WORDS Michael McVeigh PHOTOS Peter Casamento

General Peter Cosgrove has seen the worst the world has to offer, but says the human spirit shines through.

There’s a passage in General Peter Cosgrove’s autobiography, My Story, where he describes sitting in on a celebratory Mass in the East Timor capital of Dili just a few weeks into his mission in the newly-independent country.

The strong Catholic faith of the people in East Timor made a deep impression on him. He writes of sitting in the church, listening to a homily from Nobel Laureate Bishop Belo, and being moved by the hundreds of people crammed into the cathedral, singing with a passion and joy that defied the violence the country had witnessed.

‘As the final hymn drew the service to a close, I was much moved and thought to myself that the faith, forbearance and courage of these people were indomitable’, he says.

General Peter Cosgrove first came to national prominence in 1999 as head of the Australian-led INTERFET force that brought peace during the Indonesian withdrawal from East Timor, but that mission came towards the end of what has been a long and distinguished military career.

A third-generation military man, Peter graduated from Duntroon in 1968. He saw action as a young platoon leader in Vietnam, where he received the Military Cross. In 1975 he was involved in the clean-up process in Darwin following Cyclone Tracy. In the 1990s he found himself back at Duntroon training the next generation of military leaders and planning his retirement. Then came the East Timor mission.

Biographer Patrick Lindsay calls Peter an ‘Australian Everyman’, saying he exemplifies the courage, ingenuity, compassion, larrikinism and humour that we admire in our diggers. But his observations in the cathedral in Dili speaks of someone who also appreciates the deeper dimensions of life, and the strength that comes from belief.

Speaking with Peter, I asked him how growing up in a strong Catholic family, attending primary school at St Francis in Paddington and secondary school at the Christian Brothers-run Waverley College, shaped him as a person.

‘I hope it always showed me right from wrong. It didn’t always prevent me from taking silly courses, and disappointing myself and others, but it wasn’t through ignorance of a better pathway’, he says.

The Catholicism he was raised with was, he says, a ‘robust’ faith, rather than a ‘finely-tuned, passive faith’. In the 1950s, during Peter’s childhood, being Catholic was as much a cultural designation as it was about belief. In the suburbs of his youth, religious brothers and sisters taught in schools and ministered to communities, and politics and faith intermingled even in the pews of the church.

He says one particularly strident Sunday sermon against Communism and the Labor Party saw his grandfather—a Labor man through and through—get up and storm out of Mass, never to return.

Afterwards, Peter remembers nuns from the Little Sisters of the Poor visiting their house on occasion, and inquiring about his grandfather.

‘They would always ask about Mr Henries—I think it had spread that he’d left the church on that occasion under a sort of, ah, estranged circumstances—and he’d twig and say “Tell ‘em to bugger off!” They were always nice about it, but Mum was mortified’, he laughs.

As a military leader, Peter says he was always ‘simple and unmistakeable’ in his faith, but careful never to impose his beliefs on others.

‘It’s been very important to me that people understand that I don’t require them to act other than in a moral way.’

Peter says he found army chaplains—or ‘padres’—were valuable sounding boards for all servicemen, regardless of rank. He was also well aware of the stresses these chaplains placed themselves under. The situation in East Timor was particularly difficult.

‘One man had appointed himself to be there at the disinterment of the remains of any people who, in the very violent months of 1999, had been buried and whose deaths may have been in violence’, he says.

The chaplain was there as the bodies were dug up, and along with an East Timorese priest, gave them the last rites before they were buried again. The work took an emotional toll, and Peter says he found himself ministering to the priest.

‘It was my turn, my job, to minister to them. To say, Padre, take a couple of days off. Go and just relax, have a shower, get some new clothes … Go and wash your mind of some of these grim experiences for a few days.’

The experience taught him that everyone, even those who dedicated their lives to ministry, needs help on occasion.

‘When I occasionally used to talk to groups of padres … I used to tell these guys, you too may need help and should seek help when things are pretty tough.’

Last year, Peter found himself in charge of the relief operation following Cyclone Larry in Queensland. He said the same sense of community and solidarity that he saw in the people of East Timor was evident there.

‘Whether you are a heroic, tough, primary producer, or a small child whose bedroom and precious possessions have been strewn a mile down the road. In either of those senses, you need help, and that help will always come first from your community.’

‘In a way, that’s an expression of faith’, he says. ‘This sense of community, cohesion, selflessness, service before self, picking out who’s in need and going to them … they do it instinctively.’

While community and solidarity aren’t unique to Australia, they are something that we should continue to celebrate. He says people of faith in Australia should rejoice in these attitudes wherever they find them, and acknowledge that these values are not just ‘Australian’, they’re also Christian.

‘We’re perfectly right to have a prism of religiosity through which we view, judge and value the way we live our lives. Yes Australian. But even better, yes an Australian with a fundamental faith.’

My Story, by General Peter Cosgrove, Harper Collins, 2006.

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