The Spirit of the Australian Soldier

 

This interesting extract comes from "Saving the Channel Ports" by Lieutenant WD Joynt VC 8th Battalion AIF and gives an insight of how the Australians thought of themselves and how others thought of them.

The Spirit of the Australian soldier

Many have remarked on the high morale of the Australians in battle at this time when they were worked so continuously and suffered such heavy casualties and fatigue. Particularly impressive was their willingness to return to the firing line after only very short periods of rest and carry out fresh attacks with enthusiasm. This was at a time when their only reinforcements consisted of the returning sick and wounded from the hospitals in England. Their cheerfulness and eagerness when ordered to attack again with such weak forces - units down to about a quarter of their normal strength - was a source of wonder as to what inspired them. One answer to this question was the Diggers pride. He knew he was definitely doing something to win the war. He had proved his ascendency over the Hun, whom he invariably defeated. He knew the enemy was frightened of him and would run before him. He was a volunteer, not a conscript, and had enlisted of his own free will to go to the help of the Mother Country, and now he was showing the Britisher that the blood he had inherited from his ancestors still ran true. He had a tradition of loyalty to the maxim that one Britisher was as good as two foreigners and so, while still able, he would carry on building up for Australia a reputation as a fighting man.

Gallipoli Landing - THE LANDING THAT COULD NOT SUCCEED—BUT DID

Yesterday 25th April 2011 was the 96th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings.

In the excellent book “Over There" with the Australians by R. Hugh Knyvett, there is a fantastic description of that day and the achievement of the ANZAC’s.


THE LANDING THAT COULD NOT SUCCEED—BUT DID

Picture yourself on a ship that was more crowded with men than ever ship had been before, in a harbor more crowded with ships than ever harbor had been crowded before, with more fears in your mind than had ever crowded into it before, knowing that in a few hours you would see battle for the first time. Having comrades crowding round, bidding you good-bye and informing you that as your regimental number added up to thirteen, you would be the first to die, remembering that you hadn't said your prayers for years, and then comforting yourself with the realization that what is going to happen will happen, and that an appeal to the general will not stop the battle, anyway, and you may as well die like a man, and you will feel as did many of those young lads, on the eve of the 25th of April, 1915. There was some premonition of death in those congregations of khaki-clad men who gathered round the padres on each ship and sang "God be with you till we meet again." You could see in men's faces that they knew they were "going west" on the morrow—but it was a swan-song that could not paralyze the arm or daunt the heart of these young Greathearts, who intended that on this morrow they would do deeds that would make their mothers proud of them.

"For if you 'as to die,
As it sometimes 'appens, why,
Far better die a 'ero than a skunk;
A' doin' of yer bit."

As soon as church-parade was dismissed, another song was on the boards, no hymn, maybe not fine poetry, but the song that will be always associated with the story of Australia's doings in the great war, Australia's battle-song—"Australia Will Be There"—immortalized on the Southland and Ballarat, as it was sung by the soldiers thereon, when they stood in the sea-water that was covering the decks of those torpedoed troop-ships. It was now sung by every Australian voice, and as those crowded troop-ships moved out from Lemnos they truly carried "Australia," eager, untried Australia—where?

The next day showed to the world that "Australia would always be there!" where the fight raged thickest. Her sons might sometimes penetrate the enemy's territory too far, but hereafter, and till the war's end, they would always be in the front line, storming with the foremost for freedom and democracy.

The landing could not possibly be a surprise to the Turks; the British and French warships had advertised our coming by a preliminary bombardment weeks previously—the Greeks knew all about our concentration in their waters—and wasn't the Queen of Greece sister to the Kaiser?

There were only about two places where we could possibly land, and the Turks were not merely warned of our intentions, but they were warned in plenty of time for them to prepare for us a warm reception. The schooling and method of the Germans had united with the ingenuity of the Turks to make those beaches the unhealthiest spots on the globe. The Germans plainly believed that a landing was impossible.

Think of those beaches, with land and sea mines, densely strewn with barbed wire (even into deep water), with machine-guns arranged so that every yard of sand and water would be swept, by direct, indirect, and cross fire, with a hose-like stream of bullets; think of thousands of field-pieces and howitzers ready, ranged, and set, so that they would spray the sand and whip the sea, merely by the pulling of triggers. Think of a force larger than the intended landing-party entrenched, with their rifles loaded and their range known, behind all manner of overhead cover and wire entanglements, and then remember that you are one of a party that has to step ashore there from an open boat, and kill, or drive far enough inland, these enemy soldiers to enable your stores to be landed so that when you have defeated him, you may not perish of starvation. Far more than at Balaclava did these young men from "down under" walk "right into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell!" And the Turks waited till they were well within the jaws before they opened fire. No one in the landing force knew where the Turks were, and the Turks did not fire on us until we got to the zone which they had so prepared that all might perish that entered there. They could see us clearly, the crowded open boats were targets of naked flesh that could not be missed. Was there ever a more favorable setting for a massacre? The Turks in burning Armenian villages with their women and children had not easier tasks than that entrenched army. Our men in the boats were too crowded to use their rifles, and the boats were too close in for the supporting war-ships to keep down the fire from those trenches. How was any one left alive? By calculation of the odds not one man should have set foot on that shore. Make a successful landing, enabling us to occupy a portion of that soil! What an impossible task!

To the men in those boats and the men watching from the ships, it appeared as if not merely the expedition had failed, but that not a man of the landing force would survive. Boats were riddled with bullets and sunk—other boats drifted helplessly as there were not enough alive to row them—men jumped into the bullet-formed spray to swim ashore but were caught in the barbed wire and drowned. Who could expect success, but it nevertheless happened! The Turks were sure that we could not land, yet we did. Not only did those boys set foot on those beaches, but the remnant of that landing-party drove the Turks out of their entrenchments up cliffs five hundred feet high, and entrenched themselves on the summit. How did they do it? No one knows; the men who were there don't know themselves. Did heaven intervene? Perhaps spiritual forces may sometimes paralyze material. It must be that right has physical might, else why didn't the Kaiser get to Paris? Mathematics and preparedness were on his side; by all reasoning Germany ought to have overwhelmed the world in a few months, with the superiority of her armament, but she didn't. The Turks ought to have kept us off the Peninsula, by all laws of logic and arithmetic, and they didn't. I really think the landing succeeded because those boys thought they had failed.

They must have believed themselves doomed—they could see that there were too few to accomplish what was even doubtful when the force was intact. When they were on the shore they must have felt that it was impossible that they could be taken off again. All the time more were falling, and soon it seemed that every last man must be massacred. They made up their minds that, at any rate, they would get a few of the swine before they went.

Every man believed that in the end he must be killed, but determined to sell his life as dearly as possible, and that made them the supermen that could not be "held back." A whole platoon would be cut down, but somehow one or two would manage to get into the trench, where, of necessity, it was hand-to-hand work, and with laughing disregard of the odds would lay out a score of the enemy and send the others fleeing before them, who would yell out that they were fighting demons from hell. After the confusion in the boats, and from the fact that in most cases companies were entirely without officers, there was no forming up for charges—indeed, there were no orders at all, but every man knew that he could not but be doing the right thing every time he killed a Turk, so they just took their rifle and bayonet in their naked hands and went to it. There was no line of battle, it was just here, there, and everywhere, khaki-clad, laughing demons, seeking Turks to kill.

Never was there fighting like this. All that day it went on. On the beach, up the cliff, in the gullies, miles inland were men fighting. It was not a battle; it would have made a master of tactics weep and tear his hair, but these man-to-man fights kept on. Many were shot from behind, many were wounded and fell in places where no one would find them—some, fighting on, went in a circle and found themselves back on the beach again. However, at nightfall some had begun to dig a shallow line of trenches, well inland across the cliff. Single men and small groups of them, not finding any more Turks where they were, fell back into this ditch and helped deepen it.

Fresh Turks were massing for counter-attack, and soon came on with fury, but we were something like an army now, and although the line had to be shortened it never broke. The landing had been made good, the impossible had been achieved. But there were many who died strange deaths, many left way in, helpless, who could not be succored—many whom the fighting lust led so far that when they thought of seeking their comrades they found the barrier of a Turkish army now intervening. Strange, unknown duels and combats were fought that day. Unknown are the "Bill-Jims" who killed scores with naked hand—there were many such. Though we beat the Turk with the odds in his favor, yet this day and afterward he earned our respect as a fighting man.

"East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat.
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the Earth."

The Australian had proved himself the fiercest fighter of the world… As one naval officer remarked, they fought not as men but devils. Many have said that much of the loss of life was needless, that had the Australians kept together and waited for orders not so many would have been cut off in the bush. It was true that the impetuosity of many took them too far to return, but it was that very quality that won the day. They did not return, but they drove the Turk before them and enabled others to dig in before he could re-form. You would have to go back to mediaeval times to parallel this fighting. There were impetuosity, dash, initiative, berserker rage, fierce hand-to-hand fighting, every man his own general.

These were not the only qualities of the Australian fighting men, but these alone could have succeeded on that day. When the time came for evacuation of those hardly won and held trenches, these same troops gave evidence of the possession of the opposite attributes of coolness, silence, patience, co-ordination; every man acting as part of a single unit, under control of a single will—which is discipline!

Kangeroo Feathers

This cartoon appeared in "The Punch" during the war. FIRST LADY: "That's one of them Australian soldiers." SECOND LADY: "How do you know?" FIRST LADY: "Why, can't you see the Kangaroo feathers in his hat?"

Lauder and the ANZAC's.

During 1917 the star of the music hall stage Harry Lauder was touring France with his own style of show for the troops.

In his book “A Minstrel in France.” He describes his first encounters with Australian soldiers.

“But it was not long before the silence of the town was broken by another sound. It was marching men we heard, but they were scuffling with their feet as they came; they had not the rhythmic tread of most of the British troops we had encountered. Nor were these men, when they swung into sight, coming around a pile of ruins, just like any British troops we had seen. I recognized them as once as Australians— Kangaroos, as their mates in other divisions called them—by the way their campaign hats were looped up at one side. These were the first Australian troops I had seen since I had sailed from Sydney, in the early days of the war, nearly three years before. Three years! To think of it—and of what those years had seen!

"Here's a rare chance to give a concert!" I said, and held up my hand to the officer in command.

"Halt!" he cried, and then: "Stand at ease!" I was about to tell him why I had stopped them, and make myself known to them when I saw a grin rippling its way over all those bronzed faces—a grin of recognition. And I saw that the officer knew me, too, even before a loud voice cried out:

"Good old Harry Lauder!"

That was a good Scots voice—even though its owner wore the Australian uniform.

"Would the boys like to hear a concert?" I asked the officer.

"That they would! By all means!" he said. "Glad of the chance! And so'm I! I've heard you just once before—in Sydney, away back in the summer of 1914."

Then the big fellow who had called my name spoke up again.

"Sing us 'Calligan,'" he begged. "Sing us 'Calligan,' Harry! I heard you sing it twenty-three years agone, in Motherwell Toon Hall!"

"Calligan!" The request for that song took me back indeed, through all the years that I have been before the public. It must have been at least twenty-three years since he had heard me sing that song—all of twenty-three years. "Calligan" had been one of the very earliest of my successes on the stage. I had not thought of the song, much less sung it, for years and years. In fact, though I racked my brains, I could not remember the words. And so, much as I should have liked to do so, I could not sing it for him. But if he was disappointed, he took it in good part, and he seemed to like some of the newer songs I had to sing for them as well as he could ever have liked old "Calligan."

I sang for these Kangaroos a song I had not sung before in France, because it seemed to be an especially auspicious time to try it. I wrote it while I was in Australia, with a view, particularly, to pleasing Australian audiences, and so repaying them, in some measure, for the kindly way in which they treated me while I was there. I call it "Australia Is the Land for Me," and this is the way it goes:

There's a land I'd like to tell you all about
It's a land in the far South Sea.
It's a land where the sun shines nearly every day
It's the land for you and me.
It's the land for the man with the big strong arm
It's the land for big hearts, too.
It's a land we'll fight for, everything that's right for
Australia is the real true blue!

Refrain:

It's the land where the sun shines nearly every day
Where the skies are ever blue.
Where the folks are as happy as the day is long
And there's lots of work to do.
Where the soft winds blow and the gum trees grow
As far as the eye can see,
Where the magpie chaffs and the cuckoo-burra laughs
Australia is the land for me!

Those Kangaroos took to that song as a duck takes to water! They raised the chorus with me in a swelling roar as soon as they had heard it once, to learn it, and their voices roared through the ruins like vocal shrapnel. You could hear them whoop "Australia Is the Land for Me!" a mile away. And if anything could have brought down that tottering statue above us it would have been the way they sang. They put body and soul, as well as voice, into that final patriotic declaration of the song.

We had thought—I speak for Hogge and Adam and myself, and not for Godfrey, who did not have to think and guess, but know—we had thought, when we rolled into Albert, that it was a city of the dead, utterly deserted and forlorn. But now, as I went on singing, we found that that idea had been all wrong. For as the Australians whooped up their choruses other soldiers popped into sight. They came pouring from all directions.

I have seen few sights more amazing. They came from cracks and crevices, as it seemed; from under tumbled heaps of ruins, and dropping down from shells of houses where there were certainly no stairs. As I live, before I had finished my audience had been swollen to a great one of two thousand men! When they were all roaring out in a chorus you could scarce hear Johnson's wee piano at all—it sounded only like a feeble tinkle when there was a part for it alone.

The last Anzac

The 3rd June 2009 passed with the last Anzac, Jack Ross passing away peacefully.

416,809 Australians signed up for the Great War and now all of them have faded into history.

As reported on Yahoo news:

Australia's oldest man and its last surviving veteran of World War I died on Wednesday at the age of 110.

Jack Ross, who joined the Australian Imperial Force in the last months of World War I 91 years ago, died in his sleep in a nursing home in the southern country town of Bendigo, the Golden Oaks Nursing Home said.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd honoured one of the last remaining veterans of the first global conflict.

"Today we mourn the death of Jack Ross, I ask that we also reflect on the service and sacrifice of the 417,000 Australians who served our nation during the First World War and the 61,000 who gave their lives," he told parliament.

"We will continue to remember and to honour their legacy," Rudd added.

Ross, who was born in 1899, enlisted in the Australian military that fought with British forces in January 1918 and was trained in the use of radio before being assigned to the 1st Battalion in his native Victoria state.

But the Great War drew to an end in November of the same year and Ross was demobilised before being posted overseas.

In 1919, Ross joined the railways, where he would work for 45 years, but served the Australian military again in World War II as a member of the volunteer defence corps. He retired from the railways in 1964.

The teetotaller and non-smoker was active until a few years ago and attended the annual Anzac Day parade that honours Australia's contribution to conflicts starting with World War I until 2005 when he became too frail.

"It's always a very sad time for him," his daughter Peggy Ashburn said of the Anzac Day holiday in which Australia's contribution to the British-led assault on the Turkish stronghold of Gallipoli is singled out for recognition.

"He would like to (have been) in the march but there is no way he can do it," she said.

Ross, known as "Pop" to family and friends, celebrated his 110th birthday in March with chocolates and cake and a congratulatory letter from Rudd.

Ross was one of only a handful of remaining soldiers in the world who served during the Great War. Only three British World War I soldiers are still alive.

"Australia owes so much to this brave war generation," Rudd told parliament on Wednesday."

Form more info: Australian News .

Expensive use of the name Anzac.

With reference to the name ANZAC, This article appeared in The Times on 17th April 1917.

The poor man was made to pay for the wrong use of the word.

“For unlawfully using the word “Anzac” Frank Gleson, a music-hall performer, was fined £5 at Middlesbrough.

He had described himself as “Driver Frank Gleson, the Anzac Tenor.””

Anzac as a Trade Name.

This little article appeared in The Times on 8th July 1916.

The use of the word Anzac was recognised and protected by the Australian Government before its use was over exploited.


"“ANZAC” AS A TRADE NAME

The Board of Trade issues the following:-

The Australian Government have drawn attention to certain instances of the employment in the country, for trading purposes, of the word “Anzac.”

In view of the associations attached to this name, its use in connexion with trade and industry has been entirely prohibited in the Commonwealth of Australia and the Board of Trade trusts that the circumstances traders and the public in the United Kingdom will respect Australian wishes by abstaining from the use of the word for such purposes. "

The word "ANZAC".

The origins of the ANZAC acronym are expalined here from the Australian War Memorial.

The ANZAC Acronym

ANZAC is the acronym formed from the initial letters of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, the formation into which Australian and New Zealand soldiers were grouped in Egypt prior to the landing at Gallipoli in April 1915.

First written as A. & N. Z. Army Corps, it soon became A. N. Z. A. C. and the new word was so obvious that the full stops were omitted. The word was initially used to refer to the cove where the Australians and New Zealanders landed and soon after, to the men themselves. An ANZAC was a man who was at the Landing and who fought at Gallipoli, but later it came to mean any Australian or New Zealand soldier of the First World War. An ANZAC who served at Gallipoli was given an A badge which was attached to his colour patch.

Following the allied withdrawal from Gallipoli and the expansion of Australian and New Zealand forces in Egypt early in 1916, the ANZAC was split into two new formations called I ANZAC Corps and II ANZAC Corps – despite the repetition of the word Corps in their name. These formations, I ANZAC Corps comprising three Australian divisions and II ANZAC Corps made up of the 4th and 5th Australian divisions and the New Zealand Division, were transferred to France and fought on the Western Front until 1917, when the five Australian formations were grouped into a single Australian Corps. Also in March 1916, the ANZAC Mounted Division was formed from three Australian Light Horse Brigades and the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade for service in Sinai and Palestine. In 1916 – 1917 a joint signals unit, the 1st (ANZAC) Wireless Signal Squadron, operated with the British expeditionary force in Mesopotamia (now Iraq).

In more deatil it goes on to explain:-

Origins of the acronym ANZAC

It is difficult to say for sure who thought of the acronym. A number of accounts have been written.

One of the first occurrences of the word appeared in a book of sketches by Signaller Ellis Silas and in its foreword by Sir Ian Hamilton. Silas Ellis served with the AIF at ANZAC Cove.
Silas dedicated his book Crusading at ANZAC anno domini 1915, published in 1916 "to the honour and glory of my comrades with whom I spent those first terrible weeks at ANZAC".
In the foreword General Sir Ian Hamilton attributes to himself the coining of the acronym as a convenient piece of telegraphese devised for security purposes. He writes,

“As the man who first seeking to save himself the trouble, omitted the five full stops and brazenly coined the word "ANZAC", I am glad to write a line or two in preface to sketches which may help to give currency to that token throughout the realms of glory.”

The Official history of New Zealand's effort in the Great War, Volume 1: The New Zealanders at Gallipoli, quotes General Sir Ian Hamilton's account above and also gives an account by General Sir W. R. Birdwood.

“...In the "ANZAC Book",General Birdwood stated that when he took over the command of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps in Egypt, he was asked to select a telegraphic code address for his Army corps, and adopted the word"ANZAC". Later on after the landing, he was asked by General Headquarters to suggest a name for the beach, and in reply he christened it "ANZAC Cove".

The Australian war historian C.E.W. Bean attributed the acronym to a Lt A.T. White RASC of the British Regular Army.

“One day early in 1915 Major C.M. Wagstaff, then a junior member of the "operations" section of Birdwood's staff, walked into the General Staff office and mentioned to the clerks that a convenient word was wanted as a code name for the Corps. The clerks had noticed the big initials on the cases outside their room - A. & N. Z. A. C. and a rubber stamp for registering correspondence had also been cut with the same initials. When Wagstaff mentioned the need of a code word, one of the clerks, (according to most accounts Lieutenant A.T. White) suggested: "How about ANZAC?" Major Wagstaff proposed the word to the general who approved of it, and "ANZAC" thereupon became the code name of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. It was however, some time before the code word came into everyday use, and at the Landing at Gallipoli many men in the divisions had not yet heard of it.”

Robert Rhodes tells a similar story to Bean.

“Two Australian sergeants, Little and Millington had cut a rubber stamp, with the initials A. & N. Z. A. C. at Corps headquarters, situated in Shepheard's Hotel, Cairo... When a code name was required for the Corps, a British officer, a Lt. White suggested "ANZAC". Little later claimed that he made the original suggestion to White. It was in general use by January, 1915.”

Australia Day 1917 in London.

Yesterday, 26th January is Australia Day. To celebrate this event in 1917 events were held all over London. 'The Times' carried this report in anticipation of the day.

“Wattle Day

Plans for Australian Festival Today.

To-day is Wattle Day – Australia Day, and elaborate arrangements of the Australian festival in London, though the wearing of the wattle (or mimosa) will probably not be very general. The Anzac Club and Buffet will hold an “Anzac Fair” at Selfridges’s, Oxford Street, in aid of the funds of the buffet, which caters regularly for about 6,000 Australian soldiers, sailors and nurses a week. No charges are made at the buffet, but during the seven months ending September the guests voluntarily contributed nearly £1,000 towards the funds.

Friends of Australia now in London are invited by the Rector of St. Dunstan-in-the-East, the Rev. A.G.B. West, A.C.F. and the churchwardens to attend the annual commemoration of Foundation Day at noon, at St. Dunstan-in-the-East, E.C. His Majesty’s Theatre, as stated in The Times yesterday, has been placed at the disposal of the Australian Y.M.C.A. for a matinee performance of Chu Chin Chow, and Australian troops, with their band, will march from Horseferry road to the theatre arriving there at 1.15.

Another important function arranged for today is the annual “Corroboree,” or dance and social gathering, to be given by the Australian Natives Association at the Connaught Rooms, Great Queen Street. At last years “Corroboree,” which was the first of its kind held in London, there was an attendance of about 2,000. At the Comedy Theatre tonight Australians in uniform will be admitted half-price to the revue See-Saw.”

The Chemist's Assistant and the Australian.

Whilst in a local second-hand book I purchased a strange little book published in 1917, ‘A second diary of the Great War’ by Sam Pepys, Junior, foretime of Magdalene College in Cambridge. Written in the style of the first Samuel Pepys it gives an interesting insight to life on the home front.

These entries are about a Chemists Assistant whom the writer takes a ‘shine’ to. Unfortunately for the writer she casts her affections towards an Australian Sergeant!

Jan 13th 1917

"Home and by the way going to Miller’s shop, the chemist, to buy sope (soap), where I have not been a great while, he hath to serve there a mighty pretty girl that wears a nurse’s white clothes and looks like a Nun almost. She comes, she says, in place of Mr. Miller’s shop man that is combed out and pretty it is to see maids thus habited to serve in Pothrcaries’ shops; so had 3 boxes off her (4s 6d)."

Feb 21th 1917

"So home, and by the way, having a new onset of the swim in my head, and going to Miller’s for a fresh draught against it, there is my little white nun; but what vexes me is she serves tooth-brushes to 3 Australian soldiers, and she laughing and playing with them, no more than nods to me, but to cry ‘shop’ and goes on with this philandering. So Miller comes and serves me. It is very observable of girls that do serve in shops how they be taken with soldiers, to the neglect of the citizens."

Mar 28th 1917

"Walking out, and calling at Miller’s for some corn plasters, I find my little white nun is gone; and enquiring of her, he tells me that she hath wedded a certain Sergeant of the Australians. Poor girl! I pity her."

The Australian Soldier by Fredrick Palmer

Fredrick Palmer was a correspondent sent to the front during the First World War. In his book “My Second Year of the War” he describes his impression of the Australian Soldier and General Birdwood:

“I have never been in Australia or New Zealand, but this I know that when the war is over I am going. I want to see the land that breeds such men. They are free men if ever there were such; free whether they come from town or from bush. I had heard of their commonwealth ideas, their State-owned utilities, their socialistic inclinations, which might incline you to think that they were all of the same State-cut pattern of manhood; but I had heard, too, how they had restricted immigration of Orientals and limited other immigration by method if not by law, which was suggestive of a tendency to keep the breed to itself, as I understood from my reading.

Whenever I saw an Australian I thought: "Here is a very proud, individual man," but also an Australian, particularly an Australian. Some people thought that there was a touch of insolence in his bearing when he looked you straight in the eye as much as to say: "The best thing in the world is to be an upstanding member of the human race who is ready to prove that he is as good as any other. If you don't think so, well--" There was no doubt about the Australian being brave. This was as self-evident as that the pine is straight and the beech is hard wood.

The Australians came from a great distance. This you knew without geographical reference. Far away in their island continent they have been working out their own destiny, not caring for interference from the outside. To put it in strong language, there is a touch of the "I don't care a rap for anybody who does not care a rap for me" in their extreme moments of independence. It is refreshing that a whole population may have an island continent to themselves and carry on in this fashion.

They had had an introduction to universal service which was also characteristic of their democracy and helpful in time of war. The "Anzac" had caught the sense of its idea (before other English-speaking people) not to let others do your fighting for you but all "join in the scrum." Orientals might crave the broad spaces of a new land, in which event if they ever took Australia and New Zealand they would not be bothered by many survivors of the white population, because most of the Anzacs would be dead--this being particularly the kind of people the Anzacs are as I knew them in France, which was not a poor trial ground of their quality.

When they went to Gallipoli it was said that they had no discipline; and certainly at first discipline did irritate them as a snaffle bit irritates a high-spirited horse. "Little Kitch," as the stalwart Anzacs called the New Army Englishman, thought that they broke all the military commandments of the drill-grounds in a way that would be their undoing. I rather think that it might have been the undoing of Little Kitch, with his stubborn, methodical, phlegmatic, "stick-it" courage; but after the Australians had fought the Turk a while it was evident that they knew how to fight, and their general, Sir Charles Birdwood, supplied the discipline which is necessary if fighting power is not to be wasted in misplaced emotion.

Lucky Birdwood to command the Australians and lucky Australians to have him as commander! It was he who in choosing a telegraph code word made up "Anzac" for the Australian-New Zealand corps, which at once became the collective term for the combination. What a test he put them to and they put him to! He had to prove himself to them before he could develop the Anzacs into a war unit worthy of their fighting quality. Such is democracy where man judges man by standards, set, in this case, by Australian customs.

When he understood them he knew why he was fortunate. He was one of them and at the same time a stiff disciplinarian. They objected to saluting, but he taught them to salute in a way that did not make saluting seem the whole thing--this was what they resented--but a part of the routine. It was said that he knew every man in the corps by name, which shows how stories will grow around a commander who rises at five and retires at midnight and has a dynamic ubiquity in keeping in touch with his men. Such a force included some "rough customers" who might mistake war for a brawler's opportunity; but Sir Charles had a way with them that worked out for their good and the good of the corps.

Though they were of a free type of democracy, the Australian government, either from inherent sense or as the result of distance, as critics might say, or owing to General Birdwood's gift of having his way, did not handicap the Australians as heavily as they might have been handicapped under the circumstances by officers who were skilful in politics without being skilful in war.

As publicist the Australians had Bean, a trained journalist, a red-headed blade of a man who was an officer among officers and a man among men and held the respect of all by Australian qualities. If there could be only one chronicler allowed, then Bean's choice had the applause of a corps, though Bean says that Australia is full of just as good journalists who did not have his luck. The New Zealanders had Ross to play the same part for them with equal loyalty and he was as much of a New Zealander as Bean was an Australian.

For, make no mistake, though the Australians and the New Zealanders might seem alike to the observer as they marched along a road, they are not, as you will find if you talk with them. The New Zealanders have islands of their own, not to mention that the Tasmanians have one, too.
Besides, the New Zealanders include a Maori battalion and of all aborigines of lands where the white races have settled in permanence to build new nations, the Maoris have best accustomed themselves to civilization and are the highest type--a fact which every New Zealander takes as another contributing factor to New Zealand's excellence. Quiet men the New Zealanders, bearing themselves with the pride of Guardsmen whose privates all belong to superior old families, and New Zealanders every minute of every hour of the day, though you might think that civil war was imminent if you started them on a discussion about home politics.

Give any unit of an army some particular, readily distinguishable symbol, be it only a feather in the cap or a different headgear, and that lot becomes set apart from the others in a fashion that gives them _esprit de corps_. With the Scots it is the kilt and the different plaids. All the varied uniforms of regiments of the armies of olden days had this object. Modern war requires neutral tones and its necessary machinelike homogeneity may look askance at too much rivalry among units as tending toward each one acting by itself rather than in co-operation with the rest.

All the forces at the front except the Anzacs were in khaki and wore caps when not wearing steel helmets in the trenches or on the firing-line. The Australians were in slate-colored uniform and they wore looped-up soft hats. The hats accentuated the manner, the height and the sturdiness of the men whose physique was unsurpassed at the British front, and practically all were smooth-shaven. For generations they had had adequate nutrition and they had the capacity to absorb it, which generations from the slums may lack even if the food is forthcoming.

There was no reason why every man in Australia should not have enough to eat and, whether bush or city dweller, he was fond of the open air where he might exercise the year around. He had blown his lungs; he had fed well and came of a daring pioneer stock. When an Anzac battalion under those hats went swinging along the road it seemed as if the men were taking the road along with them, such was their vigorous tread. On leave in London they were equally conspicuous. Sometimes they used a little vermilion with the generosity of men who received a dollar and a half a day as their wage. It was the first time, in many instances, that they had seen the "old town" and they had come far and to-morrow might go back to France for the last time.

My first view of them in the trenches after they came from Gallipoli was in the flat country near Ypres whose mushiness is so detested by all soldiers. They had been used to digging trenches in dry hillsides, where they might excavate caves with solid walls. Here they had to fill sandbags with mud and make breastworks, which were frequently breached by shell fire. At first, they had been poor diggers; but when democracy learns its lesson by individual experience it is incorporated in every man and no longer is a question of orders. Now they were deepening communication trenches and thickening parapet walls and were mud-plastered by their labor.

Having risen at General Birdwood's hour of five to go with him on inspection I might watch his methods, and it means something to men to have their corps commander thus early among them when a drizzly rain is softening the morass under foot. He stopped and asked the privates how they were in a friendly way and they answered with straight-away candor. Then he gave some directions about improvements with a we-are-all-working-together suggestiveness, but all the time he was the general. These privates were not without their Australian sense of humor, which is dry; and in answer to the inquiry about how he was one said:

"All right, except we'd like a little rum, sir."

In cold weather the distribution of a rum ration was at the disposition of a commander, who in most instances did not give it. This stalwart Australian evidently had not been a teetotaler.

"We'll give you some rum when you have made a trench raid and taken some prisoners," the general replied.

"It might be an incentive, sir!" said the soldier very respectfully.

"No Australian should need such an incentive!" answered the general, and passed on.

"Yes, sir!" was the answer of another soldier to the question if he had been in Gallipoli.

"Wounded?"

"Yes, sir."

"How?"

"I was examining a bomb, sir, to find out how it was made and it went off to my surprise, sir!"

There was not even a twinkle of the eye accompanying the response, yet I was not certain that this big fellow from the bush had been wounded in that way. I suspected him of a quiet joke.

"Throw them at the Germans next time," said the general.

"Yes, sir. It's safer!"

Returning after that long morning of characteristic routine, as we passed through a village where Australians were billeted one soldier failed to salute. When the general stopped him his hand shot up in approved fashion as he recognized his commander and he said contritely, with the touch of respect of a man to the leader in whom he believes:

"I did not see that it was you, sir!"

The general had on a mackintosh with the collar turned up, which concealed his rank.

"But you might see that it was an officer."

"Yes, sir."

"And you salute officers."

"Yes, sir."

Which he would hereafter now that it was General Birdwood's order, though this everlasting raising of your hand, as one Australian said, made you into a kind of human windmill when the world was so full of officers. Gradually all came to salute, and when an Australian salutes he does it in a way that is a credit to Australia.

After a period of fighting a tired division retired from the battle front and a fresh one took the place. Thus, following the custom of the circulation of troops by the armies of both sides, whether at Verdun or on the Somme, the day arrived when along the road toward the front came the Australian battalions, hardened and disciplined by trench warfare, keen-edged in spirit, and ready for the bold task which awaited them at Pozières. This time the New Zealanders were not along.”



Earlier in the book he writes about his work during the war:

“Those whose business it was to observe, the six correspondents, Robinson, Thomas, Gibbs, Philips, Russell and myself, went and came always with a sense of incapacity and sometimes with a feeling that writing was a worthless business when others were fighting. The line of
advance on the big map at our quarters extended as the brief army reports were read into the squares every morning by the key of figures and numerals with a detail that included every little trench, every copse, every landmark, and then we chose where we would go that day. At corps headquarters there were maps with still more details and officers could explain the previous day's work to us. Every wood and village, every viewpoint, we knew, and every casualty clearing station and prisoners' inclosure. At battalion camps within sight of the Ridge and within range of the guns, where their blankets helped to make shelter from the sun, you might talk with the men out of the fight and lunch and chat with the officers who awaited the word to go in again or perhaps to hear that their tour was over and they could go to rest in Ypres sector, which had become relatively quiet.”


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