Eulogy for Stan Bisset

Twenty years ago, we were interviewing veterans for a documentary on Kokoda. When Stan Bisset appeared, I distinctly remember thinking: someone’s called central casting and they’ve ordered a hero!

Stan didn’t think he was a hero but he was a hero to me and I know he was a hero to many others here today.

Stan had star quality: that indefinable amalgam of physical presence and character that sets the remarkable ones apart. He was a sporting hero who blossomed into an authentic hero in the cauldron of war.

Stan was an elegant man who carried himself with grace. He was a gentleman in the true sense of the word: one of those rare individuals who had both style and substance. He showed respect to others … and in turn he received respect. He had, and he lived by, a deep sense of duty and honour. He was a natural leader.

He lived his life true to his principles … a man of courage - both physical and moral - of compassion, loyalty and selflessness. He inspired many of his own generation … and many of those that have followed.

I know that barely a day went by that Stan didn’t think about his beloved brother Butch. He was determined to lead his life well so that Butch’s sacrifice was not in vain.

I was proud to have had Stan as a mentor and a friend. I learned so much from him and I’ve admired so much about him. I loved the way he refused to concede an inch to Father Time ... how he fought to the end, showing the courage for which he was famed.

I remember a couple of years ago, when he had some lingering leg sores, Stan heard that the Brisbane Broncos’ players had used a hyperbaric chamber to hasten their recovery. Stan checked it out on the web and arranged for the department of veterans’ affairs to take him to Brisbane to follow the Broncos’ example. He cured his sores and then started a new exercise regime. He was 96 at the time.

Stan loved and was deeply proud of his children, Tom, Holly, Sally, Jim and Ros. His world revolved around his beloved Gloria. I thank you all for sharing your Stan with us.

For more than 60 years Stan was the lifeblood of his battalion association. He helped countless old comrades. He worked tirelessly to keep the Kokoda story alive. He was unfailingly generous with his time and his energy to all who found their way to his door, inspired by his part in the Kokoda legend.

Who could forget Stan singing … in his beautiful baritone voice … his battalion song “Spearhead of the Army”

Who else but Stan could inspire awe and admiration with lyrics like “we’re fistical, ballistical and very much militaristical. We’re the boys for the scraps, just look at the tilt of our caps … we’re even very definitely most belligerent chaps.” When Stan sang it, it roared like a battle anthem … a sacred hymn of praise to a band of a special men.

Stan now joins Butch … and so many of his mates who have gone before him … Phil Rhoden, Don Duffy, Chas Butler, Bob Dougherty, Teddy bBar, Maurie Taafe, Alan Avery, Charlie McCallum, Bruce Kingsbury, Ralph Honner, John Metson, Claude Nye, Lefty Langridge and so many, many more.

Australia is a better nation for having a man like Stan Bisset as one of her sons … and we’re all better people for having had Stan in our lives.

Like the spirit of Kokoda, Stan’s spirit will live on.

Godspeed old friend.

VALE Stan Bisset MC OAM (1912-2010)

Stan Bisset, who died on the Sunshine Coast on 5 October, aged 98, was one of the heroes of the Kokoda campaign in WWII, and Australia’s oldest Wallaby rugby international.

I’ll never forget watching Stan as he stood in front of his beloved brother Butch’s grave at Bomana War Cemetery outside Port Morseby. It was August 1998, during what Stan and his fellow Kokoda Diggers called The Last Parade, their pilgrimage to say a final farewell to the mates they left behind. 

It was the first time Stan had visited the grave since Butch had died in his arms on the Track 56 years earlier. He stood there silently for a long time. I could see the emotions surging through him. As always, he stood ramrod straight but tears welled in his noble eyes as the memories flooded back. 

There before him lay Butch, his life cut short by the terrible random selection of war like so many others on the Track. Stan had vowed to lead a good and productive life to honour Butch’s sacrifice. And he had been as good as his word. He had raised a fine family, forged a long and successful career and had done all in his power to keep Butch’s memory and the story of Kokoda alive. 

While I watched, Stan gently wiped the tears from his eyes with his powerful hands and then brought them to his side. He squared his shoulders and paused. Then he swept his right arm up in a crisp, practised salute: an homage from a warrior, a farewell from a brother.

Stan has a deep rooted sense of duty and an unshakeable sense of honour. He had, and still has, star quality: that indefinable amalgam of physical presence and character that sets the remarkable ones apart. He was a genuine sporting hero who blossomed into a military hero in the cauldron of war. 

I vividly remember when I met him for the first time, doing interviews with the veterans for a documentary. My immediate thought was that they’ve ordered a hero from Central Casting and they’ve sent the perfect specimen.

Stan’s former commanding officer and lifelong friend, the late Phil Rhoden, told me that Stan had no time to grieve for Butch during the battles along the Track and took many years to recover from the loss. Like so many other Kokoda veterans, the campaign was one of the defining experiences of Stan’s life. Somehow, Stan dealt with the blows and got on with his life. 

Stan Bisset is quite simply one the finest men I have met. I have been privileged to call him a friend and a mentor for twenty years. He personified so many attributes of the Digger to me: courage (both moral and physical); compassion; selflessness; independence; loyalty; resourcefulness; devotion; coolness; and humour.

He carried himself with the bearing of a natural leader and a champion sportsman. Even as he neared his century, he continued to inspire me and all those who know him with his dogged refusal to surrender any ground to Father Time. 

Since the rediscovery of the Kokoda story about 15 years ago, barely a day would go by without someone wanting to contact Stan and meet him. Without fail, he gave his time and his support.

In 2000, Stan was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for his service to veterans, particularly through the 2/14^th Battalion Association.

Stan is survived by Gloria and his children and grandchildren

Stan Bisset, like his story, is timeless.

Have our Pacific Neighbours Missed Out Again?

At first glance, our Pacific neighbours are one of the big losers in Prime Minister Gillard’s Ministerial Line-up.

The portfolio of Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs - which was dropped, without any explanation, by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last year - has not been reinstated by Ms Gillard.

Duncan Kerr occupied the office in the Rudd Government and many credited it with playing a significant role in improving Australia’s relations in the Pacific, particularly those with our nearest neighbour, Papua New Guinea.

Many experts had tipped that Prime Minister Gillard would take the chance to reinstate the position, in the light of her avowed aim of establishing asylum-seeking processing centres in the region and of the growing volatility in the Pacific: Fiji’s continuing democratic crisis, the smouldering parliamentary uncertainty in PNG and the growing influence of Chinese, Malaysian and Indonesian interests in the South-West Pacific.

The omission is more surprising given the statement by former Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith in the lead-up to the election:

“In our own region, in the Asia-Pacific, when we came to office there was a breakdown in relations between Australia and Papua New Guinea and a breakdown in relations between Australia and the Solomon Islands. They have both been repaired.

“Our opponents, when they were in office, the Liberal Party for 11 years, never chaired the Pacific Island Forum. We chaired it, most successfully, in Cairns last year, establishing the Cairns Compact for the coordination and effectiveness of development assistance in our region.

“This is the century of the Asia-Pacific. Economic, strategic, security, military, influence is moving in our direction: the rise of China, the rise of India, the rise of the ASEAN economies combined; the ongoing central significance and influence of the United States; the continuing importance, economically and strategically, of Japan and the emergence of Indonesia, not just as a regional power but as a global influence.”

Perhaps Ms Gillard plans to allocate the Pacific Islands Affairs role to one of two new Parliamentary Secretaries for Foreign Affairs, Justine Elliot and Richard Marles.

One of the Rudd Government’s positive legacies was its work towards developing a substantial improvement in relations with PNG. The Kokoda Initiative was born of this new approach, as was the PNG-Australia Development Co-operation Treaty, signed last April.

But many within those structures are concerned that they may not be renewed. They will be hoping that Mr Rudd, as the new Foreign Affairs Minister, will be able to maintain his enthusiasm for the region. He has been tasked with handling the prickly negotiations with East Timor over Ms Gillard’s proposed establishment of an asylum seeker-processing centre there.

Let’s hope that this focus on the region and his passion for Kokoda, will motivate Mr Rudd to elevate the Pacific’s priority in his successor’s government. It would be to his lasting credit.

The "Few" of the Pacific War

In 1940, in one of his most celebrated speeches, Winston Churchill praised the Allied airmen who fought in the Battle of Britain: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

I believe the Coast Watchers were the Pacific equivalent of the Battle of Britain’s famous “Few”.

Just like the gallant fighter pilots over Britain, the Coast Watchers were a tiny gallant band, which had an impact far out of proportion to their numbers. And, like the fighter pilots, the Coast Watchers changed the course of the war.

The Coast Watchers volunteered to stay behind the enemy lines in the Pacific islands when, all around them, others were fleeing in the face of a seemingly invincible invasion force. When they volunteered there was no guarantee – or even likelihood – that the Allies would ultimately prevail in the conflict. The only certainty was that if they were captured they faced torture and death.

Indeed, at least 30 Coast Watchers were captured and executed, mostly by beheading.

They were remarkable characters. Most were ‘old hands’ in the islands, who knew the land and the people intimately. They stayed on, in their jungle posts, after the Japanese swept through the islands, constantly moving camp, living off the land, working with their islander comrades, all the while on the lookout for enemy patrols intent on hunting them down.

They made their reports using the then ‘state-of-the-art’ communication system the ‘portable’ AWA 3B teleradio, an absurdly cumbersome set of gear that weighed 150 kilos and needed between 12 and 16 men to move it.

Many Coast Watchers died heroically, like Con Page on Simberi Island off New Ireland, who continued to radio reports, even when the Japanese were closing in on him.

Greg Benham and Bill Kyle stayed behind, refusing the last chance to escape when a group of civilians left New Ireland by boat, to keep reporting.

Just last week, speaking at Camden Library, I met Greg Benham’s nephew. He showed me his uncle’s last letter to his family, taken out by the escaping civilians.

In it he wrote that he stayed behind because his mate Bill Kyle had been ordered to stay behind with the radio: “I felt it my duty to volunteer to stay with him instead of going on the boat to the Solomons and thence to Sydney. I know I owe you all a duty to return and to dear Lillian – however I know you all realize the decision I made was the only honourable one.”

Both Bill Kyle and Greg Benham continued to send their reports until they were captured by the Japanese, just hours before they were due to be rescued by submarine. They were both beheaded. 

Time to Right a Wrong

The wonderful news that another 19 missing Fromelles Diggers have been identified highlights two things: one, that the original bureaucratic dismissals of the chance of any identifications were well wide of the mark; and, two, that the time has come to have the name of the battle inscribed on our major war memorials.

Currently, of 250 sets of remains discovered, 203 have been identified as Australian and, of these, 94 have been individually named. This result far exceeds the authorities’ expectations.

Indeed, when Lambis Englezos originally approached our bureaucrats asking that they search Pheasant Wood, he was told there was almost no likelihood that any remains would be found and, further, if any remains were found they would have virtually no chance of identification.

So, having overcome both these hurdles, surely the time has come for the name of this tragic battle to be added to our war memorials. Many Australians will be staggered to learn that Fromelles, the worst loss of life in a single night in our nation’s history, does not appear on our major memorials.

The long-term advocates of Fromelles, call their quest for the battle’s recognition on our war memorials, the Third Battle of Fromelles: the first was the original in July 1916; the second was the fight to find the missing soldiers, now in its final stages.

Fromelles appears on the Australian Memorial in London’s Hyde Park and on the 5^th Division’s Memorial at Polygon Wood, near Ypres in Belgium, but it does not appear on any of Australia’s major memorials.

The original argument that prevented Fromelles being inscribed on our memorials was that it formed part of the Battle of the Somme. Certainly, Fromelles was originally designed as a diversion to hold German troops away from the Somme, about 80 kilometres away, but it was a separate battle and, in scale and importance, far outweighed many other battles that have been long since carved into our history. (For example, almost four times as many lives were lost at Fromelles than those who died in all our years fighting in Vietnam.)

Inclusion of Fromelles on the memorials would in no way denigrate the battle honours already there. Rather it would right a wrong that has endured for almost a century.