Our Darkest Day

by Patrick Lindsay

  Haking’s message to McCay for distribution to the 5th Division after the battle is breathtaking in its arrogance, self-delusion and callousness:

  I should be glad if you would convey to all ranks of the Division under your command my deep appreciation of the gallant and successful manner in which they carried the attack on the enemy’s lines yesterday afternoon.

  Officers and men displayed a fine spirit throughout the attack and drove back the enemy with true British vigour. The Commanders and Staff Officers also worked with untiring energy and great skill in a difficult attack, and I am proud to have such a fine division as yours under my command on such an important occasion.

  Although the division was unable to hold the position gained for a long time, the attack must have made a great impression on the enemy and fulfilled its main purpose which was to assist our Comrades who are fighting in the South and prevent the enemy from moving reserves away from our front in that direction. I wish you all a still more complete victory in your next attack and I hope that I shall be somewhere near it when it takes place.

  The following day, Haig added his congratulations:

  Please convey to the troops engaged last night my appreciation of their gallant effort and of the careful and thorough preparations made for it. I wish them to realise that their enterprise has not been by any means in vain and that the gallantry with which they carried out the attack is fully recognised.

  Haking then devoted his energies to finding excuses for the disaster. While Bean attributed it (diplomatically) to ‘loose thinking and somewhat reckless decision on the part of the higher staff’, Haking, of course, had other ideas. Taking any responsibility for his mistakes was out of the question so he focussed his main blame on what he called the ‘newness of the infantry’. In his official report on the attack, he started with some outright lies:

  The artillery preparation was adequate. There were sufficient guns and sufficient ammunition. The wire was properly cut, and the assaulting battalions had a clear run into the enemy’s trenches.

  Then he pointed the finger at the poor men he sent to their deaths, firstly the Australians whom he damned with faint praise:

  The Australian infantry attacked in the most gallant manner and gained the enemy’s position, but they were not sufficiently trained to consolidate the ground gained. They were eventually compelled to withdraw and lost heavily in doing so.

  After which he turned on his own men:

  The 61st Division were not sufficiently imbued with the offensive spirit to go in like one man at the appointed time. Some parts of the attack were late in deploying …

  With two trained divisions the position would have been a gift after the artillery bombardment …

  But perhaps Haking’s most outrageous statement came next:

  I think the attack, although it failed, has done both divisions a great deal of good, and I am quite sure as a result of the attack that the Germans are not likely to move troops away from the front for some time.

  As with most of his assessments, Haking was wrong in his view that the Germans would be deterred from moving any forces away from the Fromelles area. The Germans had discovered a copy of Haking’s battle orders on one of the captured Australian officers. The limited objectives set out in those orders confirmed what the Germans already believed: that the attack was a feint and the Allies had no intention of renewing it. They therefore released the reserves that they had held near Lille and sent them south to fight on the Somme.

  As to the absurd notion that the divisions would benefit from the disaster, Pompey Elliott wrote a few days after the battle:

  one of the best of my commanding officers was killed and practically all my best officers, the Anzac men who helped to build up my Brigade, are dead. I presume there was some plan at the back of the attack but it is difficult to know what it was. I can only say – it was an Order. I trust those who gave the order may be made to realise their responsibility.

  After the brief and often inaccurate reports which appeared in the Australian press in the days after the battle, Fromelles quietly disappeared from the Australian consciousness, swamped by the massive losses suffered by the 1st, 2nd and 4th Australian Divisions in the Battle of Pozières on the Somme, which began four days later. The three Australian Divisions there lost a total of 16,780 killed, wounded, captured or missing in two weeks of vicious fighting before they captured their objective, the village of Pozières. The intensity of the fighting was underlined by the four Victoria Crosses won by Diggers. Bean later wrote that Pozières Ridge was ‘more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth’.

  The Melbourne newspaper, the Argus, revisited the Fromelles story in April 1920. In an article headed ‘Fromelles 1916! – A Glorious Failure – What Really Happened’, it hinted at the cover-up:

  for a long time the secrecy of war kept a veil drawn over the details of this sad page in the history of the Australian Imperial Force.

  Overall, the story added little new information and made some incorrect claims – for example, that some men from the 60th Battalion had broken through the German lines. After its publication, the Battle of Fromelles once again disappeared from public view, aside from the occasional mention in memoirs or privately published pamphlets and, as we have seen earlier, Pompey Elliott’s speeches in 1929 and 1930.

  Pompey Elliott caused a stir in Australia and in Britain in 1929 and 1930 when he gave a series of lectures about the Battle of Fromelles (which he still called Fleurbaix). Elliott vehemently criticised the British General Richard Haking’s plan, calling it a ‘wretched, hybrid scheme, which might well be termed a tactical abortion’.

  Perhaps the most disgraceful act of cover-up came from the commander of II Anzac Corps, the British General Sir Alexander Godley. He wrote his autobiography after the war, yet could find neither the time nor the space for a single line about Fromelles. Godley lost 5533 men under his command in that battle but somehow managed to ignore the event completely. Similarly, the commander of I Anzac Corps, another British General, Sir William Birdwood, published a post-war autobiography without a single reference to Fromelles.

  Sydney historian Neville Kidd believes the cover-up has continued to the present because the Battle of Fromelles does not appear on our major war memorials. This is a consequence of decisions taken in the 1920s, before most of our major shrines were constructed during the following decade.

  Kidd points out that the original decision was taken by the Battles Nomenclature Committee, a British body with an Australian representative, established by the Army Council to King George V in 1922. The Committee classified Fromelles as a ‘subsidiary attack’ under the heading ‘The Battles of the Somme 1916 (1st July – 18th November)’. Kidd adds:

  The evidence before the Nomenclature Committee, sitting so soon after the cessation of hostilities, would almost certainly be received from or based upon information sourced from the British High Command or its bureaucracy. Members of the High Command or their delegates probably sat on the Committee. It is certain in relation to Fromelles that the High Command attitude, the mis-description ‘raids’ and The Somme connection, would have all come to their notice and been appropriately persuasive.

  Kidd also notes that even Pompey Elliott, when he delivered his stinging attacks in 1929 and 1930, titled his speeches ‘The Battle of Fleurbaix’:

  Obviously Elliott even then, felt bound by honour as an Officer and Gentleman, to continue the charade of wartime secrecy.

  Neville Kidd has been waging a campaign in Sydney to try to persuade the trustees of the war memorial to honour the sacrifices of the men of Fromelles by including the name among the battles commemorated on the memorial. His efforts have so far been fruitless. The reasons most commonly given by the trustees in the various state war memorials are: that the original memorial was handed to the current trustees in its present form and, as such, has heritage value that would be compromised by change; Fromelles is correctly classified a
s an ‘action’ not a ‘battle’; in any event, it is sufficiently honoured under the name ‘The Somme’; and that recognition of Fromelles would set a precedent leading to a rush of other claims.

  Kidd responds that the ‘set in stone’ argument would condemn the trustees to perpetuating any and all errors they have inherited – surely no legitimate argument if a mistake can be properly demonstrated. He claims that the original decision not to include Fromelles as a battle was tainted by the cover-up then still in existence in official circles.

  As to the claims that Fromelles was an ‘action’, not a ‘battle’, Kidd points out that Australia’s official World War I history, written by Charles Bean, features two chapters, both titled ‘The Battle of Fromelles’. He contends that if the heroic Battle of Long Tan in the Vietnam War is classified as a battle, surely so should Fromelles. (At Long Tan one Australian company of about 100 Diggers heroically held off around 2000 Vietnamese troops, losing 18 killed while inflicting around 800 casualties on their enemy.)

  Kidd dismisses the claim that Fromelles should be included under the Somme battle honour:

  The Somme was about 80 km to the south and had been raging for three weeks when the Diggers attacked at Fromelles. If you take that approach, why wasn’t Lone Pine subsumed under the name of Gallipoli in the memorials instead of being rightly accorded its own battle honour?

  For Neville Kidd, the men of Fromelles are being treated in disgraceful fashion, similar to the way we initially treated Vietnam veterans, many of whom were refused membership of RSLs because the conflict was considered to be ‘a police action’ rather than a ‘real war’:

  My hope is that the discovery of the missing of Fromelles will prompt the authorities to reconsider the battle’s position on our memorials. It’s time to stop the cover-up and honour the Diggers of Fromelles as we have honoured their comrades from other battles down the years.

  Memorials in their essence play on the emotions of those who visit them and indeed worship at them. Memorials do nothing for the dead and wounded or the survivors except to honour them. They should not dishonour them by contrived classification and exclusion.

  13

  WE ARE THE DEAD

  We are the dead. Short days ago

  We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

  Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

  In Flanders fields.

  JOHN MCCRAE, ‘IN FLANDERS FIELDS’, 1915

  Jack Bowden and Wally Vaile had been best mates since they were at primary school. After school they joined the State Savings Bank of Victoria together. They joined up together and they hopped the bags shoulder to shoulder at Fromelles and charged into the hail of steel together. Jack was killed outright and Wally was hit in both ankles and badly wounded in his arm. Wally made it back to the Australian lines but he was so badly wounded that he only made it as far as Calais before he succumbed from shock and the massive loss of blood. All he was worried about when they were caring for him was his mate Jack. He wanted Jack’s body recovered.

  Lifelong mates Jack Bowden and Wally Vaile with Harry Johnston, all of the 59th Battalion. Jack was killed in action at Fromelles and Wally badly wounded. Even as he succumbed to his wounds in Calais, Wally’s only concern was that his comrades try to recover Jack’s body. (JENNY INGHAM PHOTO)

  Remarkably, Jack and Wally’s company commander in B Company 59th Battalion was another pre-war manager from the State Savings Bank of Victoria, Captain Keith McDonald. He was wounded in the Fromelles attack and wrote to Wally’s sister while he was recuperating at the 3rd General Hospital at Wandsworth, London, on 28 August 1916:

  I regret to inform you that (Wally) died of wounds at Calais. I was given this information by Lieutenant Haddon who was in the same hospital as Mr Vaile. Mr Bowden has been recorded as Missing, but Lt Donohoe, who was wounded a couple of days after the charges is now in this hospital, and told me that Mr Bowden was killed in the charge. A man is not officially reported killed unless there is very definite and reliable evidence forthcoming.

  Both Mr Vaile and Mr Bowden were officers of my company and they were regarded as two of the ‘solidest’ officers in the battalion. There were times when changes were being made between companies when I had to fight hard to retain them, as every company commander coveted them.

  McDonald explained that his company had formed the first and second waves of the charge and that Jack went over with the first and that he and Wally went with the second wave:

  We had about 500 yards to cover over rough country, barbed wire, ditches and the River Laies to cross. Our men were magnificent – they charged in a hail of shrapnel and machine-gun fire and kept going until they were practically wiped out.

  I didn’t see a great deal unfortunately – I got one in the right arm before we left our trench, but it wasn’t too bad, but I got it solid when about 200 yards out through the left shoulder and out of the back. This dropped me like a log. I’m the only officer of the company left – Lieutenants Morrow and Carr killed, Lieutenants Bowden and Howard missing.

  Mr Vaile was constantly enquiring for Mr Bowden before he died. The two were like brothers. Mr Bowden was out until 2 am the night before the charge and went all along our front to see if there was sufficient wire cut for us to get through. Thanks to Bowden the preparation in this respect was excellent – we had no trouble in getting through the wire at all.

  Bowden and Vaile are men for whom no praise is too great – their men loved them and would have followed them anywhere. I don’t think they could have been up against more fearful odds than they were on the 19th, yet they went out to it as one man. I was right through the Gallipoli show yet this was the severest action I’ve yet been in.

  Jack Bowden had almost reached the German wire when he was killed. They never found his body. Perhaps it is fitting that, more than 90 years later, this gallant soldier may well play a key role in unravelling the mystery of the missing Diggers of Fromelles.

  After the battle, Bowden was one of 1750 Australians posted as ‘missing’ – without question the worst classification for their families. The doubts and the fears and the hopes build in the families at home as the days turn into months and then drag on into years without any definite information about their loved ones’ fates.

  Around the end of August and through to the beginning of September, the lists of those taken prisoner became available and were passed on to their families. For those whose loved ones were not on these lists the long wait then began. They would hold on to any shred of hope: perhaps they are lying wounded but unrecognised in a hospital; maybe there was some confusion with the records and he’s been shipped back to hospital in England. Their hopes were often sadly prolonged by letters from well-meaning mates who were convinced they saw them in base camps, or recovering in hospital in London.

  Where they had specific knowledge of a man’s fate, officers would write to his family and tell them of his last moments and the way he met his death. They usually broke the news as gently as they could and left out the ghastly details. At least these families had some definite knowledge that their man had died and they could begin their grieving.

  But, for many, the letters never came. To compound the situation, some wives, in reality already widows, had their pensions suspended or delayed because the bureaucracy could not prove that the soldier had not gone absent without leave.

  Given the chaos, the death and destruction at the front and the limited means of communication of the day, it is understandable that the fate of so many individuals remains unknown. In fact, it is remarkable that out of that cauldron so many records have survived.

  It is a testament to the skill and the determination of the humble clerks and record-keepers who beavered away under constant stress that we have the material through which Lambis Englezos and his ilk can trawl to find the clues that have opened up the quest for the missing so many years later.

  That ongoing search is also a testament to the many individual soldiers who committed t
heir experiences to paper both during and after the war. These diaries, memoirs and recollections provide a rich vein of material for the historian and the sleuth. And of course Charles Bean’s Official History towers above them all. It is surely the most prodigious effort of sustained literary endeavour in Australia’s history. When he started writing, Bean hoped to complete the work within five years. It took him 23 years – from 1919 to 1942 – to complete the monumental 12-volume work, of which he wrote the first six, and that’s not counting the four years of life-threatening research he did on the ground during the war and in the year after the Armistice when he revisited many of the battlefields. He set himself a lofty goal after he was commissioned to write the work, as he explained in an article in the Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society in 1938:

  The first question for my fellow-historians and myself clearly was: how did the Australian people – and the Australian character, if there is one – come through the universally recognised test of this, their first great war? Second was the question: what did the Australian people and their forces achieve in the total effort of their side of the struggle? Third: what was the true nature of that struggle and test so far as Australians took part in it? How well or ill did our constitution and our preparations serve us in it? What were their strengths and weaknesses? And what guidance can our people or others obtain from this experience for future emergencies?