Phillip Schuler

by Mark Baker

  Rupert Murdoch would give his own benign postscript on his father’s actions in a BBC interview that coincided with the release of Deadline Gallipoli in April 2015. He described Keith as a fierce Australian patriot who loved his country and had always striven to take a leadership position, ‘not in a power hungry way’ but only to achieve what he believed was in the country’s best interests. Rupert said his father had on more than one occasion told him that he ‘never had a moment of conscience’ about his actions in writing the Gallipoli letter and was proud of what he had done. In this, the famous father and son were happily on common ground: ‘My father certainly shook up the establishment and I think I have shaken them up over a longer period—and a lot more.’9

  Keith Murdoch might have made his name challenging the boundaries of official censorship in the Great War but soon after the outbreak of World War II he became, briefly, one of the architects of an even more draconian regime to control the work of journalists.

  After taking control of the Melbourne Herald in the early 1920s, Murdoch proved himself to be a brilliant editor, transforming the paper, boosting its circulation and driving profit growth. He then masterminded the company’s expansion into South Australia, Queensland and Western Australia. That success, and his formidable reputation in the Australian newspaper industry, was threatened when, in June 1940, Murdoch accepted an appointment from Prime Minister Robert Menzies to become the government’s Director-General of Information. The post enabled him to attend meetings of the War Cabinet. At one of the first meetings, Murdoch revealed his new enthusiasm for censorship. While pledging his support for the release of information other than details that might benefit the enemy, he declared: ‘If criticism would be damaging to the national war effort, it should be suppressed.’10 He then won approval for new regulations ‘to insist on a journal publishing the truth in an appropriate form if required to do so’. This meant that, at Murdoch’s discretion, publishers and broadcasters would be forced to run material supplied by him if he deemed they had disseminated misleading or inaccurate reports. As he himself described it, the government might say: ‘That statement has been harmful. Here is the truth. Print it and print it where we tell you.’11

  It was a political bombshell that exploded in Murdoch’s face. His rival publishers were incensed. The Sydney Morning Herald denounced the regulations as ‘a bludgeon for the press’ and accused Murdoch and Menzies of creating a Propaganda Department. Victorian Premier Albert Dunstan declared: ‘This is establishing a dictatorship.’ Most seriously of all for Murdoch, his mentor and Herald and Weekly Times chairman Theodore Fink was equally upset and instructed Lloyd Dumas, who was acting as HWT managing director during Murdoch’s official secondment, that The Herald must join The Age and The Argus in attacking the regulations. Dumas resisted and, when his fellow directors refused to support him, Fink wrote an open letter condemning the regulations ‘as an infringement of the rights and liberties of the public’. The letter was published by all the major Australian newspapers—except those of the HWT. Soon the federal opposition was rounding on the government and Murdoch’s position became politically untenable. He quit in late October after less than five months in the job. Biographer Desmond Zwar would describe the interlude of the press poacher turned censorship gamekeeper as ‘the major mistake’ of Murdoch’s entire career. The man himself, of course, would never publicly admit to failure. Or hypocrisy.

  Appendix

  The Battle of the Nek

  By PHILLIP SCHULER

  ‘Men,’ he said, ‘you have 10 minutes to live.’ And those Light Horsemen of this regiment, recruited from the heart of Victoria, knew what he said was true.

  Dawn was beginning to steal into the sky behind the Turkish position. A thin, waning moon shed but little light over the terrible battlefields. From a forward observation station I noted the battle line spitting red tongues of flame all along to the Nek, while at Quinn’s Post occurred every few minutes terrible explosions of shell and bombs from either side. A gun a minute was booming constantly—booming from the heart of Anzac.

  The destroyers, the rays of their searchlights cast up on to the hill, swept the top of the Sari Bair ridge with the high-explosive shell from their 6-inch guns. Fearful as had been the night, the dawn was more horrible still, as an intense bombardment commenced on the Chessboard Trenches on the Nek.

  Howitzers and high-explosive shells fell thickly round those masses of Turkish trenches, so often and accurately registered in the weeks of waiting. The surmise that the Turks had brought up reinforcements had indeed proved correct, for they were waiting now in the trenches on the Nek—confidently, we learn, waiting any ‘English’ attack, which now seemed inevitable. It was inevitable.

  At this time the 3rd Light Horse Brigade, under Brigadier-General Hughes, held the Nek. I have already described this position. It was barely 120 yards wide. The Turkish trenches were scarcely 80 yards away from our line. They sloped backward slightly up the ridge to the sides of Baby 700 and Chunuk Bair. On the right of this narrow causeway was the head of Monash Gully, a steep drop into a ravine, and across it, Pope’s Hill and Quinn’s Post. On the left the sheer precipices fell away down into the foothills of the Sari Bair ridge. Row after row one could see of the enemy trenches—Chessboard Trenches; the name significant of their formation.

  It fell to the 8th and 10th Light Horse Regiments to storm these enemy redoubts. They were to charge at 4.30 in the morning—the morning after the bloody battle of Lone Pine, after, as I heard Colonel Antill, Brigade-Major of the Light Horse Brigade, say we had gone along the whole of our battle front ‘ringing a bell’. Then, when that has tolled and sounded, were the Light Horse to face their certain death.

  The story is simply told. It is very brief. The attack was to be made in four lines. The 8th Light Horse (Victorians) were to supply the first two lines, 150 men in each. Besides scaling ladders that had been specially made to enable men to get into the trenches, these Light Horsemen each carried two empty sandbags. They had food supplies, and plenty of ammunition. But they were not to fire a shot. They had to do their work with the cold steel of the bayonet.

  Following them was a third line of 150 men of the 10th Regiment, and yet another line—the last—ready with picks and shovels and bombs—any quantity of bombs—and reserves of water and ammunition. They were to help to make good the trenches when they were won.

  Against the sandbags of our lines thumped the bullets as the Turkish machine guns traversed from end to end of the short line. A hard purring and the whistle of bullets, then a few minutes’ pause. Still the bombardment continued furiously, smashing, it was thought, the Turkish trenches to atoms. But while the communication-ways were blocked and heavy casualties were inflicted, the front Turkish trenches remained practically unharmed.

  In three lines of trenches, their bayonets fixed, standing one above the other to get better shooting, resting on steps or sitting on the parados of the trenches, the Turks waited the coming of the Light Horsemen. The trenches were smothered in a yellow smoke and dust from the bursting lyddite from the ships, that almost obscured from our view the enemy’s position. It was a bombardment the intensity of which had never been seen yet on Gallipoli; the hill was plastered with awful death-dealing shells.

  Just at 4.35 the bombardment slackened significantly. Immediately there began to pour a sheet of lead from the Turkish trenches. Musketry and machine guns fired incessantly. Could anything live for a minute in it? At the end of three minutes our guns ceased.

  Lieutenant-Colonel A. White elected to lead the men he loved. He made a brief farewell to his brother officers. He shook them by the hand and went into the firing-line. He stood waiting with his watch in hand. ‘Men,’ he said, ‘you have 10 minutes to live.’ And those Light Horsemen of this regiment, recruited from the heart of Victoria, knew what he said was true.

  They waited, listening to the terrible deluge that rained against the parapets of their trenches. ‘Three minutes, men.’ And
the word came down from the far end of the line, did the order still hold good? It was a sergeant who sent it, and by the time he had received the reply passed back along the waiting line, the whistle for the charge sounded. With an oath, ‘— him!’ he leaped to the parapet of the trench; he fell back on his comrade waiting below him—dead.

  The whole line went. Each man knew that to leave those trenches was to face certain, almost immediate death. They knew it no less than the glorious Light Brigade at Balaclava. There is surely a comparison between the two deeds, and shall not the last make the young Nation more honoured!

  Those troops, with all the knowledge, after months of waiting, of what trench warfare meant, of what they might now expect, never flinched, never presented a braver front.

  Theirs not to reason why; theirs but to do—and die. They charged.

  Lieutenant-Colonel White had not gone 10 paces when he fell dead, riddled with bullets. The first line of 150 men melted away ere they had gone half the distance to the trenches, and yet the second line, watching, followed them. One small knoll alone gave a little protection for a few dozen paces to the advancing line from the Turkish machine guns, that rattled from a dozen different points along the narrow front, and swept from the right flank across from the enemy trenches opposite Quinn’s Post.

  Adding to the terror of it all came the swish of the shells from the French ‘75’ guns that the Turks had captured from the Servians, and which were now firing 10 shells a minute on to the Nek. The parapets were covered with dead and dying. Stretcher-bearers rescued men where they could from just above the parapets, and dragged them down into the trenches, while over the same parapets went other men, doomed like their magnificent comrades.

  Just a handful of men—how many will hardly ever be known, probably it was not 10—managed to reach the section of the Turkish line facing the extreme right of our position. At other places some few others had pitched forward and fallen dead into the Turkish trenches. But those few men that won through raised a little yellow and red flag, the pre-arranged signal, the signal for the second part of the attack to develop.

  It were better that those gallant men had never reached that position. The third line were ordered to advance, and went over the parapets. There was nothing else to do. Comrades could not be left to die unsupported.

  At the same time from Bully Beef Sap (that was the trench that ran down into Monash Gully from the Nek) the Royal Welsh Fusiliers attacked up the head of the gully. Their first two lines, so soon as they came under fire, fell, crumpled; at which moment the third line—Western Australia Light Horse—had gone forward from the Nek.

  But before the whole of the 150 men could rush to their certain destruction, Brigadier-General Hughes stopped the attack. So it happened that a small party of 40 on the left managed to crawl back into the trenches. The remainder fell alongside their brave Victorian brothers who had charged and died.

  For the flag in the enemy’s trench soon disappeared, and the fate of the brave men who erected it was never told. Late the next night a private named McGarry crawled back from beneath the parapet of the Turkish trenches, where he had feigned dead all day. He told of the forest of Turkish steel that stood in the series of three trenches, ranged one behind the other.

  Another man, Lieutenant Stuart, 8th Light Horse, who, after going 15 yards, fell wounded, and managed to crawl into the crater of a shell-burst, where he lay until the signal was given to retire, returned from among the dead and dying lying under the pale morning light on no man’s ground between the trenches.

  Thus in a brief 15 minutes did regiments perish. Only an incident it was of the greatest battle ever fought in the Levant, but an imperishable record to Australia’s glory. Nine officers were killed, 11 missing, 13 wounded; 50 men killed, 170 wounded, and 182 missing: and those missing never will return to answer the roll call—435 casualties in all.

  What did the brigade do but its duty? Duty in the face of overwhelming odds, in the face of certain death; and the men went because their leaders led them, and they were men. What more can be said? No one may ask if the price was not too great.

  The main object had been achieved. The Turks were held there. It was learned that many of the enemy in the trenches had their full kits on, either just arrived or bidden remain (as they might be about to depart). And so right along the line were the enemy tied to their trenches, crowded together as they could be, packed, waiting to be bayoneted where they stood or disperse the foe.

  Above all, the Australians had kept the way clear for the great British flanking movement already begun. For all this, will the spot remain sacred in the memory of every Australian of this generation and the generations to come.

  Phillip Schuler’s first-hand account of the Battle of the Nek on 7 August 1915 was reproduced in his book, Australia in Arms.

  Acknowledgements

  This book began its written form on 4 August 2014—a century to the day after the Great War began. A month earlier, at a small stone church in Victoria’s Dandenong Ranges, family and friends gathered for the funeral of Meg Howard, aged 93, the daughter-in-law Phillip Schuler never knew. Two days before that, Danilo Nemec sat in the kitchen of his cottage in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick remembering the stories of his mother, Netta, who in 1917 opened the door of the Cairo home of Nelly Rabinovitch to the news of Schuler’s mortal wounding. Bookends to the bloodiest century in human history; footnotes to the short life of a remarkable journalist.

  Any writer who ventures into the fields of history, particularly the vast landscape of World War I and of Gallipoli, stumbles into a land of giants: the great writers and historians who have passed this way before and whose work challenges those bold enough to follow. Anyone who steps into the realm of biography will come to rely on the kindness of many strangers. I am deeply indebted to the work of a series of great and gifted writers who have been here before and whose work has informed this book and often made me question my ability to produce a narrative worth trailing in their wake. I am particularly grateful to the disparate descendants and connections of Phillip Schuler without whose help this story could not have been told. One of the joys of the solitary journey of authorship is the people you meet along the way. I am fortunate that they include many who have inspired me, some who have moved me and a few who have become firm friends.

  Phillip Schuler’s story has been a sadly neglected chapter in Australian military history. To the extent that it has been told at all, it has been too often a sideshow in the stories of others and too often books, films and television documentaries have misrepresented what Schuler did and what he believed. I hope this book goes some way towards rectifying that legacy of neglect and ignorance and explaining the reality. I hope, particularly, it demonstrates that not all of the journalists who reported on the Gallipoli campaign thought and acted the same way, were uniformly pessimistic about its prospects, railed against the supposedly oppressive censorship or believed the British commanders were incompetent and callous.

  I first became aware of Phillip Schuler more than a decade ago. As a senior journalist and editor at The Age, the paper that has been as much a part of my life as it was part of the lives of Frederick and Phillip Schuler, I was vaguely aware of a young Age journalist who had been sent to World War I and died there. In 2005 I decided to research and write an article about him as part of that year’s coverage of Anzac Day. That assignment opened my eyes to the richness of the Schuler story, particularly to the quality and impact of his dispatches and the remarkable archive of photographs his family left with the Australian War Memorial. But my decision to delve more deeply was made only after a phone call I received several weeks later. The caller said his name was Richard Howard and he told me how much he had enjoyed reading the article, ‘Schuler’s War’. I thanked him for the feedback and was preparing to hang up when Richard added, ‘Yes, I think he is my grandfather.’ When I politely responded that Schuler had never married or had children, the story of Polly and Max Howard cam
e tumbling down the phone line. Within days I was sitting with Richard and his wife Lyn at their dining table in Warrandyte and the biggest research project of my long career in journalism had begun. Richard became a great supporter of this book with his insights, family archives and photographs. Meeting Richard’s mother, Meg Howard, shortly before her death, opened a priceless window on the lives of Polly and Max.

  While I was determined to write this book, work and family commitments would delay its gestation. When I left The Age in late 2013 I had, at last, the time to devote myself to the final research and writing. Throughout the process my greatest supporters have been Les and Denise Carlyon. Les was a brilliant and too brief editor of The Age when I was a young reporter and he has been a friend and mentor ever since. Every time I pick up either his Gallipoli or The Great War—two of the finest books ever written about Australians at war—I am reminded of his greatness as a storyteller and of my shortcomings. It was Les who first urged me to do a book on Schuler and who kept on urging me over the years until I could no longer find excuses for procrastination. He also generously led me into the warm embrace of publisher Tom Gilliatt at Allen & Unwin. Les read the manuscript before anyone else and his astute advice on revisions greatly improved the final draft. The mistakes he found—and any that remain—are all my own work.

  It was Denise Carlyon, a long-time Schuler enthusiast, who helped me solve one of the abiding mysteries of Phillip’s life: who was the elusive Madame Rabinovitch, the widow with two young daughters in Egypt who was supposed to be his fiancé? Despite an intensive research effort, neither Denise nor Su Strafford, Phillip’s great-niece, had been able to answer that question. After visiting Les and Denise in early 2014 and again sharing our frustration about this, I came home determined to try again. Several hours of relentless internet searching—via search strings and pathways I no longer recall—led me to the possible name of Nelly Rossi. Several Jewish genealogical sites strengthened the case that Nelly was the one: she was the widow of a Russian doctor, Alexis Rabinovitch, who had died in 1915 and she had two young daughters. The cyber trail then led me to the name of Gabriel Josipovici, the grandson of Nelly Rossi and a distinguished author and retired professor living in England. An email sent via his publisher in London drew a reply from Gabriel that would make my day—and my book. ‘How fascinating. A letter I never thought to receive,’ he wrote. ‘I had no idea PS was “a famous Australian journalist” and of course am delighted to hear it . . . All the information I had came via my mother and aunt, Nelly’s two daughters.’