Australia in World War One

Willingly at war for the Empire

A postcard photograph, supposedly of 'the firing line' in Shrapnel Gully on Gallipoli, circulated in Australia in 1915. Beside the photograph of Australian troops waiting in shallow trenches under a warm sun it bore the hand-lettered inscription 'Here Australia became a nation'. This sentiment expresses the essential Australian interpretation of the Great War. The Australian official historian, Charles Bean, expanded those five words into six volumes. He elaborated how Australians had responded to the challenge of the Great War, how the war had cost the young nation dearly and how it had created a new understanding of what being Australian meant.

Despite the colonial pride in the virtues of the 'native-born', Australian movements in art and literature and the very fact of Federation in 1901, Australians early in the 20th century remained ambivalent toward ideas of Australian nationhood. Most thought of themselves as 'Australasian Britons', bound to Britain by 'the crimson thread of kinship' and a proud junior partner in the empire. The service of over 320,000 Australians in the Great War would offer the first substantial challenge to that view and would stimulate the growth of a self-conscious Australian nationalism.

With the outbreak of war the new Commonwealth of Australia found itself willingly at war for the empire. Australian leaders were not consulted, but demonstrated their unqualified loyalty. Andrew Fisher, Labour prime minister from 1914 to 1916, declared that Australia would support Britain to 'the last man and the last shilling'.

Australia's dual loyalty was evident in the name of the volunteer force formed in September 1914, the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). Its first members sailed for the war in November 1914. They had enlisted with mixed motives: to serve King and Empire, to have an adventure, to see the world, to do the right thing. One man in five had been born in Britain; many enlisted in the hope of a trip home before seeing active service.

Worlds apart

Kitchener passes curious Australian troops at Anzac Cove, Gallipoli  © The AIF first went to Egypt, destined to go the Dardanelles. On arriving in Egypt many of its members were struck by the contrast between themselves and the British soldiers they met. Though most Australians were city men, they had been raised in one of the world's most prosperous and progressive democracies. They towered above the shorter Lancashire territorials they called the 'Chooms', aware of the physical and even linguistic differences between the empire's armies. For the rest of the war, Australians would measure themselves against the British army. As their awareness of their own prowess grew, so would their disillusionment with their senior imperial partner.

Differences between the two emerged immediately. British troops insisted on rigid adherence to the forms of military custom, notably saluting. Australian volunteers, all citizen soldiers who regarded the army's demands as limited, especially out of action, tended to salute only those superiors they respected personally. A cartoon of 1917 hardly exaggerated: '"Why do you not salute?" a British colonel demands of a slouching Australian private. "To tell you the truth, digger", he replies, "we've cut it right out"'. British insistence prompted Australian resistance, generating friction throughout the war.

Sister Narelle Hobbes, an Australian who joined Queen Alexandra's Imperial Medical Service in 1915 and died of illness in the Red Sea in 1918, was repeatedly frustrated by British military procedures and by condescension. 'Thank God I'm Australian!', she recorded in exasperation in her diary.

A bloody shambles

Like the Anzac soldiers, the encounter with an imperial culture often sharpened the nurses' sense of Australian-ness  © The Australians went into the landing on Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 carrying a heavy metaphorical burden as well as their packs. Conscious of their national identity, they wondered how they would meet the test of battle. Though it was costly and close-run, out of the bloody shambles of the landing at Anzac Cove the Australians (with the New Zealanders) quickly developed as soldiers. Though newcomers to war they soon gained a resilience, toughness and skill which contrasted with what a South Australian school teacher called the 'inefficient, incapable, and badly led' British troops. A Victorian farmer complained of the 'lack of organisation, spirit and individual initiative' of a British unit he had served with at Suvla. Other Australians felt that inexperienced 'New Army' units had let them down (though AIF volunteers had been no more experienced than those for Kitchener's Army). They had expected to learn from the British, but on Gallipoli they looked down on them as amateurs.

Searching for explanations, they fell back on the archetype of the Australian bushman. A self-reliant, ingenious, practical man who could shoot fitted the bill for Charles Bean. Though Australian-born, Bean had been classically educated in Britain. Returning to Australia and discovering the inland in a series of visits as a journalist, he idealised the virtues of the bushman. On Gallipoli he virtually created what has become known as the 'Anzac legend', the celebration of the archetypal virtues of the Australian soldier. The Anzac Book, an annual he edited on Gallipoli, became the defining expression of those qualities. Anzacs were almost defined by their differences with Britain. Many qualities - independence, casual proficiency, and a disregard of rank for its own sake - specifically contrasted with the qualities of the British regular.

On Gallipoli, errors of command and failures of supply and medical care had been obvious to every soldier. Further disillusionment would follow. On the Western Front, where the five AIF infantry divisions served from 1916 to 1918, they had ample opportunity to ponder British successes and failures. With the command and logistic structure essentially British, Australians identified the shortcomings of a straining imperial military system with Britain.

The AIF divisions fought on the Somme in 1916, losing as many casualties in eight weeks as had been lost on Gallipoli in eight months. In 1917 they attacked at Bullecourt, Messines and in the battles of Passchendaele (Ypres). In 1918, now combined as a self-conscious Australian Corps, commanded by Lieutenant General John Monash, they helped to both stop the German March offensive and lead the advance to final victory.

'British staff, British methods and British bungling'

Australians encountering British troops found that the shared experience of the Western Front exposed differences of attitude and temperament  © Until 1918, failures were the norm. The 1916 offensives, particularly Fromelles and Pozières, left many Australians disappointed with the performance of flanking British units. The historian Bill Gammage, whose 1974 book The Broken Years did so much to renew interest in the Great War in Australia, summed up the impact of the 1916 battles. 'The Australians never forgot Pozières', he wrote, 'nor the English staff which had sent them there, nor the mates killed, nor the New Army divisions which had failed so often on their flanks'. Of course British troops lost mates in horrific battles and suffered from poor command and staff work, but they were led by their own. Australians felt particularly aggrieved because they increasingly felt different to them.

The evidence of Australian attitudes towards British troops is found in abundance in soldiers' writings held in the collections of the Australian War Memorial (established by Charles Bean) and other libraries. At Fromelles and on the Somme, British formations failed to take or hold trenches often enough for Australians to notice. A Tasmanian grazier, a gunner lieutenant, cursed the British officers he had seen at Fromelles as 'only a b____ lot of Pommie Jackeroos and just as hopeless... most of them crawlers or favourites of some toff'.

A Victorian mining engineer (an officer, writing in the aftermath of Passchendaele) damned 'British staff, British methods and British bungling'. 'We are all "military socialist",' he told his father, 'and all overseas troops have had enough of the English'. He, like many Australians, exempted Scottish units from their condemnation. Indeed, many Australians continued to express their admiration for British formations which struggled on in the face of such losses. Bean's own history, while often critical of British shortcomings, also fairly praises British units which met the Australians' exacting standards.

Back to Blighty

Gallipoli held special significance for Australians and New Zealanders  © Like their British (and, indeed, German) counterparts, many Australians hoped for a wound that would send them at least back to Blighty. Britain - 'Blighty' - was more than a reprieve from the horror of the Western Front. A Blighty wound or the leave that came around occasionally gave Australian soldiers the opportunity to visit the heart of the empire. Many looked up family in the 'old country'. They expressed amazement at buildings older than their country, disgust at slums, despair at the weather and an appalled fascination with British women who had taken men's jobs for the duration. While Britain remained 'home' - for some for the rest of their lives - it was not Australia, and many said so. A verse tersely expressing the new-found awareness of their homesickness circulated in the AIF: 'Blighty is a failure, take me to Australia'.

In the early 21st century, with Australian national identity flourishing, it is important not to read retrospectively into the troops' condemnation of an imperial war machine the triumphant nationalism of post-Olympic Australia. Many, perhaps most, remained proud of the dual loyalties to Australia and to the Empire. 'This war', the critical South Australian schoolteacher wrote from Gallipoli, 'has made me intensely British and absolutely Australian'. Not until after the stress of another wartime crisis - after Greece, Crete and Singapore - would Australians' faith in Britain falter and develop into a self-reliant pride in a nation independent of Britain.

Find out more

Books

The Anzac Illusion: Anglo-Australian Relations during World War I by Eric Andrews (Cambridge University Press, 1993)

The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918 by Charles Bean (Angus & Robinson, 1921-42)

The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War by Bill Gammage (ANU Press, 1974)

The Australian People and the Great War by Michael McKernan (William Collins, 1984)

Links

Australian War Memorial Museum and website commemorating the sacrifice of Australians in war. Includes online collections of art, artefacts, official and private documents and photographs.

Spartacus Educational Spartacus' World War One website offers a growing encyclopaedia of entries about the war, as well as links to other websites.

About the author

Dr Peter Stanley is Principal Historian at the Australian War Memorial, where he has worked since 1980. One of Australia's most active military historians, he has contributed to the development of the Memorial's exhibitions and has published 11 books, with three more in press in 2002. He was born in Liverpool and migrated to Australia as a child.