WWI veterans through the eyes of a child - ANZAC Day memories of the 1960s

My ANZAC Day memories go to the town of Moss Vale in the Southern Highlands south of Sydney, Australia, where I grew up in the 1960s and 70s. In our street there lived two elderly men who had gone to France in WWI. Mr Hosier, our next-door neighbour as a junior officer and Mr Pearson as an army engineer. They were wonderful, generous men and very patient with children. Mr Pearson, (Tom), had "taken a bit of gas" in France, as he put it, and had a bad chest. He taught me and my friend, David, Morse code and basic electrical circuitry on his front verandah where he often sat in the mornings for tea. Locals remember him as the town civil engineer, a builder of roads and bridges, the job he did in France as well.

We called Mr and Mrs Pearson “Mr P” and “Mrs P." They were unfailingly welcoming and cheery to the kids of the street as we meandered past on our way to school and other places of interest. If I spotted Mrs Pearson on the front porch I would yell out, “Hello Mrs P.” “Which one are you?” Mrs P would call back, “Philip!” “And how are you my darling,” she would invariably reply. When we visited, a hug and something delicious just out of the oven were added to her warm voice.

An oxygen cylinder sat snugly next to Mr P for the bad days when his breath was short and rasping. Neither Mr Pearson nor Mr Hosier glorified their time away in Europe. Mr P carefully deflected my questions about the war. Mr Hosier's only comment was, "It was terrible, son. I don't want to talk about it". A black and white photo of a dashing young Mr Hosier in army uniform stood near the hat stand in his back room. I gazed admiringly at the handsome young man leaning on his rifle, looking confidently at the camera. Even as a child I struggled to reconcile this slim, sepia-coloured figure in a slouch hat with the elderly, retired grazier before me.

Age did in fact weary the men and women who came home after WWI, as no doubt did the bitter and for some, rancid memories of shells, mud, death, and lost comrades.

As a young woman Mrs P, Ethel, had volunteered as a nurse at the makeshift rehabilitation home on the outskirts of Moss Vale where injured WWI soldiers were repatriated. "They used to call and scream terribly at night, poor boys", she told me once, "The doctors said they were malingerers but that was before we knew about shell shock". Wise words from a woman who left school at around age 14 but who could still complete the Sydney Morning Herald crossword by morning tea even in her 80s! My younger sister Ruth, whose interviews with Mrs P are in the national archives, reminded me that Mrs Pearson lost her younger brother in the Great War, the war that was to end all wars. Nursing returned solders must have been a special experience and no doubt caused her a degree of pain and grief.

In WWII, the Pearsons opened their home to Allied soldiers on R&R. The young men on leave would catch the train down from Sydney for a welcome break in the country. Many of the men who stayed with them came from England. They were very homesick, Mrs P told me. Some were so grateful that they brought their families out from the UK to visit Moss Vale decades later. Mr and Mrs P were the kind of people you meet once but feel you've known all your life. They could always expand their family to fit one more person in.

Another remarkable woman of that era, Miss Sybil Badgery, lived a short walk up our street. Miss Badgery was highly intelligent, well-read, and always busy, often helping others. The Badgerys were a distinguished Southern Highlands family and Miss Badgery had firm, direct, yet thoughtful interactions with children. I found her immediately likable as she had the rare gift of treating us as small, interested and interesting friends, not as lesser beings. It is amazing to reflect that back then I could decide to visit her neat cottage without notice, and be welcomed. After a drink of cordial and a biscuit, I would typically be given chores to do. It is often forgotten that boys and men relate through doing, but I suspect she knew that. I enjoyed pottering around with her as every task we undertook was accompanied by a soft-spoken, running commentary in the slightly English, clipped speech of educated people in those times. Whether digging bulbs in her garden, or fixing something in the back shed, there were always little facts and reasonings she had to share.

Miss Badgery came off the land so was good with her hands, but as she grew older she needed more assistance around the house. Looking back, I realise that sometimes my mother sent me there to do just that. At the time, I did not know I was helping, but that is the way small towns work, you get along side your neighbours without fuss. There are five Pogson children. Three of us were "big lumps of lads" as my mother opined. We were therefore fair game to be allocated out to various labouring duties from time to time by my mum's "invisible hand." She seemed to know who needed a garden dug or their lawns mown and we were just the young men to get the job done.

Back to Miss Badgery, her smiles were rare and somewhat quizzical, but I treasured those moments as they lit up the whole of her broad, kindly face. Although she was older than my mother, they became firm friends right up to Miss Badgery’s death. She taught me how to prime a pump and use a scythe to cut grass – arcane skills that have never left me. I pestered my mother once as to why Miss Badgery – she was always Miss Badgery, never “Miss B” - had not married. "Probably because the man she was supposed to marry never came back from the war, dear,” Mum replied.

Whether Miss Badgery had lost a sweetheart or not, I now realise just how many young men from rural Australia never returned home after WWI. It may have been men who in the main died, but the impact of those tens of thousands of casualties, and the physical and emotional wounds carried by those who survived, left a legacy of carnage across rural towns and families. The reason so many villages give prominence to a war memorial is not to glorify battles in far off lands, but as a grim reminder of the myriad homes where places at the dinner table remained achingly empty once the guns fell silent in 1918.

In the ongoing shadow of the Ukrainian invasion, and other recent wars such as that in Sudan, I hope that we will never again see conflagrations like WWI and WWII.

To Mr Hosier, Mr and Mrs Pearson and dear Miss Badgery: "Lest We Forget".

?Philip Pogson FAICD April 25, updated in 2023