“I have seen enough of the horrors of war, and want peace. War has made me a socialist and a pacifist,” announced Gallipoli veteran and Victoria Cross winner, Hugo Throssell, on Peace Day in 1919.

Throssell was shot in the neck on Hill 60 at Gallipoli in 1915 and nearly died from surgical complications. He returned to the frontlines in Egypt in 1917. There, he was reunited with – then lost – his brother Eric, who was killed in action.

Throssell wrote to his wife, Katharine Susannah Prichard, of searching for Eric in battle in vain, “crawling across the battlefield, still under enemy fire”. After the war, he reflected on the “colossal profits” made in war, concluding that while it was possible for men “to profit by war, we will always have war” and advocating for society’s reorganisation “for the wellbeing of the community as a whole”.

Most war historians today would agree with Throssell’s assessment of the first world war: an imperialist war and a wasteful tragedy. Yet despite regular echoes of “Lest We Forget” on Anzac Day, the views of soldiers and veterans who disagree with Australia’s involvement in wars, both past and present, are rarely heard.

It has become rather fashionable to refer to soldiers’ stories as “forgotten”, or “hidden”. The “forgotten” lament – often associated with the most widely studied topic in Australian history – has become something of a collective joke among war historians. But Throssell’s service was not forgotten. He was honoured in Anzac Day events in Perth throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and buried with full military honours after his suicide in 1933. Obituaries hailed his war record.

However, Throssell’s anti-war views, derived from his firsthand knowledge of war and its consequences, were largely ignored.

This pattern repeats across Australian history, from the first world war to the War on Terror. In every war, there have been a number of soldiers and veterans who turned against it, Some became pacifists, while others acknowledged the necessity of war in rare instances. They drew on their war experience to caution restraint, urging war-makers to reflect on Australian values and interests before committing Australian lives overseas.

Yet these radical veterans’ voices are excluded from veterans’ organisations, diminished in the media and ignored by cultural institutions. These critical perspectives could nuance Australia’s understanding of its war history and inform its involvement in future wars. But they have been siloed off.

I am one of a group of historians working on the Challenging Anzac project, exploring the stories and experiences of service members and veterans across history who contradict Australia’s war mythology. Our research reveals a longstanding reluctance in Australia to acknowledge and honour the anti-war feeling among our soldiers and veterans.

Many Australians joined up for the first world war with great enthusiasm: eager for adventure, to prove their manhood, and serve their King and country.

Edward “Ted” Ryan, from Broken Hill, New South Wales, enlisted in September 1915, swearing an oath to “serve our Sovereign Lord the King” and “resist his Majesty’s enemies.” Ryan fought with the 51st Battalion on the Western Front and was severely and repeatedly injured at the Somme and at Pozèries in 1916.

Evacuated to England, Ryan was ordered to return to service at Perham Down, a Hardening and Drafting depot where wounded Australian soldiers retrained – or “hardened” – for redeployment. At Perham Down, Ryan addressed a letter, condemning war, to Britain’s leading anti-war politician, Ramsay MacDonald, records historian Doug Newton.

Contradicting the British press portrayal of Australian soldiers as “bright & cheering, hooraying” for war, Ryan said they despised what they referred to as “the Abattoirs”. They were frightened and sick of war:

I have not spoken to one man who wants to go back to the firing-line again. Every man I have spoken to is absolutely sick of the whole business. I have just been speaking to two Anzacs who said they would rather be shot than face another bombardment.

Ryan ended his letter by urging MacDonald to “do everything possible in your power to bring about a Peace and save this slaughter of human lives”. His was one of many letters MacDonald received from anti-war soldiers across the Imperial forces, who had become “revolutionary” because of the war.

Ryan’s later war years saw him repeatedly go absent without leave, a pattern Newton found was “notorious” among Australian soldiers who argued they had volunteered for war, so were entitled not to return to it.

Other soldiers made more symbolic gestures of opposition. Many Australians with ancestors who fought in the first world war may have heard stories of soldiers shedding uniforms or discarding medals upon demobilisation, to rid themselves of reminders of war.

Novelist Martin Boyd enlisted for the war after hearing some of his friends had died at Gallipoli. He drew on his war experience to write a novel, When Blackbirds Sing (1962). Protagonist Dominic goes to war to fulfil his “purpose” of killing his enemy, but becomes haunted by the humanity in the eyes of a young German soldier he shot. After being bayoneted himself, Dominic writes to his benefactor, “I have taken off my uniform and shall not wear it again”. He explores the immorality of the war, arguing he would fight for his friends and home

if anyone threatened them. But they are not threatened, except by our own government.

When he returns to Australia, Dominic receives his war medals and throws them in a dam.

Despite the horrors of war, many Australians found a sense of community with their fellow soldiers. Militaries foster a deep sense of belonging, which veterans describe as feeling like being “links in a chain”, utterly dependent on one another for survival. In the 1980s, historian Alistair Thomson conducted an oral history project with “radical diggers” of the first world war.

He found the concept of “mateship” – a core component of the Anzac legend – in fact stemmed from the socialist tendencies and solidarity among working-class soldiers against their military leaders, who treated them like pawns on a chessboard.

Fred Farrall, for instance, who fought in Egypt and then on the Western Front, described his fellow soldiers pelting visiting generals with fistfuls of dirt after losing most of their battalion.

The mateship of the military attracted many returned soldiers to the trade union movement, which offered a similar solidarity. In Western Australia, historians found returned soldiers among the Lumpers, or dockers, who refused to break strikes in Fremantle in 1917–1919. They were hard to restrain, after a rumour circulated that a Lumper who had been bayoneted by police was a returned soldier. The rumour turned out to be false.

The mutual support of the union movement was a solace to those veterans who struggled to recover from war wounds. Allan Whittaker was 23 when he enlisted in 1914, deploying to Gallipoli with the First Battalion. Shot in the ankle and invalided out, or medically evacuated, Whittacker was hailed as a wounded hero on return to Australia.

But he struggled to survive on his war pension while his wounds healed. He took work on the Melbourne wharf, joining the wharfies’ strike in 1928. He was shot in the neck by police on the picket line and died slowly, buried by his union comrades.

Yet since the war itself, Australian institutions have downplayed and disconnected veterans’ radicalism from their war service.

Horace Ratliff, a labourer from Gundagai, fought in Gallipoli and then on the Western Front. After the war, he became a communist, writing literature for the Party and holding underground meetings. During the second world war, he was interned for communist activity and held a hunger strike.

Of over 700 archived newspaper articles reporting on his imprisonment, only 32 mention he “happened to be a returned soldier with a good war record”.

The erasure of Ratliff’s military service from reporting on his communist activity suggests a deeper discomfort in Australia with the idea former soldiers might become radical leftists.

In fact, since the war had ended, authorities had worked to neutralise the radical potential of returned soldiers.

Fearful of the disruptive threat of a large, battle-hardened population, Australian authorities and unions granted employment preference to returned soldiers. Throughout the........

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