Anzac's Dirty Dozen
Page 5
It is true the AIF was made up entirely of volunteers, but it is not true that the Australians were the only such force in World War I. Charles Bean, Australia’s official historian of this conflict, certainly described Australian soldiers as volunteers, but he was careful not to say they were the only ones. Bean does not explicitly state why, but it would have been because he knew that the 1st South African Infantry Brigade serving on the Western Front was also an all-volunteer force. Both Australian and South African units faced the difficulties of declining recruitment as the war went on. In the final volume of the official history, Bean commented on the under-strength nature of Australian infantry battalions in 1918. He made the same point about the South Africans, where the brigade (consisting of four battalions) ended the war with its formation strength equivalent to just one battalion. Jeffrey Grey, in his A Military History of Australia, first published in 1990, and in his 2001 history of the Australian Army, explicitly described the South African Brigade as an all-volunteer force and pointed out that the ‘popular perception’ of the AIF as being the only all-volunteer army in World War I ‘needs to be modified’. The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History, and the Australian War Memorial’s website make similar clarifying statements.3
Other British Empire forces consisting of volunteer soldiers and auxiliary troops need to be assigned their places alongside the Australians and South African Brigades on the list of all-volunteer forces of World War I. But first, the extent of conscription within this conflict needs to be briefly outlined. With the exception of the United Kingdom, all the major combatant nations fought the war with conscript soldiers. The ‘Great Powers’ of France, Russia, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Germany and the Ottoman Empire had long traditions of compulsory military service, as did smaller European nations such as Serbia, Belgium, Bulgaria and Romania. When the United States entered the war in 1917, it too created a conscript army under the Selective Service Act.
For its part, the United Kingdom entered the war with a small volunteer professional army of about 250 000 men that was largely destroyed in the initial battles of 1914. In its place, the ‘Kitchener army’ of 2.4 million volunteers was raised, trained and suffered heavy losses in the battles on the Somme from July to November 1916.4 With the decline in voluntary enlistment, conscription was introduced in Britain – but not in Ireland – in January 1916. Initially limited to single men and childless widowers between the ages of 18 and 41, within six months all men in this age range became liable for military service, and the upper age limit was extended to 50 in April 1918.5 Two and a half million men were thus called up in Britain, joined the remaining veterans of the pre-war regular army and the surviving wartime volunteers to fight the indecisive battles of 1917; to face and stop the German offensive of March 1918; and to take part in the Allied ‘Hundred Days’ offensive that brought final victory in November 1918.6
Of the five self-governing Dominions in the British Empire during World War I – Australia, Canada, Newfoundland (now a part of Canada), New Zealand and South Africa – three followed Britain’s lead in introducing conscription: New Zealand in June 1916, Canada in January 1918 and Newfoundland in May 1918.7 These Dominions conscripted far fewer men than did Britain, even when the differences in population are taken into account. The New Zealand government decided to limit its Western Front commitment to one infantry division of three brigades (temporarily supplemented by a fourth infantry brigade created in March 1917 and disbanded February 1918). For this reason New Zealand conscripted only 32 270 men – less than half the number who voluntarily served in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force.8 In Canada, 124 588 men were called up into the Canadian Expeditionary Force (in comparison to about 600 000 volunteers), but only 24 132 conscripts had gone overseas before the end of the war, and of these only a few thousand actually reached the front line. Although the Newfoundland government did introduce conscription, none of the conscripts left home before the Armistice, and the Royal Newfoundland Regiment serving on the Western Front retained its all-volunteer identity to the end of the war.9
With the Australians having being joined on the list of all-volunteer forces by the South African Brigade and the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, it is now time to add another group. As mentioned above, conscription was never instituted in Ireland, so all 210 000 Irishmen who served in the British Army in World War I were volunteers.10 The 10th (Irish) Division served alongside the Anzacs at Gallipoli. The 36th (Ulster) Division, formed out of the Unionist (wanting Ireland to remain united with Britain) paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force, lost about 5000 men on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The 16th (Irish) Division, which included many prominent Nationalists (who wanted Ireland to have its own government, separate from Britain), also served on the Somme. On 7 June 1917, the 16th (Irish) and the 36th (Ulster) Divisions put aside their political differences and fought alongside each other in the successful attack on Messines. As voluntary enlistment in Ireland declined, Irish battalions were bolstered with British conscripts.11 An attempt to introduce conscription in Ireland in 1918 failed when it met with strong public opposition that can be compared in many ways to the opposition to conscription in Australia.12
The remaining all-volunteer forces to be considered came from South Africa, India and several British colonies. These soldiers were mostly non-White, and Australian World War I-era racial attitudes probably explain why these men, even when they fought alongside the AIF at Gallipoli and in the Palestine campaign, were ignored when making claims about all-volunteer forces.13
That the 1st South African Brigade that fought on the Western Front was composed entirely of volunteers has already been noted. This brigade was composed almost entirely of Englishspeaking whites, but all South African units – whether recruited from English- or Afrikaans-speaking whites, mixed-race ‘Coloureds’ from Cape Province, ethnic Indians from Natal, or the African majority – were volunteers. A force of 45 000 white volunteer combatants and 33 000 African, ‘Coloured’ and Indian volunteer auxiliaries took part in the South African invasion of the neighbouring German colony of South-West Africa in 1914. Twenty-one thousand African volunteers served with the South African Labour Contingent in France and carried out vital military tasks such as building roads and unloading supplies at the Channel ports. A further 18 000 Africans served in East Africa. About 7000 ‘Coloureds’ enlisted in the Cape Corps and members of this formation’s 1st Battalion fought as infantry alongside Australians in the Palestine campaign.14
The largest all-volunteer army in World War I was, in fact, the Indian Army. In 1914, this force, in which almost all officers were British, consisted of 155 423 soldiers and 45 660 non-combatant troops who carried out logistics, transport, medical, veterinary and remount tasks. In 1914 and 1915, Indian volunteers served on the Western Front and alongside Australians at Gallipoli. From 1915, the Indian Army provided the bulk of the British Empire force fighting the Ottoman Empire in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and alongside Australians in Palestine. By the end of the war, the Indian Army had expanded to over 1.4 million volunteer troops – one million more than the entire number who enlisted in the AIF in the whole of the war – composed of 877 068 combatant and 563 369 non-combatant soldiers.15
Military units raised in other British colonies were also all volunteers. In the Caribbean, 15 601 men enlisted in the twelve battalions of the British West Indies Regiment. The battalions of the regiment sent to Europe were deployed as labouring troops, but those sent to Palestine fought as infantry alongside Australians.16 The Nigeria Regiment raised about 17 000 volunteers who served in the campaigns in German Cameroons and German East Africa. A further 38 500 Nigerian volunteers served as auxiliaries.17 The King’s African Rifles, recruited from Britain’s various east African colonies, expanded from three battalions in 1914 to twenty-two battalions in 1918, with 31 000 volunteer infantrymen.18 These soldiers fought German forces in the East African campaign that began in 1914 and did not conclude until the German commander, General Paul
von Lettow-Vorbeck, was told that the war in Europe had ended and he subsequently surrendered on 23 November 1918.
The gross misconception that arises out of the erroneous belief that the AIF was the only all-volunteer force in World War I is that Australian volunteers, because they chose to enlist, inevitably made better soldiers than those who were compelled to join up. This idea is a myth for two reasons. Firstly, it projects current ideas of individualism and autonomy back almost one hundred years onto young men living in a more hierarchical and deferential society. In this time, the choice of whether or not to enlist was not necessarily an act of self-determination, but was often a decision made for the individual within a family or wider community. As one AIF veteran wrote in 1965, Australia in the period of World War I ‘was an old man’s world – a chap of twenty-one was considered a boy and not given responsibility, nor much notice’. Young people were used to decisions being made for them and following the directions of others. A clerk in a Ballarat solicitor’s office recalled of his decision to join up: ‘I hardly thought about it. The adults around me all seemed to be of the opinion that enlistment was the right thing for an eligible male to do and I just seemed to conform to that idea without attempting to weigh the pros and cons of the matter.’19
Australian males in this period did not act individualistically without reference to others to the extent that their contemporary equivalents do. Instead, the Australians of 1914–1918 were more likely to view themselves as members of wider groups such as a church congregation, trade union or professional organisation, political party or sporting club. One under-aged Balmain apprentice printer enlisted in November 1915 because he had heard the news that several men from his church had been killed at Gallipoli. Employers played a major role in deciding which of their employees went to war and which stayed at home. One man working for the Melbourne city branch of the Bank of New South Wales was prevented from enlisting in 1914 because he was not one of the five employees the bank manager was willing to release from the branch’s staff. In the same way, at the beginning of the war a station manager on a property in the north-east of South Australia allowed several stockmen to go to Adelaide to join the Light Horse because drought had reduced stock numbers and their services were not needed. The man in charge of maintaining the dams, however, was vital to ensuring the survival of the remaining sheep and cattle, and he had to stay until heavy rains in 1915.20
Family responsibilities generally loomed much larger in a young man’s life in Australia in 1914 than it does today. In a time before pensions, superannuation, retirement villages and nursing homes, parents required their children to keep and care for them in old age. Most boys and girls generally finished school around the age of 12 and started working either in paid jobs or in doing all the unpaid work that needed to be done around homes, family businesses or farms. Parents therefore often saw children less as individuals, with their own rights and ambitions, and more as economic units to be deployed for what they saw as the greater interest of the family unit.
Some parents directed their sons to enlist. One mother, an English migrant living in Ballarat, told her children: ‘Well boys, my country is at War and you know what is expected of you’. The father of Robert Menzies (who would become Australia’s longest-serving prime minister) held a ‘a family conference’ at which he decided that his two eldest sons should join the AIF and that Robert, who was studying law at Melbourne University and therefore had better financial prospects, should remain at home to provide for his aging parents.21
Other parents refused to allow their sons to go to war. In 1915 the Federal Government issued war census cards to all adult males and asked those aged between 18 and 44 whether they were willing to enlist and: ‘If you are not willing to enlist, state the reasons why’.22 One dairy farmer – the most labour-intensive form of farming in this period, since the twice-daily milking had to be done by hand – was so determined to keep his adult son on the farm that he filled out the his card for him, stating that he could not enlist, and demanded his son sign it. As the son later wrote: ‘I signed as he directed but made a private vow to leave home and join up under another name. I felt that only by doing so could I regain the loss of dignity and pride that I had suffered by submitting to such treatment. I felt most dreadfully shamed and humiliated.’23
In some rural areas the older men of the district decided how many men needed to stay to provide sufficient labour to work the farms and how many could join the AIF. As John McQuilton found in his study of north-east Victoria in World War I: ‘Once local communities were satisfied that their “eligibles” had gone, they resisted any further attempts to force the men remaining to enlist’. McQuilton provides the example of the rural district of Wooragee, just north of Beechworth: 14 men had enlisted from Wooragee by the time the first conscription referendum has held in October 1916, and the local community had decided that this was enough. When members of the Beechworth branch of the pro-conscription National Referendum Council visited Wooragee in the lead-up to the referendum, they received a hostile reception. Only four men enlisted from this district in the remaining two years of the war.24
Strongly-held societal values also influenced the decision to enlist. The idea of ‘duty’ was dominant in Australia in this period. As an engine cleaner in the New South Wales Government Railways later wrote: ‘My motive for enlisting was, as Australia was at war, it was my duty as a Free young able Man to enlist’. When men considered ‘eligible’ to enlist by the rest of the community did not do so, they were sometimes sent white feathers – a symbol of cowardice – to pressure them to ‘do their duty’ and join up.25
The second reason why enlistment in the AIF in World War I was not necessarily a free choice was the poor state of the Australian economy in this period. Between 1911 and 1916 much of the country was devastated by drought. An editorial in the West Australian in 1915 rightly described drought as ‘the formidable enemy within our gates’. The outbreak of war exacerbated these economic problems, especially after the amount of shipping sailing to Australia fell to half. As economic historian Marnie Haig-Muir puts it, for an economy so reliant on exporting commodities and importing manufactured goods, this was ‘little short of disastrous’. The war also led to high inflation. In Melbourne, from mid-1914 to mid-1915, the price of meat increased 200 per cent, flour 87 per cent, butter 63 per cent and bread 50 per cent.26
With this weak Australian economy, many men worked irregularly or not at all, and there were no government payments to the unemployed. For many, the decision to enlist was thus determined by economic circumstances. One 16-year-old in Melbourne, who had been working to help support his mother since the age of ten, enlisted in June 1915 to improve on the 30 shillings a week he brought into the household by delivering newspapers and milking cows. He calculated that if he joined the AIF he would be able to give his mother the bulk of his private’s pay of 42 shillings a week ‘and mum didn’t have to feed and clothe me’. In another example, an English coalminer who had migrated to Australia with his wife in 1913 was unable to secure regular work due to constant union strikes and company lockouts in the New South Wales coalfields of the Hunter Valley, Illawarra and Lithgow. His middle-class wife had brought ‘a considerable amount of money’ with her to start their new life in Australia, but when this had been spent on living expenses they faced ‘poverty caused by constant unemployment’. This man, a stalwart unionist and a staunch member of the Methodist Church, decided to enlist for three reasons. First, he doubted he would be able to work again at his Lithgow colliery which had re-opened with non-union labour. Second, he ‘salved his conscience’ over the morality of war with the belief that Britain had a just cause in mobilising to protect Belgium against German aggression. Third was what he described as the ‘financial issue’: ‘In the army, at least, I would be fed, and my wife with a 3 [shilling] a day allotment would be able to live without getting into further debt’.27
The last problem with the mythology surrounding the vol
untary status of the AIF is the spurious notion that a volunteer will always be a better soldier than a conscript. As Elizabeth Greenhalgh wrote in her chapter on the myth that the AIF broke the Hindenburg Line in 1918 in the original Zombie Myths of Australian Military History: ‘The idea that Australian volunteers had developed specifically Australian racial characteristics well suited to modern industrial war, in contrast to the class-ridden, stunted, conscripted infantry of the “Mother Country”, is quite ridiculous’.28 The AIF was successful on the Western Front in 1918 not because they were all volunteers, but because they were a component of a British Empire army and wider Allied force that was by that stage in the war well trained and well supported, particularly with artillery – and especially in contrast to its enemy.
Rob Stephenson, in his study of the 1st Australian Division in 1917, argues that the ability to successfully attack on the Western Front relied ‘[n]ot so much on the individual courage of the front line digger, although this was of course still vital, but rather the intellectual and moral power’ of the Division’s commander, Harold Walker, a British Regular officer who had served with the Indian Army, and his chief of staff, Thomas Blamey, an Australian Permanent officer. Just as significantly, according to Stephenson, Walker’s and Blamey’s improvements in the 1st Australian Division were replicated ‘in dozens of divisions’ through the British Empire’s army as ‘like-minded professionals grappled with the implications of new technology, experimented with new tactics to exploit it and adapted the way they organised and trained their troops’.29