa and enlisted in the South African Constabulary, one of the imperial units set up in the subcontinent to fight the war. He was killed at Heidelberg in Cape Province on 30 August 1901.
The local paper reported that a âpall of gloomâ had descended on Cudgewa with the news of his death.
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He was the youngest in the family and a âgeneral favouriteâ. The districtâs Presbyterian minister, Rev. Campbell Lahore, conducted a memorial service in October before a packed congregation. The pulpit was draped in black and partly covered by the Union Jack. Lahore claimed it was noble to love oneâs country and those without such affection suffered a âserious defectâ. Cudgewa was not alone in its loss, he said: there were vacant chairs in homes across an empire that mourned for âthose brave soldier lads who will never returnâ. Briggs, he told the gathering, had been an exemplar of what it meant to be a British soldier and had died âone of the noblest, most glorious deaths a man can dieâ. He then turned to a matter that was of some interest in the region: whether the men in the Fifth VMR had been cowards when they fled before, or surrendered to, the enemy at Wilmansrust in June. The Fifthâs defeat was a âpainful and humiliating shockâ, Lahore claimed. Its men had violated the best traditions of the British Army and had tarnished the recognition that Australian soldiers had garnered during the war.
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For the district, Lahoreâs attack on the Fifth meant Robert Carlisle. For the region, it meant the reputation of its largest single intake of volunteers for the war.
The school has gone, as has the memory of Briggs, his sacrifice and his war. Even less is remembered of the reasons behind Lahoreâs savaging of the Fifth.
Dotâs war was the Boer War. Laurie Field described it as the âforgotten warâ,
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and the study of the social history of war in Australia bears out the claim. In current historiography, there are only occasional reminders of that warâdissent at home, âBreakerâ Morant and monuments that draw little recognition. It has, as Craig Wilcox argued in his masterful analysis of the conflict in South Africa, been âhas been lost to sightâ
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in histories of Australia. The celebration of the centenary of federation in 2001 made the point rather neatly. Although it was acknowledged that Australia had men fighting in South Africa in 1901, federation was achieved by peaceful means. The nation, however, was âbornâ in 1915. Yet, the Boer War was Australiaâs first experience of a sustained imperial war fought beyond its shores. But what did the war mean at a community level? Using North Eastern Victoria as a prism, this book looks at Australiaâs âforgotten warâ at home.
Notes
1.
National Archives of Australia (NAA) B5179, Muster (Nominal) Rolls of Victorian Contingents.
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2.
UM&MH, 12 September 1901.
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3.
CC, 10 October 1901.
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4.
L.J. Field, The Forgotten War: Australian Involvement in the South African Conflict of 1899â1902 (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1979).
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5.
Craig Wilcox, Australiaâs Boer War: The War in South Africa 1899â1902 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press in Association with the Australian War Memorial, 2002) 87.
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