When Barbara Logan was a young girl growing up in the Queensland outback, special trips were made to Brisbane to stock up on school shoes and supplies.
No trek was complete without lunch at the Gresham Hotel with “Aunt Madeleine” .
Pushing open the brass handles on heavy wooden doors, Madeleine would be seated in the corner – long gloves and cloche hat in place, a fox fur around her neck, “bared teeth and all”.
With her experience growing up around horses, Madelaine Logan was assigned to remount units. (PR IMAGE PHOTO)“She was very wealthy … she would always have a lovely dress on, beautiful jewellery. And she was beautifully spoken with a polished English accent,” Ms Logan, now in her 70s, tells AAP.
Ms Logan’s childhood was filled with glamorous stories about her great aunt – how she would buy a cabin on both sides of a ship to avoid the sun, or bathe in milk to keep her skin pristine.
“She was very indulgent. Very feminine. Very impulsive,” Ms Logan says.
What she didn’t hear were the stories of war.
She didn’t hear how Madeleine and her sister Ethel travelled halfway around the world to England during World War I, pursuing love and adventure while serving King and country as expert horsewomen with the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.
She didn’t hear how they worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the men in the remount units, training new horses, rehabilitating and resting others and getting them healthy and ready again to go back to the front.
Barbara Logan's childhood was filled with tales of glamorous Aunt Madeleine. (PR IMAGE PHOTO)She certainly didn’t hear the family story that King George V gave the pair special dispensation to ride astride – not side-saddle, as expected of women at the time – and in trousers, no less.
“Never! Never!” Ms Logan says, when asked if she could have imagined her glamorous great aunt in breeches.
“That would be the last thing that I would have associated with Madeleine.”
Madeleine and Ethel were in their 20s when Ethel’s fiancé left for France.
Determined to follow him and do her part, Ethel enlisted her sister and the pair set off for England – where their father had been supplying horses for the war effort.
“They didn’t want to knit socks and make Anzac biscuits but they could go and train horses,” Ms Logan says.
“They just needed to serve their country somehow … and this was it.
“They came from the Australian bush … they’d seen plenty of blood and guts in their life.”
A photo album of the Logan sisters' time in England resides with the State Library of Queensland. (PR IMAGE PHOTO)Ms Logan never got to meet Ethel, who married her fiance in London in 1917 and had a family in Australia before dying young of meningitis.
But from what she knew of Madeleine, she’s certain the formidable horsewoman would have remained stylish throughout her years in war-time Britain.
“She might have had breeches on during the day … she was a party girl at night,” Ms Logan imagines.
“She would have charmed them.”
A photo album detailing the story of the Logan sisters forms part of a collection held by the State Library of Queensland.
Specialist librarian Robyn Hamilton says hearing stories like theirs is crucial to understanding how war impacted all of society.
Ethel Logan married during the war in London and died of meningitis in her 30s after returning home. (PR IMAGE PHOTO)“War happens to everybody. It doesn’t just happen to the soldiers who serve and who are on the front lines,” Ms Hamilton tells AAP.
“It’s useful for us to look at the stories of women and understand that how they responded, how they coped and what they did while the machinations of war were happening overseas and sometimes at home as well.”
This Anzac Day, it’s important to pay tribute to the full spectrum of people who did their bit for this and every war effort, she says.
“We have a lot of soldier stories in the collection,” she says.
“However we also absolutely try to represent women’s stories and women’s lives.
The sisters worked with horses in various locations in England, including Wiltshire and Middlesex. (PR IMAGE PHOTO)“War doesn’t happen without all of that in the background – the support and infrastructure that often women provided, either by stepping into to the roles traditionally held by men, or by supporting troops in other ways.”
Ms Logan is thrilled to be sharing her family’s story – she is extremely proud of her glamorous and fearless aunts.
“If this isn’t a story for young girls to hear, I don’t know what is,” she says.
Source: AAP.
