Our Indigenous Heroes - They Also Served
Husband, Dad, Digger: The Aboriginal ANZAC who fought for family. – Percy Pepper
Percy Pepper with fellow returned service man at Koo Wee Rup circa 1920
Author: Daniel James, Producer: Sophie Verass and Daniel Gallahar
The Great War offered Percy Pepper the same pay and conditions as the white man. With a severely ill wife, seven dependent children and a life under the harsh Aborigines Protection Act, it gave him a chance to fight for his country and for justice.
The average age of the infantry men in the 21st Australian Imperial Force Battalion of World War I was 29, Percy Pepper, however, was 38.
The first batch of youthfully exuberant enlistments for the great war had come and gone. Many would stay gone.
Thousands of men and boys had been shipped off in search of great adventure only to return in the form of bright pink telegrams to notify families of their ultimate sacrifice for King and country. The young fellas were away to have a crack; the whole show was turning out to go on longer than everyone expected. It was time that men of more mature years headed across to lend them a hand.
Among them, Private Percy Pepper service number 5677.
It wasn’t Percy’s age that was the distinguishing feature of his service. Nor was it that he had lost the third and fourth finger on his left hand in an accident on the wharf in Sale back in 1907. It was the fact that he was one of 800 Aboriginal men to enlist and serve during the Great War.
And as such, Percy’s shipment to the western front would be yet one more battle, in a life often consumed by fighting forces beyond his control.
Pepper was a self-described “Aboriginal half-caste earning my own living.”
Well, at least that was the way he described himself to the Aboriginal Protection Board in the state of Victoria. Percy was actually a proud Gunnai man, born on Ramahyuck mission circa 1877. He was forced to denigrate himself with such descriptors to deal with the Board and the swathes of red tape and public servants that would pester his and his family’s mere existence.
He was forced to label his genetic make-up under the Act, the infamous Aborigines Protection Act 1915. It was that Act and its various iterations that would govern Percy’s and many generations to come. The Act was there so the clerks and bureaucrats knew exactly what type of Aborigine they were dealing with.
The Aboriginal Protection Board; think — the bureaucracy of the NDIS, pile on the racism and disdain of clerks for Aboriginal people and add a three to four week lag for every request. Whether it be for a train ticket to visit family or a new pair of woolen stockings to get through the winter.
A half-caste would fall under the protection of the Board, it was the clerk’s job to determine whether half-castes were able to live on their own land, spend time with their “full blood” brothers and sisters, uncles and aunties. They would either approve or disallow whether Aboriginal people could spend time in their culture. The answer was usually ‘no’. It was the Act of 1915 that would more than ever rigidly assert the government’s authority to further erode connection to traditional life.
There was no science in their method. Life altering and culture fraying decisions were made on the basis of the shade of people’s skin. Under the Act, clerk’s job was to “protect” by destroying culture, severing any connection one may have had with it. It was the clerks and the administrators that were the custodians of cultural genocide and they performed the task politely and efficiently.
It was a time in which a clerk’s pen could be as lethal as the Hun’s bullet.
Nine years prior to his embarkment to Plymouth on the HMAT Shropshire, the fate of Percy’s wife Lucy Pepper (nee Thorpe), suffering from tuberculosis was in the hands of such clerks, to get a train ticket from Lake Tyers to Broadmeadows to receive advanced treatment for her condition.
Percy having just lost two fingers in a work accident 21 years before the invention of penicillin was laid up in hospital pleading for help from the Board via his mission manager, John Bulmer. He wrote:
“Dear Sir, I have just received a letter from Lucy, she is in hospital again, and the doctor told her she would have to go away to the Sanitorium at Broadmeadows about 13 miles from Melbourne. Well Mr Bulmer I am not able to get her to that place and the doctor says she can get treatment their (sic) that will all probably cure her. It is all outdoor treatment. I would like her to get away as soon as possible as every week she is getting worse, I am going to ask you if you could get me a pass to take her down as I cannot do much work yet as my fingers are not healed I will be out Sunday to see you and let you know everything as I am going to Sale tomorrow my self to see about her Alice has got the Typhoid Fever, Billy has gone up as he is bad again, I am just up to my eyes in trouble no about the children hear and their. (sic) I have nothing more to say hoping you will be to help me in some way. Your trustworthy – PERCY PEPPER (Excuse writing in pencil)”
This time, in a merciful gesture the clerks approved the permission to receive basic treatment.
There a dozens and dozens of letters from Percy and Lucy to administrators or letters from administrators pertaining to their family. He was indeed gainfully employed in support of his wife and seven children. So when the Great War came and he had a chance to serve under the same pay and conditions as white soldiers it may have been an offer too good to refuse.
It was also an opportunity for acceptance. Surely to honorably serve one’s country would sweep away much of the discrimination endured by him and his family.
"Half-castes” were permitted in the army as outlined in the booklet, Instructions to army recruitment officers. Full bloods were forbidden from serving the country that was trying to eradicate them. Half-castes would assimilate easier, be less of an irritant to their would be brothers in arms, look that little bit more European. There was a proviso though, half castes that were raised by full blooded Aborigines would not be allowed to serve.
The inherent mistrust of Aboriginal people may have been born out of suspicion by the army of the potential actions of its own personnel or it could have been an echoic murmur from the frontier wars, some of which were still being fought. Whatever the motive was, it was racist. How the Aboriginal men that served in the war quietly held onto their dignity, their culture in the fear and alarm of the voyage and the battles they would fight before fighting on the front line is worthy of our respect. Lest we forget.
Percy Pepper, to the right at central pier Docklands, 25 September 1916.
Little is known about the day-to-day goings on of Percy during his active service on the western front. We know what conditions were like on the line. The mud, the blood, the dysentery. The seemingly never ending bombardments from both sides, the armaments flying overhead, the sky on fire, trenches full of water, water soured by death.
We also know his battalion saw some of the fiercest battles of that theatre of the war. The battle of Amiens, the battle of Pozieres and the German Spring offensive to name a few. But it was in or around the time of the battle of Broodseinde Ridge that Private Pepper received shrapnel wounds to the head, all in the service of a country that barely tolerated his existence at all.
If Percy was a hero, then Lucy was as much a heroine. For the time Percy was in the military, Lucy in poor and fading health would stay put and look after their seven kids. She would keep the family together and away from the lurking authorities and judgemental “do gooders”. A miraculous feat that deserves its own writing, her legacy should not be diminished and it won’t.
In London, Percy would recover from his wounds and continued to serve in the army until August 1918 before being granted permission to return home and care for the ailing Lucy. In a memo to his superiors, he wrote:
“Would it be possible please for me to be returned to Australia” I have received advice that (enclosed) that my wife is very ill…In consequence of the injury to my head and chronic rheumatism, I am quite useless at times as I have to sit down. I am ½ years of age and have seven children. I do not necesdsarily ask for me discharge but desire to be near my wife owing to her condition of health. Would you please return letters to me. P.PEPPER. 14.5.1918”
Discharge was granted, Percy’s war was over but his battles would go on. He was granted a soldier settlement at Koo Wee Rup, a drained swamp.
Lucy Pepper (centre), with her children: (clockwise from top left) Gwendoline, Phillip, Alice, Sarah, Lena and Sam.
The mud of France had been replaced by the mud of Gippsland. He would try and make a go of farming the land until Lucy died in 1923 at the age of 39. In a final act of cruelty, the clerks had refused her burial on country at Lake Tyers to be laid to rest with her mother and father.
Percy would live to 1956 and would continue to be a role model and beloved grandfather to many, including my grandmother Patricia. It is through the relentless and patient grace of Percy and Lucy that we are here today. Lest we forget.
Daniel James is a Melbourne-based writer of the Yorta Yorta Nation. Follow Daniel @mrdtjames
