by Peter Brune
If the qualities of Monash the engineer were to prove beneficial, then the attributes of the qualified lawyer were also apparent in the form of his conferences. Forthright and sincere views were encouraged across a comprehensive number of agenda items and, once given, there was a resultant demand for uniformity of plan and purpose. Monash’s depth and clarity of thought were then translated into lucid and precise orders issued by Blamey.
Administration is arguably the Principle of War too little recognised and discussed when evaluating command. Monash’s attention to detail in this area was unsurpassed: the allocation of roads, tracks and the ground in general to facilitate the efficient movement of his artillery; supplying the requirements of his engineers for bridge and road building; and ensuring a water supply, and indeed a hot meal and drink, for his front-line infantry—all reflect his talent for administration. We have noted the American 27th and 30th Divisions’ poor mastery of it during the fighting on the Hindenburg Line, caused quite simply by a lack of experience and of a tried and tested doctrine.
At the Australian Army History Conference in 1998, J M Bourne succinctly acknowledged Monash’s ‘managerial style of command’, and the fact that he ‘measured his resources against his task’.7 However, he made two further points of interest:
He was not close to or beloved by the ordinary soldier. He was a strict disciplinarian who never sought popularity, characteristics which endeared him to Haig, who had little time for the shameless vulgarity of Monash’s predecessor, Birdwood. He rarely, if ever, visited the front line.8
The other ranks of any army are not stupid. They well know when plans fail through a lack of reconnaissance and poor planning; when the available and necessary implements of war are denied them; when those weapons are poorly coordinated; when they are poorly fed and watered; and, most of all, when they suffer unnecessary casualties. In addition, in any vocation, nothing succeeds like success—an army feeds on victory. Monash ‘fed’ his soldiers well. In his Official History, Charles Bean—whose praise for Monash was often begrudging—made a critical point: ‘His men went into action feeling, usually with justification, that, whatever might lie ahead, at least everything was right behind them.’9 High praise indeed.
Peter Pedersen has recorded that:
Not once as corps commander did Monash call on a brigade headquarters during a battle. His visit to Mont St Quentin and Péronne on 6 September, four days after the fighting, was probably the closest he came to the front line . . . he never gained a personal impression of the battle by visiting the subordinate commanders fighting it.10
In his Through the Fog of War, Liddell Hart maintained that Monash possessed ‘an uncanny mastery of what was reported and by a masterly organization of his intelligence, so that he saw more exactly through these compound lenses than anybody else with their own eyes’.11 It is true that Monash had an uncanny ability to interpret intelligence, listen to liaison officers, visualise a given battleground from a map, and plan an operation accordingly. But his ‘compound lenses’ failed him on two occasions: the first during the Battle of Chuignes and the second on the Hindenburg Line when Gellibrand’s ‘own eyes’ saw the real situation. On that occasion Monash should have listened to him. But his propensity for conducting his battles from Corps HQ is understandable. Given that communication was the curse of senior commanders during the Great War, with its consequent problems of command and control, a commander’s ‘grip’ of his battle was best maintained at his HQ.
Charles Bean has offered a further dimension to an assessment of Monash: ‘Whether Monash possessed the ruthless will of the greatest fighting leaders may be strongly questioned, and he was fortunate in never having to carry unsupported the shock of a great reverse.’12 As a corps commander, a ‘ruthless will’ was not lacking in Monash. His courage in demanding the already pledged American support at Hamel and his threat to cancel the operation unless it was forthcoming are apposite examples. Another is his repeated insistence on continually pushing his soldiers to the very limits of their endurance—despite the protests of Gellibrand and Hobbs—to maintain the momentum of his advance. This single-minded, ruthless stance undoubtedly reduced the casualty count, and in the end bore the fruits of victory. And while Monash was successfully conducting his battles it should not be forgotten that Bean, Dyson and Murdoch’s intrigues to have him replaced by White were an added and lingering additional strain. Further, Prime Minister Hughes’s insistence that the AIF be relieved from the front by mid-October 1918 and that Monash’s ‘position as corps commander depended on it’, brought further pressure upon Monash and little credit to Hughes. The notion that Monash might have faltered under the ‘shock of a great reverse’ is nothing more than baseless conjecture.
In view of our summary of General Monash’s illustrious command of the Australian Corps, consideration should be given to Liddell Hart, Field Marshal Montgomery of Alamein and Lloyd George’s claims concerning him.
Liddell Hart’s contention that had the war gone into 1919, Monash would have risen to the command of an Army and possibly might have become the BEF’s C-in-C, while complimentary, is in blunt terms fanciful. The same should be said of Montgomery of Alamein’s claim that Monash was the best general on the Western Front, and that had he commanded the BEF, the war would have concluded earlier and with fewer casualties. And Lloyd George’s assertion that Monash was ‘the most resourceful General in the whole of the British Army’ is little more than speculative hindsight.
In his Through the Fog of War, Liddell Hart stated that ‘perhaps the strongest testimony’ to Monash’s capacity was the ‘distance he went in spite of a tremendous compound handicap’ of his Jewish origin and the fact that he was an ‘amateur’ soldier.13 The degree of anti-Semitism of that period should not be ignored. Peter Pedersen has left us with a relevant and telling example. He has recorded that in 1920, when Monash’s former Fourth Army Commander, General Rawlinson, sought the prestigious post of C-in-C India, and suspected that the Secretary of State for India Sir Edwin Montague might oppose that appointment, he wrote two letters to his former Chief of Staff, Montgomery, claiming that:
I read him [Montague] as a clever, slippery, creepy crawley jew [sic] who will always back you if he thinks you are winning and have no scruples about sticking you in the back if he thinks you look like a loser . . .
He is clever and intelligent but his knees knock together when trouble is about. Edwin is not unlike Monash!! We know how to manage his sort.14
In his memoirs, Lloyd George claimed that ‘Seniority and Society were the dominant factors in Army promotion’ and that ‘deportment counted a great deal’.15 Although Lloyd George was no great admirer of the British officer class, there is an element of truth in his observations. It is left to the reader to contemplate the chances of a mere ‘colonial’ officer, commanding but 10 per cent of the BEF, and an ‘amateur’ at that—and of German Jewish ancestry—having any chance whatsoever of commanding a BEF Army, let alone reaching the exalted rank of C-in-C.
In the end, Lloyd George’s memoirs thoroughly discount any chance that Field Marshal Haig might have been replaced by anyone as C-in-C BEF. He gave five reasons. The first was quite simply that neither he nor his advisors could recommend a replacement. The second constituted what he identified as ‘the gag of Army discipline’.16 He cited the probable reaction of public opinion as the third. His fourth reason was the anticipated effect upon Britain’s Entente Allies. But it was the fifth reason that must surely have been the most persuasive: his own political survival. In contemplating sacking the CIGS, Robertson, and the C-in-C BEF, Haig, at that time:
I always had to bear in mind the possibility that such a step would inevitably have given rise to political complications. Both had a considerable backing in the Press and House of Commons and inside the Government. The Asquithian Opposition, were solid behind them. Northcliffe [the English newspaper magnate] strongly supported both.17
When it is remembered that the above-menti
oned events were occurring before Monash assumed command of the Australian Corps—he was at the time GOC 3rd Australian Division—it is obvious that his name would not at that time have been put forward. Given the numerous and compelling reasons cited above as to why Lloyd George did not remove Haig at that time, he was hardly going to remove him during the second half of 1918, or into 1919 as Haig was busily presiding over momentous victories.
In his book Maestro John Monash and through his chairmanship of the Saluting Monash Council, Tim Fischer, at the time of writing, is advocating that General Sir John Monash be promoted to Field Marshal. In so doing Fischer has made a number of assertions.
In comparing Currie and Monash, he has stated that ‘if only because Monash had to overcome steeper odds to succeed I favour John Monash as being greater than Arthur Currie by the narrowest of margins.’18 This assertion hardly constitutes an even-handed method of comparing generals. The Canadians would argue—with some justification—that their accomplishments under Currie match the Australian contribution. Indeed, their 1917 successes such as Vimy Ridge, Hill 70 and Passchendaele, followed by their superb 1918 efforts of Amiens, Arras and the Canal du Nord are comparable with the Australian Corps’s efforts. And when one examines the Canadian doctrine in 1918 the similarities to the Australian Corps are striking. A senior British officer remarked that the Canadian Corps ‘was an organisation. It had life; there was a family feeling present’.19 In other words, there existed a similar Canadian homogeneous structure to that of the Australian Corps; a similar trust and cohesion; a similar degree of sound staff work; and an evolution of a sound doctrine.
General Arthur Currie’s 1918 emphasis upon firepower not manpower, and his Corps’s efficient staff work and logistics, all mirror the same learning curve—with some variations—that had occurred in the Australian Corps. Professor Tim Cook has noted that:
. . . he [Currie] added dozens of additional heavy Vickers machine-guns and poached the artillery from the now broken-up 5th Division to augment the corps’ available firepower. Additional trucks created a more robust logistical system, engineer battalions were augmented to three times the size of their British equivalent, and additional mortar teams rounded out the formation.20
General Currie and his Canadians also employed the conference method for uniformity of plan and purpose, and, like Monash, Currie was open to the opinions of others and their constructive criticism. None of these similarities should come as any great surprise, since both Monash and Currie were well read and versed in the BEF’s doctrine that had evolved over time. And so too were a number of British Generals—Maxse and Plumer are but two examples.
Fischer is not content to attempt to elevate Monash to superiority over his Corps command peers, but has proceeded to attempt a ranking against the Supreme Commander of the Entente, Marshal Foch:
Was Foch a better conductor than maestro John Monash, who also likened a perfected battle plan to a score for orchestral composition? They were both very good. However taking into account the margin of difficulty each faced, Monash was up against steeper odds, albeit on a significantly smaller scale.21
Musical allusions aside, the notion that a supreme commander might be compared to a corps commander defies logic and credibility. In the opinion of this work, brief and sweeping—and unsustainable—comparisons have also been made between Monash and the likes of Allenby, Chauvel, Pershing, Maxse, Plumer, Jacob and the then CIGS, General Wilson.
A number of further points should be made concerning the Saluting Monash Council’s advocacy for General Sir John Monash to be posthumously promoted to Field Marshal. First, General Chauvel—promoted General by the Australian Government at the same time as Monash—was senior to Monash as a Corps Commander, and the Desert Mounted Corps was bigger than the Australian Corps. Second, Canada could have sought equal consideration for General Currie to be promoted to Field Marshal. Equally, there were some excellent British generals who were not promoted: Rawlinson was one, but he died in 1925.
Appointment to the rank of Field Marshal in that era required that that General be on the Active List of the Army. It is significant that with Birdwood being promoted to Field Marshal in March 1925—as C-in-C Indian Army—the then Australian Government did not consider Monash or Chauvel. However, it would have constituted a jump of two ranks and neither had been Army Commanders like many British officers who had been promoted after the Great War. Monash was not on the Active List and had never been an Army Commander. Further, of the thirteen generals promoted to Field Marshal during and not long after the war, six were so promoted when or shortly after assuming the highest position in the Army, that of Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS): Robertson, Wilson, Milne, Cavan, Montgomery-Massingberd and Deverell. Of the remaining seven, four were Commanders-in-Chief: Haig, Birdwood, Allenby and Chetwode. The remaining three were Army Commanders: Plumer, Byng and Jacob.
We search for a fair, balanced summary of the achievements and standing of General Sir John Monash. In the end he should be judged or assessed as a BEF Corps Commander, simply because that was the highest position that he attained. In that capacity, he was among the elite: the equal of any and better than all but a few. It is enough to claim for this great Australian; it is enough with which to honour him; and it is enough to proudly commemorate him. To claim more than he actually achieved, to engage in mere speculation as to what might have been, is to actually demean his enormous and well-deserved reputation and status.
CHAPTER 14
. . . great-hearted men
During its illustrious campaigning in the period 8 August to 5 October 1918, the Australian Corps suffered 4998 soldiers killed or died of wounds, 16 166 wounded, and 79 missing. Its total casualties were therefore 21 243.1 Despite those losses, the Corps took 29 144 prisoners and captured 338 guns, innumerable machine guns and trench mortars, and all within a vast 344 square miles of captured territory containing 116 towns or villages. Thus a Corps that comprised just under 10 per cent of the BEF had taken around 22 per cent of the total captures in terms of prisoners, guns and territory.
***
The fate of our seven AIF diarists is of interest. Our story began with the 48th Battalion’s Captain George Mitchell. His was a remarkable AIF service. A South Australian, after having landed with that state’s 10th Battalion at Gallipoli as a Private on the first Anzac Day, he was evacuated with enteric fever on 6 August. He rejoined the 10th in Belgium in early September 1916, and was subsequently posted to the 48th Battalion as a Lance-Corporal. Mitchell’s Western Front service was most distinguished: he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal during the first battle of Bullecourt, and less than a year later was awarded the Military Cross at Dernancourt. In May 1919 Mitchell returned to South Australia. It is utterly remarkable that he served his country for four years on the front line without being wounded.
Not unlike many of his comrades, Mitchell found the transition to civil life difficult. He took up a soldier settlement block near Mt Gambier but struggled to prosper and left it in 1922; he then went to Victoria, regularly changing jobs; then he moved to Queensland in 1926, where he tried real estate, running a garage, and working as a car salesman. He then went to New South Wales where he began to write for Reveille and Smith’s Weekly, which culminated in his book, Backs to the Wall, which was first published in 1937.
After having served between the wars in the Militia, Mitchell saw service with the 43rd Landing Craft Company during World War II. On 11 May 1945, he landed troops near Wewak in New Guinea. George Mitchell died on 11 January 1961. His wife and a son survived him.
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We have recorded Corporal Cliff Geddes’s vivid accounts of his 13th Battalion’s fighting at Hamel and Amiens and, in particular, the horrific mass and yet at times random small-scale slaughter inflicted by artillery shelling. Among his many Great War experiences was the sheer exhaustion that was the constant companion of the Great War digger. And in Geddes’s case that fatigue was matched by a bitternes
s towards those who had not volunteered.
His diary, 20 August 1918:
. . . at 8 p.m. once more set off, bound for La Neuville, near Corbie, where the nucleus are. We had already walked a long way but this was the limit. More dead with fatigue than alive walked & walked, got in two motor lorries for a short while, but otherwise had no lift, & walked the whole way . . . A lorry took us about a kilo to Corbie, then we walked to La Neuville, & finally hit our destination at 12.30 a.m. Think of that, you cold-footed ‘stay at homes,’ started walking at 8 p.m., finished at 12.30 a.m. & yet we were out to have a rest. Civilians who haven’t done these army tramps, lumping rifle equipment & gear, can have no idea of the utter weariness we felt.2
Geddes also had a protracted war that was interspersed with illness. After having participated in the landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915, subsequent dysentery and enteritis caused his evacuation to Lemnos in July. He was eventually invalided home. After being discharged from hospital in Sydney in early 1916, Geddes was promoted Sergeant, re-embarked from Australia in 1917 and was posted to the 13th Battalion. Two of his brothers also served in the AIF: Aubrey (‘Boo’), who was wounded at Hamel, and another who served as a sapper with the 15th Field Company.
After arriving back in Sydney in July 1919 Cliff Geddes resumed his bank employment and later worked as a real estate agent. He married Elsie Gall in September 1919 and we know that the marriage produced at least two children. Geddes died in October 1946 aged 58.