Beaten Down By Blood

by Michele Bomford

  Many war diaries contain programs for sporting and equestrian carnivals, held when units came out of the line after the Mont St Quentin-Péronne ‘stunt’. There were events such as sack races, egg and spoon races and three-legged races, as well as the more conventional running races, hurdles, relays and so on. True to form, the men placed bets on the main events at sporting carnivals and some even donned fancy dress. The 2nd Division held a ‘sweep’ on 5 September: ‘Tattersall’s-Sur-Somme, right at your dugout!’, while the men of the 5th Australian Field Artillery Brigade went swimming in icy cold water and the 105th Battery had a ‘bathing parade’.27 At 6.00 pm there was a heavy thunderstorm, nostalgically described as ‘quite like an Australian thunderstorm’.28

  A foot race at the 2nd Division Sports Carnival, Cappy, 16 September 1918. A large crowd watches and cheers. (AWM EO3281)

  It is not difficult to imagine the indignation of the men of the 41st Battalion when, on 3 September, an administrative order directed that ‘the practice of bombing the river for fish is to cease’. Likewise, the order to all troops to stop rinsing their dixies in the Somme Canal must have raised hackles.29 However the Australian characteristic of not taking their situation too seriously was clearly an advantage and helped maintain the morale of the troops and lift their spirits.

  A young German corporal from the Alexander Regiment, 2nd Guard Division, a university student who was peeved at being captured by the 20th Battalion on 31 August as he was due to go on leave to Berlin on 1 September, nonetheless had only praise for his captors. He regarded them as having initiative with dash, qualities unequalled by any other troops. German sources also commented on the audaciousness of the Australians and described them as ‘war-like, clever and daring’. Even the French believed that only people skilled in ambush and bushcraft would be able to take Mont St Quentin.30

  Another defining feature of the men of the AIF was individuality, a quality noted by Monash himself. Ordinary soldiers such as Frank Brewer regarded it as the characteristic that set Australians apart from other troops while, at the same time, emphasising their patriotism and other qualities which defined them as typically ‘Australian’.31 With individuality came initiative and that much-vaunted quality, ‘dash’. Australian troops were capable of acting independently and intelligently while still adhering to an overall plan, a factor that was to prove crucial in the battles of 1918.

  Mont St Quentin-Péronne was a battle of calculated risk. It was not so much a ‘soldiers’ battle’ — there were plenty of these on the Western Front in 1918 — as a ‘diggers’ battle’, recognised as such by Charles Rosenthal in 1922, when he remarked that the battle had shortened the war by a year.32 The digger of all arms was a combination of characteristics — determination, impudence, audacity, tenacity, courage, dash, bravery and spirit, but all with a touch of larrikinism thrown in. However, he also displayed great skill in the implementation of tactics, the use of firepower and in understanding ground. While, as Peter Stanley argues, ‘not every man who donned a slouch hat in the Great War became an Anzac hero’, most men fought bravely and some even ‘heroically’.33 There were sufficient of these, in fact, to sustain the image of Charles Bean’s mythological digger and allow him to take his place in the history of the Great War.

  Indeed, the diggers were proud of their achievements at Mont St Quentin-Péronne. Every war diary commends the men, the NCOs and the company commanders for their courage, bravery, determination and skill. Eight Australian VCs were won in this battle in three days — only one fewer than in the nine months of the Gallipoli campaign — and two other men were recommended for this award but did not receive it. A host of other honours were awarded — in the 53rd Battalion alone, 38 men were recommended for awards.

  This was the Anzac legend, born on the Gallipoli peninsula in 1915, forged and coming of age on the battlefields of the Western Front in 1918. In a general staff circular on 29 August, Lieutenant Colonel Carl Jess, Gellibrand’s Chief of Staff, told the men of the 3rd Division that ‘the present battle calls for endurance to the extent so cheerfully given on Gallipoli by all Ranks. To endure to the end with the advance of the Australian Corps on the Somme in 1918 will rank as an achievement second to none in our Military History.’34 For Second Lieutenant William Nancarrow, the Australian Corps gained an honour ‘truly paralleled by the memorable Landing on Gallipoli’.35

  A 39th Battalion soldier near Curlu, opening a parcel from home, probably after coming out of the line on the Bouchavesnes ridge, 1 September 1918. (AWM EO3207)

  The Gular boys36

  Good luck to every mother’s son,

  Their parts like men they’ll play;

  They came from Western farm and run,

  And from the Castlereagh.

  F.A. Fitzpatrick, 1915

  In understanding the men of Mont St Quentin-Péronne, it is useful to examine how the development of their singular characteristics was influenced by the environment in which they were born and bred. The men who enlisted in Gulargambone, a small town in rural New South Wales, truly came from the bush, while those who were recruited in the Melbourne ‘suburb’ of Malvern were representative of the city dwellers of the time.

  Gulargambone today is a tiny town of some 500 people, nestled on the banks of the Castlereagh River. It is 527 kilometres north-west of Sydney and 48 kilometres equidistant from the larger towns of Gilgandra on the southern end of the Castlereagh Highway and Coonamble on the north. Its name means ‘the watering place of many birds’. It lies west of the Warrumbungle Mountains, on plains so flat that they seem to stretch forever.

  The first Europeans to arrive here in the late 1830s had traversed well beyond the limits of settlement. These ‘squatters’ ran mostly cattle on vast acreages of land. By the prosperous years of the 1880s, these leases had been broken up and men were bringing their families to ‘select’ land in the district. There were still some runs of around 40,000 acres, but properties of between 5000 and 15,000 acres were more common. Sheep had replaced cattle as the main pastoral industry and farmers were growing some wheat in the area. This was truly a land of ‘drought and flooding rains’, vulnerable also to economic trends — the depression of the 1890s hit the district hard and stunted the growth of its fledgling towns and villages.

  Gulargambone township officially came into existence in 1883. It struggled through drought and depression at the end of the 19th century, but received a significant boost when the Dubbo to Coonamble railway line opened in 1903, passing a few kilometres to the west of the town and carrying both passengers and freight. A new settlement, Gular Rail, sprang up and grew to be almost as large as Gulargambone itself. At its peak it boasted around 25 houses, three stores, three pubs, a skin buyer and refreshment rooms. The blacksmith, Charlie Simpson, served with the 1st Light Horse Regiment, enlisting in August 1914. A boarding house, misleadingly and unfortunately named ‘Pleasure Villa’, was run by the very respectable Eliza Mary Jane Holland who saw two of her sons, Fred and Albert, go to war.

  Postcard from Minnie Watson to Claude Sowden in France, 1917.

  In the years leading up to the First World War, Gulargambone was a thriving community. The town itself boasted some 13 shops, two banks, three barbers, two bakers, three butchers, two hotels, a midwife and about 45 or 50 houses. Davie Winton was the blacksmith — his son Alfred served with the 7th Field Company Engineers during the war, including at Mont St Quentin-Péronne. There were mail runs all over the district and, from the 1870s, the telegraph line made communications easier, although there was no electricity. The town, like the tiny villages of Armatree and Box Ridge not too far away, was a service centre for the main business of the area — wool — and, to some extent, wheat.

  Around Gular the pastoral and agricultural industries were still largely labour intensive, although this was a time of technological change. By 1905 most of the shearing sheds were completely mechanised, machines replacing blades. The shearer epitomised the tall, strong, bronzed Aussie. Highly competitiv
e, each man was keen to improve his totals, but not at the expense of the quality of his shearing, because reputations carried and competition for sheds was intense. A shed did not employ shearers alone, but also hired a cook, ‘penner-ups’, ‘pickersup’, wool rollers, pressers and a machinery expert. There was a great deal of pride and honour involved in all these jobs, and indeed in all types of work, with an emphasis on self-reliance and independence. Jobs were performed with a sense of humour and the occasional spat or two but, on the strength of a handshake, adversaries one day could be best mates the next.

  When the sheds weren’t shearing, men went rabbiting, fox and dingo hunting and fencing. They were good shots. The skins from rabbits — in plague proportions at the time — foxes and even possums were handled by a ‘skin buyer’ and tidy profits could be made. With the exception of the farmers, ‘graziers’ (often those from the old squatting families) and those with a specific trade, men tended to move around the district in search of work, and small landholders, unable to produce enough themselves, could provide a stable workforce for the larger properties. Those graziers who provided the best deal in terms of rations, tobacco and a few extras always had a good supply of workers.

  There were no social distinctions. Graziers would sit around a campfire and yarn with itinerant workers. People would travel 50 miles or more for the Christmas picnic, sports and dance at Box Ridge, where it was not uncommon to see a grazier’s wife dancing with a ‘picker-up’ from the shearing shed. Against this ethos it is easy to understand why George Mill, serving with the 34th Battalion, failed to salute an officer in Oxford Street, London, at 7.00 pm on 20 April 1917 and equally why he was simply ‘admonished’ for this breach of discipline.37

  Private Claude Australia Sowden, 20th Battalion.

  VC winner Corporal Alexander Buckley, 54th Battalion, and his unknown fiancée, taken in 1916. Buckley was from the tiny village of Armatree, near Gulargambone. He was killed in action on 1 September 1918. (AWM PO1421.001)

  On 19 September 1916, seven young men from Gular enlisted together at Dubbo, to be followed a week later by three more. They came from all walks of life — farmers, graziers, labourers, an artesian well borer, a stud groom. On 30 October they embarked together on the Argyllshire as part of the 17th Reinforcement of the 24th Battalion. Interestingly, all 170 men who sailed that day from Sydney were from New South Wales, reinforcing a Victorian unit, illustrating what a truly national force the AIF was. Of those ten Gular boys, five did not come home.

  Mateship was an intrinsic part of living and working in a place like Gulargambone. On his attestation papers, in the space for an example of handwriting which most men left blank, 20-year-old Private Frederick Holland of the 55th Battalion wrote: ‘I trust I will pass as I am anxious to go and help my mates.’38 Fred was badly wounded at Fromelles in July 1916, repatriated to Australia and, while he married and fathered a large family, suffered ill health for the rest of his life. In his memoir, 19-year-old Claude Australia ‘Aussie’ Sowden writes that he ‘left Gulargambone in company with three mates, Dick Saunders, Alex and Donald Strang on a Wednesday 7th April 1915 to enlist for the great war’, inspired by a sense of adventure but with a touch of intense patriotism thrown in.39 The Sowden and Strang families were devastated when Don, just 21 years old in 1917, died of wounds received at Passchendaele.

  Some men were encouraged to enlist by economic considerations. The years 1911–1916 saw Australia in severe drought. Across the country 19 million sheep and two million cattle were lost. As a result, unemployment was high in rural New South Wales and men took whatever jobs they could find. At six shillings a day, a private in the AIF earned as much as a farm labourer and the army offered secure employment. Overwhelmingly the men who enlisted from Gular were between 18 and 30 years of age and single. One-third stated their occupation as labourer, farm hand or station hand. The army must have seemed an attractive proposition.

  In this small Australian community, duty and honour loomed large as reasons for men to enlist. Their duty was to king and country, of which they were intensely proud, but there was also a sense of duty to family and community. In a number of cases older brothers enlisted just weeks after younger siblings had done so. One can only suspect that the pressure was enormous and that men did not want to be labelled cowards. A local newspaper article praised the ‘self-sacrifice’ and bravery of 19-year-old Lawrence Kennedy of the 54th Battalion who was killed at Bullecourt in 1917. The article urged the young men who had yet to enlist to ‘wake up and be men’, to do something for their community and ‘be loyal to your King and country’. The article further stressed that Lawrence Kennedy had given ‘his life for our freedom – to prevent those living in our sunny land from being slaves.’40 This call to duty was reiterated in postcards of the time: Minnie Watson, sister of Claude Sowden, sent him a printed card which emphasised that duty must be done, that it was the most important consideration in life. Minnie, in her cards and letters, often told her brother how proud she was of him and what he was doing.41 These were powerful sentiments, made even more potent by the close-knit nature of this community.

  The Gulargambone community was certainly close knit. Every family seemed to be connected in some way with several others. The Kennedy family, one of the oldest in the district, was connected through marriage to at least 12 other local families. Representatives of all these families served in the Great War and are commemorated on one, or perhaps more, of the war memorials. In fact, young men from almost every established family in the area, and others who perhaps were just working there at the time, joined up. Robert and Mary Strang saw three of their four eligible sons enlist, while William Mill watched four of his five sons march off to war. On 14 July 1917 the Coonamble Times published a list of 603 men who had enlisted from the area, the highest number for any region in New South Wales.42 This was one reason for Edward, Prince of Wales’ visit to Gulargambone and Coonamble in 1920, when he met James and Julia Buckley, the parents of Alexander.

  The death of a soldier from the district reverberated through the whole community. Casualties among the Gular boys were high. In a study of 90 men, most of whose names appear on the Gulargambone war memorial and whose war service records could be traced, only a few escaped the war unwounded, and even they were sick at some point during their service. Diseases such as pleurisy, mumps, pneumonia, dysentery, trench fever, scabies and influenza appear frequently in the records, while several men serving with the Light Horse suffered malaria. There were cases of tonsillitis and one case of appendicitis resulting in an appendectomy. One man died from an abscess of the liver, while William Hitchen, the organiser of the ‘Coo-ee March’ from Gilgandra to Sydney in October 1915, died of a melanotic sarcoma associated with diabetes in September 1916. Three cases of venereal disease, including a nasty case of gonorrhoea and an equally nasty recurring case of syphilis, were recorded. Several men suffered from neurasthenia. Andrew Ferguson, serving with the 45th Battalion, was struck by a shell in January 1917 and began to experience headaches, giddiness, tremors, epileptic fits and cardiac symptoms. He returned to Australia in July of that year.

  Most men, in addition to having one or more of these diseases, were also wounded more than once. Jack Andrews of the 24th Battalion was wounded on four occasions but still managed to survive the war, unlike his cousin Sam, who was wounded at Bullecourt and killed at Passchendaele. The two had enlisted together and embarked on the Argyllshire. Jack was 21, while Sam was 20 years, 11 months and 20 days and perhaps hoping to join up without requiring his parents’ consent. Another of this group, 21-year-old Roy McGill, suffered a gunshot wound to his buttock at Bullecourt, was gassed in March 1918 and killed in action at Montbrehain on 5 October 1918. There were many cases of men being gassed; others suffered severe abdominal wounds and three men had limbs amputated. Of the 90 men researched for this book, 18 died — killed in action, of wounds or of disease. This represents 20% of the total. The worse ‘stunts’ for the Gular boys in terms of casualt
ies were Bullecourt and Passchendaele, but these were completely overshadowed by the number of casualties suffered in 1918, when over a third were killed or wounded.

  Two men also became prisoners of war. Matthew Claremont Sowden of the 45th Battalion, known as ‘Clarrie’ and cousin of Claude, was captured with five mates in February 1918 and sent to Dulmen camp in Westfalen, Germany. His foot had been badly crushed and was amputated above the ankle. He was repatriated through Holland to England in October 1918.

  The Gular boys were not all angels. Apart from the usual ‘scraps’ typical of so many Australian soldiers, there were some serious misdemeanours. One man had to be disciplined repeatedly for drunkenness and obscene language and, judging from the number of times he changed units, officers were glad to see the back of him. Another man was charged with desertion and required to undertake penal servitude on his return to Australia. For some men, soldiering in the Great War was not what they had expected when they left Gulargambone.

  Nineteen of the men researched for this book were involved in the Battle of Mont St Quentin-Péronne. Jack Andrews, Walter Hourn and Ernest Owens — the latter two men both killed later at Montbrehain — fought with the 24th Battalion and were all Argyllshire men. Claude Sowden, David Strang and Clarence Magick were serving with the 20th Battalion. Most heavily represented, however, was the 54th Battalion, with Frank James, Lloyd Mill, Alfred Power, Richard Sutton, James Wilson, Joseph Pickles and Alexander Buckley in its ranks.