Duckboard Fighting Spirit
Alan Jackson
Australian Governments have spent fortunes prosecuting wars at the behest of the powerful. Comparatively, repatriation has been an afterthought attracting a pittance. Some of the first soldiers to return from the Great War founded the Returned Soldiers' Association on 8 August 1915. They knew there would be a fight for the rights and needs of those broken physically and psychologically, and the families of those of those who were lost. They were ready for the fight, a fight which continues today. What they didn't anticipate was that they would start the RSL movement. Nor did they know that they would be fighting the very hierarchy they created for the next 100 years.