Contents
Cover
Title Page
Publisher’s Note
Foreword
Maps
Diary of A.A. Barwick
1914
1915
1916
1917
1918
1919
Afterword
Glossary
Copyright
“If this book gives anyone as much pleasure
reading it as I have had writing it,
well it will be time well spent on my part.”
Publisher’s Note
Archie Barwick’s diary is contained in 16 individual notebooks, held by the State Library of New South Wales. He was a prolific writer, so in order to make the diary more easily accessible to the modern reader, we took the decision to edit it down from roughly 400,000 words to approximately 133,000 words. We also very lightly edited the diary where necessary to improve readability, all the while being mindful of the integrity of the writing and Archie’s natural narrative rhythm. Even though some sentences might seem a little out of place, we haven’t moved them elsewhere — it is a diary after all. We have also retained his preference to use the ampersand rather than “and”, “on to” rather than “onto”, among other things.
We very much hope you enjoy reading Archie’s diary as much as we have enjoyed creating this book.
Foreword
by Peter Cochrane, historian
When war was declared in 1914, Archie Barwick was among the first Australians to enlist. He couldn’t wait to get away. He worried he might be too short. When he was passed fit and able and sufficiently tall, he did two somersaults, thus confirming his readiness for battle. He was a country boy from Tasmania. He was 24 and as strong as an ox. He was fair-haired, blue-eyed, rubicund, single, Church of England and, yes, he was short. He was one of the “originals”, No. 914, 1st Battalion, Australian Imperial Force.
Archibald Albert Barwick thrived on war. In war he was unstoppable. He grew in confidence from one battle to another, first at Gallipoli, then in France and Belgium. He was as cool as a cucumber and brave too, and proud of it. He had so many close calls he was certain someone was watching over him. God, maybe. The hard times were very hard but he relished the entire adventure. He even surprised himself for it was very soon clear that he could lead men in the most terrible of times on the front line. When men were falling apart around him, Archie stood firm. So they made him a Corporal; then they made him a Sergeant; they told him he was officer material and he was chuffed. “I seemed to be walking on air,” he wrote. He was disciplined, tidy, polite, abstemious and moderate in all things save in the white heat of battle.
Archie was good with weapons and he was also good with words. He had limited schooling but he was a keen reader, a “bush scholar” and a lover of language, and doesn’t it show in this extraordinary diary. It shows in the homespun lucidity of his prose, in the dramatic power of his front line reportage, in his sense of his own part and the Australians’ part in momentous events; in his love of travel, his appreciation of the great cities such as Paris and London and his bucolic eye for beauty, from the smallest thing — the flower petals he pressed into his prayer book — to the unspoilt French countryside which he took to be “almost a paradise”; and the gardens of England too, gardens that sent forth, as he put it, “a perfume & incense that defies my poor humble pen to describe”.
But that’s the wonderful thing — for the most part Archie’s “poor humble pen” was up to the task. He was an aesthete who wrote of leaves “golden & russet” and he was an Aussie bloke who wrote of C Company, his company, “strung out like a mob of flukey sheep”.
Still, keeping a daily diary did not come easily to Archie. He had to work at it and, typically, he did just that. Initially he couldn’t settle to the routine but he was determined to hone his literary skills. His first two volumes come close to the immediacy of the moment but not quite. He wrote them on his way to France, his recollections of training and embarkation and Egypt and Gallipoli still fresh in his mind. Then he got into the swing of it, writing continually for the next three years, with breaks here and there, the writing routine punctuated only by sheer, unavoidable necessities like ceaseless battle or injury, or the needs of his men or a reunion with his soldier brothers Stan and Len, or those rare occasions when complete exhaustion overtook him.
The end result bears the hallmark of the true diary — raw and unpolished prose that is rich with the “diamonds” of more or less spontaneous, sometimes urgent jotting. Here is a diary that is intensely in the moment, all the more so in the trenches where death is everywhere. In one of these trenches Archie and his mates are literally sitting on the dead, for there was nowhere else to go and nowhere else to rest.
Many diggers tried to keep a diary but few kept a diary as long and lyrical as Archie’s serial volumes. Writing or fighting, his endurance was phenomenal. He turned himself into a dedicated diarist and it is not hard to see why. At the close of his first volume he wrote: “I hope all at home will find something of interest in it for them, for that is the reason why I wrote it.” In the course of the war, Archie mailed home 14 volumes and the last two volumes came home in 1919 in his vest pocket. His diary was a record of his travels as well as his war. He was a pilgrim, a lover of life, a glass-just-about-full man, a man of keen aesthetic sensibility, relishing the chance to see the world and to share the experience with the folk at home. This is not simply a war diary; it is much more than that. It is the chronicle of a gifted soldier-tourist, a self-made storyteller.
Archie did not hold back. He wrote graphically about the horrors and the heroics of his front line existence, as in the Somme offensive in July 1916:
All day long the ground rocked & swayed backwards & forwards from the concussion … [like] a well-built haystack … swaying about … Men were driven stark staring mad & more than one of them rushed out of the trench, over towards the Germans. Any amount of them could be seen crying & sobbing like children, their nerves completely gone … We were nearly all in a state of silliness & half dazed but still the Australians refused to give ground.
His stamina enabled him to lead his men year after year, to dig in, to fight, to suffer as he did and transcend that suffering, and somehow to keep writing whether early in the morning or in the few spare minutes just before tea, or in his dugout in the midst of a bombardment or when he was on leave, delighting in the comforts of a clean, dry bed or the delicious tucker in a French estaminet. “Here I am,” he wrote on 21 April 1917, “scribbling away as if my life depended on it.” Well, in a sense it did, for whether he was writing about the bloody business of war or the beauties of the countryside, the discipline of writing was therapeutic and I believe he knew it — writing helped to keep him steady and sane when others about him went to pieces. “I know I always pride myself on my nerves,” he wrote in April 1918 after an operation to remove shrapnel from his chest. He was sitting up in a hospital bed writing letters to “the boys” at the front and bringing his diary up to date. Scribble scribble scribble. Archie had become a seasoned scribbler. He was never idle.
Most importantly, Archie managed to balance the horrors of the war with the joys of sightseeing, which was a refuge and a consolation in hard times. Reading his diary, it sometimes seems as if the war was a monstrous intrusion into an otherwise delightful, all-expenses-paid tour abroad. What you notice is just how much he relished his surroundings — the people, the panoramas, the flora, the fauna, the crops, the livestock and so on. All the things that caught his eye and warmed his heart seemed to renew him, to ready him for the next battle.
The war did not stop Archie having the most wonderful holiday in France! Indeed, you might say Franc
e saved him, for at Gallipoli there was no beauty to compare but in France he found beauty and abundance everywhere. “Imagine us here bogging into the cherries … I am never tired of praising France,” he wrote. Nor did he tire of praising the countryside in France and Belgium, for it seemed to hold him in a kind of rapture. Even the most exhausting route marches provided him with an opportunity to enjoy the glorious panoramas beyond the battlefields and, of course, to register the experience in his diary. His long, flowing paragraphs are the mark of his enthusiasm.
We constantly find him reaching for superlatives: “Truly a grand sight” and “Oh how I would like some of my people to see this country”. In many a soldier’s diary that’s all you get, but Archie had the literary wherewithal to “paint” the scene for us and he does this in each and every one of his volumes. In Archie’s diary we encounter a tragic entwinement of splendour and devastation.
Archie wrote letters too and occasionally mailed off photographs, and it is clear the diary was part of a serial conversation with his mother, sister, aunties and others at home. He is thinking of them, almost talking to them, as he writes the entry for the day. “Just imagine us if you can,” he says. And “Oh I can tell you I am writing under difficulties.”
He wrote for himself and for his family and his words were ties across time and space, ties as strong as iron yet light as air. They were a means of survival and a mark of his dedication. They remind us of how love was magnified, exalted and enhanced by the perils of war, and of how much loved ones felt the heightened emotions of separation in such perilous times. The author in war, and his audience in waiting, lived in hope.
I have suggested this diary played no small part in seeing Archie safely through the war and delivering him home in good health and good spirits, so it is a joy to discover that he lived a long and fruitful life thereafter, for he deserved nothing less. Now, almost a century since he left these shores to fight, Archie’s diary will embark upon another journey and serve another valuable purpose. Having been kept safe for posterity in the climate-controlled “vaults” of the Mitchell Library, it is to travel once again, this time in published form to readers everywhere. Australians should know about Archie Barwick. He was a resourceful and resilient man, a brave and decent and chivalrous fellow, and his diary testifies to that. “Chivalrous,” I hear you say, “where does chivalry come in?” Well, there’s a sweetheart or two, or three, in this magnificent story and that’s where I’ll leave it …
June 2013
Maps
Diary of No. 914
A.A. Barwick
C Company, 1st Battalion
1914
Training in Sydney, Australia
Travelling overseas
Training in Egypt
In this journal I am going to put forward to the best of my ability a few of my impressions & experiences since joining the Army.
Well I will start first of all from the time I left Surveyor’s Creek in New England, New South Wales. How pleased I was, one fine Saturday morning, to find in the mail box a letter bearing the Government stamp addressed to me. I was almost afraid to open it for fear it might say that I was unsuitable for the Force, but I plucked up courage & opened it, & to my great joy & no less surprise, I was requested to report at once to Victoria Barracks in Sydney for medical inspection. I think I threw 2 or 3 somersaults.
When I finished reading the note, for we were all more or less crazy at that time, I was pretty sure I could pass the Dr as far as medical fitness went, for I had just been through a fairly stiff examination for the A.M.P., but I was not so sure about my height, so I took the precaution to write to Colonel Antill & ask him if my height (5 ft 4) would pass & the note I had just received was his answer.
On receipt of the note I straight away telephoned Mr Mitchell at Rutherglen, telling him of my decision & that I would be coming down on that night’s train passenger. He said he would meet me at Danglemah, as he & Mrs Mitchell were going to Sydney.
So you see it was pretty short notice. I made a rapid pack up & said goodbye to as many of my friends as I could, & that night young Golledge drove me to Walcha Road, where I caught the train & so away. At Danglemah Mr & Mrs Mitchell got in. We arrived in Sydney on a Sunday morning, & I went & took a room for the night.
The following morning found me making my way to Victoria Barracks & after some sparring about & a lot of questioning, I was taken into a room & given some papers to fill in. There were about 30 questions we had to answer on this paper, & by the time you had finished filling them in, what they did not know about you wasn’t worth knowing, provided you spoke the truth.
After this was over we had to line up with our papers in hand & wait our turn to see the Colonel. The chaps all spoke of him as being an old tiger & so we were all more or less afraid when our turn came; however he must have been in a particularly good humour this morning, for when he had a look at my papers he only put a few short sharp questions to me, & marked my papers as accepted.
As we came out from this ordeal we were formed into different squads & marched off, some to Kensington & some to Randwick Racecourse. On arrival there we were formed up in 2 ranks, & Captain Jackson came along & picked so many men out for his Company (old H). I was among these, & that is how I came to be in the 1st Battalion.
After this was over, we had all our names taken again, & then we went down to dinner. I shall never forget that dinner as long as I live. Just imagine about 600 men all shouting & talking at the one time, & some of the language was pretty warm I can tell you. For dinner we had “what do you think” roast beef, no chance, for the tables were laid with big boiled potatoes with their skins on & great junks of bully beef. Ho, ho, I thought, so this is how things are carried on, eh well that’s no good to me, so I & a few more does a get & goes into town for our dinner. That sort of tucker was going to take some getting used to, after the way I had been living.
There was not the slightest sign of any system when first I joined, for things were in a terrible state at that time, for the war had caught the authorities totally unprepared; however after a couple of weeks they began to get into their stride, & after a little time we settled down to it as well as could be expected.
That afternoon was the 24th August 1914 & from that date my military career started.
I went out to see Mr Mitchell at Croydon that afternoon & had a good yarn with him, & later on I went back to town & stopped at the People’s Palace that night. I rose fairly early the next morning, & caught the Coogee tram, & went back to Randwick. I arrived there in time for roll call, & had a sort of breakfast, of tea, jam & bread. After this we fell in for drill. What a crowd we were. I suppose there were 9 out of 10 who had never formed fours in their life before, & I was one of them. It was funny to see us trying to get through the most simple movements, & getting completely boxed up. It was about 3 weeks before I mastered the form fours properly — I could never remember whether it was the odd or even numbers who had to move. We were enough to break any drill instructor’s heart, & when some of them were spoken to they used to get quite shirty about it; however they knocked us into some sort of a shape by the time we left Randwick to go to Kensington.
The day we shifted we had our first route march with full kits up & water bottles empty. The march was about 8 miles — it seemed more like 20 by the time we finished. Everyone was glad to see that our tents were up as we marched in. That night we had a good square meal, & by this time we were beginning to get used to roughing it.
We all had our khaki & how proud we were to get it. Our Company was one of the first to get properly equipped, & we were not slow to remind the others of the fact, who I am sure were quite jealous of us, for there was the keenest of rivalry between the different Companies & this holds good even now.
They worked us pretty hard, & we were fast coming on. We had plenty of route marches, & a fair bit of musketry, which we used to do at the Long Bay rifle range. (It was out at the Long Bay range that I first saw a machine gun
in action, & I had my eyes opened.) By this time I was thoroughly enjoying the life for I had got to know a good few chaps, & was beginning to get into my stride & each day was a pleasure. We had good officers, at this time.
Our food was much improved here. A typical breakfast would be viz chops or steak, plenty of bread, butter & jam, whips of tea. For dinner we generally had a stew or roast with onions, cabbage, potatoes & etc. For tea at night they always turned out boiled potatoes, what for I don’t know for no one used to eat them. We always had plenty of good tea or coffee, & stacks of bread, butter, jam & etc. It was shameful to see the bread that was wasted there, & the jam we had tons of it, good jam it was too, nearly all from Jones factory at Hobart. We used to have good times at Kenso, for most of the chaps had friends & relations, & they used to bring big hampers of all sorts of things, & of course the boys would share them round.
Not so very long before we left Kensington, Len [my brother] came down from Scone to see me, & while there he kidded me to have my photo taken in my equipment. I have regretted ever since that those photos ever reached home. If I could lay my hands on them, I don’t think they would live long — a chap looks a perfect fool in them.
While training here, I first came in proper contact with drink, & my determination never to touch it was strengthened properly. I saw enough to convince me for the rest of my life of the evils arising from the curse. Lots of our chaps only lived for pay-day, & as soon as they got their money, off to town & straight to the pubs they would go. Next morning would find them with a big head, a terrible thirst & empty pockets, & they would be humming for the rest of the week. It used to be funny some nights, when the chaps would be coming home late, & had to pass through the guard at the gate. The majority of the revellers would have bottles with them, & if the sentry was a thirsty soul, he would give the order “halt bottle pass soldier”, & if they had a bottle with them they were right, & if they could not produce the needful, well into the guard tent he would go.
In Great Spirits Page 1