St John's Cathedral, Brisbane and the Anzac Legend

For soldiers today, as in the past, the colours or guidons of their military unit are sacred to their mission and to the lives that they honour. The solemn ceremonial laying-up the colours or guidons in a church or cathedral speaks to the mutual esteem in which these standards are held by Australian Defence Force personnel and the community these men and women serve. It also speaks to the linkages between military sacrifice and eternal life, embodied in the faith of the churches or cathedrals in which the colours are laid. Colonel Hughes was determined that his Battalion’s colours should lie in St John’s Cathedral, as had the unit’s former colours, remarking at the time that it was “heart-warming” for the Battalion that there existed an institution in Brisbane such as St John’s in which the colours could be deposited. St John’s is an especially appropriate space for the display of regimental colours. The Cathedral is recognised as one of the finest Neo-Gothic churches in Australia. Its striking Gothic lines and internal spaces exude a sense of timelessness, ‘transcendence’ and dignity, providing a fitting backdrop for the regimental flags and colours, and other war mementoes, which repose in the building. In 1915 the 9th Battalion RQR had the first man ashore at the Anzac dawn landings: Lieutenant Duncan Chapman of Maryborough, Queensland. It also fought on the Western Front in Europe where Chapman (then aged 28) was to meet his death at the Battle of Pozieres in 1916. During the Second World War the Battalion also fought in North Africa and in the decisive battle of Milne Bay in New Guinea. All these and numerous other battle honours are recorded on the colours of the Battalion which lie in St John’s Cathedral. The relationship between the Cathedral and the Battalion can be traced back to at least 1916, though the ties probably go back to the 19th Century. On 25 April 1916, exactly a year after the Anzac dawn landings, three soldiers from the Battalion who had taken part in the landings—Major John Milne and Sergeants Thomas Scott and Reginald Verry—attended a packed service at St John’s to commemorate the first anniversary of the dawn landings. They formally presented the Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane, the Most Reverend St Clair Donaldson, with a flag which they said had been carried ashore by the Battalion at Gallipoli. This flag—which was reportedly one of the first carried at the landings— is no longer to be found at the Cathedral its whereabouts unknown. It is possible that it was hung in the Cathedral with other military flags and colours and eventually decayed over time. However, in 1955, Chaplain Maxwell’s flag flown at the evacuation of Gallipoli (see section 1) was housed by the Cathedral in a glass and metal case, which probably explains why Maxwell’s flag still exists and remains, on the whole, well preserved. Other Queensland-based Army units whose colours or guidons have been laid-up in the Cathedral in previous years include the former 5th and 11th Light Horse Regiments disbanded in 1943 (guidons laid-up 1959); the 15th Infantry Battalion disbanded in 1946 (colours laid-up 1953); the 2nd/14th Light Horse Regiment (guidons laid-up 1972); and the 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (colours last laid-up 1988). Also hung in the Cathedral in 1972 was the eagle-emblazoned banner of the Right Honourable Sir Leslie Wilson, a British politician and colonial administrator and Queensland’s longest serving Governor (1932 to 1946), who had fought with distinction at Gallipoli and on the Western Front, where he had been severely wounded. Sir Leslie’s banner had previously hung in St Paul’s Cathedral, London.

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