(1) Melbourne Labor Call (3rd August 1914)

It is unthinkable to believe that because an archduke and his missus were slain by a fanatic the whole of Europe should become a seething battlefield, and deplorable misery brought upon the people. But there is one thing certain, if such a catastrophe comes to pass that will be the end of war. It will assuredly end in revolution and the dethronement of monarchs. If the workers of the world federated, like those of this hemisphere, and said we will not fight, then war and swashbuckling is at an end. War is a horror made for the Krupps and Armstrongs of the twentieth century. What glory is there in today's warfare? None whatever; it is only slaughter and carnage.

 

(2) Archbishop Kelly of Sydney, Daily Telegraph (8th August 1914)

The war now broken out challenges the attention of all. The issues at stake are tremendous. The sacrifices by which alone favourable results may be looked for by us are exceptional. War, being the worst of the three evils by which mankind may be overwhelmed, cannot be regarded passively. War is worse than pestilence, worse than famine. Often, nay, generally, it embraces both in some degree. Yet war evokes patriotism, courage, wisdom, fraternal regard, individual heroism - all noble and manly virtues. Evil is not unmixed with good; yes, and when a just war, nobly waged, is crowned with victory, then our nation wins imperishable glory.

 

(3) John Raws attempted to join the Australian Corps on the outbreak of the First World War but failed to meet the required chest and height measurements. He tried again the following year and this time he was accepted. He wrote a letter to his father explaining why he had joined the army on 12th July 1915.

I received your letter this evening, just a few minutes after I had passed the medical test for enlistment. I propose to go into camp in a week or two - probably Wednesday week, or Monday week - today fortnight. Meantime I shall study and drill.

If I had received your letter before, father dear, it would have made no difference. My decision has not been sudden. My mind has been practically made up for a month or so - before the recruiting boom to which you refer - but I was waiting to advise you immediately everything was fixed, and I was accepted. The reduction of the standard has enabled me to get through.

I hope that you will be proud to think that you have two sons - who were never fighting men, who abhor the sight of blood and cruelty and suffering of any kind, but who yet are game to go out bravely to a war forced upon them. There are many men, wealthy and strong, who should have gone before me, and have not. But can that excuse me? Not for one moment.

I do not go because I am afraid that my friends may think me a coward if I stay, but I do feel in going that in my small way I am conferring upon you and dear mother what should not be a crown of sorrow. You would not have your son, whatever else, a craven - one who would say that he thought others should go, but would himself hang back. If I prove unfit for service, well and good. But it has to be proved.

I said before that I claimed no great patriotism. No government, other than the most utterly democratic, is worth fighting for. But there are principles, and there are women, and there are standards of decency, that are worth shedding one's blood for, surely.

 

(4) Charles Bean, report sent to Andrew Fisher (17th May, 1915)

The Australians and Maorilanders landed in two bodies, the first being a covering force to seize the ridges around the landing about an hour later. The moon that night set about an hour and a half before daylight. This just gave time for the warships and transports of the covering force to steam in and land the troops before dawn.

It had long been known that the Third Australian Brigade, consisting of Queenslanders, South Australians, Western Australians, and Tasmanians, had been chosen to make the landing. This brigade consists largely of miners from the Broken Hill and Westralian gold-fields. It had left Egypt many weeks before the rest of the force, and had landed on Lemnos Island, where the troops were thoroughly practised at landing from ships and boats. During the second week in April the greater part of the Australian and New Zealand troops from Egypt followed, and had been just a fortnight in Lemnos when they sailed to effect a landing at a certain position on the northern shore of Gallipoli Peninsula, about 60 miles away.

The covering force was taken partly in four of our own transports, partly in three battleships. The night was perfect; about three o’clock the moon set, and the ships carrying the troops, together with the three warships which were charged with the protection of the flanks, stole in towards the high coastline. It was known that the coast was fortified, and that a battery on a promontory 2 miles southwards, and several other guns amongst the hills inland covered the landing place. The battleships and transports took up a position in two lines. The troops were transferred partly to the warships’ boats, and partly to destroyers, which hurried in shore, and re-transferred their occupants to boats, which then made by the shortest route for the beach.

It was eighteen minutes past four on the morning of Sunday, 25th April, when the first boat grounded. So far not a shot had been fired by the enemy. Colonel McLagan’s orders to his brigade were that shots, if possible, were not to be fired till daybreak, but the business was to be carried through with the bayonet. The men leapt into the water, and the first of them had just reached the beach when fire was opened on them from the trenches on the foothills which rise immediately from the beach. The landing place consists of a small bay about half-a-mile from point to point with two much larger bays north and south. The country rather resembles the Hawkesbury River country in New South Wales, the hills rising immediately from the sea to 600 feet. To the north these ridges cluster to a summit nearly 1,000 feet high. Further northward the ranges become even higher. The summit just mentioned sends out a series of long ridges running south-westward, with steep gullies between them, very much like the hills and gullies about the north of Sydney, covered with low scrub very similar to a dwarfed gum tree scrub. The chief difference is that there are no big trees, but many precipices and sheer slopes of gravel. One ridge comes down to the sea at the small bay above mentioned, and ends in two knolls about 100 feet high, one at each point of the bay. It was from these that fire was first opened on the troops as they landed. Bullets struck fireworks out of the stones along the beach. The men did not wait to be hit, but wherever they landed they simply rushed straight up the steep slopes. Other small boats which had cast off from the warships and steam launches which towed them, were digging for the beach with oars. These occupied the attention of the Turks in the trenches, and almost before the Turks had time to collect their senses, the first boatloads were well up towards the trenches. Few Turks awaited the bayonet. It is said that one huge Queenslander swung his rifle by the muzzle, and, after braining one Turk, caught another and flung him over his shoulder. I do not know if this story is true, but when we landed some hours later, there was said to have been a dead Turk on the beach with his head smashed in. It is impossible to say which battalion landed first, because several landed together. The Turks in the trenches facing the landing had run, but those on the other flank and on the ridges and gullies still kept up a fire upon the boats coming in shore, and that portion of the covering force which landed last came under a heavy fire before it reached the beach. The Turks had a machine gun in the valley on our left, and this seems to have been turned on to the boats containing part of the Twelfth Battalion. Three of these boats are still lying on the beach some way before they could be rescued. Two stretcher-bearers of the Second Battalion who went along the beach during the day to effect a rescue were both shot by the Turks. Finally, a party waited for dark, and crept along the beach, rescuing nine men who had been in the boats two days, afraid to move for fear of attracting fire. The work of the stretcher-bearers all through a week of hard fighting has been beyond all praise.

The Third Brigade went over the hills with such dash that within three quarters of an hour of landing some had charged over three successive ridges. Each ridge was higher than the last, and each party that reached the top went over it with wild cheers. Since that day the Turks have never attempted to face our bayonets. The officers led magnificently, but, of course, nothing like an accurate control of the attack was possible. Subordinate leaders had been trained at Mena to act on their own responsibility, and the benefit of this was enormously apparent in this attack. Companies and platoons, little crowds of 50 to 200 men, were landed wherever the boats took them. Their leaders had a general idea of where they were intended to go, and once landed, each subordinate commander made his way there by what seemed to him to be the shortest road. The consequence was that the Third Brigade reached its advanced line in a medley of small fractions inextricably mixed. Several further lines of Turkish trenches were swept through. On the further ridges the Turks did not wait for the bayonet, and when at sunrise ships bringing the first portion of the main body arrived and steamed slowly through the battleships to disembark the men, those on board could see figures on the skyline of the ridges near them, and on a further ridge inland. Presently a heliograph winked from near the top of the second hill. They were our men. They could be seen walking about and digging just as you see them any morning at Liverpool Camp during annual training. The relief which flooded the hearts of thousands of anxious watchers on the ships can be better imagined than described.

(5) William Hughes, speech quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald (15th December 1915)

We must put forth all our strength. The more Australia sends to the front the less the danger will be to each man. Not only victory, but safety belongs to the big battalions.

Australia turns to you for help. Fifty thousand additional troops are to be raised to form the new units of the expeditionary forces. Sixteen thousand men are required each month for reinforcements at the front.

This Australia of ours, the freest and best country on God's earth, calls to her sons for aid. Destiny has given to you a great opportunity. Now is the hour when you can strike a blow on her behalf. If you love your country, if you love freedom, then take your place alongside your fellow-Australians at the front, and help them to achieve a speedy and glorious victory.

On behalf of the Commonwealth Government, and in the name of the people of Australia, I ask you to answer 'Yes' to this appeal, and do your part in this greatest war of all time.

 

(6) Private James Blackwood, letter (6th August 1916)

Yesterday afternoon some ladies of the Australian branch of the British Red Cross came down here and issued out some small kit to us. The Australian Government can't afford to let the hospital issue us with the kit which British Tommies receive, as they have to pay the Imperial Government for the articles; but I suppose they can splosh money away wholesale in Australia on contracts quite unnecessary, but entered upon to keep the all-devouring working man
employed. Ugh! So these ladies came, and I was glad I had not yet bought a razor, shaving brush and hair brush, with which they issued us. They also gave a good writing pad and envelopes, which will come in handy as I have oceans
and oceans of correspondence one way and another.

 

(7) Charles Edward Bean, From Anzac to Amiens (1946)

In round figures this period cost the two allies three quarters of a million casualties against half a million on the German side. These figures include the casualties incurred during the latter stages at Verdun and also on quiet parts of the front; but they may safely be assumed to indicate, at least roughly, the proportion of the German loss to that of the Allies in the First Battle of the Somme.

Far from the German loss being the greater, the British Army was being worn down - numerically - more than twice as fast, and the loss is not to be measured by bare numbers. The troops who bore the brunt of the Somme fighting were the cream of the British population - the new volunteer army, inspired by the lofty altruistic ideals traditional in British upbringing, in high purity of aim and single-minded sacrifice probably the finest army that ever went to war. Despite the indignation expressed by one of the higher commanders at the criticism current in England, a general who wears down 180,000 of his enemy by expending 400, 000 men of this quality has something to answer for.

(8) William Hughes, speech quoted in the The Age (13th November 1917)

October 28, 1916, was a black day for Australia: it was a triumph for the unworthy, the selfish, and anti-British in our midst. It was a triumph for the insidious propaganda that had been actively at work in every Allied country since the war began. Our troops in the trenches were taunted by the enemy - "Australians, your comrades have deserted you." The defeat was interpreted by those sections amongst us who had led the campaign as proof that Australia was war weary, that their campaign of lies and poisonous propaganda had done its work sufficiently, and not only misled the electors on this one question, but had sapped their loyalty to the Empire.

(9) In an interview in 1993, William Brooks argued that the Australians were critical of the way the British Army treated its soldiers.

The Yanks and the Aussies were disgusted at the way our officers treated us. There were cases where British officers tried to put Yanks or Aussie soldiers in front of a firing-squad but couldn't get away with it. If they had, I reckon those countries would have pulled out of the war and left us to it.

There was a big riot about September 1917 by the Australians at a place called Etaples. They called it "collective indiscipline", what it was was mutiny. It went on for days. I think a couple of military police got killed. Field Marshall Haig would have shot the leaders but dared not of course because they were Aussies.

Haig's nickname was the butcher. He'd think nothing of sending thousands of men to certain death. The utter waste and disregard for human life and human suffering by the so-called educated classes who ran the country. What a wicked waste of life. I'd hate to be in their shoes when they face their Maker.

 

(10) John Raws, letter to his brother (6th June 1916)

Somehow we Australians do not seem to mix with the Scotch and English officers at all, and I never see our men with theirs. I think they don't like us, you know, because our style is not so good, or it may be purely sensitiveness on the part of both of us. They rather ignore us, and put on a frightful amount of dog, and we on our side don't like to butt in. Our officers, I believe, compare very favourably with the English subaltern who is coming over now, except in dress and style. They lick us in that, but to us they appear to be absurdly mincing and effeminate, and to have an extraordinary desire to look foppish.

I think they really try to put it on, because whenever one scratches one of them he does seem to be all right inside. I've noticed when watching them together in numbers, how much cleaner and smarter they look than we do.

 

(11) John Raws died at the Battle of the Somme. He wrote a letter to his brother just before he was killed (12th August 1916)

The Australian casualties have been very heavy - fully 50% in our brigade, for the ten or eleven days. I lost, in three days, my brother and my two best friends, and in all six out of seven of all my officer friends (perhaps a score in number) who went into the scrap - all killed. Not one was buried, and some died in great agony. It was impossible to help the wounded at all in some sectors. We could fetch them in, but could not get them away. And often we had to put them out on the parapet to permit movement in the shallow, narrow, crooked trenches. The dead were everywhere. There had been no burying in the sector I was in for a week before we went there.

The strain - you say you hope it has not been too great for me - was really bad. Only the men you would have trusted and believed in before, proved equal to it. One or two of my friends stood splendidly like granite rocks round which the seas stormed in vain. They were all junior officers. But many other fine men broke to pieces. Everyone called it shell shock. But shell shock is very rare. What 90% get is justifiable funk, due to the collapse of the helm - of self-control. I felt fearful that my nerve was going at the very last morning. I had been going - with far more responsibility than was right for one so inexperienced - for two days and two nights, for hours without another officer even to consult and with my men utterly broken, shelled to pieces.

 

(12) Gilbert Wallace, How We Raised the First Hundred Thousand (1917)

On the 15th of September, a mass meeting of metropolitan teachers, convened by the Minister and the Director of Education, met in the Melbourne Town Hall, and a central executive committee was elected. The declared objects were to provide comforts in the way of special clothing, etc.; to supply sick-room aids and hospital appliances; and to obtain money that might be used, as need arose, to afford relief to those on whom the war must inevitably bring suffering and want - the broken men, the widows, and the orphans.

Emulating the Melbourne meeting, similar gatherings of teachers were held throughout the State. The schools got busy from the Murray to the sea, from the east nook of Croajingolong to the farthest Thule of the Mallee. Everywhere the click of knitting needles, the clink of pennies in the collection box. Sewing circles wrote impatiently for material not to be obtained in the bush. A stream of finished articles began to trickle citywards. A central depot for the receipt and dispatch of goods became necessary.

 

(13) General John Monash, letter (18th March 1918)

As you know, our great problem is — how to keep our men fit and well. One way is to secure for them occasional rest and relief from their hardships by giving them leave to either London or Paris.

Although barracks and lodgings are provided both in London and Paris for Australian and Canadian soldiers to sleep in, at a nominal expense, yet such an arrangement does very little towards giving the boys what they really need when they go on leave. Moreover, owing to the serious food difficulties in England, we have been asked to discourage our men from going to London, but to send them either into the English provinces to the houses of private hosts, or to Paris. To a soldier who wants a change from his monotonous life at the front there is not much attraction in an English country place, where there are not theatres and no sight-seeing. So the leave given to Paris is much more eagerly sought by the Canadians and Australians.

 

(14) Sydney Morning Herald (12th November, 1918)

The end of the war in the capitulation of Germany is an event so much greater in importance than any within the experience of the modern world that it is impossible to grasp its full significance. The most tragic chapter in the history of mankind is at last at an end. Hundreds and thousands of men will today be relieved of a constant burden of mental and physical suffering, hundreds of thousands of their kinsfolk will at last be free of the daily anxiety which has been theirs ever since their sons and brothers went into the firing line. There will be many whom this news of victory will not save from personal grief. The sounds of rejoicing cannot but bring some reminder of their loss. To them, however, the news of victory will mean more than to any others, since it will assure them that their sacrifice has not been in vain.

Every man who saw his duty and did it when the choice was before him has had his share in the destruction of the most maleficent Power that ever afflicted mankind. The Australian people will recognise that to them they owe their safety, that through them their honour stands high among the free peoples of the world. Peace that has been won by so much suffering and so many tears must be honoured by a new spirit of fraternity and public service. The flower of this generation has perished. Their loss is irreplaceable, but their sacrifice makes an unanswerable appeal for the democracy they have honoured and preserved.