Great Anzac Stories

by Graham Seal

  Barney was wounded on several occasions and was given a medical discharge in 1916. But he re-enlisted and went back to fight and souvenir for another year or so until he was again discharged for health reasons in 1918. He returned to Australia where he set up house in a humpy on the fringes of Sydney, eking out a living through various forms of manual and itinerant labour and, of course, selling souvenirs. It is said that he took the train into the suburbs each week to deliver a sack of vegetables to ex-soldiers in the repatriation hospital. Occasional republication of the famous photograph briefly revived his notoriety from time to time. When war again broke out in 1939, Barney tried to enlist but was rejected due to his age. He died in 1958.

  The crucified soldier

  One especially potent legend of the Great War is best known in its Canadian version. But the story also circulated among British and Allied forces, with the alleged victim being a British officer or an Anzac.

  Canadian troops had been training in England from October 1914, arriving in France the following February. By May a disturbing new rumour was spreading through the trenches. The Times of 10 May 1915 ran the first press report of the story, which claimed that a group of Canadians wounded in the fighting near Ypres had come across one of their officers who had been literally crucified. ‘He had been pinned to a wall by bayonets thrust through his hands and feet, another bayonet had been driven through his throat and, finally, he had been riddled with bullets.’

  A similar horrific tale was picked up by the Canadian press and retailed in a number of versions, and stories of crucified Canadians, as well as British and Australian troops, continued throughout the war. There were questions in the British Parliament, some street riots and numerous official and unofficial attempts to verify the stories. But they never were proven, although the belief that the event—or something like it—had occurred was certainly strong among Canadian troops at the front and also among many on the home front. It has been suggested that the story was a propaganda piece developed by the Allies in response to the German sinking of the liner Lusitania on 7 May 1915. Regardless of its origins—and there were similar stories in circulation before April 1915, including allegedly on Gallipoli—the story has never gone away, with a recent television documentary attempting to verify it.

  As with all such rumours and legends, details will vary. There is also a tendency for various stories to become mixed up in their telling and retelling. In this case, it may be that the actual crucifixion myth became tangled up with another tale in which a soldier is discovered bound across a wagon wheel or stakes in a crucifixion-like position. Known as ‘Field Punishment No. 1’, this unpleasant form of discipline was practised in the British and some other armies and was known to troops colloquially as ‘crucifixion’. It could be incurred even for minor offences. Field punishment involved the unlucky soldier attending parades in a full pack, after which the pack was taken off and the luckless victim was trussed up across a wagon-wheel with fetters or handcuffs for an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. This treatment went on for as many days as the inflicting officer determined, up to twenty-eight days in the field. If sentenced by a court martial it was possible for ‘No. 1’ to be carried out for up to ninety days. The soldier who suffered ‘crucifixion’ was also given hard labour and lost pay.

  New Zealand conscientious objector Archibald Baxter experienced ‘No. 1’ in Belgium at the hands of a New Zealand sergeant at a prison compound called ‘Mud Farm’. Baxter was bound to stakes rather than a wheel and, according to his account, for a good deal longer than the regulation two hours.

  He took me over to the poles, which were willow stumps, six to eight inches in diameter and twice the height of a man, and placed me against one of them. It was inclined forward out of perpendicular. Almost always afterwards he picked the same one for me. I stood with my back to it and he tied me to it by the ankles, knees and wrists. He was an expert at the job, and he knew how to pull and strain at the ropes till they cut into the flesh and completely stopped the circulation. When I was taken off my hands were always black with congested blood. My hands were taken round behind the pole, tied together and pulled well up it, straining and cramping the muscles and forcing them into an unnatural position. Most knots will slacken a little after a time. His never did. The slope of the post brought me into a hanging position, causing a large part of my weight to come on my arms, and I could get no proper grip with my feet on the ground, as it was worn away round the pole and my toes were consequently much lower than my heels. I was strained so tightly up against the post that I was unable to move body or limbs a fraction of an inch. Earlier in the war, men undergoing this form of punishment were tied with their arms outstretched. Hence the name of crucifixion. Later, they were more often tied to a single upright, probably to avoid the likeness to a cross. But the name stuck.

  A few minutes after the sergeant had left me, I began to think of the length of my sentence and it rose up before me like a mountain. The pain grew steadily worse until by the end of half-an-hour it seemed absolutely unendurable. Between my set teeth I said: ‘Oh God, this is too much. I can’t bear it.’ But I could not allow myself the relief of groaning as I did not want to give the guards the satisfaction of hearing me. The mental effect was almost as frightful as the physical. I felt I was going mad. That I should be stuck up on a pole suffering this frightful torture, a human scarecrow for men to stare at and wonder at, seemed part of some impossible nightmare that could not continue. At the very worst strength came to me and I knew I would not surrender. The battle was won, and though the suffering increased rather than decreased as the days wore on, I never had to fight it again . . .

  Towards the end of the afternoon, in the small corner which was visible to me of the enclosure on the other side of the road, heads began to appear and disappear with great rapidity and much blowing of whistles and roars of ‘Double, double!’ resounded from the same quarter. After some time the sergeant came over and released me. I set out to walk to the tent without waiting, as I afterwards learned to, for the slow and painful return of the circulation to my numbed limbs, and immediately fell. I struggled on again, somehow and, stumbling and falling, managed to make my way to the tent . . .

  A number of Anzac stories tell of a group of Australians and/ or New Zealanders who come across such a scene and are so horrified by its cruelty that they release the victim from his bonds and otherwise take matters into their own hands. One account appears in Aubrey Wade’s 1936 memoir, The War of the Guns.

  Close by the road where the crucifixion took place there ran a narrow road which led to a stream where it was usual for all the artillery in the area to water their horses. At evening stable-time the Australians rode through with their animals on their way to water, and it so happened on the third day of the wheel torture that the victim had been strung up on a wagon in full view of the road, which was an oversight, no doubt, on the part of the sergeant major.

  The Aussies, coming along at the trot, pulled up dead and stared in blank amazement. They simply could not understand it. The corporal who appeared to be in charge of them (for so much as they were ever in anyone’s charge) dismounted, handed over his horse and strode across to the scene of punishment while all of us watched him with the keenest anticipation. Then the Aussie spoke: ‘Who in the hell’s name tied you up like this, digger?’ And without waiting for a reply he cut through the new brown straps with his jack-knife, releasing the prisoner who stood looking dazedly, while the guard discreetly found something urgently waiting to be done at the guard-room. ‘Who tied you up, digger?’ came a chorus from the watching Australians. ‘Show us the b——d.’ I prayed for the appearance of the sergeant-major. But no sergeant-major came. The corporal remounted. ‘We’ll be here again tomorrow,’ he called, and with that he led his grinning troop away . . .

  The next day, to the minute, the process was repeated. Again the victim was released in a jiffy by the Aussies, four more brand-new straps were ruined and the
sergeant-major hid himself in fear of his life. But the crucifixion was not called off; the next afternoon the prisoner was led out and strapped tight, and we gleefully awaited the appearance of the Australians. This time they were a little later than usual, but they came right enough just as the sergeant-major emerged from the field in which the tents lay. He walked right into them before realizing that they were companions of the corporal who was busily engaged in cutting gun-straps to ribbons. Pushing between their horses he yelled at the corporal.

  ‘Hello, b——d,’ said the corporal pleasantly, looking round. ‘Come down to watch the fun?’ he continued, in a soft drawl which infuriated the sergeant-major. His hand flew to the riding crop tucked under his arm, but the Australian gazed at him steadily and contemptuously. The other rider drew closer. Then the corporal went up to the sergeant-major and told him that for two pins, more or less, he’d tie him to the tails of their horses and gallop him over half France. And for tying a poor digger up like that he ought to be strung up by an extremely susceptible part of his anatomy and flogged to death for a b——d. And every time they came that way they’d cut the prisoner down, and then they’d think about cutting the sergeant-major’s throat. The rescuers formed a ring of horses round the two protagonists so that the sergeant-major should not miss one word for the good of his soul. It was a great day.

  The walers

  The waler is a type of horse bred for Australian conditions. It is a hardy animal with great stamina and can travel for considerable distance on little food and water. These characteristics made the waler valuable as a working horse in the bush and also as a mount for the Australian Light Horse during World War I, where it was well suited to the climate and terrain of Palestine and the Sinai Desert and to bearing the considerable weight of a fully equipped light horseman. The horses served with success and gallantry, winning the admiration and praise of many of the British cavalry who on several occasions observed them performing impressive feats of endurance and strength. One fabled performance was by Major Shanahan’s difficult mount, known as ‘Bill the Bastard’. Shanahan, an officer of the 2nd Light Horse Regiment, found four unhorsed Australians surrounded by Turks, and Bill carried all five men to safety through over a kilometre of soft sand. Such actions added to the reputation of the walers and also to the extensive mystique of the Light Horse units. When the war ended it is said that many light horsemen shot their beloved horses rather than see them left behind. Although historians can find little evidence, this belief persists.

  There were roughly 10 000 horses—not all walers—remaining among the Australian forces in Syria, Egypt and Palestine when the war ended in November 1918. The cost of returning these beasts to Australia, together with the quarantine risks they would pose, meant that another solution was needed. Some were reassigned, some were sold. Those that were unhealthy or aged—between 2000 and 3000 horses (estimates vary)—were destroyed under veterinary supervision. Although the procedures for the disposal of the army horses were as humane and well organised as possible under the circumstances, many diggers who had served in the Middle East, light horsemen in particular, strongly resented what happened to their loyal mounts.

  ‘The Horses Stay Behind’, a poem published just after the war by journalist and soldier Oliver Hogue, who wrote under the pen name of ‘Trooper Bluegum’, was probably the most important initial inspiration for the notion that light horsemen shot their horses.

  I don’t think I could stand the thought of my old fancy hack Just crawling around old Cairo with a Gyppo on his back. Perhaps some English tourist out in Palestine may find My broken-hearted waler with a wooden plough behind. No: I think I’d better shoot him and tell a little lie ‘He floundered in a wombat hole and then lay down to die.’ Maybe I’ll get court-martialled; but I’m damned if I’m inclined To go back to Australia and leave my horse behind.

  Of the 136 000 horses used by Australian forces during World War I, only one returned home, ‘Sandy’, the mount of General Sir William Bridges. The general was killed on Gallipoli and Sandy was taken into army veterinary care and reposted to Egypt, France and finally back to England. Here the horse was quarantined for three months, found to be free of disease and shipped back to Australia in September–November 1919. He spent the rest of his days grazing at the Central Remount Depot in Maribyrnong, Victoria. In 1923 he was put down due to age and illness. His head was mounted and became a part of the collection of the Australian War Memorial. The head was displayed at the Memorial for many years as the only horse to return, and this perhaps contributed to the belief—although Sandy was not a waler—that these horses had indeed been shot by their riders. Regardless of the historical reality, the story has a firm hold on the Australian imagination. Together with the Light Horse units, the waler remains a powerfully romantic symbol of national identity and wartime pride.

  ANZAC to Anzac

  As most things connected with Anzac have more than one story attached to them, it would be surprising if the word itself was not the subject of a few. According to one of these tales, the abbreviation was chosen by General Birdwood, or ‘Birdie’, as the diggers knew him. By his own account:

  When I took over the command of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps in Egypt a year ago, I was asked to select a telegraphic code address for my Army Corps, and then adopted the word ‘Anzac.’ Later on, when we had effected our landing here in April last, I was asked by General Headquarters to suggest a name for the beach where we had made good our first precarious footing, and then asked that this might be recorded as ‘Anzac Cove’—a name which the bravery of our men has now made historical, while it will remain a geographic landmark for all time.

  Another claimant to the honour is General Sir Ian Hamilton, commander of the Gallipoli campaign. As he himself put it in the foreword to a book published in 1916:

  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.

  According to the Australian war historian Charles Bean, a Lieutenant A. T. White, Royal Army Service Corps, of the British Regular Army was the originator.

  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.

  They soon did, though, and the term has well and truly stuck. The word has been controlled by Commonwealth and state legislation almost from the time it first appeared in wide usage. Controversy continues over whether it should be spelled as ‘ANZAC’ or ‘Anzac’. One argument is that it is an acronym and so its original form should be preserved. Others insist that it has moved beyond the acronym stage to become a fully fledged word and so should appear as ‘Anzac’, unless referring to the original telegraphic address.

  Anzac and the Rising Sun

  The most recognisable symbol of Anzac is the Rising Sun badge. Use of a rising sun motif has a long history in Australia, where the concept of a young, growing colony, state or country has an obvious appeal. Rising sun motifs appeared quite frequently in colonial times on coins and also in trademarks and proprietary products such as ‘Rising Sun Jam’.

  But the famous ‘Rising Sun’ badge worn by members of the Aus
tralian military probably had its origins in South Australia. In 1893 the commander of the South Australian Permanent Artillery had a trophy made featuring bayonets radiating outwards from a central crown. According to legend, the trophy was the inspiration for the first Rising Sun badge, designed for the 1st Battalion, Australian Commonwealth Horse, during the Boer War. Modifications were made to this design when the first Commonwealth forces were formed, and the badge was worn by the First and Second AIF. Some further changes have been made since then, but the badge now worn by the Australian military forces is still the Rising Sun.

  The first and the last

  Two of the foundation legends of the Anzac tradition concern the identities of the first Australian to step ashore at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 and of the last to leave eight months later. There have been and continue to be a number of competing claims for these honours. The passion with which the various first man to land and last man to leave stories are supported or refuted has been a constant theme, and reflects the important place that Anzac holds in the lives and hearts of large numbers of Australians.