University of Queensland ANZAC Day Display

Honouring our Law Students and Graduates who died on war service in World War II

World War II

Fifty million people died in the Second World War - the conflict affected almost the entire world. Almost a million Australians, both men and women, served in the Second World War. Australian servicemen fought in campaigns against Germany and Italy in Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa; and against Japan in south-east Asia and in other parts of the Pacific. The Australian mainland came under direct attack for the first time as Japanese aircraft bombed towns in north-western Australia and Japanese midget submarines attacked Sydney harbour.

Over 30,000 Australian servicemen were taken prisoner in the Second World War, and 39,000 gave their lives.

Anzac Day

Anzac Day - 25 April - is one of Australia's most important national occasions. It marks the anniversary of the first major military action by Australian and New Zealand forces which took place in 1915, during the First World War. ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The soldiers in those forces quickly became known as Anzacs, and the pride they soon took in that name endures to this day.

The date was officially named Anzac Day in 1916, when it was marked by a wide variety of ceremonies and services in Australia, a march through London, and a sports day in the Australian camp in Egypt.

During the 1920s, Anzac Day became established as a national day of commemoration for the 60,000 Australians who died during the First World War. The first year in which all the States observed some form of public holiday together on Anzac Day was 1927. By the mid-1930s all the rituals we today associate with the day - dawn vigils, marches, memorial services, reunions, sly two-up games - were firmly established as part of Anzac Day culture.

With the onset of the Second World War, Anzac Day became a day on which to commemorate the lives of Australians lost in that war as well, and in subsequent years the meaning of the day has been further broadened to include Australians killed in all the military operations in which Australia has been involved.

Australians recognise 25 April as an occasion of national commemoration. In the early hours of the day, at various Shrines of Remembrance, cenotaphs and war memorials throughout Australia and New Zealand, men and women who have gone to war and returned gather with their families and friends. Dawn services are held, heralding the start of another Anzac Day. Later in the day ex-servicemen and women meet and join in marches through the major cities and many smaller centres.

Anzac Day is a day when Australians reflect on the many different meanings of war. It is also a day of remembrance - of the deaths and sufferings in war, the valor of fighting men and women, and the ever-present hope for the peoples of the world to live together in harmony and lasting peace. And, as every Anzac Day service recalls, "at the going down of the sun, and in the evening we will remember them."

The Law School & its Anzacs

This display is to commemorate five outstanding young men who studied Law at the University of Queensland. Not all of these men studied in the T. C. Beirne School of Law. This is because by the outbreak of the Second World War, the Law School had not long awarded its first Bachelor of Laws. In April 1935, a large pledge made by T.C. Beirne to the University enabled the establishment of a complete School of Law. Classes in the new Law School began in 1936, and its first students graduated in 1938. In 1939 there were thirty students enrolled and five LLBs were awarded.

Prior to the establishment of the Law School, students who wished to pursue the study of Law could enrol in the University of Queensland's Arts Faculty which offered some law subjects. Some of the men being commemorated took this course of study, and then went on to complete their Law studies elsewhere, such as Oxford.

The first Queensland Law Journal published in 1951 was dedicated to the memory of these five men, former students in Law at this University, who gave their lives for their country during the Second World War. This display commemorates:

The 1951 Queensland Law Journal dedication reads:

These men were outstanding in their generation. All had shown promise of high achievement, and all had won the respect and affection of their fellows by the qualities of character and humanity which they possessed. The loss which a nation suffers when men like these are taken is one which can not be remedied, but the inspiration which is afforded by the sacrifice they made will not be lost, for they will not cease to be remembered with honour while any of those who knew them remain.