Bureaucracy has been derelict in not doing all it can to give our returned war heroes the recognition they earned and deserve as well as keeping ‘The Spirit of Anzac’ alive.
Years of war caused debilitating physical and emotional problems, and many returned veterans, and their families probably suffered more than those who died during or shortly after the wars.
As such, the author of the book How to Research and Honour Our Returned War Heroes, Ian Burrett JP, firmly believes that our returned heroes have just as much right to be named on community war memorials as those who died.
Because 98.4% of the nearly 103,000 people named on the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial (AWM) are those who died in the two world wars the book, whilst covering other conflicts, mainly concentrates on those who served in the world wars.
Hundreds of thousands of our returned war heroes have been neglected by not being named on community war memorials. Why?
The major reason is that neither the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA), the AWM, RSL Australia, the Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) nor the National Archives of Australia (NAA) has published any guidelines to assist communities with this task.
Late in 2015, Ian commenced a project to update Lithgow and district WWI memorials with the names of both those who died and returned.
The Lithgow City RSL sub-Branch did not initially support the project. In the absence of any guidelines they incorrectly relied upon the criteria of the Office of Australian War Graves which only relates to those who died. Because the sub-Branch did not support the project the Lithgow City Council also declined to support it.
Ian spent over 1500 hours producing over 500 pages of research. His research was a steep learning curve with many obstacles to overcome.
A countless number of letters, emails and phone calls to all tiers of government and relevant institutions were required, and the sub-Branch and Council finally were on board with the idea.
The end result was that on 11 November 1918, a plaque was unveiled in the memorial area in Queen Elizabeth Park, Lithgow. It named a further 762 Lithgow township people who had served in WWI. Amongst these were 72 people who had died and were not named on the original Lithgow WWI Cenotaph which named 131 people who had died.
The book outlines what Ian learnt during his research. It gives step-by-step guidelines and handy hints as to how to navigate the various websites created by the DVA, AWM and the NAA.
It is the first and only textbook to assist communities to update their war memorials. Ian is hopeful that ‘the powers that be’ will use his book as a guide to producing a website that improves upon what he has written.