Going The Extra Mile Sam Paynter

They Cried for Their Mothers

The words in my poem They Cried for Their Mothers are an evocation of my personal connections to Gallipoli and explained as follows:

My Great, Great Uncle Herbert Hare and his brother Charles ‘I think of all those farm-boys’ landed at Gallipoli with the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on 25th April 1915.

A few months earlier Herbert had written home from a village called Mena in Egypt, the Christian pilgrimage centre in late antiquity, ‘in the lands of Bible Lore’ to advise (left) that he was

“leaving Egypt for the Dardenelles to fight the Turks”.

Lt Rev. Herbert Hare. Herbert was wounded at Gallipoli, repatriated in Malta then re-joined his battalion on the Western Front in France where he died on 8 August 2016 from severe gunshot wounds ‘in action…right arm blown off by shell…’ ‘smashed and shot and shattered’.

Official Australian war historian CEW Bean described the fighting in this area around Pozières ridge as "more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth". ‘.. the killing fields of France’.

Herbert’s brother, Charles, who was wounded twice at Gallipoli, and his other brother Henry, who served in France, both returned to Australia.

In the early 1970’s, renowned artist Lloyd Rees who, during a library lecture in Hobart, recounted the words of his brother in a letter home from the Western Front: “these boys are keeping me awake at night, crying for their mothers” ‘some cried for their dear mothers’.

Lloyd’s story was seared onto my consciousness as an expression of the unimaginable fear these boys were experiencing. ‘yet the din of war continues…as it echoes in my head’. Lloyd said that Vivien was later killed in the quagmire of the Somme ‘amongst the blood and guts and gore’.

I visited the Lone Pine cemetery on the Gallipoli Peninsula in 2019 and read the pained words inscribed on the headstones of our boy soldiers by their grieving families.
They Cried for Their Mothers includes words from these headstones (above) ‘when their lives had just begun’. I also stood below the sheer cliffs at Anzac Cove which these boys had to climb whilst under heavy enemy fire ‘they didn’t stand a chance’.

Tributes from both the Anzac and Turkish families to their fallen sons stand together on the Gallipoli Peninsula. (right)

They Cried for Their Mothers acknowledges the lost sons on all sides of the conflict. ‘I think of all the mothers…who lost a darling son’.

They Cried for Their Mothers also references Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the Turkish commander at Gallipoli, and later to become known as the Father of Modern Turkey, who is said to have paid tribute to the loss of these young lives with the following words:

You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well. ‘our weeping sons…’.

He later said “the sound of those broken men crying for their mothers is something I shall always have in my ears”. ‘it’s not the sound of cannon…but our weeping sons instead’.

His famous painting merges the images of men and their weapons such that their very humanity appears subsumed into the machinery of war ‘all for King and Country’. His words and painting jolted my previously silent reflections of these boys at war whilst, at the same time, realising that there was a shared experience across generations and across countries and cultures.

I recently read the story of the WW1 English artist CRW Nevinson who painted Mitrallieuse (right) after his experiences of the Western Front.

He later said “the sound of those broken men crying for their mothers is something I shall always have in my ears”. ‘it’s not the sound of cannon…but our weeping sons instead’.

These unconnected emotional

Bravery Co. was born to a girl called Emily. A dreamer and a traveller, a collector and a designer, she spent her days as an Art Director in a bubble of colour and happiness. Then she got sick. Real sick. She got cancer. Not once, not twice but three times. And do you know what, she beat it. Not once, not twice but three times.

Inspired by her own experience of chemo, cancer, naps, and turbans, she's on a mission to create some cool cancer headwear in the hope to give bravery to others going through something she knows only too well.

Emily and Bravery Co. is located in Melbourne, Australia.
www.braveryco.com.au

Sally Hepworth is the New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, most recently Darling Girls. Her novel, The Mother-In-Law (2019), has been optioned for a TV series by Hollywood actress and producer, Amy Poehler.
Drawing on the good, the bad and the downright odd of human behaviour, Sally writes incisively about family, relationships and identity. Her domestic thriller novels are laced with quirky humour, sass and a darkly charming tone.

Sally's novels are available around the globe in English and have been translated into 20 languages. She has sold more than one million books worldwide.

Sally lives in Bayside Melbourne with her family.
www.sallyhepworthauthor.com

Proud Local. Since 1981.
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For 43 years, Sports Conscious has been delighting customers in Brighton with a unique range of premium outdoor and sporting fashion brands.
Every day, the passionate team of experts lead by
Andy Stuart Menteth provides the highest level of customer service. It’s just one of many reasons why Sports Conscious become known as “that store”.
Andy continuously searchs the globe for innovative, sustainable, and environmentally conscious brands whose products are kind to the planet. From well known to small up-and-coming, he is proud to partner with these brands and take the time to deeply understand their products. This allows the store to offer the very best customer service, ensuring customers get the perfect fit for their needs every time.
Premium Global Brands
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Always Pivoting Andy selects only the world’s best outdoor and sports fashion labels, combining premium quality products with expert local knowledge. The team closely work with each brand to provide the widest selection of products, and in many cases these are Australian exclusive to Sports Conscious

Possum Portraits was founded in Bayside in 2021
The timing was significantly influenced by COVID, in the sense that I had just moved to Melbourne with my Aussie husband and then 6 month old daughter in late January 2020. We had not been in the country 6 weeks when the first lockdown was announced in March. I knew no one and was being kept from making friends by continuous lockdowns for the better part of 2 years; so I decided to found a charity that was based on work I had been doing in Germany since 2018 (drawing infant loss portraits) in order to give myself a purposeful project and feel like I was working towards a goal.
I first came to infant loss portraiture through the encouragement of my sister, who is a midwife.


Pregnancy and Infant Loss in Australia

-Over 110,000 families affected by perinatal loss each year in Australia
- That is 6 stillbirths and 2 neonatal deaths a day, while a miscarriage occurs every 3.5 minutes
-This is despite Australia having one of the three top performing healthcare system in the world
- 1 in 4 pregnancies ends in loss; which means that far from being uncommon, the reason we don’t commonly hear mention of it is because perinatal loss is still shrouded in social taboo
- This attitude is unhelpful to grieving parents, who often don’t feel seen, heard or supported in their needs after bereavement


Possum Portraits’ Operations

- we supply hospitals across Australia with free grief resources for bereaved parents
- midwives and other caregivers refer parents to our continuity of care service after loss
- we specialise in free commemorative keepsake portraits of so-called “angel babies”. This is a grief support service no other charity in the world offers
- parents who wish to receive a portrait apply through our website and supply reference photographs of their baby to base our portrait on. In concert with parents, our professional portrait artists then design a portrait for parents which will allow them to remember their baby in a way that meets their wishes. For example, parents may only have poor quality phone pictures of their stillborn or only have photos that show their baby connected to medical equipment. Our hand-drawn portraits allow for details present in photographs to be left out, or for various reference photos to be combined in a single portrait.
- This approach allows us to give parents family portraits with their baby when they may have no such photos in real life, or to show angel babies with their surviving siblings, which we get asked to do often. I’m short, a portrait offers many commemorative possibilities beyond photography and is a crucial alternative for parents to have access to after loss
- we pay our artists for the specialist and highly skilled nature of the work that they do. As an organisation, we are mainly funded by donations.
- we also run a training program in compassionate perinatal bereavement care for midwives which is endorsed by the Australian College of Midwives
- our first academic research study with Monash University is due to commence in July 2023


Why commemoration matters
- keepsakes have been shown to improve mental health outcomes after perinatal bereavement
 
www.possumportraits.org

An Artist, Podcaster, Author & Consultant - leading a very busy life. Heading into retirement Andrew wanted a plan and decided it put it on paper and help others with his story. So he wrote a book and It’s called "My Future’s So Bright…I Gotta Wear Shades", it’s a practical workbook including 18 fun but life changing exercises, a signature Goal Setting tool, Planning checklists and Bucket List ideas designed for those seeking reason and meaning in Retirement. It's my hope that the information in the book will help people to:
• Define their purpose in this next phase of their life,
• Have sufficient self-belief to design this next phase, and
• Build a roadmap to achieve their dreams and goals.

If can help others along their journey of self-discovery to find reason and meaning in retirement, to find their purpose and the motivation to chase that purpose, then I would consider the book a success