The Spirit of the Digger

by Patrick Lindsay

  For example, amateurism in sport originated in England, not as some noble Olympic ideal but as the result of the landed gentry trying to protect their control of many sports. They did that by insisting that anyone who couldn’t afford to play for the ‘love of the game’ (because he had to earn a living) was either excluded or categorised as a ‘professional’ and therefore treated using different rules. In fact, until after World War II, English county cricketers were divided into two classes: ‘players’, or those who were paid to play; and ‘gentlemen’, who played ‘for the love of the game’ (also known as amateurs, from the Latin amare, ‘to love’). Although members of the same team, they often changed in different dressing rooms and took the field through different gates. Amateurs were introduced as ‘Mr Jardine’ while the professionals were called ‘Larwood’.

  Britain was an ‘upstairs–downstairs’ society, where the aristocracy and the landed gentry lived high on the hog and those languishing at the bottom of the scale ‘knew their place’. This approach had particular resonance in the military where wealthy families purchased army commissions for their sons. Virtually all officers were ‘born to rule’, as Lawrence James writes:

  Honour gave him the ultimate right to command. Bravery and courage were contagious. Men who did not comprehend the niceties of honour were more prepared to risk their lives when they saw those who did hazarding theirs. Moreover, a gentleman was obliged to defend his honour with force, hence the duel was a public test of courage in the face of death. All the virtues prized by the medieval knight were cherished by his successor, the gentleman officer.

  Imagine how offensive this system was to those early Australian settlers. And imagine the reaction of British officers when exposed to the colonial reality.

  Even when the colony was opened to free settlers from around 1820, it retained its strong military flavour. Some early problems with the New South Wales Corps, which centred on illegal trading in rum (a common occurrence at the time among colonial troops) and led to clashes between the military and the early governors, resulted in 1808 in the overthrow of Governor William Bligh (who seemed to make a habit of mutinies).

  As Jeffrey Grey notes, there was not a great difference between many of the early troops and those they were guarding, but between troops and officers the gap was massive:

  Officers had little to do with the rank and file who were in any case separated form their superiors by a yawning social gulf. Whoever ‘listed for a soldier’, wrote one such in 1805, ‘was at once set down among the catalogue of persons who had turned out ill’. Another ex-soldier, writing in the 1840s, noted that the British Army ‘as is well known, is the dernier resort [the last resort] of the idle, the depraved and the destitute’.

  Essentially, the British Army had degenerated to the stage where it consisted of the bottom-dwellers of society, led by officers who, in the main, were aristocratic amateurs. Indeed, even the great Duke of Wellington once remarked of his force: ‘I do not know what the enemy will make of them but, by God, they frighten me.’

  But while generally maintaining the colonials’ pre-existing negative attitudes against the rule of law and the military, the various regiments did make some positive contributions. They established the Mounted Police in New South Wales, helped to build fortifications, guarded goldfields, treasuries and government buildings and attempted to keep the peace. As the years passed, the military control over the colonies lessened and their involvement with the communities became more cooperative. For example, military engineers surveyed much of early Sydney and helped build roads and bridges and ports, and soldiers were often used as firefighters.

  There must have been a considerable dampening in the antipathy towards the military and, indeed, the ‘Mother Country’ as the years progressed, and the numbers of free settlers grew. The pro-Empire sentiment expressed by those who willingly fought to defend British interests in the second half of the 19th century is testament to that change in attitude, and was a precursor to the enthusiastic response in the rush to Britain’s defence at the outbreak of World War I.

  Our first soldiers sent to fight overseas were the four regiments, including 1475 volunteers, sent by the colonies to assist in the New Zealand Maori Wars. They had little chance to develop any definable national character as a force and, in fact, were even called the Waikato Militia (because that’s where they were fighting). But the first Australians to be killed in a foreign war ironically fell fighting in the land of our greatest ally, New Zealand. Four Victorians from the 1st Waikato Regiment (largely recruited from Australians) died during a skirmish with Maori insurgents at Mauku, near the Waikato River, on 23 October 1863. Another 1200 Australian volunteers joined the following year and some took part in the first pitched battle in which the Australians fought, at Te Ranga in the Tauranga District. The battle forced the surrender of the Ngaiterangi Tribe and was the last substantial engagement of the Waikato campaign. Many Australian volunteers accepted the offer of land in New Zealand as a reward for their service but most had drifted back to Australia by the 1870s.

  The first genuinely Australian military force – one drawn from volunteers – to fight overseas was raised in 1885. It came about as a result of the Australian colonies’ response to the actions of the Dervishes of the Sudan. Under their leader, Muhammed Ahmed, known as the Madhi (or ‘expected one’), the Dervishes, an Islamic sect, overran the British garrison at Khartoum and killed them all, including the famous British General Charles ‘Chinese’ Gordon. Gordon was widely loved and, in a surge of colonial patriotism, the government of New South Wales offered to send 750 troops to help recapture the Sudan. Drawn from volunteers it acquitted itself well, fighting alongside units as famous as the Grenadier Guards, the Coldstream Guards, the Scots Guards and the Royal House Artillery. The Australians served from 29 March through to 13 May, but saw only sporadic action.

  The Sudan episode was a dress rehearsal for the next time the Empire called for assistance from its loyal colonies, and it came soon enough. On 11 October 1899 the South African republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State declared war on Britain. Australians leapt to the defence of the ‘Mother Country’. Thousands volunteered to fight against the Boers, the descendants of the original Dutch settlers in South Africa, who were trying to free themselves from what they saw as British interference in South Africa. The colonies of New Zealand, Canada, Ceylon and India also rallied to Britain’s side. The South African conflict had been simmering since the First Boer War of 1881.

  Within three weeks of the declaration of war, 200,000 Sydneysiders lined the city’s streets to farewell the first troops to leave for the fighting. At the end of November 1899, around 1200 left in a convoy from King George Sound, Western Australia. By the time they reached Cape Town, they found that a contingent of the NSW Lancers which, by coincidence, had been undergoing training at Aldershot in England, had been diverted to Cape Town on the way home and was already in action.

  The Australians quickly impressed. Many were included in the specially selected Imperial Light Horse which defeated a force of Transvaalers at Elandslaagte on 21 October 1899. They set the tone for the impression created by the Australian troops during the war, as recorded later by one of their commanders, British Major General E.T.H. ‘Curly’ Hutton:

  No man, be he Cromwell or Napoleon, could drive Australian troops. But a strong and capable leader no matter how strict, could lead an Australian army to emulate – aye and surpass, if need be, the finest and most heroic deeds recorded in the annals of the British Army.

  Clearly, some of the key ingredients in the make-up of the future Digger were already evident: his independence and his fighting spirit.

  During the course of the Boer War, Australia sent 859 officers and 15,064 men (12,000 before Federation and 4000 after), including 16,357 horses and around 220 guns and wagons.

  A total of 57 Australian contingents took part: 15 from New South Wales, eight from Victoria, nine each from Queensland, South Australia and West
ern Australia, and seven from Tasmania. Our casualties totalled about 1400, of which 251 were killed in action and 267 died of illness.

  Our troops generally fell into three groups: those funded by local government or private subscription; the Imperial Bushmen, who were backed by the Imperial War Office; and the Commonwealth Contingents, raised after Federation but paid for by the British.

  The first Australians to die in the war were two troopers from the Queensland Mounted Infantry, who were killed at Sunnyside on New Year’s Day 1900 – the first day of a new century which would see at least 100 million more die in wars, including 100,000 Australians.

  From the start, the Australians established a reputation as resolute fighters. The Boers also quickly won grudging respect for their courage and their unconventional guerrilla tactics. On 9 February 1900, 20 West Australian troopers, led by Captain Hatherly Moor, were patrolling with a squadron of Enniskillen Dragoons east of Slingersfontein when they clashed with a Boer commando unit of about 400 men. The West Australians were assigned to cover one of the flanks and withstood a series of withering attacks by the Boers who attempted to encircle the force. Even the Boers came to admire the West Australian troops’ fighting qualities in the face of overwhelming numbers. The Australians hung in and shot with devastating accuracy as the Boers tried to isolate them. Indeed, so fiercely did they resist that the Boer commander sent an officer with an offer of an honourable surrender. The Australians’ response: ‘Go back and tell your Commandant, Australia’s here to stay.’ The Boers tried to charge the Australian position but the defenders drove them off and held them at bay with relentless, accurate fire. Eventually the Australians withdrew, taking all their wounded with them. The Australians numbered 20 against the Boer force’s 400 troops.

  The NSW Lancers and the Queensland Mounted Infantry were also prominent in the conflict. They helped to establish the Australian military tradition of regularly leading the way in an attack. One of the Queensland company commanders was the redoubtable Captain Harry Chauvel, who would later rise to Lieutenant General and lead the famous Desert Mounted Corps in World War I – at five divisions, the biggest cavalry force of modern times under the command of one man. Chauvel and his men were prominent in the relief of Kimberley and Mafeking, but perhaps the most outstanding achievement of the Australian forces in the Boer War occurred after the war had degenerated into a guerrilla-style conflict, at Elands River.

  Attracted by a large storage dump at an outpost at Elands River in western Transvaal, a large force of Boers attacked the small Australian garrison. Under the command of General Koos de la Ray about 3000 Boers, with accompanying artillery, laid siege to a garrison of about 300 Australian troops and 200 Rhodesian volunteers. The siege began on 4 August and continued, with constant shelling from five Boer artillery pieces, for ten days. After six days, the Boer commander demanded that the defenders surrender. He was met with this response from the British commander, Colonel Hore: ‘I cannot surrender. I am in command of Australians who would cut my throat if I did.’

  The garrison outlasted the siege. Their furious defence dissuaded the Boers from attempting a frontal assault on the position. The Boers finally admitted the position was beyond them and retired. Two days later the garrison was relieved by a force commanded by the legendary General Horatio Herbert Kitchener (later Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, Britain’s World War I Secretary of State for War).

  The famous British novelist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote in his memoirs of the Boer War:

  This stand at Brakfontein on the Elands River appears to have been one of the finest deeds of arms of the war. Australians have been so split up during the campaign that although their valour and efficiency were universally recognised, they had no single large exploit which they could call their own. But now they can point to Elands River as proudly as the Canadians at Paardeberg … they were sworn to die before the white flag would wave above them.

  And so fortune yielded, as fortune will when brave men set their teeth … when the ballad makers of Australia seek for a subject, let them turn to the Elands River, for there was no finer fighting in the war.

  The Australians fighting in the Boer War made significant contributions in virtually all the areas in which they fought. Their overall impact was watered down because the force was split up and incorporated into so many other units, but six Australians won Victoria Crosses.

  The first VC awarded to an Australian serviceman was won by Captain Neville Howse, from the NSW Medical Corps, at Vredefort in Orange Free State on 24 July 1900. Howse risked heavy crossfire to move over open ground to pick up a wounded man and drag him to safety. He would later serve with distinction in World War I and become the Federal Minister for Defence after the war.

  Lieutenant Guy Wyllie and Trooper John Bisdee, of the Tasmanian Imperial Bushmen, both won VCs for rescuing wounded men on the same day during the battle at Warm Bad in Transvaal on 1 September 1900. Lieutenant Fred Bell of the WA Mounted Infantry won his for gallantry on 16 May 1901 at Brakpan, Transvaal, and Trooper James Rogers of the South African Constabulary was awarded his VC for repeated acts of bravery in Thaba Nchu in the Orange Free State on 15 June 1901. On 23 November 1901 our last Boer War VC went to Lieutenant Leslie Maygar of the 5th Victorian Mounted Rifles, for gallantry at Geelhoutboom in Natal. He would later die gloriously in the great charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba in World War I.

  By late 1900 the Australians in South Africa were becoming disillusioned at the conduct of the war. The fighting was now predominantly sporadic guerrilla warfare and the Boer civilian population was caught up in the process. The British ‘scorched earth’ approach, which involved burning Boer farms and imprisoning their families in the newly created ‘concentration camps’, alienated many of the Australians. After they began to show open disaffection, the initial contingents were progressively returned home from December 1900. There they received an enthusiastic welcome.

  But the war continued and fresh volunteer contingents, the Bushmen and draft contingents, were raised in Australia and sent to Cape Town. Some incidents involving these men revealed a darker side of the conflict.

  First, at Wilmansrust on 12 June 1901, the 5th Victorian Mounted Rifles was ambushed by Boers at night. Caught completely unawares, the unit lost 18 killed and 42 wounded in the initial onslaught and the rest either fled or were temporarily captured. The Boers either destroyed or stole the Victorians’ horses; then, unable to travel with prisoners, they freed them. Their British commander, Major General Stuart Beatson, labelled his troops a ‘fat-arsed, pot-bellied, lazy lot of wasters’ and another British officer called them ‘a lot of white-livered curs’. Not surprisingly the troops reacted, and three of them were subsequently charged after being overheard telling their mates they should not take the field again under Beatson’s command. The three Australians were court-martialled, found guilty of inciting mutiny and sentenced to death. The sentences were later commuted to prison terms. Nevertheless, the incident was raised in the new Australian Parliament, with the issue centring on the British control of Australian soldiers. This led the then Prime Minister Edmund Barton to question the British government, which intervened, found flaws in the courts martial, and released the men before they had completed their sentences.

  A far more serious incident occurred towards the end of the war when three officers from the Australian Bushveldt Carbineers, a special force which had been conducting a guerrilla campaign in northern Transvaal against the Boers, were charged with the murder of Boer prisoners. One of the officers, Lieutenant Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant, had a strong public profile as a bush poet and balladeer for The Bulletin magazine. He and Lieutenants Peter Handcock and George Witton were found guilty by a British court martial. Morant and Handcock were sentenced to death but Witton’s death penalty was commuted to life imprisonment. Morant had admitted shooting the prisoners but claimed he was acting under orders that no prisoners were to be taken. He won lasting fame for refusing a blindfol
d and for calling to the firing squad: ‘Shoot straight, you bastards! Don’t make a mess of it!’ The actions of the three Australians won little sympathy or support at home, although it contributed to the view that Australian authorities should control any disciplinary action against our soldiers.

  In the aftermath of the Boer War, the British Elgin Commission commented favourably on the dash, the courage and the initiative of the colonials, including the Australians. Several witnesses before the Commission expressed the view that the Australians were ‘soldiers of great potential’. But the Commission also pointed to some interesting shortcomings in the Australians: they were good horsemen but poor horse masters; their marksmanship needed work; and their officers were poorly trained.

  Many of the British officer class believed that the Australian Army, with its citizen soldier base, would not be able to stand up against a fully professional army. They maintained this view right up until the Anzacs proved it wrong at Gallipoli. General Sir Ian Hamilton, who would lead the Anzacs at Gallipoli, held that view too, but he did see the potential of the individual Australian soldier:

  The best assets of the Australian land forces … are to be found in the natural soldierlike spirit, in the intelligence, and in the wiry and athletic frames of the bulk of the rank and file … Patriotism, keenness, study and careful instruction, strain and struggle at the heels of practical experience and habits of discipline, but rarely quite catch them up.