fine fellows

During World War I, 1914-1918, the 'Great War', the most important battleground was the 'Western Front' in France and Belgium.  More than 290,000 Australians served in this theatre of war in the Australian Imperial Force, in battles such as those at Fromelles, the Somme, Bullecourt, Messines, Passcshendaele, Dernancourt and Villers-Bretonneux.  Of those who served, 46,000 were either killed in action or died of their wounds.   

Today is the 90th anniversary of what came to be known as the ‘other’ Anzac Day, when ANZAC forces surrounded and later recaptured the small northern French village of Villers-Bretonneux from its German occupiers,  in circumstances reminiscent of Gallipoli three years earlier. 

Villers-Bretonneux was vital to the integrity of the whole Allied line.

Diggers on the Western Front. Some quick snippets from around the web:

Ordinary men

Photo: Herbert Fishwick, 1915. SMH.

Who earnt a reputation

Australian Postcard

English officer: "Disgraceful harness... Have you no soap?"
ANZAC: "No"
English officer: "No what?"
ANZAC: "No soap."
Drawing by Dan Lindsay

Nonchalance. Australian Postcard 1917.

We have had to separate the Australians into Convalescent Camps of their own, because they were giving so much trouble when along with our men and put such revolutionary ideas into their heads.

--Commander-in-Chief Field-Marshall Douglas Haig, letter to wife, February 1918

The Colonel decided that he would have a full dress parade of the guard mounting. Well, the Aussies looked over at us amazed. The band was playing, we were all smartened up, spit and polish, on parade, and that happened every morning. We marched up and down, up and down.

The Aussies couldn't get over it, and when we were off duty we naturally used to talk to them, go over and have a smoke with them, or meet them when we were hanging about the road or having a stroll. They kept asking us: 'Do you like this sort of thing? All these parades, do you want to do it?' Of course we said, 'No, of course we don't. We're supposed to be on rest, and all the time we've got goes to posh up and turn out on parade.' So they looked at us a bit strangely and said, 'OK, cobbers, we'll soon alter that for you'.

The Australians didn't approve of it because they never polished or did anything. They had a band, but their brass instruments were all filthy. Still, they knew how to play them. 

The next evening, our Sergeant-Major was taking the parade. Sergeant-Major Rowbotham, a nice man, but a stickler for discipline. He was just getting ready to bawl us all out when the Australians started with their band. They marched up and down the road outside the field, playing any old thing. There was no tune you could recognise, they were just blowing as loud as they could on their instruments. It sounded like a million cat-calls.

And poor old Sergeant Rowbotham, he couldn't make his voice heard. It was an absolute fiasco. They never tried to mount another parade, because they could see the Aussies watching us from across the road, just ready to step in and sabotage the whole thing. So they decided that parades for mounting the guards should be washed out, and after that they just posted the guards in the ordinary way as if we were in the line.

 --Private C. Miles,10th Btn. Royal Fusiliers, recalling Aussies at Strazeele, Belgium

--Slovenly ANZAC troops having a day off from the trenches, Western Front

I do hope that we shall hear no more of the 'indiscipline' of these extraordinary Corps, for I don't believe that for military qualities of every kind their equal exists. Their physique is wonderful and their intelligence of a high order 

-- Sir Maurice Hankey, Secretary of the Imperial War Cabinet, after touring the Gallipoli peninsula

Very much and very stupid comment has been made upon the discipline of the Australian soldier. That was because the very conception and purpose of discipline have been misunderstood. It is, after all, only a means to an end, and that end is the power to secure co-ordinated action among a large number of individuals for the achievement of a definite purpose. It does not mean lip service, nor obsequious homage to superiors, nor servile observance of forms and customs, nor a suppression of individuality... the Australian Army is a proof that individualism is the best and not the worst foundation upon which to build up collective discipline.

-- Lieutenant-General Sir John Monash

In Belgium and France

In moving from the Herissart Area to the Tincourt Area our transport traveled two nights, stopping during the day at Bray. Soon after leaving Bray the night of September 22, one of the mules caught his foot in a wire and the pull on the wire set off a mine the Germans had placed under the road. Several of our men (117th) were killed and others wounded. Ten horses of the 117th transport were killed. We are constantly on the lookout for mines and Booby Traps. The Hun is very ingenious and nothing is too devilish for him. This past summer when he withdrew from a certain  place, he left a pond that had all the appearance of having been used as a swimming place, even had a spring board in place. A party of Australians came to the pond and got ready to go in swimming. The first two dove in but did not come up. Their companions went in after them and found they had been spiked. The Germans had placed upright spikes in the bottom of the swimming pool. A party of our men started to bury a German; as they lifted the body an explosion took place and two of our men were killed. They had used the body to make a "booby trap." We do not bury German dead except on the battlefield, and then only after testing them. The German apparently does everything that will make the rest of the world hate him and desire his destruction. 

-- October 1918, Diary of Colonel Joseph Hyde Pratt, commanding 105TH Engineers,
A. E. F.

 

Shrapnel bursting amongst reconnoitering planes. Photo: Frank Hurley (nicknamed 'the mad photographer)

Hellfire Corner on the Menin Road, near Ypres. AWM

Infantry marching ahead in a single line to the front. Photo: Frank Hurley

In an elephant iron dugout on Hill 60. Photo: Frank Hurley

Carrying in the wounded during the height of the battle (combined negatives) Photo: Frank Hurley

Hauling up an 18 pounder across captured ground to an advanced position. Photo: Frank Hurley

Surrounded by an invisible enemy.  Photo: Frank Hurley

The Battle of the Menin Road Photo: Frank Hurley

The Shell-Shattered Area of Chateau Wood, Flanders. Photo: Frank Hurley

The dawn of Passchendaele (combined negatives) Photo: Frank Hurley

Reminiscences of home: Australians chaff making in Flanders. Photo: Frank Hurley

General Rosenthal, C. B., D. S. O., of the Australian forces, told at the Overseas Club, London, the exploit of an Australian corporal named Brown, who volunteered to take a certain bit of trench, which was looked upon as very risky business indeed.

He set out with a couple of bombs, and after walking into a cornfield amid terrific machine-gun fire from the enemy, he dropped and everybody thought he was killed. He, however, was seen to rise and go forward, only to fall again. Once more he got up and went on. A Boche accosted him, but he "flattened him out" with a blow under the jaw. Arriving at a dugout he threatened to bomb it, whereupon a Boche officer and thirteen men came out and were solemnly marched back to the Australian lines by the plucky corporal.  The hero of this exploit was recommended for the D. C. M., but received the Victoria Cross.   

General Rosenthal was Commanding Officer of the Fifth Australian Division, which we relieved October 8th. Very genial and pleasant man.

-- November 1918, Diary of Colonel Joseph Hyde Pratt

A possibly shell-shocked soldier, with a "thousand yards stare" (picture made in an Australian Advanced Dressing Station near Ypres). Cropped from a photo by Frank Hurley.

Chaplains were nearly all Anglican at first, but later joined by Catholic and Protestant ministers.

Photo: Sergeant Jack Grinton.

'Les kangourous' de Villers-Bretonneux

An Australian field artiller howitzer immediately after firing a salvo at Villers-Bretonneux, 24 April 1918. AWM. 

"Tell us what you want us to do, Sir, but you must let us do it our own way." 

--Australian brigadier-general Thomas William Glasgow

They were magnificent. Nothing seemed to stop them. When our fire was heaviest, they just disappeared in shell holes and came up as soon as it slackened. When we used Verey lights they stood still and were hard to see.  

-- Unnamed German officer, quoted in Neville Browning, Fix Bayonets: The Unit History of the 51st Battalion, Perth, 2000, p.157

It seemed there was nothing to do but go straight forward and die hard

-- Digger at VB

Remembered

Photo: George Lipman, 1963.  SMH.

The British officers at Dover, Calais, and at several other places we have been have talked about being "fed up" on the war and ready for the Americans to take it over. The talk sometimes was extremely depressing and showed up the British officers in a very poor light. The Canadians and Australians that we have met are entirely different as are also the men we have met up here at the front. As a whole the men we have come in close contact with have been fine fellows.

-- June 1918, Diary of Colonel Joseph Hyde Pratt, commanding 105TH Engineers, A. E. F.

Credits and Links:

Australian War Memorial

Australians on the Western Front 1914-18

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Sydney Morning Herald

History in a biscuit tin (Daily Telegraph)

Jean-Pierre Thierry (The Age)

The Heritage of the Great War (An unusual Netherlands-based site with an extensive collection of  photos)

AIF Project

Update: additional photo added