The Spirit of the Digger

by Patrick Lindsay

  You bloody Australians, when you are in the line you keep us on pins and needles; we never know when you are coming over.

  This approach exemplified the Australians’ attitude of maintaining aggression and, wherever possible, freedom of movement, despite the static nature of the fighting. It was consistent with the philosophy espoused by the commander of the Australian Corps, General Sir John Monash:

  The role of the infantry was not to expend itself upon heroic physical effort, not to wither away under merciless machine-gun fire, not to impale itself on hostile bayonets, but, on the contrary, to advance under the maximum array of mechanical resources in the form of guns, machine-guns, tanks, mortars and aeroplanes.

  In May 1918, Monash succeeded the Briton General Sir William Birdwood as the commander of the Australian Corps after Birdwood was promoted to lead the 5th Army. This was another important step in the ‘Australianisation’ of the Australian Corps. The appointment was symptomatic of the capacity of the Australian Army to embrace multicultural diversity: Monash was the Australian-born son of Polish-Jewish migrants. He had excelled at Melbourne’s Scotch College, where he was dux, before becoming a brilliant engineering student at Melbourne University and a successful civilian-soldier. He had played a leading role at Gallipoli and was highly regarded by Diggers and his fellow officers.

  Monash was recognised as a brilliant planner. His attention to detail in the preparation of his operations was prodigious, as was his ability to juggle the various elements at his disposal once hostilities had commenced. He had a keen understanding of the needs of his men and the extent to which they could be pushed. Because of his background he approached his tasks untrammelled by the strictures of the British military system. This also allowed him greater freedom intellectually. He appreciated the special qualities of his men and used them wisely. He realised the Diggers were in many ways a different breed to the other armies fighting in France: their origins, upbringing, attitudes, even their physical appearance, set them apart. The Australian fighting spirit had impressed British commanders, generous in their praise of the Australians’ contributions at Gallipoli and in France. Charles Bean tried in his reports from the various fronts to make the Australian public aware of the high esteem in which their Diggers were held. But those at home generally did not fully appreciate the Diggers’ achievements until some time after the war.

  The following month, the Australians undertook their first action as a corps when they successfully captured the German front line defences at Morlancourt and Sailly-Laurette, taking 325 prisoners and effectively eliminating an entire German battalion. Bean quotes the German divisional commander as reporting to his superiors that in a few minutes ‘a complete battalion had been wiped out as with a sponge’.

  In July, Monash set new standards of planning for the Australian forces. Bean called him ‘a master of lucid explanation’. In preparing for what was to become known as the Battle of Le Hamel, Monash and his staff choreographed a precise operation involving British tanks and Australian infantry. As Bean reports, the planning turned the attack into a ‘brilliant success’, even though the Australian infantrymen had only received hurried training with the tanks that were, on several occasions, late on the scene. But they were more manoeuvrable than the infantry and, when bringing up supplies, they carried out in minutes the work of hundreds of troops.

  The tank crews on their part particularly noted (to quote their commander) ‘the superb morale of the Australian troops, who never considered that the presence of tanks exonerated them from fighting, and took instant advantage of any opportunity created by the tanks’. The infantry walked enthusiastically behind machines marked with the infantry’s own battalion colours.

  Within two hours the impression left by Bullecourt was reversed [when the tanks had been an abject failure and 1170 Diggers had been taken prisoner]. From this time the British Tank Corps looked to the Australian Diggers above all other infantry in France, and the Diggers never ceased to welcome the chance of working with the tanks. Their only complaint, on this occasion, as constantly before, was: ‘Why did we stop before reaching his guns?’

  Thus, on 4 July 1918, in just over an hour and a half, three Australian brigades, the 6th, 11th and 4th, advanced 2 kilometres to reclaim the town of Hamel and capture the German positions on the ridge overlooking the village, 1600 prisoners, and substantial amounts of enemy equipment and supplies. Also in this battle, for the first time, American troops fought alongside the Diggers. Four companies from the US 33rd Division (about 500 troops) were sprinkled among the Australians to give them combat experience. Another first – one that was to have vast ramifications in the future – was the dropping of ammunition to the troops by parachute. This was a concept developed by Captain L.J. Wackett of the 3rd Squadron, Australian Flying Corps, which worked in tandem with the Australian infantry.

  The success at Hamel was replicated, using similar preparation, artillery and tank support, at the Battle of Amiens on 8 August 1918. For the first time all five Australian divisions fought together. Alongside the Canadian Corps they formed the spearhead of the attack mounted by the 4th British Army. The attacks took place under a dense fog, made even thicker by white smoke-shell in the creeping barrages preceding them. The plan involved concealing the noise of the preliminary positioning of the supporting tanks by planes consistently flying over the Germans under cover of the fog. It worked to perfection: many panicked German units were bypassed in the fog and overwhelmed when attacked from the rear. The attack overall smashed through the German defences, inflicting 27,000 casualties including 16,000 prisoners. General Ludendorff called it Germany’s ‘Black Day’:

  Our fighting machine was no longer of real value. Our capacity for war suffered harm even if the far greater majority of our divisions fought bravely. August 8 marked the decline of our military power and took from me the hope that … we could restore the situation in our favour … The war had to be ended.

  But the Germans fought on, and the Diggers spent the next two months in almost continuous combat. Amazingly, they still had the dash and courage to perform one of their most outstanding actions in the war. In late August about 1200 Diggers (around 300 from each of four heavily depleted battalions) charged a superior German defensive force and took Mont St Quentin, the high ground that overlooks the old town of Peronne on the Somme. Bean noted that the Australian company leaders knew they were well short on the desirable numbers so they ‘decided that the best chance lay in making a noise as they attacked, “yelling”, as Captain E.T. Manefield urged, “like a lot of bushrangers”.’

  The cheering platoon at once ran into crowds of Germans, who seemed bewildered and quickly surrendered – indeed in many cases they were simply pushed to the rear with their hands up, leaving their machine-guns lying on the ground. They were from one of the best divisions of the German Army, the 2nd Guard, which had just been sent to relieve the over-strained garrison. ‘It all happened like lightning,’ says the history of the Guard Alexander Regiment, ‘and before we had fired a shot we were taken unawares’.

  Once again, Monash planned the assault meticulously and the Diggers had shown extraordinary spirit. For a cost of 3000 casualties the Australians had mauled five German divisions. The British 3rd Army and the Canadians simultaneously thrust towards Cambrai and prompted General Ludendorff to pull back from the line of the Somme below Peronne. As Bean noted, Ludendorff could only withdraw as far as the Hindenburg Line, which had also been penetrated by the British northern thrust not far from Bullecourt.

  Bean summed up the Diggers’ contribution to the Western Front campaign by referring to the growing reputation of the Australian flyers who had risen, like their infantry brothers, to claim the honour of leading most of the engagements in which they participated. He quotes Lieutenant Colonel L.A. Strange, one of the originals flying in France, in his memoirs, Recollections of an Airman, on the Australian flyers:

  Their records show that they were the finest material as an
attacking force in the air, just as their infantry divisions on the ground were the best that the war produced on either side. It became the practice for our Australian squadrons to lead the 80th Wing’s bombing raids. When later in the year over a hundred machines set out on one of them, the spearpoint was always formed of Australian airmen led by an Australian.

  Bean concludes:

  Such was the reputation attained after two and a half years of intense warfare on the Western front by the force whose first trial was the equally intense struggle on Gallipoli.

  There is no question – although their own home folk in Australia at first found this difficult to believe – that the spirit and skill of the Australian Imperial Force, and particularly of the infantry, in the final year’s fighting in France materially affected the course of the campaign there, as did that of the other Dominion forces.

  On 11 November troops across the front were relieved to receive the following official communiqué:

  Eleven o’clock today, November 11, troops will stand fast on the positions reached at the hour named. The line of outposts will be established, and reported to Army Headquarters. The remainder of the troops will be collected to meet any emergency. All military precautions will be preserved, there will be no communication with the enemy. Further instructions will be issued. Acknowledge.

  When the clock struck eleven, on that eleventh day of that eleventh month of 1918, and all the guns fell silent after four years, the Digger had established his niche in history. The armistice was welcomed with relief, rather than joy, by most of the troops who had survived, as Bean recalls:

  For the troops there the change went too deep for outward rejoicing; on the surface, life continued as usual except for the cessation of actual fighting. But, in the back areas, as in London and Paris, the people and servicemen burst into demonstrations increasing in exuberance with the distance from the front.

  In Australia a false report from America set fire to public enthusiasm four days earlier, but that did not damp the genuine outburst of public relief when the true news arrived on November 12; as in England, people flooded into the streets; flags broke out, bonfires blazed, bells rang, bands played, and for that day serious work was at an end.

  Many recalled the words of the English poet and writer Laurence Binyon, from his poem ‘For The Fallen’, some of which forms the ‘Ode’ played out in RSL clubs across Australia and at cenotaphs every Anzac Day:

  They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

  Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow,

  They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

  They fell with their faces to the foe.

  They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

  Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn

  At the going down of the sun and in the morning

  We will remember them.

  CHAPTER 7

  Between the Wars

  It would be well over a year before the last of the Diggers returned home. At war’s end they were dispersed in almost all the theatres of the conflict: 92,000 in France; 60,000 in England; 17,000 in Egypt, Palestine and Syria; and smaller groups scattered in Mesopotamia, Persia and Kurdistan.

  Sensibly, the Anzac leaders adopted a policy of ‘first come, first go’ in repatriating the Diggers. In spite of the Diggers’ lingering reputation for poor discipline when not on operations, the process was achieved without any drama. The men were sent home in groups of 1000 – a manageable trainload and shipload. Generally, each of these ‘battalions’ was accompanied by its own staff officers, band, education and recreation staff, and facilities. They all passed through camps on England’s Salisbury Plain on their journey to the transport ships that would ultimately deliver them to their waiting loved ones.

  For some unlucky Diggers, fate had one more blow in store when they came in contact with the then raging Spanish flu; most of the 143 Australian graves in the cemetery at Sutton Veny, near Salisbury, contain Diggers who succumbed to influenza. Still more got even closer to home before dying in transit and being buried in Sierra Leone in Western Africa.

  Today, on that same Salisbury Plain, you can visit the Fovant Badges – regimental badges evocatively carved in the soft chalky hills by the soldiers who camped there. They are lovingly tended by a dedicated group of locals, who maintain them as a memorial to the thousands of men who passed through this beautiful land.

  The repatriation of the Australian forces was achieved with admirable efficiency. But that was just the start. The Diggers, in the main, were able to put aside their slouch hats and uniforms and merge back into the Australian heartland. But things were never quite the same. Barely a family escaped loss, and thousands welcomed home a severely wounded loved one. There was great dislocation as Diggers found their wives or sweethearts had taken up with others. Many waiting women found it hard to come to terms with the changes the war had wrought on their men. Some widows and bereaved fiancées would never recover from their broken hearts. Then there were the wounded. Gassed and mutilated Diggers would linger on for years, requiring constant treatment. The ‘repat’ hospitals became a fixture in the community, and most families knew a long-suffering veteran or one whose life was cut short by injury or impaired health.

  Out of a population of around five million, 60,000 of our finest sons had been killed. This loss would echo throughout the nation for a generation. Like the other countries involved, we had lost the cream of the crop. The balance of male to female had been disturbed. And then there were the psychological legacies. For some, the war never ended: they wasted away in a mad netherworld. Some walked on eggshells, fearful of sudden noise, which would send them diving for cover. Some became unpredictably violent or withdrew into bouts of depression. Others managed to cope with their nightmares and feelings of guilt but they often remained just below the surface, ready to be triggered by sights, sounds or smells which brought the horrors flooding back. Some families broke under the strain. Many marriages shattered or hung on by a thread, often simply because divorce was still a socially unacceptable option.

  There were few medicines and virtually no counselling to ease the psychological damage. Many families found it hard to understand the Diggers’ need to be with their mates. But the Diggers knew that only those who had shared the horrors could understand their sense of doubt, loss, guilt and helplessness, their mood swings and periods of restlessness. The great majority of the returned Diggers avoided talking about their wartime experiences. This reticence became a typical Digger response down the years, through World War II and down to Vietnam and beyond, and caused considerable damage both to the veterans and their loved ones.

  On the positive side, the Australian government established a system of pensions and health services for injured veterans, paid war gratuities to all who served and made home loans available to them under the War Service Homes Act. The government also oversaw a ‘soldiers’ land settlement’ scheme, managed by the states, which aimed at resettling veterans in selected rural areas. The war prompted the formation of the RSL (originally the Returned Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Imperial League of Australia) and Legacy, which continues today to provide for the children of dead or disabled veterans.

  Charles Bean believed our Diggers’ performance in World War I enabled Australia to secure a seat on the League of Nations and brought ‘a new confidence into Australian national undertakings’. Bean had little doubt about the real basis for the success of the Diggers:

  Actually it was discipline – firmly based on the national habit of facing facts and going straight for the objective – that was responsible for the astonishing success which first gave other nations confidence in Australia, and to the Australian nation confidence in itself.

  Sadly, the ‘Great War’ was not, in the hopeful words of the American President Woodrow Wilson, ‘the war to end all wars’. Around eight million died in the conflict and another 20 million or more were wounded or disabled, but even
that grievous toll was not a sufficient disincentive to prevent another global conflict just two decades later.

  Much of the credit for immortalising the Digger rests with Charles Bean. He personally wrote six of the 12 volumes of the Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918. Bean worked for 23 years to complete this work and wrote more than two million words. The most admirable aspect of his beautifully crafted reporting is that it was gathered first-hand. In addition, Bean witnessed many of the battles and travelled incessantly to find out ‘what actually happened at the cutting edge of the military machine, where the intention and effort of one side grated on that of its opponents’. Bean set out to go behind the official records and reports to examine the impact of the conflict on those in the front lines, to find ‘the hopes, fears, ambitions, resolutions, enthusiasms and sufferings of ordinary men’.