My first year at the bar was shadowed by the war; I had been practising for only five months when the war broke out in Europe. My memory of my first colleagues and associates at the bar naturally centres less on those men who later became judges or distinguished barristers than on a limited number of young men – ‘Doc’ McKay, Eric Connolly, Mervyn Higgins, Frank Carse – all men of superlative quality who in the ordinary course of events must have won distinction in the law. Each of these men was an early volunteer in the war, and all were killed. Some were only sons; Connolly had a brother but both were killed. Their death caused consternation at the time but their memory now, of course, has faded and is probably preserved only by portraits valued, I hope, by their descendants.
I decided to go to the war; I was not influenced by any heroic considerations but felt that it was impossible for me to continue in practice while so many men were giving up greater prospects. Enlisting in 1915 my first experience was to wait on the table of an officer who owed me £30 for poker, a sum which incidentally I never received. I recall even more vividly in Bendigo camp my poor father’s obvious emotion when he came on his first visit after my enlistment. Uniforms were not yet available and I was in ill-fitting dungarees: probably I was on fatigue duty, cutting firewood. The poor man, along with my mother, had sacrificed a great deal to provide me with a profession; and now looking at me in my dungarees his thoughts could easily be read: ‘Is this what we have received for all the care we devoted to this boy?’
Eventually I received my uniform and went into camp with the 22nd. Battalion at Broadmeadows, near Melbourne. As I needed money I gladly accepted a junior brief in a case in which Bryant was leader, and successfully gained leave from the Army in order make my court appearance. Sir John Madden, the Chief Justice, was to preside, and Bryant invited his opinion as to the appropriate garb in which should appear. Should I wear a wig and gown or should my uniform suffice? This gave occasion for Madden to deliver some of the well-rounded phrases for which he was renowned. He spoke of King and went on to emphasise that the costume in which a young hero was prepared to die – I having no great willingness to die – was obviously fit to be worn in court. So I appeared in the uniform of a private soldier, thus creating an unusual precedent and, more important, receiving the fee which I sorely needed.
I attended officers school in Australia and so to France. I speedily adjusted myself to life with the 22nd battalion, and found it a home. The only difficult days came when one was separated from his battalion in a base camp or in some other place where he had none of the status which battalion members accorded their comrades who, they believed, were trying to pull their weight. For most of the time my colonel in charge was A.R.L. Wiltshire, CMG, DSO, M.C. He was very young, and he was nervous about relaxing too much in the presence of his officers. His worldly experience was limited, being only in his mid twenties, and he was apprehensive lest he permit undue familiarity, thereby making it difficult to perform his regimental duties. Wiltshire was devoted to the battalion and I once saw him make as much fuss over the delivery of semi-cold stew to his men as if the battalion had been engaged in action and had suffered heavy causalities. I soon realised his wonderful capacity and told my junior colleagues that ‘Willie’ (which was the name by which we designated him behind his back) was certain to become head of his Bank if he survived the war. My prediction was verified – Wiltshire did become general manager of the Bank of Australasia.
Most of us were young and quite unsophisticated. To use a single word, we ‘believed’ we had not been submitted to the avalanches of propaganda which afflicted men in later years; propaganda, of course, was used but we were not conscious of it. We believed in the battalion, we believed in ourselves. We were gauche and very proud of the A.I.F. units. When we went into action or were in the front line in France, the first question was: ‘Who is on our left and right flank?’ This is not meant to disparage the fighting capacity or courage of other troops, but were delighted to know that one of our own brigade battalions guarded our flank although we were generous enough to admit that the Canadians, the Scots or the New Zealanders were as good. Please don’t misunderstand me. I am full of admiration for the British soldier but, of course, as the war went on British casualties had become so enormous that some of the latecomers were not of the physique or standard of those who died in the early days.
A man’s return from the war usually was a measure, not of the engagements in which he took part, but of his good luck in being left out of the more disastrous ones. You had to be lucky. The battalion strength of those days was about 12,000, and in our battalion 844 were killed, 2173 wounded and 288 gassed. The 844 killed included 46 officers.
On the voyage over to Europe boxing contests had been held in the ship. Kernick, a batman, was a first class lightweight, and so was his bosom friend, Bates. They fought in the finals before the whole ship’s company, and it was soon obvious that neither had any desire to punish the other. For four rounds the contest was merely a sparring match and then one of the boxers accidentally struck a more severe blow than he intended. His opponent retaliated and in a moment they were fighting like wildcats. Before the ‘wildly cheering audience they fought: to a bloody standstill.
In Frances Kernick lost his life in peculiar circumstances. My friend Bill Braithwaite and I were left out of the BattIe of Ville Sur Ancre but our battalion being low in strength it was decided that one of every two batmen ((or batwoman) is a soldier or airman assigned to a commissioned officer as a personal servant) should stay behind while the other went into battle. Accordingly Bill and I called up our two batmen, Kernick and Reeves, and told them that the simplest way to decide was to play a game of show poker.
Kernick and Reeves looked on while we played. I held two pairs and won, and so we agreed that my batman Reeves should stay behind. Kernick went forward, and though casualties were not comparatively heavy he was killed. Twenty four hours later word reached the battalion that, at the request of his parents, the authorities had recently granted an order for him to bee repatriated home.
Members of an Infantry Battalion in action disliked stories of narrow escapes. Anyone showing the least tendency to expatiate upon the narrow margin which separated him from eternity was not encouraged to continue. Of course no one could be sure whether he would find death or death would find him. I went into the line one night with my friend Bill Braithwaite, a comparatively junior officer in charge of the “show”. There was one post on the extreme left flank where the Huns raided us frequently It had an evil reputation: I felt very unheroic but in order to avoid any suggestion of favouritism from Bill, I somewhat reluctantly volunteered to take it; on the first night. It was a bright moonlight night; the lines were very close. The Huns were uneasy, and so were we. Each side was bringing up duckboards and material for the front posts. Suddenly someone started to play a machine gun, then a German barrage came down. It was sometimes safer to move nearer to an enemy barrage rather than away from it, so I ordered our fellows out of the trenches and to advance twenty yards. One man failed to comply but I did not know he had remained in the trench. He was a late reinforcement and had been with the battalion only a couple of days. After the hubbub died down we returned to our trenches. There was only one casualty – the solitary man who had remained behind had been killed.
I have a memory of that night. In the midst of the hurly burly we saw Braithwaite loping out like a greyhound dog; I knew that his soldierly concern at what was happening was accentuated by his knowledge that I was in charge of the post.
Near dawn we prepared to withdraw, because the post because the post was only occupied at night – dawn is not a good time for bravery and vanity is the only substitute, but I had to stay until I thought the last of our fellows had disappeared. I was turning to follow them when I saw a figure looming out of the mist from No mans land. I well remember my thought, ‘This is it’. I assumed that the oncoming figure was the first of a German advance party. Blasphemy can be a relief, and I admit to language unworthy of an officer when I found that the oncoming figure was a fool who had gone out to the post to which we had+ advanced during the barrage in order to bring back his Mills bombs.
On 18 August, 1918, the day of the famous advance at Villers-Bretonneux, our battalion had to stay in the front line with very thin ranks, most of the men being withdrawn as zero hour approached. Those who remained had to hurl an occasional bomb and keep machine gun bursts as to give the impression of activity. It was a wonderful sight as the other fellows went through; but more rewarding(?) was the subsequent sight of columns Germans being marched as prisoners along a nearby road.
About a month or more before Armistice Day (1918), I was out in No Man’s Land with a night patrol. I was acting as substitute for the Intelligence Officer and was expected to reconnoiter the ground immediately in front of our lines. With a private for my companion I was suddenly plunged into a well. What it was designed for I don’t know and I never did find out, but we fell about 18 to 20 feet. My companion broke his thigh, I broke my ankle. Eventually – when we were found barbed wire and rifle slings were tied together and we were hauled out. I was too heavy to be carried and there was no stretcher. The incident ended in farce. I was dumped by a sunken road and hearing the noise of advancing troops I stupidly drew a revolver – why I cannot say. My stupid ‘hold up’ was of members of’ a neighbouring battalion who shortly afterwards provided a stretcher on which I was carried back to the battalion headquarters in a rear gully. For some reason which I have forgotten I remained there for two or three days until my leg appeared to be turning green up to the thigh: it was decided to evacuate, not in an ambulance but in one of the mule carts which brought up the stew. Now stew is a mule cart had a tendency to spill and the floor of mine was strewn with the overflow. As we set off, the Huns started to shell the gully. I don’t know how fast a mule travels, certainly he doesn’t go as fast as a racehorse but the animal in charge of my conveyance did his best. My leg was causing me pain which the jolts did not alleviate, and I felt like the sea sick passenger hoping that the ship would go down.
Bill Braithwaite, son of Colonel Braithwaite, founder of the little firm which prospered as Preston Motors, Was an only son. He and I were of very different temperaments but we were inseparable from the date of our leaving Australia until his death. He reminded one of a kindly Labrador dog. His men understood and revered him. When I had to go to England with the broken ankle, Bill happened to come over on leave, and we roistered around Piccadilly. One day he left his field glasses in a shop for adjustment, and I (facetiously but perhaps because I was apprehensive) remarked to the shopkeeper, ‘He won’t be coming back for them’. That night the two of us took charge of the Pala is Royale kitchen, serving diners and acting the goat. Patrons were kind and no one interfered. Bill returned to the front next morning, and two days later he went into the battalion’s last engagement. I was ·at Chobham Hall, a convalescent home; and on the night of’ the attack I had a most vivid dream during which I saw Bill shot down by machine guns. I got leave to go to London, tried to find out there whether our battalion has suffered any casualties. Boarding the train that night to return to Chobham Hall, I was greeted by an inmate in the carriage with the remark ‘I suppose you know Bill was killed’. I still feel sad when I think of it.
Of the other extraordinarily gallant men, I shall simply mention Leo McCarten who, at Villers Brettoneux, the place where I had broken my ankle the preceding evening, led a hopeless attack on a barbed wire entrenchment. Leo was seriously wounded. Someone communicated his condition to battalion headquarters by field telephone, and orders were given that he was to return at once to the rear. Leo got the message, acknowledged it, and walked out to lead his men. He was killed instantly.
I was never an autograph collector – it seemed trivial – but to while away the time I bought a little notebook and when I came across decorated men of great distinction I got their signatures. It ran from Rawlinson upwards and downwards, all decorated men. It reads now like a record of a cemetery. Underneath you will see ‘Bill was killed on Thursday’, ‘Tom was killed on Friday’, ‘Harry was killed on Saturday’. There too you read the simple story of Eric Edgerton of our brigade: A D.S.O., M.C., M.M. in August 1918, with this extraordinary record, he was killed in action, still virtually a boy. You ????? understand how I treasured those days.
I wonder at the manner in which we accepted death and grave wounds. Men would be dining in a dugout at night, all pretty intimate pals, and in the morning an attack would inflict numerous casualties, and we shrugged our shoulders as though we had merely lost a few kitchen utensils. Very few men showed emotion, no matter how seriously they were hurt by the loss of an intimate pal.
I remember Jonah, a rather brutish type of soldier, redeemed somewhat by his devotion to his battalion and to his comrades. When the padre Durnford, a quiet strict but very gallant Englishmen, was burying the dead during Moquet Farm after Pozieres, Jonah was the soldier attached to him. Durnford would proceed with his service and after the second sentence Jonah would interject – ‘this is no bloody good, Padre, they’re dead and it’s no use our bloody well etc. etc.’ On went the Padre’ s prayers and again would come Jonah’s voice interjecting, ‘it’s no bloody-use stopping here any longer, Padre’. I can’t in these few words do justice to the incident, but you can imagine the picture, the Padre’s prayers, and Jonah’s blasphemous interjections. Despite his insensivity, Jonah was a pillar of strength throughout his period of service.
Once one of our reckless privates, gallant soldier and winner of the D.C.M. got into an affray wile on leave, and was convicted by a Court Martial and sentenced to detention. The Court Martial went further – I know nothing of the legality of its action – and ordered that the offender be deprived of his D.C.M. When the news came to the battalion, the forfeiture of his D.C.M roused every officer from Colonel to second-Lieutenant. Representations were made with force and urgency, and the D.C.M. was returned to our wondering boy.
In my notebook containing the signatures of decorated men, the first signature is that of Albert Jackal, the first Australian to win the Victoria Cross in the war. I first met him in an Army school at St. Orner. I did no legal work but probably because I was at least a titular barrister I was detailed to defend, at a Mock Court Martial, an accused officer from the 14th Battalion, ‘Jacka’s Mob’, I then rejoined my Battalion in the line but seven days later received an order to report to Jacka’s battalion where a real Court Martial was to be held on the same officer whom I had defended at the mock Court. There had been some friction in the battalion but the incident out of which the Court Martial arose in no way reflected on the courage or general character of the officer concerned; I am happy to report that the charge against him was dismissed.
I did not go to war to practice law and though an opportunity later occurred to transfer to the legal department I unhesitatingly turned it down. In those days we were younger, more naive and not cynical about propaganda. A member of the battalion evacuated by reason of wounds or sickness was regarded as a renegade unless he took the earliest opportunity of returning to the fighting line. The convention was commonplace but I remember the fate of one unfortunate officer who for some reason remained in England for a considerable period, his absence giving rise to the usual criticism. Eventually he returned to the battalion during operations around Ypres, and no later learned that he had married three weeks before his return. His reception was not warm, and he was sent immediately to a front line ‘show’, to be the first officer killed.
Charles Bean, the Army’s great historian, visited us once in France; and you may think I am unduly sentimental but I remember almost verbatim his description of the A.I.F. I suppose it is my age which causes me to admit that it still moves me. ‘The meaner struggle of parties cannot erase one tittle from the glory of that terrible but more generous struggle in the scrub of Gallipoli or under the rain clouds of France, or the glare of Sinai. But the Australian Imperial Force is not dead – the famous array of armies of generous men marches still down the long line of it’s country’s history, bands playing and rifles slung, with packs on shoulder, white dust on boots and bayonet scabbards and trench tools slapping on countless thighs, as the French country folk and the fellahins (?) of Egypt knew it. What these men did nothing can alter now. The good and bad, the greatness and the smallness of their story will stand. Whatever the glory it contained, nothing can now lessen. It rises as it will always rise above the mists of ages, a monument to great hearted men and for their nation a possession forever’.
It’s so long since he wrote it, and comparatively few now living have read it.
I was very lucky: a bit of bomb in my shoulder on one occasion, a bit of shrapnel at Boulecourt and finally a broken ankle when I tumbled down that well in No Nan’s Land, I learned from this experience something which I have observed pretty faithfully. One might, not in despondency but merely reflective, I realised that there were only two ways of leaving the western front, namely ???? ???? a wound so serious that you couldn’t come back. There was another option – to look cushy job away from the battalion – but such a man was in effect blackballed by all his companions. So I resolved that if I got out of the war, losing only one arm or one leg, nothing save a grave personal affliction would ever make me cry or complain. I am not boasting when I tell you that as far as practicable, as far as one could be expected, I have kept to that resolution, never worrying about what happened yesterday, never gravely concerned about what night happen in the future but, by and large, living in the present and talking only the ordinary precautions that a sensible man takes.
Occasionally, when on leave or during periods of convalescing, we could see places which we would never have seen but for the war. In Ireland in 1916 I saw my two maternal grandparents. They were of extremely modest means living in a little whitewashed cottage on a few acres. The old man had a certain gentility but he also had robust character, and I was told how at the local hunt a rider had once slashed at him with a whip, whereupon my grandfather dragged the horseman down and administered a reasonably severe punishment. This was a most serious incident ??? ??? ????? nearly involved him in deportation.
Neither my Irish-Australian father nor my Irish mother was robustly Nationalistic but as a youngster I read of the Irish rebellion, the funice, the fate of Robert Emmett and Wolf Tone, the Siege of Limerick and the curse of Cromwell. This resulted in an anti-English bias and it was not until the war that I saw the other side of the shield. It was a trifle that first attracted me to the English. Newsprint was scarce, the national existence was at stake but the early arrival of a migrating bird of the sight of a pair of birds which had not been observed for years were still able to make the newspaper columns. Space was available too for protests against the use of traps for catching birds. I was in London on Armistice Day, 1918, and did not fails to note the order in which three national songs were broadcast – Irish, Scottish and English. The more I saw of England and its people the better I remember Kipling’s lines:
“For undemocratic reasons and for matters not of State.
They arrive at their conclusion, largely inarticulate.
Being void of self-expression, they confide their thoughts to none.
But sometimes in a smoke room one learns how things are done”.
Later I sometimes introduced to my English friends a tribute from a most unlikely source, Henry Lawson:
“She’s England yet, with little to regret,
Aye, more than every she’ll be England yet”.
Nowadays one can but wonder and hope.
My bias against the English was altered too by the opportunities to share in their wartime hospitality and, above all, their sense of crisis. An organisation headed by the Earl and Duchess of Harrowby arranged for convalescent Australian officers to take leave in famous home in England and Scotland. Bill Braithwaite and I elected to go to the north of Scotland, near Nair, to a family named Blane, who were delightful hosts. I am ashamed to say that I was very careless in those days and failed to maintain the friendships so generously offered. Later I learned to keep an address book and maintain correspondence with people who had been kind to me. Host of my meetings were fleeting but frequently the impressions I retained were vivid.
In music my abiding memory is not of great concerts, ballets or operas but of a charity concert in the Albert Hall in London. It synchronized with the last German breakthrough early in 1918 when it appeared that all the sacrifices of the preceding years were likely to be vain and that the Germans would at last make their way to the Coast. The Albert Hall was packed with London’s elite, and Braithwaite and I were guests of Lady Lloyd. Never shall I forget Clara Butt one of the reigning Queens of Song, singing Land of Hope and Glory. There was first a cathedral-like silence, then the most vociferous applause I ever heard in a place of public entertainment.
The combination of singer, song and national emergency had created the mass emotion.
Once, on leave in Paris, I was introduced to Gaby Delys. How the introduction came about I have long since forgotten but I was taken back stage to meet Gaby who was still enjoying a worked reputation; enhanced by her status as the devoted friend of a reigning Monarch. She was no longer young or beautiful and here stage make-up added nothing to her appeal; but I was young and much impressed by my good fortune in being presented to her. It was also during my a brief leave in Paris that I was introduced by Frank Sellick to a young lady, Martha Vallee, and after the war was over she came out to Melbourne where in September 1920 we married.
Soon after the armistice, out battalion was stationed on garrison duty at Marcinello, a suburb of Charlerot in Belgium. When I went there after convalescence in England I was billeted in a private house – I have kept in touch with the Belgium family ever since. Our duties were light and I was free to do more work, under the coercion of Willy Wiltshire, on the history of our 22nd Battalion. Compiled spasmodically in France and Belgium, and hastened by peremptory orders for long-promised but still unwritten chapters, it is a simple story of a battalion’s service and its long lists of killed and decorated. Published under the title of “With the 22nd”, its contents are??? Weighty and no one has sought to imitate its literacy style. The book gave Wiltshire and me much trouble, for it aroused a strange and not very honest individual, long since dead. On the other hand the book gave some pleasure to surviving members of the battalion and I hope some consolation to relatives of the men who died.
War is horrible but never did I personally witness or even hear second hand any of the fanciful and appalling stories narrated so glibly by gentlemen who achieved some success with their war novels, particularly novels of extremely Leftist tendencies. Soldiers, of course, were not plaster saints; and when on leave many failed to qualify for canonisation but I never saw or heard of the mass misbehaviour which has been so graphically described. After the Armistice there was some free running, and strict orders were issued that any officer or man concerned in excess drinking or riotous behaviour in Charleroi was to be immediately court-martialed and if found guilty was to be returned to Australia. Returning one evening from the city about ten o’clock I was most concerned to meet Willy Wiltshire, our colonel, in a state of concern. Three of: our officers, with long and gallant records, had been arrested by the Provost Corp for ‘being under the influence of liquor’. We managed to secure their release and ??? them down with the battalion.
Meantime someone more ingenious than me had been at work, preparing their defence. The court-martial was soon faced with much evidence as to the apparent sobriety of the accused when they returned to the battalion. Various notes were produced in the accused officers’ handwriting. All had been written within twenty minutes of their return, and words of many syllables – were neatly written and nearly all were spelled correctly. It would have been too much to expect perfection just as it would have been incredible that those who wrote and spelled so well could have been intoxicated when they wrote. The accused were honourably discharged.
Before I completed writing that history in Charleroi I seized, or stole, the chance to visit Germany. Leave to visit the Rhine and the district of Cologne was restricted to officers of the rank of major and over; but Tommy Miles and myself were only captains. When Willy Wiltshire, our colonel, came back with glowing reports of his visit to the Rhine and when soon after he set off on a visit to Switzerland, we felt it was our turn to see something. Handing over control to another officer, Miles and I, for the first and only time, went AWL. The railways had just opened and we went to the station and boarded an eastward-bound train.
We had no difficulty when asked for documents. Waving a copy of the book ??????? Instructions we crossed through all railway barriers. When we were asked for tickets, this manual was equally useful. Throughout the journey we were not called on to pay any fare.
At the cathedral at Strasbourg where the chimes of the clock strike at midday and the devil comes out and the angels walk around, we were gazing in admiration at the spectacle, when suddenly in front of us I saw our Colonel. It was a disconcerting moment. After momentary hesitation we decided to make the most of it and walked up and Saluted. Wiltshire was a strict disciplinarian but he took it well. It appeared that he had been denied entry into Switzerland on the ground that rationing there was too severe to permit the entrance of holiday makers, so he retraced his steps to the Rhine. We joined forces and went to Wiesbaden where we had a most extraordinary afternoon as the guests of the Consul for Chile. How we met him I do not remember but I distinctly remember our walk home to our lodgings. It was the only time I saw Willie Wiltshire in a condition which suggested that he had been sampling the contents of a bottle a little too freely. (Wiltshire died this year, 1969 ) At Cologne I decided that I wanted to see no more of Germany.
Our garrison duty over, we entrained at Charlerol and went to the French Coast and then crossed to a camp at Sutton Veney in England where we awaited embarkation for Australia. We reached Melbourne in September 1919, ten months after the armistice. Our war was over.
We had a sergeant called Russell who, although a man of very moderate means, devoted himself to caring for the interests of the battalion survivors in Australia. He did this unremittingly for fifty years. He found out where they were, who was sick, who died, and it was a sheer delight to me when his fifty years of work was recognised first by a dinner a and a substantial presentation from those of the battalion who were still alive, followed by an M.B.E. in the New Year’s Honours in 1971.
The war years were the most exhilarating years of my life and I wouldn’t have exchanged them for any sum of money. That, I think, was also the verdict of most men who did a reasonably honest job in a front-line unit.