In the Footsteps of Private Lynch

by Will Davies

  The German delegation sent to negotiate Germany's ceasefire terms was headed up by politician Matthias Erzberger. Erzberger had been vocal in the Reichstag in mid-1917 in calling for a negotiated peace and seemed the appropriate man – being a Catholic civilian politician rather than a member of the German royal family or military – to negotiate Germany's ceasefire terms. On 7 November, Erzberger and his delegation crossed the line to begin peace negotiations with Marshal Ferdinand Foch. But there would be no negotiations as such, for what the Allies sought was something far more demanding and harsh than a simple ceasefire: they wanted Germany's total and unconditional surrender.

  On 8 November, the Germans were taken by train to a secret location: a railway siding in the forest at Compiègne, about 80 kilometres northeast of Paris. The train came to a stop and they were ushered into another train waiting on the next track, which acted as Foch's headquarters. There, in the stationary carriage, Foch handed over the Allies' armistice terms and gave the Germans 72 hours to consider them.

  Unaware of just how close the end of the war was, Edward Lynch and his mates in the 45th Battalion were far away from the line in billets at Fluy, near Pissy, southwest of Amiens. By now they had been there for six weeks, playing sport, undergoing rigorous training, doing route marches and enjoying hot baths and clean clothes. They were well prepared for their next period in the line, but their departure kept being postponed by their commanders – a reflection of the uncertainty of the military situation.

  With the armistice as yet unsigned, the Allies kept up the pressure on the German troops. It is said that only the cavalry could keep up with the German retreat; the Allied troops were advancing so fast it was difficult to provide them with food, ammunition and supplies. The British crossed the Scheldt River with little opposition and advanced on Mons and Ghent. The rapid advance was held up in some places, though, by delayed- action mines laid by the Germans. These were also to hold up the 1st and 4th Australian divisions as they returned to the line on 10 November. The devastating explosion caused by the mine left in Bapaume Town Hall by retreating Germans in March 1917 was still fresh in their minds, so they were very wary.

  Meanwhile, in Germany, revolutionary changes were afoot. The Social Democratic Party demanded the end of the monarchy and there was a workers' uprising in Berlin. The Kaiser wavered on whether to give up the throne, but Prince Max of Baden, who had been chancellor since only October, announced the Kaiser's abdication, forcing his hand, and the next day the Kaiser's family, staff and a Prussian guard drove to the Netherlands and into exile. Prince Max himself resigned as chancellor in favour of the leader of the Social Democrats, Friedrich Ebert, who had been a saddlemaker and union activist up until not long before. On 9 November, the German Republic was proclaimed and Ebert's first act as chancellor was to accept the Allies' peace terms. The armistice was finally signed by both parties at 5 a.m. on 11 November in Foch's train carriage at Compiègne. Erzberger could do little to alter the conditions in Germany's favour and had scant input apart from correcting some factual details and making a short, emotional speech about the severity of the terms of surrender. The two sides agreed that the guns would fall silent at 11 a.m. on the 11th day of the 11th month, 1918. The war was finally over.

  The conditions of the armistice were intended to remove any chance of Germany resuming the war. The Germans were to withdraw within 14 days from all captured and invaded territory and, within a further 16 days, to have withdrawn back 10 kilometres on the German side of the river Rhine – meaning that the Rhineland would be under Allied occupation. The many thousands of Allied prisoners of war were to be released, though German POWs were to remain in Allied captivity for a period to prevent them being re-formed into a fighting army. Germany was required to hand over 5,000 artillery pieces, 25,000 machineguns, 3,000 trench mortars and 1,700 military aircraft. To prevent the movement of troops and supplies, Germany also had to hand over 5,000 locomotives, 150,000 railway wagons and 5,000 trucks. The German navy was stripped of ten battleships, six battle cruisers, eight light cruisers and 50 destroyers. German crews destroyed and sank many of these vessels in 1919, when it came time to hand them over at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, off the Scottish coast. Nevertheless, the loss of all of these war materials and transportation was a huge blow to German pride and military preparedness.

  In Australia and Britain, the news of the armistice was received with widespread joy and celebration. As church bells rang out, people poured into the streets, overjoyed that peace had come at last. Offices and factories closed and pubs did a roaring trade. In London, flags and bunting in red, white and blue sprouted everywhere; in Sydney, jubilant crowds poured into Martin Place. There was mass hysteria as people mobbed returned soldiers and carried them aloft, cheering and thanking them while others danced in the street or wound through the crowd in long, excited conga lines.

  For Private Lynch and his mates in the 45th, however, the war felt far from over. The battalion history states:

  In the first week of November, preparations were made for a move forward, but this move was postponed from day to day, and, on the morning of November 11th, the glad news of the Armistice came through.2

  But did it? For the boys of the 45th, there seemed some confusion about the armistice. According to Lynch's account in 'Fini la Guerre', on 10 November the men hear news of the Kaiser's abdication and 'rumours of peace are floating around, but we no longer worry over rumours these days'. On 11 November the men get word that they are heading to the front early the next day. Then the signallers intercept a message that an armistice has been signed, but the men hear that Foch 'won't entertain any peace proposals until the Allies have crossed the Rhine'. Even when their commanding officer announces that hostilities ceased at 11 a.m., ending the war, the men are doubtful. As Nulla says, 'Surely wars don't end like this.' Their uncertainty is compounded when the CO adds with a grin: 'I regret to announce that the message is unofficial.'

  Today it seems amazing that the declaration of the end of the war would not be passed on to the Australian soldiers in a more official way. Yet, knowing the status of the Australian soldier in the Allied military hierarchy, Lynch's account seems entirely plausible. The private soldier in a colonial battalion far from home was at the lowest echelon of the power structure. Who in the British High Command would be worried about informing mere Australian privates that hostilities were over, that they had survived and could soon go home? And as a private, who would you believe? After all that the men had gone through, peace must have seemed almost inconceivable.

  Though the guns fell silent at 11 a.m. on 11 November, Nulla and his mates are sent off for two hours of bayonet training. On the way, Farmer asks if there is anything in the peace rumours and one of his friends tells him, 'Yes, the war's over, all right. All over the flamin' place.' That night the French civilians are celebrating and getting drunk, but the men continue to debate whether the news is true. One can imagine the talk that night: the hope that yes, the war has ended; disbelief that it could be possible; and anticipation of the great disappointment they will feel if this turns out to be just another furphy. It is only exhaustion that closes down their discussion and they suffer another cold night without their blankets, which were sent ahead days ago for their oft-postponed trip to the frontline. They fall into 'a cold, broken sleep' still unsure whether the war is actually over.

  Imagine how it would have been for Lynch's German equivalent that night: some poor private soldier, powerless, hungry, cold and now faced with defeat. He may have felt he had failed, that his effort was not enough and the Fatherland now lay in ruins because of his failure. Probably with no job to go to, he would have been looking into a bleak future. He would have heard about the rioting on the streets of Berlin and, given the situation in Russia, may have feared the effects socialist and communist agitators might have. The Kaiser was gone and Germany was now a 'republic' – an unfamiliar term that may have meant little to him. The German private would be retur
ning to a rapidly changing and perhaps confusing political situation. He may have suspected his family were starving; that there was no coal for their fires nor bread for their table. Though he would no longer be facing death each day on the line, his fate probably looked grim, or at least uncertain.

  Another cold morning dawns for Nulla and his mates. Reveille sounds at 4 a.m. – a noise anyone with military experience hates – and they drag themselves up from their uncomfortable bed on the floorboards, pack their equipment and march 'away from Pissy for the line again', perhaps for another stunt, another hop-over; perhaps death. But the rumours still linger and the discussions of the night before are still at the forefront of their minds – perhaps the war is over ... if only. They march to Ailly-sur-Somme, just northwest of Amiens, and entrain to head east.

  What finally convinces them that the war is over is the English-language newspaper that boys are selling on the railway platform. It is ironic that though they are the ones who have been risking their lives each day, they get confirmation of the armistice not from their superiors but from the media, the way today we might look to CNN or Fox News. Newspapers bought for a few pennies on some unknown and previously unheard of railway station carry the priceless words they have longed to hear: WAR ENDS.

  The men are unimpressed about how they have been informed of the end of hostilities. They well know that the ceasefire details would have been received at division and brigade level, so why was it not officially passed on to them? They discuss the possibility that 'Perhaps they'd forgotten where we were,' to which the answer quickly comes, 'They'd have flamin' soon remembered if Fritz had broken through again.'

  In contrast to the jubilation on the streets of Paris, London and 'the whole Allied world' that they read of in the papers, the reaction of Nulla and his mates is curiously subdued. They sit on the train digesting the news, making their way to the frontline they 'no longer dread'.

  We've convinced our innermost selves that the war is over, that we've seen it through, that we'll really again see our own people and our own homes that have seemed so hopelessly distant of late ...

  Our men are as calm as ever. We, to whom the screeched 'Fini la guerre' of the newsboys really mean the most, are taking our release from all that war has meant very calmly and casually. [p. 313]

  They have dreamt of this day, but when it arrives their joy is perhaps complicated by other emotions. In the official history, Charles Bean observes:

  The 1st and 4th Australian Divisions were then arriving in the region about le Cateau. Neither there nor at the front was there any general demonstration – the sound of guns ceased; the gates of the future silently opened. Wonder, hope, grief, too deep and uncertain for speech, revolved for days in almost every man's mind ...3

  The 45th Battalion travelled on to Fresnoy-le-Grand, nearly 100 kilometres to the east of Amiens. Winter was coming on again and for a week, in cold conditions, they drilled, had inspections, washed and polished their equipment and practised ceremonial parades. They set out again on 22 November to be included in the triumphant Allied force that would cross the Rhine and enter Germany. But it wasn't to be: the Australian government decided that no Australian troops were to take part in the occupation, a great disappointment to many of the men, given the part they had played in the victory and the high casualties taken by all Australian divisions.

  But the 45th Battalion continued east, stopping at numerous French towns on the way. In Somme Mud, when they are near Avesnes-sur-Helpe, they get 'all dolled up' to line the roadside with other Allied troops to be inspected by the King and Prince of Wales as they drive past. It is a freezing day with an icy wind blowing across snow-covered ground as they shuffle to line the roadside, battalion after battalion of Australian and English troops, waiting for two hours for the royals. Here we see once again the stark difference in attitude between the Australian and the British fighting men. The Australians try to get in a game of two-up; some sneak off to a nearby estaminet for a quick drink. The British on the other hand stand obediently at ease, causing Nulla and his mates to pass cheeky remarks about them, because 'the sight of this good soldier stuff generally gets our goat'. Finally, the Prince of Wales, who Nulla feels 'is a sort of cobber of ours, though we haven't told him so yet' and then the King, 'a little man, mostly beard and overcoat', glide by in big cars. The British troops loyally cheer the King; the Australians derisively cheer the cheering British. Nulla deadpans, 'Long live the King. Our crowd didn't shout and cheer, yet we somehow feel that the King didn't expect it.'

  In the days after the signing of the armistice, Europe became a bubbling cauldron of political activity and turmoil, and would remain so for decades to come. Austria and Hungary became separate republics, as did Czechoslovakia, which had formerly been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Poland, which had for over a century been split into three territories ruled by Russia, Prussia and Austria, declared its independent nationhood and expelled German troops from her soil. In Germany, the political power of the monarchies of Bavaria, Saxony and Württemberg came to an end with the abdications of their rulers. In the Balkans, where the war began, provinces formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire joined with Serbia and Montenegro to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (which would, in 1929, come to be known as Yugoslavia). As Allied warships entered the Dardanelles and anchored at Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), the government of Ahmed Isset Pasha fell; the curtain had fallen on the Ottoman Empire.

  On 1 December, British, French and American forces moved into the Rhineland in accordance with the armistice and soon after they occupied three strategic bridgeheads: the British at Cologne, the Americans at Coblenz and the French at Mainz. The Australians were on the move, too. Haig would not officially release the AIF from France and Belgium until February 1919, when it was anticipated that troops would not be needed for possible deployment, so the 45th Battalion went to Hastière-Lavaux in Belgium, on the left bank of the river Meuse, southwest of the major town of Dinant. Here their time was taken up with physical training, lectures, route marches and small arms training, or musketry. Each afternoon at two o'clock there was a 'recreational parade' that allowed the men to venture into the nearest town or have time to themselves. On Saturdays there was 'hat ironing', presumably in readiness for the church parade on Sunday. The weekly routine kept the men in a fighting state – fit, well practised and ready for a ceremonial parade at a moment's notice.

  The French-speaking Belgians in this border area had suffered under the German occupation and though they had never met Australian troops before, they received them with great warmth and a special welcome. The 45th stayed in the town for over two months, from mid-December through Christmas and on into February 1919. When they departed for the Australian base area at Le Havre, in France, there was much sadness among the villagers. On 26 February 1919, the town's burgomaster wrote to the OC:

  The Australian troops left our locality some days ago and I beg you to accept the liveliest feelings of sympathy for the population which will always keep a good remembrance for the 45th.

  We admire the Australians for their generous patriotism, which voluntarily brought them to our battlefields.

  We love them for all their sufferings, and we send them our deepest gratitude for the active part they took in our deliverance.

  We received and welcomed you according to our small means, we wanted our village to be hospitable agreeable [sic], so that after these anxious years, you might enjoy here a happy and calm life.

  We are proud that we were destined to receive you and you may be sure that these two months during which you were staying here have tightened the bonds of friendship and gratitude which attach us to the brave sons of beautiful Australia.

  To all we wish a happy return in their far away country. Please accept, Colonel, the expression of our kindest feelings.4

  The Australian base at Le Havre had been quickly enlarged and modified to cope with the troops converging there from the battlefi
elds of France and Belgium. Here the men handed in weapons and other equipment, were given medical checks, deloused and provided with clean clothing and underwear. To keep them entertained, a sporting field was laid out, a theatre built and a newspaper published. Men spent their time playing two-up and enjoying the estaminets and local night spots and generally passing the days in a high state of boredom and anticipation. Some who had been away from Australia for nearly four years found this period of waiting wearisome and frustrating.

  The British High Command and General Monash were keen to keep Australian troops moving away from the battlefields towards home, so every effort was made to get men to the large holding bases on the Salisbury Plain, in England, as quickly and efficiently as possible. On 15 April 1919, Private Lynch bade farewell to France. It was a bittersweet occasion as the rain pelted down and the men headed west for England and home, leaving behind in the Somme mud so many 'fine mates who fell whilst we lived through it all', as Nulla says. This same kind of anguish overcame the men pulling out of Gallipoli during the evacuation in December 1915 – the great sadness of leaving the graves of their mates in a foreign land, so far from home. And so Private Lynch and the remaining men of the 45th Battalion AIF crossed the choppy English Channel. Behind them were the war, the memories, the former enemy and ahead were the friendly people of England, safe camps on the Salisbury Plain and, soon, repatriation home.

  NINETEEN

  A Dinner

  to the Troops

  When the war finished, as well as joy and celebration, there was a sense of surprise among the Allies. Only eight months before, the German army had driven them back, Paris had been under threat and the Channel ports in jeopardy. Now, not only had the Germans been stopped, they had surrendered and were in total turmoil. The Allied planners had been focused on the 1919 summer offensive, when suddenly their thoughts had to turn towards how their troops should be utilised until a peace treaty was signed, and then how to get them home. Well before the armistice, in fact as early as January 1917, the AIF had been giving thought to the logistics for bringing troops home, but their efforts to make preparations had been hampered by the government in Australia, which had been slow in its decision-making and was not ready for such a profound turn of events.