by Will Davies
The mammoth task of getting the troops home needed a special person, and who better for the job than General Sir John Monash, the Commander of the Australian Corps. There were three stages that needed to be planned and organised. First, repatriation: the return of the troops to Australia; second, demobilisation: standing the army down from its war footing; and third, rehabilitation: returning the troops to civilian life. On 21 November 1918, Monash was appointed Director General of Repatriation and Demobilisation. His task was enormous: getting nearly 180,000 men, the wounded and convalescing, plus his estimate of 7,000 dependants, back to Australia. Apart from the men in France, Belgium and the United Kingdom, men also had to be returned home from the Middle East, Mesopotamia and Russia. In addition, a significant number of men had married local women and fathered children, so places also needed to be found on ships for these dependants.
A great challenge was finding enough ships to transport these men and their families home. Australia was competing for a limited number of suitable ships with troops from Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, India and a host of small colonies and protectorates. The massive army of the United States was also eager to return home. The Shipping Controller's job was made difficult by the great demand for ships, coupled with the Australian government's high standards, which specified the men should have ample space and good amenities. Given the challenges of procuring enough ships that met requirements, the return of the Australian troops would have to take place in increments. It might be up to a year before the last man was home.
So, how to determine the order in which the men should be sent back? The principle of fairness prevailed and a policy of 'first to come, first to go' was introduced, meaning that those who had served the longest were first in the queue to go home. Two other criteria were also taken into consideration: whether a man had heavy family responsibilities or a job waiting for him.
Monash devised a system of sorting the men into shiploads, or 'quotas', of 1,000, according to their priority for returning to Australia. As ships became available, quotas were assigned to them, in order of priority. But sorting the men into quotas based on their length of duty, and family and work, meant that longstanding battalions were torn apart and returned to Australia piecemeal. The Australian government had sought to bring each division home as one unit so that victory parades could march proudly through the cities and towns of Australia, but Monash was far more practical about who should get a berth on the next ship.
Initially, it was planned that wives and children of Australian soldiers would be sent home first, but it would mean these young English wives would have to wait months, maybe up to a year, in a strange new country until their husbands arrived. It was decided that 'family ships' would be dispatched at intervals to allow soldiers, their wives and children to sail together. By May 1919, dependants were a sizeable logistical problem, as on average 150 Australian soldiers were getting married each week. By the end of the year, 15,386 dependants had been shipped to Australia.
The approximately 40,000 wounded men and convalescents from hospitals across Britain had special transport needs, such as medical services and personnel, which further complicated how the limited number of ships was allocated. Right from the beginning, repatriation was slow. Nearly 20,000 men embarked from Britain during December 1918 and January 1919, but a shipping strike in February saw only 5,400 head home.
We know little of Private Lynch's time in England. His personal file shows that he went from the Australian base depot at Le Havre and arrived in England on 15 April 1919. As Nulla puts it, 'We're over in England thawing out a bit and waiting, ever waiting.' The following month, May 1919, the majority of Australians left France and arrived in England, swelling the population of the camps on the Salisbury Plain to 80,000 men and placing severe pressure on the Shipping Controller to find berths.
During this time, Monash kept a close eye on the men's welfare, ensuring where possible they had sporting events and concerts to keep them occupied. Well understanding the Australians' make-up, he knew that now their primary task – winning the war – had passed, the men needed a fresh purpose, otherwise boredom, desertion and unrest would mount. Monash exhorted the officers to give their men a different focus for their energies, to take them from their 'fighting morale' to a new 'reconstruction morale'.1 What the men needed was a sense of the future; they needed training, education and what we today would perhaps call work experience. Most of all, they must be given a clear and optimistic vision of their place in the nation.
Canada had long before the armistice established an education programme for soldiers and it had inspired General Sir Brudenell White, the AIF Chief of Staff who presided over the Demobilisation and Repatriation Branch for a time. White recruited George Merrick Long, the Anglican Bishop of Bathurst, to run the AIF's education programme. Since May 1918, Long had been reviewing other armies' education schemes, researching the future Australian labour market and talking to troops about what type of training they wanted. Together with an academic staff, he formulated a wide-ranging programme offering the men educational and work experience options in the UK, other parts of Europe and America. There were three main strands of training: professional, for those seeking university degrees and a professional career; technical, for those wishing to learn a trade; and general, for improving basic literacy and numeracy skills. To do this, he needed the co-operation of the British education system, trade unions, leaders of industry and the people of Britain. And such help was not always forthcoming.
In any case, only one in three men took up the offer of education and training. Many had never had a job, had little idea about preparing themselves for one and believed that they should wait until they were home and had a sense of the career options available in Australia before they underwent training. Some spent their time in boredom in the camps, forgoing a splendid opportunity. Perhaps being young and never having had a job except in the army, they had no idea of their future needs, their responsibilities or a possible career path. Certainly there was a deep concern for the future among the troops in England, who universally shared a deep longing for home. They realised how different Australia was, not only from continental Europe but also from the mother country. They had experienced the class system and privilege and felt uncomfortable with them. They had also seen the squalor of life, the pallid faces and the weak and underdeveloped manhood of both English and German troops. They yearned for space, clean air, the scent of eucalypts and the bush chorus, but most of all their families and girlfriends. A poem by P. Vance, published in a troop-ship paper, sums this up:
Oh, London girls are sporty girls, and Cardiff girls are sweet, And the dark eyed girls of Charleroi are dainty and petite, But now I'm on the track for home the only girl for me Is the homespun, all-wool dinkum girl who's waiting on the Quay.
I've had my fun, I must admit, and made the money go, For the sheelahs [sic] know the Aussie hat, from France to Scapa Flow. There was Maisie down at Margate, there was Maggie up at Frome, But I'm forgetting all the lot, now that I'm bound for home.2
They sat around in corrugated-iron camps and dreamt of home. Australia took on a new lustre and for some it became a nearly mystical place where everything was perfect and fair dinkum. Though the vast majority of the men came from the cities, they saw Australia and themselves as rural and the bush as somehow their home. This was reflected in the academic courses the men chose. Of those who did take up the offer of education and training, a great number attended agricultural courses such as animal husbandry, farm management and wool classing. Many of them found practical experience on British farms, particularly sheep farms.
For the authorities, keeping the men occupied and out of trouble was a major focus of their attention. Apart from the official distractions of education, sport and concerts, the men found time for letter writing, diary entries and painting. Men listed in a quota for embarkation were granted 14 days' leave. Those who still had close family connections in the UK journeyed to all co
rners of the island to see them. Some went to London to visit the Tower, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Hampton Court and of course the West End. Some went to London and simply spent their savings and, when the money had run out, took the train back to their base camp on the Salisbury Plain.
Friendships began with English girls, many resulting in marriage, but many a heart was broken by an Australian Digger. Others found comfort in the ladies of the night, increasing the incidence of venereal diseases in the AIF, with many returning to Australia to spread their infections. Venereal disease was a problem in all armies but, according to Bean, the incidence in the Australian army was among the highest. Perhaps the disparity was due to the fact that the English and French soldiers weren't so far from their wives and lovers, while the Australians, better paid and further from home, might be more likely to visit prostitutes. Whatever the reason, all measures to curb STD cases failed, including designating the disease a 'crime' and noting it in a soldier's pay book.
Most of all, the men played their favourite game, two-up. It had become popular with Australian troops during the Boer War and had been revived in the earliest days of the AIF, at the beginning of the First World War. In the Australian War Memorial's collection there are many photographs and even early black-and-white movie film of men playing two-up. One photo of a game in progress, taken at Brown's Dip, Gallipoli, is especially poignant, for many of the men playing were dead minutes after the photograph was taken, when they were hit by a shell. Though technically illegal, the game was accepted by the officers, who turned a blind eye to it, much as they had to the men drinking while in the back areas, as it was seen as a harmless distraction and something to occupy them during their idle hours.
Even so, there were certain times when officers wanted their men to at least make a pretense of decorum. In Somme Mud, Nulla tells us:
Our little crowd is mooching about the huts trying to fill in time somehow. A game of two-up is in progress and Longun and I are winning well. An officer drifts along to the game and Dark, very friendly like, asks him, 'Goin' to have a spin, Sir?'
'No, you fellows want to take a bit of a pull. Playing two-up here today! Surely you know it's Sunday. Get round behind the huts if you must play.'
'What day is it behind the huts, Sir?' Dark asks, but the officer buzzes off so we get into an empty hut, fix a blanket on the floor and finish the game. [p. 328]
While in the Salisbury camps, the Australians were inoculated against the virulent and deadly Spanish influenza. Scientists were divided on the exact cause of Spanish influenza and the virus responsible for it would not be isolated until 1934, but men were inoculated against a more common strain of influenza plus bacteria that caused secondary infections such as pneumonia, which was often responsible for the rapid deaths of Spanish flu patients. During some periods of the repatriation process, hammocks were spaced further apart on the ships to prevent the spread of the illness. The fear was that shiploads of returning soldiers would be struck down on the nine-week voyage home and spread the disease far and wide upon their return. If even one case of influenza was detected on board, all the men were quarantined on their arrival in Australia, which must have been agony to the men, so tantalisingly close to their loved ones and homes. The pandemic had already hit Australia by then, but according to Bean, it was 'said that by delaying the epidemic the quarantine probably saved Australia a heavy toll of life'.3 Spanish influenza took approximately 12,000 Australian lives and by the time the disease had petered out in 1919, globally it had caused more fatalities than the Great War.
In the chapter 'A Dinner to the Troops', Nulla and his mates find themselves being inoculated. By this point in the war they have undergone so many inoculations they don't know what this one is for and don't care all that much, but it was probably for influenza. Longun casually asks of the medical orderly administering the shots:
'What's this inoculation for, Dig?'
The orderly gets a burst of wit and tells Longun, 'To guard against the prevailing epidemic of catching Pommy Brides.' We grin at Longun and wait. Longun gazes long and unlovingly in that orderly's face and screws his long neck to get a side view, too, and in a friendly sort of tone tells the orderly, 'You should be thankful that your face has saved you the necessity of being inoculated.' [p. 322]
On Anzac Day 1919, Nulla and his mates are dinner guests of the mayor of a town probably somewhere close to the 4th Division base camp at Codford, near Salisbury. It's unclear whether this dinner actually took place, but we do know that large dinners for Australian troops awaiting repatriation were common in the area around the bases. Nulla's attitude to this, the fourth Anzac Day, is an intriguing one. 'We're told, "Today's Anzac Day, don't you know?" We didn't know, or care much either.' [p. 323] The previous year, on the third Anzac Day, across the AIF there was much celebration. For the 45th Battalion a sports day had been planned as a celebration, cancelled only because of the German attack around Villers-Bretonneux and the Somme. Perhaps the difference now is that Nulla and his mates don't find much to celebrate about war.
With hostilities at an end, the opportunity arises for the men to look back on the conflict and their good fortune in living through it – and it is perhaps inevitable that thoughts turn to religious faith. Throughout Somme Mud, Lynch explores the place of religion in war, showing Nulla's attitude to be that the padres are not particularly relevant to the real concerns of fighting men. The characters' discussions become quite spirited when it comes to the hypocrisy of ministers of religion – but they never broach the topic of their own personal faiths. This is interesting given that Edward Lynch was a very religious man, came from a strong Roman Catholic family and attended mass regularly until his death. He even told his children that his rosary beads saved his life during the First World War, though we do not know how.
In 'A Dinner to the Troops', Lynch returns to the theme, having Nulla weigh the roles of God's grace and sheer luck in the survival of him and his mates, when so many others fell.
We've seen our fair share of the war ... and come out alive, thanks to God's goodness and our own good luck.
We give our luck some credit and suppose there's something in what writers call the 'luck of life'. We joke and speak of our luck and attribute much of the daily good or evil to the fact that our luck was in, or out.
We don't openly speak of being preserved by the Grace of God, for somehow in the A.I.F. it doesn't seem the thing to dwell too much upon religious convictions. It isn't done, not openly at any rate. With luck it's far different. We can wax free about luck, shower it with praise, blame it for our own short-sighted madness or make it responsible for any bravery. When a man's modesty forbids him accepting the praise his actions have so well merited, he passes it off to his luck. Or, if he has been so careless over little things as to throw his hat down in Piccadilly Circus and defy six big military policemen to touch it, and gets landed in Warwick Square gaol for being drunk, disorderly and A.W.L., he's not to blame in the least ... his luck was out, that's all. But religion, or luck, or both, we're going home to our own kith and kin. [p. 321]
It would be another month, however, before Private Lynch and his mates of the 45th would begin their long journey home, a journey that for many was a mixture of excitement and anticipation, but also a time where old friendships and the bonds of the battalion would be broken forever. For them all, the time had come to return to Australia.
TWENTY
Till the
Boys Come
Home
On 3 June 1919, Private Lynch embarked from Devonport, Plymouth, on HMT Beltana as part of Quota 30. Like all the Australian troops prior to embarkation, he had taken 14 days' leave. He no doubt enjoyed, as did Nulla, 'various towns in the UK' and 'great times in London'. Then, after months of waiting, his quota took the train from Salisbury southwest to Exeter, and on to Plymouth. Along the way they were cheered and farewelled, and given tea, scones and souvenir cards by the pretty girls sent to meet them.
As the chugging, belching steamer went out past Drake's Island, down Cawsand Bay and on past Penlee Point, Lynch was leaving behind his fallen Australian mates and the post-war turmoil of Europe – a turmoil that even he had played a small role in. In the years to come, the fallout from the First World War would bring another terrible war, but that was in the future. For the moment, there was a new life and new hope, far across the endless horizon.
In a coda to the story running through Somme Mud of how war changes and matures Nulla and his mates, their ship docks at Cape Town, one of the places where they got drunk and disorderly on their journey to the war. How different they are now. They are no longer boys naively heading off on a great adventure; they are grown men who have experienced the absolute worst and the best of humanity and who have seen things they could barely have imagined previously.
We enjoyed Cape Town, but in a calmer, maturer manner than when we bubbled over on our wild day there three years ago on our way to the war ... Perhaps the thought that we're so near home ... has blunted the edge off our wildness ... Perhaps ... the slackening of the usual discipline has given us the opportunity for indulging our wildness, and what's the use of mucking up when it's not against authority? Or perhaps we've just got more sense, or is it that the past three years have quietened us down more than we realise? [pp. 331–332]
Following the armistice, the maelstrom of political change and social turmoil descended on Europe. Though the figures vary widely, an estimated eight million military personnel were killed; five million from Britain's allies and three million from Germany and her allies, plus an estimated 12 million civilians. Great tracts of France and Belgium were laid waste as were other countries where fighting had been waged. Industry and infrastructure were damaged, stockpiles of food were gone and crucial minerals and fuel sources depleted. Just beginning to approach the repair and restoration of whole countries, their infrastructure and society was beyond belief. And the human, physical and emotional damage of this war would take long into the future to repair and to heal; a residual pain remains even to this day.