Closer connection to our Remembrance Day heroes
MAJOR KAREN MASTERS works part-time at The Salvation Army Museum (Sydney branch). Today, on Remembrance Day, she shares how her connection to The Salvation Army’s Red Shield Defence Service (RSDS) representatives of yesteryear has grown.
Remembrance Day feels different to me this year. It feels more about people.
Working at The Salvation Army Museum, I feel more connected to the people who are represented there.
As we document artifacts from World War One and Two, I’m reminded of the stories told about these people – people like William ‘Fighting Mac’ McKenzie, Jock Geddes and Arthur McIlveen.
(From left) William ‘Fighting Mac’ McKenzie, Jock Geddes and Arthur McIlveen.
Since 1913, The Salvation Army in Australia has had the privilege of having a representative serve as a chaplain to our armed services. Over the years, many Salvation Army RSDS representatives and chaplains have worked alongside our armed service personnel. Some of these men became legendary, not for their own words but through the eyes of those they served.
The role of an Armed Services chaplain is both simple and complex. They are there simply to look after their people. What they do for their people is complex.
The chaplain’s role was to be there: to conduct services, pray, listen, provide writing materials and, essentially, provide morale to the troops. What some did went further. The chaplain helped provide entertainment for the men, worked alongside them, worked through the night to help make things easy, dug trenches with them, then sat in the trenches with them and sent last words back to grieving families, after retrieving and burying bodies. All while unarmed.
One soldier wrote of their chaplain, “Then there was a very dangerous and slippery zigzag path over some hills, which was most awkward and treacherous, especially when carrying wounded. One morning they found that Brigadier [William] McKenzie had cut steps the whole way over the wretched journey.”
Another wrote to his brother saying, “The bravest man here is a Salvation Army captain, the only clergyman that was in the trenches and was out in front bringing in wounded and burying the dead.”
Chaplain-Captain [later Commissioner] William McKenzie was involved in every part of the men’s lives, organising entertainment and participating with them, while ministering to them and caring for them physically, mentally and spiritually. His involvement earned him the nickname ‘Fighting Mac’.
Fighting Mac was highly honoured for his wartime service, receiving an OBE, Military Cross, a Salvation Army Order of the Founder, and other medals, which can be viewed at our Melbourne Museum. A plaque honouring him is on display at our Sydney museum.
Another man represented in the museum is Arthur McIlveen, who joined the AIF as a welfare officer but became the unofficial padre to other troops serving in the Middle East during World War Two.
Arthur was also known for visiting the men at the frontline and in the trenches. He looked out for the Australian men as well as the Italian and German prisoners of war. He became known for playing records on an old phonograph on the battlefield.
Sir Brigadier Arthur McIlveen received an MBE, a Salvation Army Order of the Founder and a Knighthood; these and his other medals are on display at the Sydney Museum.
And then there was Brigadier Charles (Jock) Geddes, who served as a chaplain with the Australian Military Forces in the Middle East, North Africa and Papua New Guinea. His uniform and identification tags can be seen in the Sydney museum.
Lance-Corporal Frank Murphy, summed up the Diggers’ attitude towards Salvation Army chaplains when he penned this poem at Tobruk:
I ain’t done too much praying. I am what you call a strayin’ lamb.
An egg what’s slightly doubtful, not too wholesome in the yolk.
But I lifts me lid in honour, when I chance to come upon a dinkum feller,
What all Diggers call the little Salvo bloke.
We remember people every day at the museum, keeping their memories and stories safe to be retold again.
Lest we forget.
BOOKS
Former Salvation Army Australia Museum Manager Lindsay Cox has authored two books on the Salvos’ relationship with the Australian Defence Forces.
Purchase these two books – Still Serving and Cuppa tea, digger? – from Salvos Publishing
