After the Final Whistle

by Stephen Cooper

  How Swannell’s abrasive style went down with the Reverend Mullineux is not recorded; the scrum half had toured South Africa in 1896, so was presumably hardened in Christian tolerance. The churchman was both humble – dropping himself from the Test team after playing badly – and obtuse, preaching an after-dinner sermon to the losing Australians after the third Test in Sydney on the poor quality of their play. Serving as a wartime chaplain in the Boer and Great Wars, he would win the MC in 1918, taking command of an aid post (after the medical officer was wounded) under twelve hours of shellfire. He would later found a charity to fund war-grave visits and led pilgrimages to Gallipoli in the 1920s.

  Back in Britain, Swannell also enlisted, serving in South Africa where he was commissioned in the field as a lieutenant with the 35th Imperial Yeomanry. If his own claims are to be believed he also fought alongside insurrectionists in Uruguay, hunted seal in Chile and Labrador and played rugby in France, Germany, South Africa, India and both North and South America, even representing Wales (probably New South) and Argentina, by one newspaper claim.

  To that list can be added with certainty Australia and New Zealand. His second British tour in 1904 saw him play all fifteen games, including three more Tests against Australia (with his first and only international try scored at Sydney) and one against the neighbours across the Tasman Sea (his first defeat). Swannell stayed on in Australia, as did skipper Bedell-Sivright and doctor Sidney Crowther. In an era before air travel, rugby adventurers often used a paid tour passage to build new lives: Irishmen Tommy Crean and Robert Johnston stayed in South Africa after the 1896 tour. Both won VCs four years later in the Boer War on the British side; but they did not wear new colours, as Swannell did in his adoptive land. In 1905 he played for the country he had already defeated six times, and ironically lost in his only game – against New Zealand on Australia’s first overseas tour. For all his travels he never played a Test on home soil.

  At just over 12 stone and 5ft 10in he was no giant by modern standards, but made up for it with his aggressive play. Moran’s memories of his youthful game against Swannell at Sydney’s Cricket Ground show grudging admiration for a hard but complex man:

  My back was black and blue from his attentions. He looked across at me, a much younger player, to see how I had taken it all. ‘Are you satisfied?’ ‘Perfectly,’ I replied. After which he invited me to have a glass of beer with him, a signal honour, for he was not given to treating. In life as on the football field, Swannell gave no quarter and asked for none. We, less mature men stood somewhat in awe of him.

  For Moran, who served at Gallipoli and in Mesopotamia as an RAMC surgeon, there is mixed fascination and repulsion. His praise is the more generous when we consider his open disapproval and low rating of Swannell as a player, considering him,

  a bad influence in Sydney football and also incidentally a greatly overestimated player. His conception of rugby was one of trained violence. He kept himself in perfect condition; this alone enabled him to conceal his slowness on the field. In appearance he was extremely ugly but, like Wilkes in the eighteenth century, he could talk away his face in half an hour. He was popular with the fair sex; men, generally, disliked him.9

  Aware of his reputation, New Zealand man-marked him with a ‘vigorous Maoriland scrummer’ known as ‘Angry’:

  At the conclusion of the game in which no quarter was given or asked for, the Welshman [sic] who could hardly see out of a pair of lovely black eyes walked off the field with his shadow and ventured the remark that the match had been ‘a bit rough’. ‘Rough?’ retorted ‘Angry’, who had not come out of the fray unscathed; ‘that’s nothing. You should see a North v South Island match.’10

  The combative Swannell liked to have the last word, as ‘FullBack’ reported in the Otago Witness,11 claiming he was ‘quiet as a lamb until his opponents began to deal it out to him, and then skin and hair fly’:

  In New Zealand where the forwards with the large feet come from, he made them cry a go first, although they started the rib-kicking tactics. He left the Dominion with black eyes extending down to his neck, with his mouth torn at the corners, and minus many molars, but he still had the smile that could not be kicked off, and he expressed the hope in a sucking-dove-like voice that when he returned they would have learned to play a good hard game – that he never could stand the parlour game anyhow. I have a photograph of his boots and judging by the boots, there were safer places in the field than in front of a pack of Swannells.

  Moran’s comment on that game was that ‘he got there what he had often given elsewhere. There was no preciosity in his workmanship. He was a hard virile unsympathetic type, but a man.’

  Private Harry Cavill, in his D Company (always D as we shall again see) at Gallipoli, later wrote in open admiration of his officer:

  Never shall I forget the look on his face when we first got within striking distance of the enemy. ‘Fix bayonets! Charge!’ rang out his order. There was a flash of steel, a wild hurrah, and the boys dashed straight at the wall of fire, heedless of the frightful slaughter. They were not to be stopped. It was in this charge that Major Swannell was killed. He had seized a rifle, and with dauntless courage was leading his men, when a Turkish bullet, penetrating his forehead, ended his career, thus depriving the First Brigade of one of its finest officers.12

  Lieutenant Colonel Kindon revealed another facet of his ‘rough diamond’ major, promoted on New Year’s Day, whose ‘personality impressed itself on all who came in contact with him’:

  He was a fatalist and firmly believed he would not come through. When, after the landing, we dumped our packs before pushing up to the heights, he said to me: ‘There’s a bottle of whisky in my pack. I leave it to you. I shan’t come through today.’ Opposite Baby 700 a few hours later he took it through the forehead whilst looking up trying to locate the enemy. I never got the whisky.

  Moran’s final verdict, still shot through with the awe of the younger man, but delivered on behalf of the country they both represented – and loved – is in effect ‘Well played, Aussie’:

  It was always said of a Roman emperor that he should die on his feet. Swannell, no doubt, thought a footballer should perish following on. His hard-visaged comrades said he died with the ruling passion strong upon him; still putting in the boot. Through sacrifice, he passed to transfiguration. The hard porcelain of his spirit had richer glaze than we had previously perceived; it was love of country. For me who knew him well, this is his epitaph: he never hung out of a ruck.13

  Another rugby man killed that day was Ted Larkin, a former policeman who played hooker versus New Zealand in 1903. He had crossed the rugby divide to become NSW Rugby League’s first full-time secretary after the 1908 breakaway from Union and his hard work saved the new code after a rocky start. He was also MP for Willoughby, declaring in Parliament in August 1914: ‘I cannot engage in the work of recruiting and urge others to enlist unless I do so myself.’ He joined the same 1st Battalion, AIF, as Swannell; in Egypt, Sergeant Larkin organised rugby in the shadow of the pyramids. At Anzac, the battalion landed at dawn and fought to take the dominating height of Baby 700 above the cove. The Turks counter-attacked to drive them from the high ground; Ted Larkin died in a hail of machine-gun rounds. Harry Cavill again remembered:

  Wounded and dying he lay, yet when the stretcher-bearers came to carry him in, he waved them on, saying ‘There’s plenty worse than me out there.’ Later they found him dead.

  Larkin’s older brother Martin, aged 37, also lost his life that day. Though their bodies were recovered in a 24 May burial truce, their names are recorded on the Lone Pine Memorial commemorating 4,934 Australian and New Zealand troops killed in the sector who now have no known grave. Ted was one of only two serving members of an Australian parliament to fall, both at Gallipoli, the other being the Member for Armidale, Colonel G.F. Braund, who played for NSW against the British tourists in 1888.

  Private Clarrie ‘Doss’ Wallach, Eastern Suburbs forward and five time
s a Wallaby, landed at Anzac Cove in August. He wrote a letter to The Referee about his time in ‘Hellopolis’ and the fortunes of his rugger comrades:

  We have been in pretty solid work but expect the real stuff next week. All the rugby union men are well here, from the Major down to the privates. Twit Tasker told me how Harold George died a death of deaths – a hero’s – never beaten until the final whistle.14

  The Major was James MacManamey, NSW Rugby Union President, who played in the first interstate game against Queensland; he died a few weeks after Wallach’s letter was written. He was 57 and had served in the Sudan in 1885. ‘Major McManamey stated that if it was right for sons to go to the front it was also right for those fathers who had had military training to go also to be of what service they could in protecting those sons.’15

  Private Harold George was a clubmate and fellow internationalist with eight caps, of whom The Arrow wrote: ‘It is hard to imagine anyone playing a harder, tougher game than he did. Perhaps never super-brilliant, he always played himself out to the last ounce, and was an awfully hard man to beat for the ball in the front rank of a scrum.’ He had also been one of the ‘first-dayers’ on 25 April with the 13th (NSW) Battalion, as they tried to consolidate the beach-head. He was wounded at Pope’s Post and died of his wounds on a hospital ship on 10 May, from which he was buried at sea. Tom Richards wrote that George,

  … got the axe for a very brave action … he was one of five to go at midday and locate a machine gun and Turkish trenches. The sergeant got a rough time and was finally shot. Harold after a while found the corner too hot and taking the sergeant’s body he made it back under heavy fire to the trenches. When he was preparing to get into the trench himself a bullet passed through his body low down.16

  He is commemorated with the Larkin brothers at Lone Pine.

  Another Wallaby in the unlucky 13th Battalion was back-rower Fred Thompson, whose death is mentioned in the same letter. Thompson sailed from Sydney on HMAT Seang Choon, the same transport ship as George and Tasker, on which a rugby ball was reportedly thrown about on the crowded decks. Thompson has the rare Gallipoli privilege of a named grave in Shrapnel Valley.

  He was shot through the head, and dropped in the trench. To someone who wanted to move him, he remarked that he “hadn’t far to go”, and died very soon afterwards. To everyone who knew them, Harold and Fred have always been known as men, good sports who ‘played the game’ good and hard, and never shirked. By their noble and gallant conduct when they doffed the jersey and donned the King’s khaki they have proved their manhood, and shown the world that the Australian Rugby Union player is a man right through.17

  All three Eastern Suburbs men had played for Metropolitan Sydney against the All Blacks on 5 August, the day that Australian newspaper placards and the Sports Ground scoreboard screamed ‘WAR DECLARED’. Nine of those Wallabies enlisted during the war, four were killed in action.

  The League code also suffered losses at Gallipoli. Rugby League kept its main competitions going in wartime, and claims have been made that 75 per cent of unmarried League players did not enlist.18 But many did heed the call of NSW Premier W.A. Holman in July 1915: ‘Your comrades at Gallipoli are calling you. This is not the time for football and tennis matches … it is serious. Show that you realise this by enlisting at once!’ Ten of the 1914 Newcastle RL team served, including star player and captain Stan Carpenter; he was joined by Horace Brown, district secretary. Like Ted Larkin, both enlisted within ten days of war being declared; both fought at Gallipoli, with Carpenter reputed to be the first member of the AIF to be recommended for a VC. He received the Distinguished Service Medal (DSM) instead. George Duffin, 18th Battalion, a League Kangaroo against the Kiwis in 1909, was killed at Hill 60 in August 1915. Charles Savoury, one of several New Zealanders who toured with the second Kangaroos to Britain in 1911, landed with the Auckland Infantry on 25 April and was killed on 8 May.

  By the end of the campaign, five Wallabies and various Kangaroos would not leave the peninsula. For the fallen Scots, Kiwis, English, Welsh, Irish and French whose bodies or unidentified remains lie in Turkish soil, there’s a cracking ghostly Sevens tournament to be played on a moonless night. If they can find a patch of ground level enough.

  The Australians moved to France where the Western Front saw a veritable rugby reunion, as Tom Richards testified. A ball of some description was always a big factor in the life of the AIF in the field, and the pursuit of sport knew few bounds. ‘There was always a game of some sort as close up to the front line as was permissible and sometimes closer,’ wrote Lieutenant Goddard in laconic style:

  The ball that had the biggest vogue was that of the .303 Mark VII SAA [Small Arms Ammunition] but the ‘game’ played with that particular variety was not always the most enjoyable. In fact the number of players who were hurt made it the most unpopular of all. Men came and men went, but King Sport reigned during the whole of the time.19

  George Pugh, who won his single cap for Australia against the USA in 1912, wrote in March 1916: ‘Have met lots of old friends, including Rugger men. It puts you in mind of a football tour, as they all seem to be here. No omissions by the selectors on this trip.’20 Pugh was killed by mortar shrapnel on 5 September 1916 near another infamous Hill 60 in the Ypres Salient and is buried at Railway Dugouts Cemetery. It was then an Advanced Dressing Station at Transport Farm, where the 1896 British lock Alec Todd, fatally wounded in the throat, smoked his last cigarette in April 1915.

  Clarrie Wallach, who ‘went right through Gallipoli without a scratch’, fought on the Somme at Pozières, was commissioned captain and awarded the MC. In 1918, during the bitter resistance against the German Spring Offensive, his luck ran out near Villers-Bretonneux. On a cold and rainy 7 April, an attack on Hangard Wood was to go in at 0455 supported by a barrage. Something misfired and no barrage fell in front; Wallach nonetheless led his company across 400 yards of open ground. German machine gunners in the wood, untroubled by shelling, opened up; one man in four was hit and Wallach fell with wounds to both knees. Lieutenant Percy Storkey took command and pushed into the undergrowth with eleven men; they took an enemy position by surprise, killing and wounding about thirty, and capturing three officers, fifty men, and one machine gun. Storkey received the Victoria Cross; Wallach had both legs amputated in a desperate attempt to save his life, which ended on 22 April. The five rugby-playing Wallach brothers make a terrible casualty count in one family: two were killed (Neville a month after Clarrie), Arthur was wounded, Henry shell-shocked and Rupert taken prisoner.

  William ‘Twit’ Tasker, who told Wallach of the deaths of George and Thompson at Gallipoli, was a fly half, ‘powerful and fast with one of the finest swerves in the game’. He and Pugh had toured North America with the woeful 1912 Wallabies: they lost all but the single Test against the USA, a performance ascribed to serious partying in college fraternity houses and a lack of disciplined tour management. The indiscipline spread to the pitch with Tasker the first Wallaby to be sent off in a Test. Having landed at Anzac Cove, Tasker was severely wounded by a shell fragment at Quinn’s Post. Manly’s H.A. Mitchell wrote home that: ‘A bomb loaded up Tasker’s ankle and leg with about seventeen pieces of shot. It will be some time before he can do any of that sidestepping he used to do.’

  So severe were his wounds that he was evacuated to Melbourne and discharged from the army in December 1915. A newspaper review revealed his survivor-guilt after the deaths of George and Thompson:

  Somehow it does not seem right, that we three should go away together, and these two not come back, while I am here alive to-day. Perhaps I should have been where they are, and if it comes to my lot to go back I would like to go out leaving something accomplished behind me comparable with what they did.21

  Intent on getting back to the fray, Tasker repeatedly tried to rejoin. While the infantry refused him, the artillery relented: he went to France in September 1916 with a howitzer battery. He was wounded twice more and gassed, before dying of fu
rther shrapnel wounds four months after Wallach, at Amiens. This decisive victory of ‘all-arms’ warfare in 1918, combining infantry, artillery, tanks and aerial support was brilliantly led by Australian General John Monash, who had been at Gallipoli. For the German Army, their ‘Black Day’ of 8 August was the beginning of the end; for Tasker, the 9th was simply the end. He is buried at Villers-Bretonneux, another destination for Australian pilgrims in these centenary years.

  Herbert Moran, writing defiantly thirty years later in his memory of the jeers and catcalls of the 1908 Wallaby tour, said with pride of Australia’s contribution:

  At Loos, in a hard match, an Irish battalion dribbled the ball towards the enemy lines. My people too joined in that rush, forming up again and again in their drive towards the goal. There was then no prig who dared to shout out from a self-righteous crowd: ‘Play the game, Australia!’22

  Of some 332,000 Australians who served in the Great War, 212,000 were casualties including 60,000 dead, the highest casualty rate of all the Allied combatants at 64 per cent. The fallen are remembered on ANZAC Day, and all who served are named on their war memorials. Australian fighting men were always willing volunteers (in Tasker’s case, a bloody-minded and determined one) as conscription, introduced in 1916 in both Britain and New Zealand, was twice defeated by referendum. An estimated 5,000 rugby players from both codes went on active service between 1914 and 1918, representing well over 90 per cent of senior players in New South Wales and Queensland.

  Some thirty-five Union Wallabies served in the armed forces, and ten died. It is for someone else other than a Union pommie to tell League’s war story; it was controversial at the time and still sparks periodic outbursts. But Rugby Union in Australia would struggle on a hard road from war, before it found its feet and ran with the ball again.