The name ‘North Russia Relief Force’ was probably coined by Churchill himself. It certainly served his purpose: it was ambiguous as to whether the force was to rescue the existing troops or to replace them.17
6
THOSE WHO
SIGNED UP
APRIL 1919
ON 9 April 1919 recruiting posters went up on London lamp posts. The next day’s issue of The Times also carried a notice—it appeared above advertisements for light globes and Havana cigars. The notice called for trained, fit soldiers over the age of nineteen. The term of engagement was twelve months, or such lesser period as was required.
A temporary recruiting office was set up at the police headquarters at Scotland Yard. According to the press there were plenty of volunteers. The Daily Mail wrote: ‘The fighting spirit of the old army is aflame. Yesterday hundreds of veterans of the Great War were crowding … to join the North Russia Relief Force’.1 Former colonels, it was said, were signing up for the ranks and men deemed unfit were being turned away in tears.
The reports were exaggerated. In fact, there were fewer volunteers than were needed. Despite Britain’s depressed economy and her two million unemployed, recruiting was less brisk than the press made out. Britain was weary of war and there weren’t many takers for a new one.
The Times, 10 April 1919
The authorities extended the deadline for recruiting and began to scour the country for men to fill the ranks.
At the time there were still 70,000 AIF troops in Britain, waiting for ships to take them home.2 After the Armistice some British circles viewed Australians with disfavour. Aussies had been prominent in the hooliganism which accompanied the Armistice celebrations the previous November. Indeed, the minutes of the British War Cabinet at the time accused them of taking ‘a leading part in increasing the rowdiness of some of the crowds’ and singled out Australians for their drunkenness and excesses.3
The Diggers partially redeemed themselves on 25 April 1919 (unofficially it was already being called Anzac Day), when they marched down the Strand with admirable discipline. But the following week they reverted to form in a march-past of overseas military contingents. ‘The Canadians, South Africans and New Zealanders were fine but our mob just strolled along, and when they halted in Victoria some of them began playing two-up and everyone was smoking.’4
Anzac Day, London, 1919. Five thousand Diggers parade past the newly built Australia House. Their smart turnout marks them as men suitable for the North Russia Relief Force. Only six months earlier the British Colonial Secretary had urged the Cabinet to get the drunken, undisciplined Australians out of London as soon as possible. (AWM P04910)
Australians were acknowledged as brave and skilful fighters, but were notorious for their insubordination and cocky individualism. Whatever their shortcomings in conventional discipline, though, they were a potential source of manpower for North Russia. The authorities despatched officers to their camps to appeal for volunteers.
At this point two British-born officers came into the picture. One was Warrant Officer Charles Oliver, a former career soldier in the British Army who had migrated to Australia when the Commonwealth introduced universal cadet training for boys in 1911. As an instructor at Duntroon, he was considered too valuable to allow overseas and spent most of the war years in Australia. Only after months of lobbying did he finally make it to France, where he was wounded in March 1918. With his contacts in the British Army, Oliver was one of the first to enlist in the North Russia Relief Force. He thought he could talk plenty of Diggers into signing on and was told to recruit as many as he could.
The second Briton was Major Harry Gladwyn Harcourt, originally of the Irish Fusiliers and a machine-gun specialist. He had met Australians at Gallipoli and later in England where his mother entertained Diggers on leave at her home. Appointed to command the machine-gun unit in North Russia, Harcourt was told to find his own men. He approached the AIF to see if he could round up any takers.
Australian repatriation policy at the time was simple: those who had joined up first, went home first. This meant that latecomers faced months more of waiting, some for as much as six to twelve months. Educational programs were set up to prepare men for non-military employment, but many found it hard to maintain interest. (Some trainees weren’t serious and referred to it as ‘non-military enjoyment’!) Other men’s minds were preoccupied with personal matters—Diggers were getting married at the rate of 150 a week.5 Mostly, though, the men were just fed up.
Private William Baverstock was one of these men. He had signed on in Sydney in February 1918 but reached France just after the Armistice. In camp back in England in May 1919, he’d just turned twenty and had seen no fighting. He was at a loose end, ‘just sitting about in cold huts waiting to be sent home’. England had soured: ‘I am fed up with Blighty—it is a cow of a place’.6
Bill Baverstock joined the AIF in February 1918 but didn’t reach France until eleven days after the Armistice. Back in England, he was assigned an unexciting desk job in the Army Pay Corps. Like other latecomers, he also faced a six-month wait for a berth on a ship home. A trip to North Russia proved a more appealing prospect. (Courtesy Baverstock family)
Private Keith Attiwill (author of the facetious table set out in Chapter 4) was also fed up. Of his time in a pre-embarkation camp in Weymouth, he wrote, ‘We were sick of mooning around camp, doing nothing worthwhile. Discipline had relaxed, there was no drill in our camp and very few parades; there was only a daily roll-call. Once a week you got paid and you had spent it all by next morning …’7
Attiwill recalled an officer in New Zealand uniform (probably Captain Maurice Newbould) turning up to the camp to appeal for volunteers for North Russia. Attiwill and his fellow South Australian, Corporal Arthur Sullivan, showed interest and the Kiwi invited them to the nearest pub—a technique that might have attracted a lot more volunteers. After a few free drinks, the two voted him ‘a good bloke’ and agreed to sign on.
Another taker was Private Ernest Heathcote from Bathurst, New South Wales. He was in camp at Longbridge Deverill on Salisbury Plain. One day an officer from one of the Guards regiments turned up wearing an unusual insignia on his tunic, a white star on a dark blue background.
We were naturally curious and we soon got the wind that he was giving a lecture on the North Russian situation in the canteen at twelve thirty.
As you may expect the whole camp turned up to the lecture and he explained to us that he had been sent down to the Australian camps by the War Office to recruit volunteers to join the North Russian Relief Force. He was ‘howled down’ by the diggers and told to ‘go home’. It was a painful scene—especially for the officer—but it was only a humorous interlude in a monotonous routine for the diggers.8
Heathcote wasn’t among those who jeered; he was a young man with a definite mind of his own. He had enlisted in the AIF at sixteen, not only by adding three years to his age, but also by assuming a false name. He was already in England by the time his mother had tracked him down as ‘Frederick Manning Whatson’ and written to the AIF demanding he be sent home. Heathcote had other ideas and, though still only seventeen, upped his age even further to twenty-five—perhaps to throw his mum off the scent—and signed on for North Russia.
To join the Relief Force, volunteers had to enlist formally in the British Army. Australians needed first to obtain their discharge from the AIF, which entailed signing away the right to a passage home from the Australian government and releasing the Commonwealth from any claim except for a war pension. Some were also made to sign an additional acknowledgement: ‘I am fully aware … I come absolutely under the control of the British Army Authorities … I cannot expect to receive preferential treatment of any kind.’9
The British authorities promised the Aussies they would serve together in a special company under Australian NCOs. Also persuasive was the promise that they could keep their Australian uniforms, including slouch hats. It was a concession Charlie Oliver had
wangled from the authorities, and to many Diggers it was an important one. The AIF was an army of volunteers, a citizen army. The slouch hat was symbolic of that fact—and a token that a man belonged to an army which was twice as good as any other.
Baverstock mentioned the uniform when he broke the news of his re-enlistment to his mother. From the War Chest Club in London, a residential club for Australian soldiers on leave, he wrote: ‘I have some rather startling oil for you. Last Friday I enlisted in the North Russia Relief Force.’10 To soften the blow, he spelled out the pluses:
We are allowed to wear Australian uniform and will have our own NCOs and all the privileges of the AIF and we only have to sign on for a year. At the end of the service the Imperial Government is giving us a passage home; so that will be better than the troop decks.
In fact, Australian uniforms were later issued to all those who found themselves part of the ‘Australian Section’ of the Relief Force. Besides Britons, these included some New Zealanders, Canadians and South Africans. Baverstock wrote later: ‘Many of the men beneath the slouch hats spoke in strange accents, but all were proud of the uniform they wore’.11
Diggers congregating outside the War Chest Club in Horseferry Road, London. The club was a base for Australian troops on leave and offered accommodation, meals, entertainment, reading room and postal facilities. Baverstock wrote from here to tell his mother he had signed on for Russia. (AWM C01839)
There was one disincentive to signing on. Whereas British volunteers to the Relief Force kept or resumed their former rank, Australians did not. The loss of rank put some Aussies off, but left others undeterred. One Gallipoli veteran, Horace Gipps, had risen through the ranks to become a lieutenant, but signed on for Russia as a corporal. Robert Allison, an accountant, had been a warrant officer at AIF headquarters and had even been seconded to give lectures at the London School of Economics. His official file is marked: ‘Brought to the notice of the Secretary of State for War for valuable services rendered in connection with the war’. Allison signed on as a sergeant.
The AIF imposed one requirement of its own. It insisted volunteers be unmarried, presumably to avoid any liability for widow’s pensions. Sam Pearse from Koorlong, near Mildura in Victoria, got around the problem by applying for his discharge while still a bachelor and getting married ten days later.
According to the official records 138 men applied to be discharged from the AIF to go to North Russia.12 One was knocked back because he was married, four for reasons not stated and eighteen men withdrew their applications. In all, 115 were approved, of whom one (Ernest Woodyard of Footscray, Victoria) didn’t actually embark for Russia. Another Victorian, Lieutenant Leslie Luscombe of Geelong, believed the prime minister personally intervened to veto his discharge.13 Having been taken prisoner at Gallipoli, Luscombe had only just got back to England after more than three years as a prisoner of the Turks.
General Birdwood at AIF headquarters complained of being inundated with the paperwork. He wrote: ‘It really seems astounding that apparently such large numbers of men should be keen on this, while presumably the same men are ready to make a tremendous fuss if not returned to their homes without delay’.14
In addition to those volunteering directly from the AIF, it is probable that other Australians enlisted from the navy and from British regiments in which they had served during the war. Many British military records were destroyed in the London blitz during World War II, so we can never know the total with certainty. Harry Harcourt misled researchers years later by claiming to have recruited four to five hundred men. The best estimate is that no more than 150 Australians took part in the North Russia campaign.
Those who can be identified are listed in Appendix 2. They came from every state, roughly in proportion to their numbers in the Australian population. Twenty-two were born in Great Britain, which at that time included Ireland. These men formed 18 per cent of the Australian contingent, exactly the same percentage as British-born recruits in the AIF. Seventeen men (plus another five from Elope Force) were Gallipoli veterans and wore the ‘A’ for Anzac badge on their unit colour patches.
Why these men volunteered for North Russia is another question. One motive which seems to have played no part in 1919 was conventional patriotism. None of the Aussies mentioned King or Empire as their reason for going to Russia. In fact, the only Australian who claimed to be moved by political motives was one who didn’t make it. This was our home-grown fascist, Captain Francis De Groot, the man who later opened Sydney Harbour Bridge with a drawn sword. De Groot was serving in the British Army of Occupation in Germany when he volunteered. Violently anti-Bolshevik (‘hate the swine’), he was knocked back because his administrative skills were thought to be needed more in occupied Germany than in revolutionary Russia.15
One feeling akin to patriotism may have played a role: a sense of loyalty to fellow soldiers. Some British volunteers were motivated by the press reports that their comrades would be driven into the sea unless they got immediate help. Australians were certainly aware of the supposed threat and may also have been influenced by it. One English major confided to his diary: ‘There was never a word of truth in [it] and I hope the men will never find out’.16 Of course, they did. Even the youngster Heathcote commented that the troops they had gone to relieve were ‘far from being “pushed into the sea” as was asserted by the English authorities and papers’.17
Some of the factors which initially motivated volunteers to the AIF can also be excluded. The fervour and war hysteria of 1914 had long subsided. With Germany defeated, hatred of the enemy or revenge for the death of a friend or family member could no longer be a motive. Nor could social pressure apply—except in terms of peer pressure and mateship. In that sense, it clearly was a factor. Mates wanted to stick together and to some degree probably urged each other on. Attiwill and Sullivan were a case in point. So were John Boag, James Peden and Wilfred Robinson, who had all been off-loaded sick in Sierra Leone on the voyage out. Having survived influenza and made it to England, the three signed on for North Russia together.
Apart from sheer boredom, there were two clear reasons why Australians chose to sign on for North Russia. The first was economic. Just as money had been an incentive in 1914, so it was in 1919. In 1914 unemployment was rising both from drought and the wartime disruption to shipping and international trade. Regular work and good pay were a huge attraction, and at 6 shillings a day on overseas service, Australian soldiers were the best paid in the world.
For North Russia the rate of pay was even higher: 14 shillings a day or £21 2s 0d a month. Not only was that more than double what a Digger was drawing in the AIF, it was much more than he was likely to earn when he finally reached home and found work. Signing on for Russia also gave him an immediate financial benefit. On discharge from the AIF a soldier could claim his deferred pay, an amount which had been withheld (at the rate of a shilling a day) as a form of compulsory saving. Arthur Sullivan was one who took advantage of this. He had accumulated more than £15 and took half of it immediately.
The second reason was a thirst for adventure. Of the North Russia volunteers, twenty-three had enlisted in 1918. None of their number reached France before the Armistice and many didn’t get beyond England. Having arrived too late for the war, they wanted to do more than sit around in a holding camp before going home again. For those who wanted to see action and prove themselves, North Russia offered one last opportunity.
Attiwill and Sullivan typified this group. The two had enlisted in South Australia and arrived in Britain in September. They were separated in October when Attiwill was hospitalised for measles, eczema and hearing damage he had suffered during training. Sullivan too ended up in hospital for three months; he had caught gonorrhoea while celebrating the Armistice. (His medical file records ‘Source: an amateur’.) The two had only just been reunited when the free-spending Kiwi captain persuaded them to sign on for Russia. In his recollections, Attiwill offers no explanation for volunteering except
the promise of adventure.
Adventure had been a major motive for men joining the AIF in the first place. War was seen as a great adventure and viewed in some ways as a sport, though a serious and dangerous one in which you played for keeps. It offered the chance to see the world and prove yourself a man. The determination to be ‘in it’ was reflected in thousands of instances where young men joined the AIF by falsifying their ages. Indeed, the enlistment forms seem to have been designed to facilitate the truth being stretched; until late in the war an applicant needed only to state an age, not a date of birth.
En route to England, Keith Attiwill is pictured in Durban, South Africa, posing with bananas and sugarcane. The war ended before he could see action so he volunteered for North Russia. (Courtesy Peter and Judy Attiwill)
Heathcote was not the only volunteer for Russia with a dodgy age. Another was Ernest Gaffey, from Bundarra, near Inverell in New South Wales. He had first enlisted in the AIF at seventeen by forging his parents’ consent. After being found out and discharged, he got away with it the following year by falsely declaring his parents to be dead!
On the other hand, James Parsons put his age down, not up. The second-oldest Australian to serve in Russia, he had been thirty-nine when he joined up in Horsham, Victoria, in 1915. At that stage of the war he was a year too old, so he knocked three years off to make sure he was accepted. There was no maximum age for the Relief Force, and by the time Parsons signed on for Russia he was aged forty-three years and seven months.
ANZACs in Arkhangel Page 8