13 November 2012

War Memorial says no to peacekeepers on the Roll of Honour

| johnboy
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Despite a spirited campaign to include peacekeepers on the War Memorial’s Roll of Honour the board has announced it’s thinking on maintaining the status quo:

Today, the Memorial has three honour rolls commemorating those servicemen and women who have given their lives for this country: the Roll of Honour, the Commemorative Roll, and the Remembrance Book.

The Roll of Honour includes those who died in war or on warlike service.
The Commemorative Roll records the names of Australians who died in wars while serving with allied forces, the Merchant Navy, and certain civilian organisations.
The Remembrance Book commemorates members of the Australian Defence Force and Australian police forces who have died during or as a result of designated as non-warlike or humanitarian peacetime service.
Currently, 11 of the 52 names in the Remembrance Book are names of peacekeepers; the others lost their lives in other non-warlike operations. Three peacekeepers’ names appear on the Roll of Honour, as they died on operations classified by Defence as warlike.

Taking all these matters into consideration, the Council came to the unanimous decision to retain the existing criteria but will further review this matter at its next meeting.

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Roundhead89 said :

I agree with this. The name of the institution is Australian War Memorial, not Australian Peace Keeping Memorial. Including peace keepers would cheapen the roll of honour and trivialise the sacrifice of the fallen during times of war.

Then you miss the point of the place, and of military service.

Roundhead89 said :

I agree with this. The name of the institution is Australian War Memorial, not Australian Peace Keeping Memorial. Including peace keepers would cheapen the roll of honour and trivialise the sacrifice of the fallen during times of war.

Yeah, Peace Keeping Missions totally cheapen our proud tradition of War and other awesome stuff.

It’s heaps more honourable to be sent off to die for no reason by the British on some pointless foreign shore than, I dunno, stopping people being killed or raped or whatever.

I agree with this. The name of the institution is Australian War Memorial, not Australian Peace Keeping Memorial. Including peace keepers would cheapen the roll of honour and trivialise the sacrifice of the fallen during times of war.

Hacketthead said :

I pretty much agree with you FB, however what about ADF personnel on peacekeeping operations who are are killed by belligerents? I don’t think it’s happened to anyone in the ADF I can think of but I recall in 2000 a New Zealand soldier was killed and his body mutilated by milita members in East Timor, and you have the Black Hawk Down scenario as occurred to the Americans in Somalia in 1993.

Australian participation in both of these Operations are declared ‘warlike’, so any deaths on them are listed on the Roll of Honour.

There are always going to criteria to meet, and as someone said, there will always be people who want (often with a valid reason) those criteria to be relaxed.

I signed the petion to ask that they include peacekeepers for several reasons. Firstly because when the orignal rules concerning honour rolls were decided early in the 20th century the concept of peacekeeping did not exist ( at least not as it does today). They need to rethink the rules.
Secondly the point over just who gets on the list is a very good one. I have a great uncle on the list. He died whilst serving in World War II. Fair enough he gets on the list. He was career soldier. However he died of illness whilst training soldiers in a camp in Australia. He was not on active duty overseas. He was well cared for. He just felll ill and died. It just happened to occur during WWII. Now I am not saying he shouldnt be on the list. It would be difficult to differientiate between those that died in different circumstances during war. For example many of those who died during WWI died from illnesses contracted on the battlefields. They should definately be on the honour roll.

I just think that peacekeepers who go into really dangerous situations and are killed, should be honoured by our country. The war memorial needs to move beyond its limited definitions of war and honour.Otherwise we may need to consider renaming the War Memorial 🙂

Hacketthead said :

I pretty much agree with you FB, however what about ADF personnel on peacekeeping operations who are are killed by belligerents? I don’t think it’s happened to anyone in the ADF I can think of but I recall in 2000 a New Zealand soldier was killed and his body mutilated by milita members in East Timor, and you have the Black Hawk Down scenario as occurred to the Americans in Somalia in 1993.

Agreed and as I said rather than changing the criteria to allow all peacekeeping operations why not change the definition of those specific operations to warlike.

I pretty much agree with you FB, however what about ADF personnel on peacekeeping operations who are are killed by belligerents? I don’t think it’s happened to anyone in the ADF I can think of but I recall in 2000 a New Zealand soldier was killed and his body mutilated by milita members in East Timor, and you have the Black Hawk Down scenario as occurred to the Americans in Somalia in 1993.

dot3 said :

You join to serve your country….. it’s not up to you where your sent…. your a Soldier, Sailor, Airman…. warlike or not. they deserve to be on the roll !!…

Just because some crusty old fart who survived does not agree….

ask the board where they served and what role they played…. but ya they were rear echelon types…

PUT THEM ON THE ROLL !!!

*SIGH* dot, the definition of who gets included is pretty good to me. They need to have a fairly clear and precise definition of who gets included.

Any enlisted soldier who is killed while on active duty in a defined conflict is included. If you want to include enlisted men on peacekeeping operations then you are including things like operation Azure in Sudan where there is no actual fighting, just overseas service. If a soldier dies in a truck rollover in Sudan should he be included? If so do you include a soldier who dies of a heart attack in bed while in Sudan. How do you tell the family of Sapper Jordan Penpraze (The soldier killed in the truck accident at Holsworthy) that his military role is less important than the peacekeepers in Sudan? If you can’t then perhaps he should be included on the Roll of Honour as well. If you include him then you need to include the many serving members of the Australian Defence Forces that are killed on active service every year. So they need to have a defined conflict period with an official start and finish date. Other wise the Roll will have 1,000,000 names instead of 100,000. Where are you going to put 1,000,000,000 names? Now while we are at it lets include the names of animals who have died in service.

They are not trying to lessen what these men & women have done or downplay their role it’s just they have to set a limit somewhere. And whet ever limit they set people will always wanting it to be relaxed just a bit more.

Perhaps a better argument would be to get them to change the definition of specific more dangerous peacekeeping operations to ‘Warlike’

You join to serve your country….. it’s not up to you where your sent…. your a Soldier, Sailor, Airman…. warlike or not. they deserve to be on the roll !!…

Just because some crusty old fart who survived does not agree….

ask the board where they served and what role they played…. but ya they were rear echelon types…

PUT THEM ON THE ROLL !!!

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