IN Spirit

For some it’s just another public holiday but for others Anzac Day will be spent marking the occasion. What better way to do so than by spending April 25 on a European battlefield where Aussie soldiers gave their all.

If you want to know anything about Australia’s involvement in the world wars, Mat McLachlan is the guy to talk to.

The Sydneysider is one of the country’s leading war historians and battlefield guides, particularly when it comes to Australian troops. He has published a number of books and appears regularly in the media as a commentator. He also designs the tours for Mat McLachlan Battlefield Tours and guides many of them himself.

While Battlefield Tours cater largely to boomers, growing numbers of young people are keeping the Anzac legends alive and visiting sites like Gallipoli. Mat says the images of those Australians who volunteered for World War I and then fought for their country still seem to stand for the qualities considered quintessentially Aussie today.

“I think they are because they identify with what it means to be Australian,” Mat says. “It’s hard to explain it in simple terms but I think people look back on that time as a simpler time and a golden one. We’d just achieved federation and I think those young men felt they were helping the mother country and wanted to stand up for democracy. I think people are proud of that.

“The landing at Gallipoli sums up everything that’s good about Australia – having a go, helping your mates – all the good things we like to think about ourselves. We’ve taken the best from that battle. In the face of disaster these men hung on and did the right thing.”

Anzac Day is of course one of their busiest times of the year for the group. Battlefield Tour’s most popular trip is the Western Front Tour, which starts on April 18 and allows travellers to attend the Anzac Day Dawn Service at the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux, where we lost 45,000 men.

Other stops include the Australian 2nd Division Memorial and the remains of trenches captured by Australian troops on the 1918 battlefield of Mont St Quentin, the iconic town of Ypres and a Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate, where the names of 54,000 missing British and Commonwealth soldiers are recorded.

“People really seem to want to travel to different battlefields for Anzac Day and they seem to want to spend it on foreign battlefields,” says Mat about how Battlefield Tours came about. While there are plenty of tours for veterans and their families, particularly in the US and UK, there aren’t that many for civilians. “The people who come with us are not just military history buffs or people who have a relative involved.”

Thirty-seven-year-old Mat didn’t grow up in a military family though he did have a grandfather he never met who was involved in World War II. He says it’s a fairly typical story – growing up in a country town in New South Wales, going to the dawn services ignited his interest in military history, particularly Australian involvement.

“That I’m a young person is important to the fact that a lot of these celebrations and memorials are being kept alive by young people. In places like America they are having a tough time keeping remembrance alive as the original soldiers are dead or passing away. Here it just seems to be getting bigger.”

Battlefield Tours offer trips to significant World War II locations in Europe as well as Vietnam, Waterloo and even former rocket launch sites in France. They’re also branching out to explore military history in other interesting locations like the Philippines and Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.
For more information, go to www.battlefields.com.au.