Aboriginal soldiers who died in France in World War I will be remembered this Anzac Day with a visit from Joe Flick.
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Mr Flick will attend the Anzac Day dawn service Villers Bretonneux and lay a wreath on the graves of Sylvester Sullivan from Trangie, William Allan Irwin from Coonabarabran and Thomas Dodd from Walgett, as well as his own grandfather.
It’s not the first time Mr Flick has visited the graves. He’s tried to travel to France every year since 2014, missing only last year. Two years ago he took soil from the home towns of the soldiers to scatter on their graves.
Mr Flick first visited Villers Bretonneux while helping supervise some teenagers on a rugby trip.
“I saw the sign to Villers Bretonneux and I just lost it. I thought shit, my granddad told my dad about that town. I think I was six or seven when my granddad died but my dad told me he talked about those places,” he said.
Even now, Mr Flick said it still made him emotional to think about what the soldiers, including his grandfather Michael Flick, went through, not only during World War I but once they returned home.
“I would like to think that every Australian person gets emotional at Anzac Day. To sit an think during that minute silence about how if they didn’t go, what sort of world would we have today. More so for black fellas, these men didn’t have to sign up,” he said.
“They went over there, they fought and died with their mates, their white mates, and they came back home and they were totally discriminated against.”
The Aboriginal servicemen weren’t given soldier settlement grants, Mr Flick said. They also weren’t allowed to go to the RSL Club after marching on Anzac Day.
“I get emotional talking about them and I get emotional when I’m standing in front of their graves. I think ‘mate, you’re right over here in the middle of France, your mob comes from Walgett, they don’t know where you are, they’ve never seen your grave but they love you as much as they’d love anyone else at home’,” he said.
Mr Flick said he was recently asked about what he would say to his grandfather if he saw him today.
“Like any soldier I’d say ‘thank you, thanks for keeping us safe over here’. The other thing I’d say to him is ‘I’m really sorry for all the crap you put up with when you got home. Sorry for how the government treated you. I’m sorry for how white fellas in small country towns treated you. But thank you’,” he said.