Vandalised War Memorial

[Tony Smith]

Australia has many War memorials scattered across the country in just about every city, town or village and many suburbs. There are something like 17,000 memorials ranging from a small obelisk to more elaborate statuary through to Sydney and Melbourne's large cenotaphs. Almost all will list the locals who gave their lives in the First World war, with additional panels for those from WW2, Korea, Malaya and Vietnam. Some of the memorials in smaller villages will list all the locals who joined up. These memorials were in just about every instance paid for by the local communities by subscription, not by Government. I think it was said that Australia had the most number of War Memorials per head of population than other country, does that still hold true?The WW1 vintage memorials will occaisionally have a trophy german field piece. Rydal's memorial is the only one that I know of that had a captured German machine gun, a Maxim MG08-15. When I last saw it a couple of years ago, it had a brass plate rivetted to the water jacket that said siomething the lines of "Captured in xxxxxx, France May 1917 by Pte. xxxxxx of xxxx, NSW, xxxth Batt". I wish now I'd taken more notice of the details. Many of the memorials have been augmented over the years by the addition of WW2 field pieces like 25pdrs and Bofors guns and even the odd Vietnam era 105mm Howitzer. Ships anchors and aircraft propellors also get a showing, too.