RAA Liaison Letter 2024 - 2025 Edition

RAA L I A I SON L ETTER 2024 – 2025 E D I T I ON C ANNON BALL S UP PLEMENT 153 Genius or Serendipity? Attempts to discover evidence of the date the School of Artillery came into possession of the plaster relief and why it was hung over the entrance to the Gunner’s Mess at North Head have yet to be found. The panel’s association with 8 August 1918 and that the Annual Gunner Dinner commemorating the famous 8th of August fire-plan was held in that Mess for many years was either planned or a serendipitous coincidence. Other Copies A bronze panel at the Australian War Memorial (image below) includes in its ‘caption’ the date 8 August 1918 and the artist’s signature. 2nd Division Memorial, France The two original bronzes on the 2nd Division Memorial, separately depict infantry and artillery; they jointly convey the centrality of infantry and artillery cooperation in the Great War. The original artillery bronze has a caption “BRINGING UP THE GUNS – MONT ST QUENTIN – AUGUST 8 – 1918” and carries the artists’ name – MAY BUTLER-GEORGE. There may be some licence in the title. Historians have associated the well-known date of 8 August with the Battle for Amiens. The following day, the 2nd Division stormed Mont St Quentin with the ongoing battle lasting some weeks. The allied August 1918 Amiens offensive so demoralised German General Ludendorff, he famously said the 8th was ‘the black day of the German Army in the history of the war. This was the worst experience I had to go through.’ In recognition of the importance of the original bronze relief, a replica was installed in 1996 at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. It is a copy of the original bronze first dedicated in 1925 (as shown at the top of this page). The Australian War Memorial web site describes the panel as follows: A bronze panel depicting members of a gun crew pushing and pulling an 18 pounder gun up a slight incline. This work is taken from an original plaster cast of one of four bronze bas- relief panels commissioned from Butler-George for the base of the pedestal of the Second Division AIF Memorial at Mont St Quentin, France in 1918. The work was cast in bronze in 1995 and was installed in the Western Courtyard of the Australian War Memorial sculpture garden. The original 2nd Australian Army Divisional Memorial was designed by sculptor Web Gilbert and bas-relief panels by May Butler George, this sculpture was destroyed by German soldiers in 1940. A replacement statue by Stanley Hammond of a thoughtful Australian soldier looking down was erected in 1971. Note that the Digger atop is no longer symbolically bayoneting a German eagle. New bronzes were also cast.