[This post has been edited down from the original article ten years ago on our sister site, Honest History: 'Singing country: the musical legacy of David Morrison, Australian of the Year – and a straw in the wind at the Australian War Memorial?’, Honest History, 2 February 2016. That article drew upon Honest History's interviews with Lieutenant-General David Morrison and John Schumann.]
Before David Morrison became Australian of the Year he was a Lieutenant-General and Chief of Army. He decided to enter the musical entrepreneur business, and the result is well worth writing about for what it says and hints at. The Australian War Memorial and its then director Brendan Nelson also played a notable role in this story.
‘On every Anzac Day’ by John Schumann
This story is about the video soundtrack of John Schumann’s song ‘On every Anzac Day’ (official video). The words of the song are printed at the end of this article.
Schumann’s song tells its story through the eyes of a white soldier who recalls an Indigenous comrade (‘When the bullets are whining past your head, you’re all just shades of grey’). What caught our attention particularly, though, were these few lines:
I asked him once why he volunteered for that hellhole far away
To fight for someone else’s king and the land they took away
He said “One invading mob’s too many” and then he walked away
and then, right at the end,
We remember those first Australians, who joined and fought and died …
We remember the fighting First Australians – now – and on every Anzac Day.
The song has the strong theme of shared fear in combat and, afterwards, shared scars and terrors and rejection of the black soldier by the RSL. The names of battles throughout the song make it clear that it is not just about World War I during the centenary of Anzac but about all our wars. But it also mentions invasions and dispossessions and that is what this article is about.
How the song was written
Honest History interviewed General Morrison just a week before he became Australian of the Year and we asked him how the song came to be written. He believed stories of war ‘are wired into our DNA’ but one area where we were ‘underdone’ was recognition of Indigenous service.
We don’t fully recognise the amazing stories of Indigenous men and women’s involvement in World War I and all our wars. I thought about the best way to make a contribution and that seemed to be through a song.
General Morrison had spent Anzac Day 2014 at Thursday Island where his speech recognised ‘that some Australians remember men from across the world coming here to take their land’. He knew John Schumann for his song-writing and his work with Vietnam Veterans and he approached Schumann to write a song that recognised Indigenous service in uniform. Necessarily, the story had to be told from a ‘white fella’s’ perspective – because Schumann was white – but it had to tell about Indigenous experience. Morrison worked closely with Schumann on the song though there was no editorial control. ‘I was happy with all the lyrics’, Morrison recalled.
When Honest History spoke to John Schumann he remembered that General Morrison had said he wanted the new song to be bigger than Schumann’s earlier hit from 1983, ‘I was only 19’. Schumann said writing the song had been quite a challenge for him, having to find a narrative point, to deliver for Morrison but make the composition work as a song. He worked on the song full-time for ten days. He had some historical research done but found there was a difference between history books and the tune and lyrics of a song.
Schumann came up with the idea of a 'white fella' serving beside a ‘black fella’ who made comparisons between the white invasion of Australia and possible future invasions of Australia by other powers. So Schumann settled on ‘one invasion too many’ as a narrative point. It was, he said, ‘a dangerous thing to do’ in song-writing terms but it worked.
Can we have recognition of both Indigenous service in uniform and Indigenous service not in uniform?
Honest History asked David Morrison whether recognition of Indigenous service and encouragement of Indigenous recruitment to the ADF will swamp the possibility of greater recognition of Indigenous warriors in the Frontier Wars. Our question asked, essentially, whether recognition of Indigenous service in uniform precluded recognition of Indigenous service not in uniform.
General Morrison said he was not qualified to give an opinion on this question; his focus as Chief of Army had been on Indigenous service and recruitment. The Schumann song had helped recruitment of Indigenous people to the ADF, as the improved numbers have shown. Honest History agreed with Morrison that there is a range of views among Indigenous Australians about whether and how to give more recognition to Indigenous warriors in the Frontier Wars.
Noah Riseman’s view
Noah Riseman is an Associate Professor in History at the Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, and a Chief Investigator in the Serving Our Country project at the Australian National University. This four-year project is researching the history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander service in Australian defence and auxiliary services from the 1890s to the present.
During his research, Riseman has worked closely with Indigenous servicemen and women and their families, although he is not himself Indigenous. Serving Our Country does not focus directly on dispossession and resistance, though it recognises this aspect of Australian history. Riseman said a number of his interviewees have mentioned the history of Indigenous dispossession.
Riseman has seen evidence in his research that Indigenous service people see their participation in the Australian military as part of a longer tradition of Indigenous people fighting for their country. He felt that the Schumann song has a similar significance to Serving Our Country.
The song is like the project [he said]: it’s another way of bringing this question back up but through a different lens. Once you recognise Indigenous service in our defence forces, the next logical question is “how about recognising what Indigenous people did in resisting dispossession?”
Appendix: On every Anzac Day (lyrics by John Schumann)
Ghosts and memories are loitering still in the corridors of time
There’s sorrow, smoke and stories in the barracks of my mind
I’m with him still in the trenches, I can see his dark, brown eyes
And his courage gave me courage when I was sure we were going to die
I asked him once why he volunteered for that hellhole far away
To fight for someone else’s king and the land they took away
He said “One invading mob’s too many” and then he walked away
And I lost him in the crowds waving flags on the side of the road — like every Anzac Day
From Murray Bridge and Mundrabilla, from Naracoote and Perth
First Australian station hands, shearers, gangers, clerks…
And there was no black, there was no white, just a dirty khaki brown
And on our upturned slouch hat brims, we all wore the “Rising Sun”
Soldiers, brothers, all Australians, we had no time for race
When the bullets are whining past your head, you’re all just shades of grey
He kept his medals in their box in a drawer — he tucked them well away
But he’d pull them out and put them on and put them back again — on every Anzac Day
Armentieres and Flanders, Tarin Kowt and Salamaua-Lae
Amiens and Morotai, Long Tan, Dispersal Bay
Somalia, Crete and Kapyong, Iraq and the Solomons
Paschendaele, Maprik and Tarakan — they were there — the first Australians
And when the show was over and we made it back to Australia’s shores
From Pozieres and Herleville Wood, Benghazi and Fremicourt
We drifted back into our lives, and we all tried to hide the scars
Of the tears and fears and terrors that still tracked us down the years
He tried to join the RSL but the bastards wouldn’t let him in
They didn’t see a soldier, just a first Australian
And I wonder what it was that we fought for and what it was we gave away
There’s reconciliation still to come — on every Anzac Day
So when the sun sets in the evening, when the dawn lights up the sky
We remember those first Australians, who joined and fought and died
From the missions, bush and station country, towns and Torres Straits
We remember the fighting First Australians — now — and on every Anzac Day
PICTURE CREDITS: studio portrait c. 1917 of two Aboriginal servicemen from Taree, NSW; 6564 Private William 'Nip' Simon (left) and 6551 Private Harold Howard Maher (AWM); studio portrait c. 1916 of 2949 Private Miller Mack, 50th Battalion (AWM)
PART 2 OF THIS POST COMING SOON
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