ALSO BY GRAHAM SEAL
Dog’s Eye and Dead Horse: The Complete Guide to Australian Rhyming Slang
Great Australian Stories: Legends, Yarns and Tall Tales
Inventing ANZAC: The Digger and National Mythology
Outlaw Heroes in Myth and History
Tell ’Em I Died Game: The Legend of Ned Kelly
These Few Lines: A Convict Story
(ed.) Echoes of Anzac: The Voice of Australians at War
THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO CREATED
THE DIGGER LEGEND
GRAHAM SEAL
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First published in 2013
Copyright © Graham Seal 2013
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Contents
Introduction
Acknowledgements
Glossary
Foundations of Anzac
Digger
First to fall
The forgotten island
The silent Anzac
The first day on Gallipoli
Talk about go!
The landing
Parables of Anzac
Silence of the guns
Furphy
Leaving Gallipoli
At Pozières
We did all that was asked of us
The charge at Beersheba
Heroes of Anzac
They just poured into the wards all day
Everyone was as cheerful as possible
Private Punch
A soldier of the cross
Fromelles
The Australians are here!
The Roo de Kanga
The only gleams of sunshine
The underground artillery
Matilda goes to war
Tobruk Rats
‘Bluey’ Truscott
Angels of the Owen Stanley Range
Australia’s secret submariners
The home front
Scots of the Riverina
The Durban Signaller
The chalk Rising Sun
Blighty
Homecoming
Very irritated
Death’s soldier
A stitch in time
The Nackeroos
Yanks Down Under
The Brisbane Line
Miss Luckman’s journal
Laughter
A million cat-calls
The Pommies and the Yanks
Religion
Monocles
Food and drink
Babbling brooks
Army biscuits
The casual digger
Officers
Birdie
The piece of paper
Baldy becomes mobile
Characters
‘The Unofficial History of the AIF’
Please Let Us Take Tobruk
Parable of the kit inspection
The Air Force wife
Legends of Anzac
The Eureka sword
The lost submarine
The vanished battalion
The two men with donkeys
Murphy’s daughter
The souvenir king
The crucified soldier
The walers
ANZAC to Anzac
Anzac and the Rising Sun
The first and the last
Memories
No. 008 Trooper J. Redgum
The first Anzac Days
Return to Gallipoli
After the war
The lonely Anzac
The longest memorial
The lone pines
Mrs Kim’s commemoration
The long aftermath of Fromelles
The Unknown Sailor
The Long Tan cross
Flowers of remembrance
The lady of violets
Sound and silence
Hugo Throssell’s VC
Do you remember?
Select sources and references
Picture credits
Introduction
SINCE 25 APRIL 1915, Australians have progressively expanded and deepened the significance of Gallipoli, the battles of the western front, Tobruk, Kokoda and Long Tan, in addition to many other engagements in the Middle East, Korea, Malaya, Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan. The national community’s awareness also encompasses the many peacekeeping operations around the world in which Australian troops have taken part. The death and injury of hundreds of thousands of Australians, together with the resulting grief and ongoing suffering within their families, have left a permanent and profound imprint on the nation. This is recorded in stone, wood and metal on memorials and honour boards in almost every community in the country and in many places abroad.
The term that embodies this combination of sacrifice, duty, loss and meaning is ‘Anzac’, formed from the telegraphic address of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps—ANZAC. This ‘one little word’ has come to resonate many things Australians consider to be profoundly symbolic of their identity: courage, determination, anti-authoritarianism, egalitarianism and a larrikin attitude to the grim realities of war and so, of life and death in general. Whether these characteristics are genuine or not is a question that is often debated. Certainly, the fact that the concept of ‘Anzac’ has persisted for almost a century and shows every sign of strengthening into the future as a popular focus of national identity, among the young as well as the old, suggests that it has wide support in the community.
Through the decades following World War I, during which Anzac has become an inescapable aspect of our society, innumerable stories have been told about those who contributed to its making. These spoken and written memorials include tales of heroism, suffering and endurance. Perhaps surprisingly to some, Anzac tales are often humorous, for laughter is an essential element in coping with the realities of war and its long aftermath. Many are widely known, in one version or another, and are told and retold in books, newspapers, films and even in schoolrooms. Many other Anzac stories are known only to particular groups or to the inhabitants of particular communities, perhaps only to a family. Whatever their provenance, these stories together make up an intangible web of knowledge about the Australian experience of war and the way we understand it through Anzac. They form a network of shared meaning that is publicly reaffirmed every year on 25 April a
t memorials around the country and, increasingly, around the world.
It is these stories, told whenever possible in the words of those who were there—at the front line or at home—that appear in Great Anzac Stories. At least, a few of them appear. Anzac’s long existence and wide appeal has generated a vast body of anecdote, legend, reminiscence and yarn and this book can only represent a small selection of these many tales.
In telling these stories, the book begins with ‘Foundations’, a selection of accounts from Gallipoli, the western front and the Middle East. This is followed by ‘Heroes’, which tells of courageous deeds in many of Australia’s wars. Home fronts are as important as battlefronts, and a selection of tales from Australia and ‘Blighty’—the United Kingdom—next appears here. The large body of digger humour is given due representation under the heading of ‘Laughter’, followed by a collection of Anzac ‘Legends’. The book concludes with a section titled ‘Memories’, which focuses on the commemoration of war and its consequences for all, at home and at the front.
The concept of ‘Anzac’ is treated broadly. As well as stories about the army and the original diggers—the largely citizen foot soldiers of the First Australian Imperial Force (AIF)—the book includes those of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). As well as tales of men at war it includes those of nurses, doctors and even animals. While the ‘NZ’ in Anzac is often overlooked, there are also a few stories specifically about the Kiwi experience of war and the considerable significance of Anzac in that country.
This enthusiasm for what some consider to be a glorification of war has generated controversy from time to time, with various groups, including anti-war organisations, voicing their opposition to aspects of Anzac. Arguments that Anzac and its day are about acknowledging sacrifice and remembering those who made it are not accepted by all Australians. Whatever the view taken, though, it is very difficult not to have a position for or against Anzac, so completely does it pervade our society.
This book seeks to present the Anzac stories it contains as straightforwardly as possible, allowing readers to make their own judgements. The stories are left largely to speak for themselves, with only a minimum of explanation and background detail to provide context for today’s reader. Spellings, punctuation and other usages have been variously standardised and corrected, except where it is necessary to retain the original to preserve the sense of the quotation. A glossary of military acronyms, specialised terms and slang has also been provided. Military titles, ranks and honours are generally those possessed by the individual at the time of the events witnessed or experienced.
To convey the immediacy of the events as they were experienced, many eyewitness accounts taken from letters, diaries and other contemporary documents have been included. These sources resonate with the attitudes and values of the day, and the emotions of the moment—and they are often rich in Australian Introduction ‘slanguage’, giving them colour and impact, even after many decades. The downside of this is that these accounts sometimes contain terms and represent attitudes that are no longer socially acceptable.
Some pieces written in reflection, after the events they describe, are also included to show the always-developing significance of Anzac, not only in war but also in the periods between them that we call ‘peace’.
Acknowledgements
MAUREEN SEAL, JOHN Stephens, Alan Williams and the Fovant Badge Preservation Society, and the staff at Allen & Unwin. A portion of the royalties generated by this book will be donated to Legacy, a volunteer organisation formed by war veterans in 1923 to care for the dependants of deceased Australian servicemen and women—a great Anzac story of its own.
Glossary
THE MILITARY, TECHNICAL and slang terms that sometimes appear in the documents used for this book may not be familiar to most readers. The following list should be helpful.
AB able bodied seaman
Ack emma am, the morning
ADS advanced dressing station
ASC army service corps
Batman personal assistant to an officer
Billyjim or Billjim terms sometimes used for an Australian soldier in World War I
Blanky euphemism for ‘bloody’, or any other swear word
Bn, or Bat Battalion
(the) Boche (sometimes as Bosche) Germans
CO commanding officer
DCM Distinguished Conduct Medal
DSO Distinguished Service Order
‘Eggsers’ 28th Battalion AIF, from their battle cry ‘Eggs-a-cook’
Enfilade to fire into a trench or enemy position from a number of sides at once
Minenwerfer German artillery piece, World War I
MM military medal
NCO non-commissioned officer
OC officer in charge
Pip emma pm, the afternoon
QMS quartermaster’s store
Sap a tunnel or trench
TB torpedo boat
VC Victoria Cross
WAAC (sometimes as ‘Waacs’) Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps
Woodbine derogatory term for the British, derived from the brand name of the cheap cigarettes they usually smoked
WT wireless telegraph
8 chevaux ou 40 hommes French for ‘8 horses or 40 men’, a sign commonly stencilled to the side of French rail wagons in which many troops were transported in World War I
Foundations of Anzac
AUSTRALIA’S EXPERIENCE OF World War I, from September 1914 to the armistice of 11 November 1918, is the basis of the Anzac tradition. The high drama of the Dardanelles landings in Turkey on 25 April 1915, and the dogged fighting of the next eight months, meant that Gallipoli (Gelibolou) quickly became the originating location of Anzac and all it has come to stand for. Other events and locations—sometimes not so dramatic or formative, but all contributing to the evolution of the digger—have disappeared from our general knowledge of the war. The fighting in German New Guinea the year before Gallipoli, the importance of the Greek island of Lemnos and the significant role of submarine AE2 in 1915 have suffered this fate of being largely forgotten. On the western front, meaning the trench lines that ran the breadth of Belgium (‘Flanders’) and France, further feats of bravery, endurance and sometimes incomprehensible sacrifice burnished the legends of Gallipoli and the digger, in the minds both of the Anzacs themselves and of those waiting and worrying at home in Australia and New Zealand. Pozières in France and Passchendaele in Belgium are among the places that still draw large numbers of visiting Australians and which are recorded on war memorials around Australia. In the region now known as ‘the Middle East’, some serious battles were fought, now mostly forgotten, with the exception of Beersheba in 1917. These events, a handful among the many that took place in four years of fighting, are the foundations of Anzac.
Digger
The term ‘digger’, meaning the rank-and-file Australian foot soldier, is closely tied to the significance of ‘Anzac’. Together, these two words have been at the centre of popular ideas about national identity since World War I (1914–18).
The term Anzac is derived from ANZAC, the telegraphic abbreviation of ‘Australian and New Zealand Army Corps’.
It seems to have become a self-descriptive word in use among members of the First AIF during training in Egypt, perhaps even earlier, and was immediately applied to the beach where the Australian and New Zealand troops first landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. At this time, the soldiers were often referred to as ‘Anzacs’, sometimes as ‘Billjims’, with the term ‘digger’ not becoming an accepted denomination until 1917 on the western front. Nevertheless, the term is commonly employed retrospectively to refer to Australian and New Zealand soldiers who fought from the beginning of World War I.
The image of the digger draws on the nineteenth-century romance and mythology of the Australian bush and its heroes. These include the pioneer, the free selector, the gold prospector or ‘digger’, the shearer, even the bushranger, as well as many similar characters who feature in bush verse and song, and in the literature and art of writers Andrew ‘Banjo’ Paterson and Henry Lawson and painter Tom Roberts, among many others. From the 1890s, these archetypal figures were closely associated with popular ideals concerning Australian identity. When the country went to war, most Australians considered that this event represented the emotional ‘birth of a nation’. Through the experiences of the AIF, the ideal of the bushman effortlessly morphed into that of the digger. Instead of driving cattle overland, shearing sheep or rounding up herds of brumbies, the bushman now wore a uniform—more or less—and employed his bush skills and nous in excavating ‘dugouts’ and ‘possies’, making jam tin bombs, sniping and generally trying to outfox a wily enemy resisting an invasion of its homeland (in the case of Turkey). Even though many members of the First AIF came from the city rather than the country (contrary to a popular and persistent myth), as a body they demonstrated the bushman’s independence and ingrained disdain for authority, as well as pursuing—frequently to excess—the masculine pastimes of drinking, fighting and gambling. The digger’s symbolic status, rooted in these available traditions of the bush, was immediate and enduring.
With this background it is not surprising that the origins of the term for the Australian infantryman have been the cause of ongoing controversy. It has been argued that the term was derived from the mid-nineteenth-century gold rushes in the eastern colonies, in which the men who hastened to the goldfields to seek their fortunes came to be known as ‘diggers’. It has also been suggested that the word originated at Gallipoli, because the Anzacs who landed there were quickly compelled by the Turkish resistance to ‘dig in’; they were famously commanded by General Sir Ian Hamilton to ‘dig, dig, dig’. New Zealand variations of the story include the suggestion that it came from the local term ‘gum diggers’ for fossickers of the fossilised resin of kauri trees. Another claim has been made for the origin of the term among members of the 3rd Division’s 11th Brigade, training and digging on England’s Salisbury Plain in September and October 1916.