Digger Memorial statue with field hand signal pose

[Liz Martin]

Hi, I’ve just come across this photo of the Atherton(North Queensland) war memorial, in which the soldier is wearing tin hat and box respirator, carrying rifle beside him, with right arm raised, fist closed.
It is, reputedly, the only one in this style in Queensland, not sure if there are others, but it is fascinating.

Various mentions of it on the web describe it as “a digger charging into action”, and “aggressive” - that’s not quite how it seems to me - I feel like it’s a particular field hand signal, but don’t know enough about those to read it precisely.

He certainly has the steady, grim look of someone about to move which matches what I read in the AIF war diaries.

Does this gesture shout out loud to anyone?

 

[maxi]

Liz

On looking at the statue for the first time thanks to your attached photo, it looked to me that his raised arm resembled that of sportsman that had scored a goal or won a race.

His face seems to be that of an action accomplished and not of one of charging towards the enemy.

Purely my first thoughts Liz and not from one of any expertise in Sculpture.

[4thGordons]

The pose is very similar to the famous EM Viquesney's "Spirit of the American Doughboy" although in the case of the US statues (there are quite a few) he is holding/throwing a grenade.

Chris

[davidbohl]

I hope it's not the recent US Army signal to "Stop", or does it go back further ?

[BereniceUK]

To me, it looks like it could be titled "The moment the war ended."

[58 Div Mule]

Now, bear in mind I’m going back 35 years but a raised clenched first was the signal for a machine gun group (GPMG or LMG) as I recall……

Not sure if this goes back as far as WW1?
 

58 DM.

 

[Liz Martin]

Thanks all for your thoughts - I think there may be a few things going on here .... the doughboy link seems highly likely - it's SO similar. Seems all that's different is the variation in uniform (collar is very different - I'm not enough of an expert in the AIF tunic to see all the other possibilities) and our lad has no Mills bomb.. 

 I've got in touch with the current Atherton sub-branch of the RSL to see if they have any archived minutes from the committee that got the memorial project done. My hunch is that it's not a coincidence that they made a "brother" AIF statue to the Doughboy. One of the area's returned men was Harry Dalziel VC (Hamel) who would almost certainly have fought alongside the trailblazer American troops either on the 4th of July, or soon after.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were more blokes on the planning committee who also fought alongside them - it will be great to find out who they all were.

In my readings amongst the battalion diary random documents my impression has been that the Aussies were impressed with the enthusiasm and willingness to learn from them that the yanks showed, and they were greatly saddened at the losses they took due to their relative inexperience, at a time when our troops were operating at absolute peak effectiveness from all the practice.

I also think the machine gun group signal angle is something I want to follow up on - the Doughboy's gesture had to come from somewhere - maybe it was the early form of that, 58 Div Mule - calling on a Lewis Gun section ...... 

Always something new to find out.....

Liz