by Peter Rees
Monash had in support Birdwood, Rosenthal and MacLagan. He had taken both Hughes and Cook to see the Canadian Corps the day before. Bean knew this was probably ‘not unconnected with the matter, for Birdie has always used the Canadians as an argument for keeping the command of the AIF in France. He says that their experiment of a separate GOC in London failed miserably.’ Monash ensured that Hughes and Cook, in their visits to the various brigades, were duchessed by commanders. Of these, John Gellibrand was the only one ‘that thinks exactly the same way as we do.’ Gellibrand, Bean said, ‘asked whether Hughes wanted his advice as a soldier or a citizen.’
The talks Hughes had with officers left him ‘seriously shaken’. He found little or no support for the arguments put forward by Bean and Murdoch, to whom he said: ‘Well, I haven’t met a single one of them that thinks as you do. They all say the same thing. You tell me there are men who think the other way—where are they?’ Murdoch replied that of course the men he had seen all supported Monash, as he had made the arrangements. Hughes concluded that Bean and Murdoch had misled him. Bean felt ‘pretty blue’ about the whole situation.
Just how well Monash was out-manoeuvring them became clear when Bean and Murdoch heard by accident that Monash and most of the divisional commanders had written to Defence Minister Pearce rightly protesting against Murdoch’s interference and upholding the present arrangements. One of them, Major General Sir Talbot Hobbs, described Monash as ‘a commander of very great ability and exceptional energy and experience, who enjoys absolutely the complete confidence and respect of the AIF as a fighting leader.’ Meanwhile, in the Middle East Harry Chauvel was penning a different view to his wife about the changes—and about Monash in particular. During the war they had established a working relationship, one that would continue in the years ahead, but there was a great rivalry between them. Chauvel held concerns about Monash, writing that the infantry wanted a leader who knew his job and would ‘not sacrifice them unnecessarily. I don’t of course know how things stand at present but when I knew the Australian infantry they would infinitely rather be led by [White] than [Monash].’ A few months later Chauvel told his wife he regretted that Monash had behaved—as he saw it—so objectionably. He snidely implied that Jews were acceptable as long as they were discreet. Given responsibility or authority, he felt, their racial faults became clear. Such anti-Semitism was clearly pervasive in Anglo-Australian circles at the time.
As the attack at Hamel began, on 4 July 1918, Monash had reason to be confident. Although a relatively minor battle compared with previous operations on the Western Front, it was notable as the first ‘set-piece’ operation that Monash planned and carried out as Corps commander. The action would be represented as a model combined-arms attack, though the method had by then become common in the British Expeditionary Force. Using aircraft, artillery and armour in effective combination with infantry, the attack was completed in ninety-three minutes—three minutes longer than Monash had planned. The Australians advanced the line almost 2 kilometres across a front of 6.5 kilometres and in the process took 1600 German prisoners and more than 200 machine-guns, trench mortars and anti-tank weapons—at the cost of just over 1000 casualties.
Monash’s reputation soared. The day before the battle he gave a briefing which Bean found impressive: ‘There is no question that the old man gave us, as always, a very able discourse indeed. Very few men could have done it. The thing had been planned with a thoroughness . . . every particle of the plan down almost to the action of companies, being known to the commander of the corps.’ Bean would hear from Gellibrand years later that after Hughes consulted them, and following the success at Hamel, Gellibrand, Glasgow, Sinclair-MacLagan and Rosenthal had met to discuss Monash’s appointment. ‘McLagan was the only one who possibly thought him inefficient—that is he thought Monash was lacking in military knowledge. The others recognised that at Hamel he had given proof of his capacity—he was comparatively speaking unknown before; but was reputed to have been successful sometimes and unsuccessful at others. They agreed that no action should be taken to unseat Monash—if he lacked in anything the team would pull him through.’
There had been a last-minute hitch at Hamel—an order had come that all the American troops were to be withdrawn. Monash, as he explained to Bean, immediately went to the Fourth Army commander, General Henry Rawlinson, and warned that if the Americans were withdrawn he would cancel the attack. No Australian, he said, would ever fight beside an American again if this occurred. He gave a 6 p.m. deadline. Rawlinson, who wanted to go ahead, was upset. He said to Monash: ‘But you don’t realise what it means—do you want me to run the risk of being sent back to England—it is worth that?’ ‘Yes I do,’ Monash replied. ‘It is more important to keep the confidence of Australians and Americans in each other than to preserve an army commander.’ When Haig was told of the dilemma, he said: ‘Of course the fight must go on—and the Americans stay in it.’ So the four companies of Americans stayed where they were.
The attack over, Bean dined with Monash three days later while the band of the 9th Brigade played in the front garden of the imposing Château Bertangles, 8 kilometres from Amiens. After dinner Bean walked quietly around the grounds with Tom Blamey, Monash’s Chief of Staff. The atmosphere was charged:
Blamey urged me, with surprising feeling, to keep this question of the GOC AIF above personalities—to make it a question of the interest of the AIF simply, and shun all suspicion of intrigue by playing with all the cards on the table. He has an exceedingly great respect for White’s character—a noble character, he said. And he told me that he, in his own case, had tried to model his line of conduct upon White’s. I know what he meant. White, because he was such a valuable officer, was passed over and so incidentally remained in the background—not given command; and he absolutely wiped himself out of the picture.
At around the same time, Murdoch had a long talk with Monash, telling him bluntly his position. Monash said that if he now lost the corps command—a post to which every soldier aspired—he would be seen to have been ‘stellenbosched’, or sacked without losing rank. He wanted ‘fighting honours’, as he called them, and when he had them he would be well content to take up the administrative command. Monash wanted to keep the corps command until war’s end, then move to the administrative command of the AIF. Bean saw the wish for battle honours as an ‘utterly wrong motive for the commander of the Corps.’
Murdoch met White, and they strolled through the gardens of Birdwood’s headquarters for more than two hours late at night discussing the issue. In a letter to Bean, Murdoch wrote that White told him he was ‘not straight to try and advise the Government differently to their responsible advisers.’ White said he ‘didn’t like this press and political influence in the affairs of the AIF.’ Murdoch thought White’s reasons were ‘small’—that he could not face many officers in the corps if he were made GOC in place of Monash. White told him that the matter was already referred to by some as ‘the intrigue by White’s friends,’ and said he would only take the command under protest and with Monash’s approval. Years later, Gellibrand told Bean that after he had joined Hughes in the Federal Parliament, Hughes told him ‘he had practically offered White the command of the corps but White would not take it.’ This fitted with Bean’s own knowledge at the time.
When Bean and Murdoch met White a fortnight later, White bluntly refused to discuss the issue of the GOC AIF. ‘I opened it,’ Bean wrote, ‘but it did not flourish—a long awkward silence and Murdoch turned the subject.’ Whatever hopes White may have had about getting the appointment, the manoeuvring by Bean and Murdoch was utterly counterproductive to his chances. The very personality traits that would have made him an attractive choice for the job were the same ones at play in his refusal to be party to their intrigue. Perhaps Bean and Murdoch outsmarted themselves by failing to understand that they were not ‘the responsible advisers,’ however great their influence was elsewhere.
In the event, Hughes of
fered Birdwood the option of remaining as administrative head of the AIF provided that he relinquished his command of the Fifth Army. Birdwood consulted Haig, who advised him to accept the offer but ask to continue in his Army command until 30 November, as important operations would be in progress until then. Monash was therefore confirmed as the corps commander, and Birdwood kept the administrative command.
Bean commented that Birdwood had ‘not the first idea of organisation—he could stand up for the Digger but he could not provide for him.’ Bitterly disappointed that White had been overlooked, Bean wondered what would now happen for him. Murdoch also wrote to Birdwood, pointing out the consequences of accepting the AIF command—his aim being to encourage Birdwood to decline the post. Bean thought this showed that Murdoch was ‘a very strong determined man—he has done a thing that I never could have done.’
Monash felt likewise about Murdoch, writing to his wife that he was anything but ‘a mere pressman.’ Already Monash saw parallels with Lord Northcliffe, whose newspapers had brought down the Asquith Government in 1916. Murdoch was closely associated with Northcliffe, whom Monash regarded as the most influential man in the Empire:
It is not too much to say that Murdoch, as far as Australian public affairs are concerned is a little Lord Northcliffe. He has the greatest possible influence with Mr Hughes, and indeed it is to him that Hughes really owes his political existence—Murdoch has intimate knowledge of most Imperial, and all Australian affairs and, both in his own person and in the great interests which he represents, he wields very enormous influence.
Bean’s relations with Monash now plummeted to their lowest level. He saw that Monash was ‘very angry with me.’ Blamey took Bean aside and told him he would be sorry to see any sort of feud develop between the two. Bean observed that with the forceful Murdoch, who told him directly what he thought, Monash ‘kept on fair terms,’ saying that he did not mind plain talk. With Bean, however, the situation was different. ‘Monash has less respect for me—he is very dissatisfied with the publicity that he is getting, and has always been a man who would have liked to have his own publicity in his own hands. I often think he would like to get rid of me if he could—of course he would; I sometimes think that he will try, but Keith doubts it.’
Monash was critical of Bean’s reporting of the victories he had achieved since taking command of the corps. Hamel had been the beginning of a series of successful operations by the Australians as part of a broad Allied offensive across the Western Front that continued until and beyond their last battle in October. The battle of Amiens on 8 August had been crucial. Allied troops under Haig’s command—predominantly Rawlinson’s British Fourth Army, which consisted of the Australian Corps under Monash, the Canadian Corps, and the British III Corps—attacked the Germans. The Australians and Canadians spearheaded the operation. Monash gave them the key objective of capturing enemy artillery in the first phase so as to minimise the potential harm to the attacking forces. The Allies won a significant victory. The Germans recognised that the war was effectively lost; the German leader, General Erich Ludendorff, later called it ‘the black day of the German Army in the history of the war.’
Four days later, King George V knighted Monash on the battlefield, the first time a British monarch had so honoured a commander in nearly 200 years. When Murdoch arrived a few days later, Monash showed him a photo of the investiture ceremony, saying: ‘Bean kindly arranged for it to be taken—I did not know anything about it of course.’ Murdoch related this conversation to Bean, who was unimpressed. He noted in his diary that Monash was, an ‘old poser’, but added—perhaps a little grudgingly—that he was ‘a most capable man.’
At a briefing for the Australian correspondents some days after the battle of Amiens, Bean realised that Monash ‘was pretty grumpy with me.’ Bean attributed this to a story in The Times officially thanking the Canadians for their effort in the current offensive, but not mentioning the Australians. Bean believed that Monash held him responsible for this omission, even though, like Monash, he was displeased at the lack of recognition the Australians received. A few days earlier he had told White of ‘the bitterness which one had met with everywhere’ about the way the fight had been portrayed as a British battle in which Australians and Canadians ‘had a share.’
As the Allies prepared for the final battles, Bean listened as Monash told the men ‘he was not asking them to fight for patriotism or public interest . . . they would increase their reputation as fighting men.’ After the war, Bean accepted that in this decisive phase, Monash had been right to work his troops to the limit of their endurance, but he thought Monash’s appeal to prestige was self-serving. In a ‘confidential and personal’ note to himself some years later, he tried to explain his thinking towards Monash:
What guided me was the knowledge that Monash’s chief motive was ambition, and that the lives of his troops and the greater interests of his side were not his paramount cares. Or at any rate, his ambition, I believed, would weigh heavily in the scale whenever it came to a decision. With White, whose capacity was in some ways greater, those interests would be absolutely safe. Monash’s selection was largely justified by his great successes in August and September; but I do not think he was the man to handle men—for all his great qualities he was not, I fancy, quite straight and courageous enough.
In early September, there were four AIF divisions fighting together for the first time in 1918. Bean thought Monash believed that the Germans were ‘being shattered by our constant blows,’ and that the AIF would go on delivering these blows as often as they could get the troops fit to make them. Bean continued, acidly: ‘Six days rest and a bath, in John’s opinion, restores the elasticity of a division and makes it quite ready to fight again. The troops are not tired—“a little footsore”, was John’s comment . . . To him the inducement is to make out that every bit of fighting is vital.’
Indeed, the Australians went on to achieve a series of victories against the Germans at Chignes, Mont St Quentin, Péronne and Hargicourt. After Mont St Quentin and Péronne it was clear that relations between Monash and Bean had not improved. Murdoch and Gilmour told Bean that Monash was angry. He thought his whole artillery was ‘seething with indignation because [Bean] said that our guns were quiet on the evening when we were watching the German transport on the roads south of Péronne.’ They added that Monash had said Bean ‘ought not to write merely what I saw, because I could not see the whole.’ Monash had also said something about lack of imagination. Bean noted in his diary: ‘All of which means that John, as he told Murdoch, would like to see the fighting written up with a lavish hand—not too much accuracy, as he himself told both me and Murdoch—in the fashion of some of the old war correspondents. “What a pity that we haven’t an Ashmead-Bartlett,” he said once to Murdoch.’
Monash was not necessarily alone in his assessment of Bean’s reporting. During these final operations, Will Dyson told Bean of overhearing some Diggers discussing his despatches. Some of them reckoned that Bean did ‘the right thing in sending them the dinkum story,’ but others thought that while ‘That might be all very well for the historian . . . the War Correspondent ought to put a little more glory into it.’
Monash had his ways of exacting a little revenge. In September, he kept Bean in the dark over arrangements for the visit of a group of Australian newspaper editors and proprietors, including John Fairfax and Bean’s former Herald editor Thomas Heney, only at the last minute inviting him to meet them. Bean was not invited to the lunch Monash was to host, and saw this as a slight.
John told me he was sorry that there was no room for me at lunch and hoped that I would come in at 2. I said that I intended to be there at 12 when they arrived, if it made no difference. He asked if I thought of going round with them and said he had no objection to my attaching myself to the party if I wished. On the strength of this I came in with them when he received them. J. looked very black, I thought. Murdoch and Gilmour came in too. We went over to our cottage
for lunch, and then, with [Will] Dyson, went out with them in the afternoon. John tried very hard to block our plan of taking them out with us tomorrow.
Bean and Monash continued to cooperate uneasily. There was no choice; each needed the other. Bean would be writing the official history and Monash was making it with a series of brilliant tactical operations that cemented his reputation as a soldier. When Bean went to see Monash to discuss his plans for attacking the Hindenburg Line, professionalism ruled. Monash stood before a map marked by circles and semi-circles that protruded from the AIF line, and told Bean that if he promised to keep the matter confidential, he would show him the plans. Bean would later conclude that to Monash, battles were ‘simply a problem of engineering.’
Under Monash’s command, the AIF 1st and 4th Divisions were part of the attack launched predominantly by the British Fourth Army at dawn on 18 September. The 6800 Australian infantry took 4300 prisoners. With Monash also commanding American troops, the Australians played a key role in finally breaking the Hindenburg Line on 29 September, and then again on 5 October—the last action in which Australian troops would take part. The capture of Montbrehain village meant the Hindenburg Line was completely broken.
Bean called it ‘one of the most brilliant actions’ of Australian infantry in the war. However, with the loss of thirty officers and 400 men, he considered it unnecessary. Military historians such as Peter Pedersen have agreed with Bean, arguing that the village could have been taken easily and with fewer casualties if it had been included among the objectives for a much wider operation. The origins of the action seem unclear. Controversy over Montbrehain aside, the achievements of the Australian Corps under Monash were great. At a cost of 21,243 casualties, a quarter of whom were killed, the Corps had taken 29,144 prisoners, 338 guns, and countless machine guns and trench mortars, and had liberated 116 towns and villages.