from Bulletin 5/2024, July

This article is the second of three drawn from Max Solling’s moving address at the 2024 Anzac Day ceremony at the Glebe War Memorial. The full text of Max’s address is on our website: (https://glebesociety.org.au/max-sollings-2024-anzac-day-address/).

The women of Glebe and the First World War 

While initially remote, war took on a sense of purpose with the Gallipoli landing on 25 April 1915. The women of Glebe–Forest Lodge quickly mobilised, engaging in door-to-door knocking for the Patriotic Fund, organising dances and euchre nights, knitting socks and other activities in aid of the Glebe branch of the Red Cross Fund, and organising local concerts for the Belgium Fund where Eva Rainford sang. 

War tore families apart, and nothing could have completely reversed this tide of separation and loss. After receiving the awful news of death, people were overcome by grief, passing through stages of bereavement. Australian families were among the furthest removed from the main theatres of military operations. Approximately 60,000 of 330,000 Australians in the AIF were killed or died on active service, a casualty rate at or above that suffered by the British, French and German armies.

Families received news of the fate of AIF men 12,000 miles from home at Gallipoli and in France from clergy who were notified by official cable at an interval of about 10 to 14 days after the event. Their dead lay far away. The loss of so many on the other side of the world without any possibility of a funeral left an aching void in their lives. As casualty lists grew, an outpouring of grief, tears, agony and pain by countless Glebe residents filled newspapers’ in memoriams.

On the Anzac Day following the inauguration of the Glebe War Memorial in 1922, Glebe women grasped the opportunity to make a profound statement of grief and pride for their collective loss. It was their special day, taking the form of a pilgrimage to the shrine of mothers, widows and sisters, all dressed in black and wearing black hats reflecting the sombre mood that pervaded the war and early post-war years. They turned up en masse and with other grieving folk crushed around the shrine. 

The pilgrimage commenced with memorial secretary Bill Brown reading out, in alphabetical order, the names of each fallen soldier inscribed in gold on the mausoleum’s marble nameplate. On hearing their son’s or husband’s name, a Glebe woman stepped forward to lay a wreath or sheaf of flowers. With all 174 names called, the ceremony was a prolonged affair – and left a searing impression.

One can only imagine these poignant scenes, charged with high emotion and solemnity. Among the pilgrims were Rachel Curtis, Susan Maltby, Margaret Cotter, Ellen Sharpe, Margaret Faerber and Emma Neaves – Glebe mothers who had lost two sons.

We will never know how the bereaved mourned and what became of them, but we do know that the widow’s pension they received – about ten shillings a week – was only one-quarter of the average weekly wage, a level of benefit less than that paid in Britain and France.

Many bereaved women would return to the Memorial on the anniversaries of death or birth to spend time at the shrine. On these intensely personal occasions, passing local pedestrians observed women standing quietly in front of the shrine, head bowed in quiet contemplation. They could not see their faces. They did not want to.