Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

One Man’s Legacy
An ANZAC Address presented to the Carroll College community by Paul Cullen, a member of the teaching staff in 2000.

History has been called the story of great lives. Today I wish to present one such life.
On the 4th March, 1915 in the middle of WW1, the conflagration known as “the war to end all wars”, a boy was born into an Irish-Australian family in the working class suburb of Erskenville in Sydney. He led an unremarkable childhood; he neither excelled academically nor did his family live prosperously.
In adolescence, Kevin found himself having to help support the family during the Great Depression. He became a carpenter and jumped a few country- bound freight trains to find work. Kevin played cricket and Rugby league for his beloved Western Suburbs until war broke out in 1939. Like so many others, he was called on to defend Australia in her hour of need, part of a generation forced to become men overnight.
In 1941 Kevin was dispatched to defend the then British territory of Singapore as part of the 8th Division 2/29th battalion C company, a Victorian outfit bolstered by New South Wales reinforcements.
Like Gallipoli, it was doomed to failure. The big British guns pointed out to sea, set in concrete unable to defend the island; Japanese soldiers rode bicycles down the Malay peninsula and captured Singapore quickly. Australian and British troops had no choice but to surrender. Kevin was suffering from malaria and was confined to the infirmary when Japanese soldiers entered the compound. He watched as seriously ill patients were killed in the beds around him. Only he and a handful were spared. The reason is as unfathomable as war itself.
For the next four years he was incarcerated in the infamous Changi p.o.w camp. He was one of the lucky ones! Most of C company were forced-marched through the jungle to help construct the Burma-Thailand railway line. We now know that for every wooden sleeper laid, one Australian soldier died; it remains as a lasting monument to the horrors of war. In that regard Edward “Weary” Dunlop’s account of life around Hellfire Pass should be compulsory reading for all of us.
Repatriated in October, 1945 he returned to Australia a physical and emotional wreck. Leaving home a healthy 68 kilos, he returned with less than half of his original body weight. While recuperating from illness, this man met a woman who nursed him back to some semblance of health; the two later married. They raised three children: a priest, a schoolteacher and a nurse.
Kevin James Cullen was my father. He died in 1988 three days before I was due to be married. He succumbed to a brain tumour traced directly to war service. Some of the last words he spoke to me were to apologise for “spoiling” the wedding preparations. He wanted so much to hang on to see his eldest son married. He couldn’t, but the fact that the ceremony went ahead was a testimony to the precious gifts he bequeathed his family.
What makes a person’s life significant or great? An important discovery, a work of art, earning your first million? For me, as his son, it’s about sacrifice. For many men and women of his generation, greatness lay in a simple and unfailing faith in community and in God. Kevin’s own father taught him how to be a dependable father and husband, his mother gave him courtly manners; Kevin’s treatment of others was a direct extension of his love for her.
As a boy I missed the playful bonding that is a vital part of the father-son relationship; kicking a football or playing cricket in the backyard. He was much too frail for that. So what did he leave me?
In all the years I spent in his household, I never heard him utter a single word against the Japanese who were his captors. He could still forgive, after all the unspeakable atrocities and tragedies he witnessed and experienced? He could forgive! I feel guilty when reminded how slow I am to forgive far more inconsequential slights. Margaret Craven in her novel “I Heard the Owl call My Name” wrote of life’s greatness taking place in quiet, unobtrusive places involving quiet, unobtrusive people. Like the worker in Bruce Dawe’s poem celebrating the life of a common man, my father did offer up his day as a sacrament. After work, time with my mother to talk about the day then out the back to water the garden “offering up not much but as much as any man can offer- time, pain, love, hate ,war, death, laughter, fever”
I miss him still. Every year since his death I wear these war service medals on my right lapel and march in Sydney with his battalion. The ranks are now thin-there are only seven left .I listen to the stories of Bill who is now one of only six living survivors of the Sandakan death march in which 600 men died and George used humour to deal with being locked in a cage on half rations for three months. Both men have become good friends.I need such men in my life to remind me that the very fortunate life I live has been possible because of them. There are many such stories, Kevin’s is but one. His life will have meaning for as long as my family remembers. This good and decent man whose only asks in life were a sleep in on Saturday and to be able to smoke his pipe in the house is now gone in one sense, yet at Easter I feel his presence deeply. Dad’s legacy to me is richer than money or gold.
Lest I forget.
My ANZAC message to you as a youthful generation untouched by war is that next time you have any dealings with an elderly person- a relative or neighbour, try to walk around in their shoes awhile. They are often too easily dismissed as out of touch, set in their ways with nothing much to offer- yet who of us here today would like to have lived through a Great Depression and two world wars in less than 50 years. Theirs were the lost generations in terms of educational opportunities; they wanted better for us. They went away to serve their country so that we standing here today may never know the horrors of war. Why not seek out an aged relative, visit a hospital or nursing home near you and spend a little time talking? You may learn more than you think; it may even change your perceptions. It is a tangible means of maintaining our links with the past that so shapes our lives today.
I leave you with a verse that sums up the legacy left by my father and all who served Australia during the dark hours of war:

“We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs.
Who thinks most-feels the noblest-acts the best”

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Lest We forget