The Western Front Diaries: the Anzacs’ own story, battle by battle

By Jonathan King

A special 100th-anniversary edition.

Long overshadowed by the national obsession with the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign, the breathtaking story of what really happened on the Western Front has finally been brought into the bright light of day.

The Anzacs’ Western Front campaign had a greater impact than Gallipoli in almost every respect: five times more soldiers served and were killed there, more than five times as many battles took place — and it was there that an astounding 53 Victoria Crosses were awarded to Australians. The diggers serving on the Western Front also helped win the war, but it was at an almost unfathomable cost.

Using hundreds of brutally honest and extraordinary eyewitness accounts, The Western Front Diaries reproduces private diaries, letters, postcards, and photographs to reveal what it was really like at the Front, battle by bloody battle.

Straight from the mouths of those who served there, it doesn’t get more honest, raw, or heartbreaking than this.

PRAISE FOR JONATHAN KING

‘It’s absolutely incredible. It’s five hundred pages of absolutely absorbing material the likes of which you otherwise can’t get your hands on.’ ABC Radio, The Conversation Hour

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scribe Publications
• Release date: Jun 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781925307061

Jonathan King

Award-winning historian Dr Jonathan King is the author of Gallipoli Diaries: the Anzacs’ own story, day by day (Scribe, 2014), and has been producing books and films about World War I since 1994. He leads battlefield tours to Gallipoli and the Western Front, and is a regular television and radio commentator, as well as a writer for newspapers. After lecturing at The University of Melbourne for many years, he has written more than 30 books and produced 20 documentaries. He is based in Sydney with his fellow adventurer and wife, Jane. They have four daughters and seven grandchildren.

Book preview

THE WESTERN FRONT DIARIES

Award-winning historian Dr Jonathan King is the author of Gallipoli Diaries: the Anzacs’ own story, day by day (Scribe, 2014), and has been producing books and films about World War I since 1994. He leads battlefield tours to Gallipoli and the Western Front, and is a regular television and radio commentator, as well as a writer for newspapers. After lecturing at the University of Melbourne for many years, he has written more than 30 books and produced 20 documentaries. He is based in Sydney with his fellow adventurer and wife, Jane. They have four daughters and seven grandchildren.

Scribe Publications

18–20 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia

2 John St, Clerkenwell, London, WC1N 2ES, United Kingdom

First published by Simon & Schuster (Australia), 2008

This revised edition published by Scribe 2015

Copyright © Jonathan King 2008, 2010, 2014

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data

King, Jonathan, 1942- author.

The Western Front Diaries: the Anzacs’ own story, battle by battle / Jonathan King.

Revised edition.

9781925106695 (paperback)

9781925307061 (e-book)

1. Australia. Army. Australian and New Zealand Army Corps–History. 2. Soldiers–Australia–Diaries. 3. Soldiers–Australia–Correspondence. 4. World War, 1914-1918–Campaigns–Western Front–Personal narratives, Australian. 5. World War, 1914-1918–Battlefields–Europe, Western.

940.4144

scribepublications.com.au

scribepublications.co.uk

To the many who gave their lives — not only Australians but those from all sides.

CONTENTS

Foreword by Dr Brendan Nelson

‘In Flanders Fields’

Preface — Five Times Greater Than Gallipoli

Introduction — All Too Quiet on the Western Front

PART ONE: 1914–1915

The Stage is Set for the Anzacs’ Arrival

A Seemingly Inexorable Build-up

1914: the first year of war

1915: the second year of war

PART TWO: 1916

Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire

Battle for Verdun

The First Anzacs Start Leaving Egypt

First Front-line Experience

First Australian Raid

The Battle of the Somme: history’s worst battlefield toll

First Big Battle

Fromelles: the worst one-day death toll

Second Big Battle

Pozières: the worst killing field of all

Pozières: Percy Smythe’s account

Third Big Battle

Mouquet Farm: dying in the mud

PART THREE: 1917

The Year of Neck-and-Neck Struggle

January 1917: winter report

Germany’s Strategic Retreat

Battle for Lagnicourt

Battle of Arras

America Joins the Fray

Battle of Vimy Ridge

Fourth Big Battle Series: Bullecourt (I) & (II)

Bullecourt (I): abandoned by tanks in No-Man’s-Land

Lagnicourt: losing and regaining a village on the same day

Bullecourt (II): no thanks to the tanks

Fifth Big Battle Series: Ypres in Flanders

Messines

(I) Menin Road

(II) Polygon Wood

(III) Broodseinde

(IV) Poelcapelle

(V) Passchendaele

Battle of Cambrai

PART FOUR: 1918

Year of Victory on the Western Front

The German Spring Offensive

Sixth Big Battle Series: battles that halted the German offensive

Halting Battle (I): Hébuterne village

Halting Battle (II): first Dernancourt

Halting Battle (III): first battle for Morlancourt

Halting Battle (IV): first Villers-Bretonneux

Halting Battle (V): second Dernancourt

Halting Battle (VI): Hangard Wood

Halting Battle (VII): Hazebrouck (aka Battle of the Lys)

Battle of Zeebrugge

Seventh Big Battle Series: Villers-Bretonneux and beyond the Somme

Turning-point Battle (I): second Villers-Bretonneux

Turning-point Battle (II): second Morlancourt

Turning-point Battle (III): Ville-sur-Ancre

Battle of the Aisne

Battle of Cantigny

Battle of Belleau Wood

Battle of Noyon-Montdidier

Turning-point Battle (IV): third Morlancourt

Eighth Big Battle: the long-awaited breakthrough

Hamel

Ninth Big Battle: Amiens, Germany’s ‘black day’

Tenth Big Battle Series: post-Amiens mop-ups

Mop-up Battle (I): Lihons

Mop-up Battle (II): Etinehem

Mop-up Battle (III): Proyart

Mop-up Battle (IV): Transloy-Loupert system

Mop-up Battle (v): Chuignes

Eleventh Big Battle Series: final victory roll

Victory Roll (I) & (II): Mont St Quentin and Péronne

Victory Roll (III): Hindenburg outpost line (aka Hargicourt)

Battle of Argonne Forest (Meuse River)

Victory Roll (IV): St Quentin Canal

Victory Roll (V): Montbrehain, the Australians’ last battle

PART FIVE: POST WAR

The High Price of Peace

Combatants Killed

Total Wounded

Civilian Deaths

Après la Guerre

Farewell to Old France Forever

Returning to Australia

Tragedy and Triumph

Success Stories

APPENDIX

Timeline

Who Was Who

Contributors

Acknowledgements

Picture Credits

Bibliography

FOREWORD

Charles Bean was Australia’s official World War I historian. Having landed with the Australian troops at Gallipoli, he stayed with them at the Front through the entire war. It was said of Bean that no one had risked death more often than him. Wounded at the Gallipoli August offensive, he refused evacuation — such was his commitment to his role and to the men and nurses whose lives, courage, and sacrifice he so painstakingly documented. At Pozières, France, in 1916, Australia suffered 23,000 casualties in just six weeks. In late July, he recorded this in his diary:

Many a man lying out there at Pozières or in the low scrub at Gallipoli, with his poor, tired senses barely working through the fever of his brain, has thought in his last moments: ‘well — well — it’s over; but in Australia they will be proud of this.’

We are. We are very proud.

At the very end of the official history, which would take almost a quarter of a century to write and edit, when Bean then sought to summarise it all and what it meant, he wrote:

What these men did, nothing can alter now. The good and the bad, the greatness and the smallness of their story will stand … It rises as it will always rise, above the mists of ages, a monument to great-hearted men; and, for their nation, a possession forever.

But it was not only what they did, it is also what they wrote. For the first time, on a scale not since seen, these men and women nurses recorded their observations, described the horror, humour, and heroism around them, and expressed their love for family and friends so far away.

The power is in their story and how they told it, especially from France and Belgium from which 46,000 would not ever return, remaining as silent witnesses to the future they have given us.

Among those, author Dr Jonathan King introduces us to Stan Hastings Marchment of the 5th Division’s 14th Machine Gun Company. He was one of the 5,770 Australian casualties on the Menin Road, Belgium in 1917. His brother, Robert, broke the news of Stan’s death in a letter home:

No doubt you’ve heard the sad news … Before we went out on the night of the 25th Stan had an idea that something was going to happen to him, and he gave a letter to one of our boys to be posted for him in England … I think it was to a girl in Wauchope … He did not want it censored … He went out cheerful as a man ever could, especially when he had an idea he was going to his doom … [After he went over the top], he and three other boys were with their Gun digging a position … when suddenly the Germans sent a barrage of fire from their heavy batteries into Glencorse Wood where Stan and his mates were, and got all four of them … [Stan] suffered no pain as it was an instantaneous death with him … Glencorse Wood turned out a veritable hell for our boys and … many other good Australian Fathers, Mothers, Sisters, Sweethearts and Brothers …

Jonathan King takes us through the epic battles of the Western Front, many of tragic proportions, and other places unknown to most Australians. The letters and diaries record the freezing conditions, the mud, and desolate despair, but also reflects on their obvious love for one another. From arrival in France to the hell that was Passchendaele and the pride finally infused by the Monash-led victories of 1918, these are immensely powerful and readable stories from young Australians in circumstances beyond our modern comprehension.

Punctuated with the citations for Victoria Crosses, cartoons, drawings, and photographs, The Western Front Diaries is their gift to us as the nation moves its commemorative focus from Gallipoli to France and Belgium. It is the gift of understanding what these men did, what they endured, and, in their hardship, what they gave for us.

We owe them a debt we can barely understand, let alone repay. The very least we can do is read their story. It is this that Jonathan King has so powerfully enabled our generation to do. As such, it is a book for the ages.

HON. DR BRENDAN NELSON

DIRECTOR, AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL

MARCH 2015

IN FLANDERS FIELDS

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

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.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOHN MCCRAE,

FLANDERS, 1915

Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, a surgeon and poet, wrote the iconic lament ‘In Flanders Fields’ in 1915. He was later killed in the war.

PREFACE

FIVE TIMES GREATER THAN GALLIPOLI

‘The story of the glorious and decisive victory of the AIF on the Western Front will re-echo throughout the world and live forever in the history of our homeland.’

MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN MONASH,

AUSTRALIAN ARMY CORPS COMMANDER, 1918

Australia’s centennial commemorations for World War I have provided a long overdue opportunity to switch the nation’s traditional spotlight from Gallipoli to the Western Front. As a military historian, I am hoping to use the 100th anniversary of the Allied victory on the Western Front to draw attention to this important World War I theatre of battle, which has for a century been overshadowed by Gallipoli. It is time, 100 years down the track, for Australians to put aside their preoccupation with the ill-fated Gallipoli disaster and learn more about — and respect — the impressive victory on the Western Front, which was far more successful and significant than Gallipoli for our nation’s history.

It is also time to create a new cultural foundation for Australia. If we switch our focus from the failed Gallipoli campaign, during which thousands of Australians were slaughtered because of incompetent British orders, to the Western Front, where Australians led Australians to phenomenal victories, we will have a better foundation for a national identity. All we need to do this is courage, knowledge, self respect, and pride.

Although the Anzacs fought at Gallipoli for eight months, they were unable to advance much beyond the confines of Anzac Cove. AWM HO3500

Instead of repeating mindlessly, as we have for a century, the mantra ‘Australia was born at Gallipoli’, we should now say thoughtfully, ‘Australia came of age through our soldier’s achievements on the Western Front.’ For that was when our little-known nation leapt onto the world stage, punching well above its weight, and helped turn the tide of WWI. And wouldn’t it be far better for our nation’s identity to be based on success, rather than failure? This is the least we can do to thank the many thousands who died on that bloody, but lesser-known stage — and having interviewed the last handful of surviving veterans, I can tell you, dear reader, this is what they all wanted. ‘Tell Australians to stop glorifying Gallipoli,’ Western Front veteran Ted Smout told me in the late 1990s, ‘and tell them if they want to recognise our achievements in WWI to acknowledge the battles we won on the Western Front.’

Ted Matthews, of Sydney, served as a corporal in the Signals Corps and went on to outlive all other men who landed on the first day at Gallipoli, 25 April 1915. He died, aged 101, in 1997.

This is why I campaigned so hard with the Kevin Rudd Labor government in persuading Rudd’s media adviser, Lachlan Harris, and others to hold the first-ever official Anzac Day dawn service on the Western Front, for the 90th anniversary of the end of WWI in 2008, at the strategic watershed battlefield of Villers-Bretonneux. Fortunately, the event was so successful they agreed to hold Anzac Day dawn services there every year since. The location was chosen because Australians recaptured that village on Anzac Day, 1918 — just 24 hours after the Germans had captured it — thus sending the Germans on the run. This battle would be a turning point for the war.

Where my earlier book Gallipoli Diaries: the Anzacs’ own story, day by day (Scribe Publications, 2014) told the story of courage in the face of defeat, this book tells the story of even greater courage, in far worse battles, and against even greater odds, which enabled a hard-won victory. The two books together tell the stories of the main battles fought by Australians in the two major theatres of World War I — Gallipoli and the Western Front.

The stories here follow the same pattern as Gallipoli Diaries as they are told by soldiers who were actually there in those muddy and bloody trenches on the Western Front. As a result, this book Western Front Diaries: the Anzacs’ own story, battle by battle, like Gallipoli Diaries, presents even more brutally honest eyewitness accounts from soldiers, because those battles were so much more horrendous. Consequently, these eyewitness records confirm how much more important the Western Front theatre was than Gallipoli.

In many ways, the Western Front was about five times greater than Gallipoli. The facts speak for themselves:

Five times more Australians served on the Western Front: 250,000 as against 50,000;

More than five times as many died there: 46,000 versus Gallipoli’s 8,709;

The Western Front battles lasted two and a half years — much longer than the eight months of the Gallipoli campaign;

Australians fought in more than 30 significant battles, whereas less than ten were fought at Gallipoli;

For the first time, Australians fought in their own distinct Australian army of five divisions — rather than as part of British forces;

Also for the first time, an Australian general, John Monash, from Melbourne, commanded the soldiers of this Australian army;

These diggers, like those at Gallipoli, also fought very well, but they won five times more Victoria Crosses — a total of 53, compared with nine VCs won at Gallipoli — as well as a range of other decorations;

Although this Australian army represented less than 10 per cent of Allied forces, in the last year of the war, they captured approximately 25 per cent of enemy territory, prisoners, and arms and ammunition;

Finally and most importantly, they helped the Allies win the war, which was a marked contrast to the crushing defeat of the Allies at Gallipoli.

Peter Casserly, of Western Australia, outlived all other Australian WWI diggers. He died in 2005, aged 107.

The nation’s worst battle was also fought on the Western Front at Fromelles on 19 July 1916, when nearly 2,000 Australians were killed during that one terrible day in the bloodiest of battles.

As well as fighting for the first time under Australian command, our soldiers were all volunteers, the only all-volunteer army in World War I, which some of the last remaining veterans told the author was something they were very proud of. Along with many readers, I had ancestors who fought on the Western Front — and many of these are pictured in the rear endpapers, showing an extract from the 15 May 1918 Sydney Mail, which featured a three-page spread on the descendants of my ancestor Governor Philip Gidley King, all of whom served in the Great War.

Admittedly, to begin with I was only interested in writing books about Gallipoli, including Gallipoli Diaries, for which I interviewed the last ten Anzacs from that campaign (when they were about 100 years of age). These veterans included Ted Matthews, the world’s last man standing who had landed on that first fateful day on 25 April 1915; and also Alec Campbell, the world’s last man standing from the Gallipoli campaign.

The French minister for war vterans, Jean-Pierre Masseret, awarded the Legion of Honour to four AIF veterans in France during 1998. From L–R, Ted Smout, Howard Pope, Charlie Mance, and Eric Abraham.

However, when these Gallipoli veterans began fading away, I became interested in the Western Front as their passing allowed the spotlight to shine on the remaining Western Front veterans, who for so long had lived under the shadow of Gallipoli. Fortunately, this was just in time for me to interview the last fifty veterans, who spoke of their great difficulties and deeds in France and Flanders — stories which are included in this book. I also met Australia’s very last man standing from the Western Front, Peter Casserly, when The Sydney Morning Herald flew me to Perth to interview this sole survivor from the 250,000 Australian soldiers who fought there. Casserly, who was then 107, still had a good memory, with great recall for detail. He was still in good spirits, even singing risqué trench songs much to the embarrassment of the nurses caring for him, one of whom told him if he didn’t stop she would leave the room. I was the last journalist to interview this remarkable man, whose inspiring spirit stays with me to this day.

These veterans were all disappointed that Gallipoli had taken so much of centre stage that few Australians had heard about their heroic successes and sacrifices in France and Flanders. Those veterans inspired this book. Their stories were so compelling, I decided to collect more stories in order that I could tell the story of the Western Front through the voices of those who were actually there.

Letters from the Western Front were normally censored by the army. Typically, place names, details of battles, and troop movements were blocked out.

In their honour, I visited the Western Front in August 2014 to report on the 100th anniversary commemorations of the outbreak of WWI. I had also led battlefield tours of these haunting fields since 1998 — for the 80th anniversary of the Armistice, I travelled with a Department of Veterans Affairs party, which included four of the last veterans, who were there to receive the coveted French Legion of Honour: Brisbane’s Ted Smout and Eric Abraham, Sydney’s Charlie Mance, and Adelaide’s Howard Pope. I interviewed these remarkable men for an 80th anniversary documentary film Anzac Heroes Return to the Somme, in which they revealed the true horrors of their battles.

VOICES FROM THE TRENCHES

As this book tells the soldiers’ own stories, it is full of fresh, little-known extracts from their diaries and letters. Thus it is written at a popular level and is not an official history nor a scholarly academic account. The book tells the story chronologically and simply: battle by battle, with only brief introductions by the author to the main battles, which are fleshed out by soldiers’ stories where material is available. I have used the voices of soldiers at the Front as extensively as possible — using the letters and diaries provided by descendants of these soldiers who responded to my public appeal for material. People were very generous with their contributions, and the letters and diaries they provided bring the story to life on a personal level.

Readers are lucky to have these extracts, as diaries were officially frowned upon (in case of enemy capture) and discouraged; and, after all, their letters were also censored. Like all diaries, they are full of mistakes — factual, spelling, and grammar mistakes, as well as misunderstandings and exaggerations — so these extracts need to be taken with a grain of salt. On occasion, some of the soldiers did not even know exactly where they were as they moved from village to village and so sometimes gave wrong geographical locations. In most cases, I have left the extracts as they were found, but in others, I have changed them just enough for a modern reader to understand, connecting different quotes with bridging words of my own or with ellipses.

DIFFERENT SIDES OF THE STORY

Apart from the stories of Australian soldiers, I have also included other nationalities, which are sprinkled through the book, including German accounts for balance. The first of these were in Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 classic study of a group of ill-fated German soldiers, All Quiet on the Western Front. During the war, the commander-in-chief of the Australian army, Major-General John Monash, who was of Prussian descent and spoke German fluently, also heard some of these stories first-hand from German prisoners. They helped him to understand and predict the German strategy. If Australian readers feel sorry for the Australians, it may help to know that German soldiers on the other side of No-Man’s-Land were just as miserable — and towards the end of the war much more so. The German soldiers also told Monash that, of all the nationalities they were fighting, they only really feared the best fighters, the Scots and Australians.

Although French, Jacques Charles Clement Mony de Kerloy enlisted as a private and fought with the AIF.

THE DIFFERENT NATIONALITIES

In this account, we meet German soldiers like Schutze Albert Muhmel and his comrade-in-arms from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Ivan Batistic (aka Surkic), an 18-year-old impoverished peasant’s son and the youngest of eight children, who enlisted in 1914 from Zrnovo village on the island of Korcula in Croatia. On the Allied side, apart from the many Australian and British soldiers, we also meet a sports-mad New Zealander, Reg Child, busting his neck to play rugby games in between battles; Scotsman William Chambers, and Frenchman Jacques Charles Clement Mony de Kerloy.

Ivan Batistic was born in Croatia and served in the armed forces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Sports-mad New Zealander Reg Childs served in the 2nd Battalion on the Western Front in some of the bloodiest battles. He won the Military Medal at Lesdain in October 1918.

Scotsman William Chambers fought at and survived the Battle of the Somme and later migrated to Australia where he employed Marcel Caux (aka Harold Katte) on his farm.

STRUCTURE

The book is divided into five parts, reflecting the five different years of the war, from 1914 to 1918. Each of the five years of the war showed a seasonal pattern to the fighting, which seemed to start in late January or early February but slowed right down as the winter approached by late November or early December, so each part of this book represents a new year and a new phase of the war. Within each of these years, the story is told battle by battle. I have then grouped sub-battles under headings of major battles in an interpretative way that is easier to understand.

Letters from home kept the AIF soldiers going during their time fighting on the Western Front.

CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE

The story is relevant for today’s conflicts, as once again, in the early 21st century, Australians have been fighting on far-flung shores under a foreign power, and for reasons that do not impact specifically on the Australian homeland — just like in WWI. Sadly, the same sort of mistakes made in World War I by British military leaders commanding Australian forces have also been repeated by American military leaders commanding Australian forces in these new wars, in troubled places like Iraq and Syria.

Yet the Australian government, which committed our forces to these new conflicts, has the same keen propensity for war and seems to have learnt so little from the mistakes of World War I, even though we have now had 100 years to reflect. This might be because our political leaders know so little about what really happened in the greatest of all Australian killing fields — the Western Front.

So, to help us understand the significance of that Western Front campaign, we need now to hear from the soldiers themselves.

INTRODUCTION

By 1915, the Western Front stretched from Belgium to Switzerland. The Germans also had an Eastern Front along the Russian border.

ALL TOO QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

‘The A.I.F’s achievement on the Western Front was never really recognised by Australians back home, even though it was clearly appreciated by the end of the war by people who had been closer to that war — the British, the French and even the Germans.’

CHARLES BEAN, OFFICIAL WAR CORRESPONDENT,

ANZAC TO AMIENS, 1946

Basil Helmore served as a gunner with the 4th Australian Artillery Brigade on the Western Front from 1917 until the end of the war.

Even though the Australians had proved to be brave fighters at Gallipoli, they got a shock when they started fighting on the Western Front, where they faced a challenge far worse than their celebrated landing at Anzac Cove. For in their first battle at Fromelles on 19 July 1916, nearly 2,000 Australians were killed in the first 24 hours, as part of the total 5,533 casualties. It was a horrendous introduction to real warfare — as well as heavy artillery, this new German enemy fired machine guns incessantly across flat, open ground where there was no shelter like the hills, cliffs, and valleys provided at Gallipoli.

Unfortunately, this bloody baptism at Fromelles was the shape of things to come. Compared with the 8,709 Australians killed at Gallipoli (out of 50,000 Australians who fought there during the eight-month campaign), 46,000 Australians were killed on the Western Front (out of 250,000 Australians who fought there over two and a half years).

When the AIF arrived, Staff Nurse Nora Cuthbert Colwill, who had enlisted in 1914, was one of the nurses serving in France, where she helped treat the growing number of casualties.

The Western Front was, in fact, the worst killing field of Australian history. Australians were fighting there as soldiers of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) while New Zealanders fought as a separate force, sometimes alongside Australians, and sometimes on their own. But the Australians also suffered the highest attrition rate on any one battlefield — in the series of attacks on the village of Pozières, in 1916, the AIF suffered a devastating 23,000 casualties in seven weeks. There were more Australians buried at Pozières, Charles Bean reported, than anywhere else on earth.

The following year, in 1917, Australians also suffered their worst cumulative losses, during the Third Battle of Ypres, with an appalling 38,000 casualties. But that is not the most devastating statistic, because during the year of 1917, at least 20,000 Australian soldiers were killed in action on the Western Front battlefields — more than the number of Australian army soldiers killed fighting on battlefields in the whole of World War II.

These Western Front battles were by far the biggest and bloodiest Australians ever fought. They made the short skirmishes at Gallipoli look like child’s play. With the exception of the Anzac Cove landing and the August offensive, which included Lone Pine and the Nek, the death tolls were much lower at Gallipoli. But despite losing thousands upon thousands of comrades, the soldiers of the AIF fought back and eventually rose to the challenge, with more recruits arriving all the time. These recruits enabled the biggest Australian presence in any one theatre of war up to that time. By Anzac Day 1917 onwards, there were enough men for five Australian divisions (of 20,000 men each) and, by 1918, together they constituted the first Australian army as an entity separate from the British armies. The New Zealanders only had enough soldiers to form one division.

Despite the enormous losses, thanks to the continuing recruitment, Australian forces still managed to spearhead attacks that defeated the German forces on the Somme in 1918 — an unprecedented feat. It was certainly heartening after the defeat at Gallipoli. This is why the Western Front veterans who I interviewed for this book were determined I should tell people about our victories in France and Belgium, and not the defeats at Gallipoli.

Australians also fought more than 30 battles on the Western Front, which was many more than were fought at Gallipoli. Apart from the landing, and repelling the Turkish counterattack in late May 1915, there were very few major battles fought at Gallipoli aside from the fighting in August. Even Gallipoli ‘stunts’ like the Nek with less than 400 killed in action may not be classed as big battles compared with the Western Front — and they were certainly not pivotal. Australians, who won nine Victoria Crosses at Gallipoli, also won far more decorations on the Western Front, including 53 Victoria Crosses.

Although Gallipoli may have a dearly held place in the national psyche as the most popular Australian war theatre of all, this honour really should belong to the Western Front. For never have so many Australians fought so hard in the one campaign to achieve such great results. While they retreated from Gallipoli with great reservations, leaving a job undone and so many mates buried on those hopeless slopes, after the Western Front the diggers returned to Australia full of pride, having acquitted themselves with honour. As Charles Bean reported in Anzac to Amiens, ‘The A.I.F. won a recognised place for Australia amongst the nations of the world’ and also won a seat at the new post-war League of Nations. Bean also noted that ‘The return to Australia of the A.I.F. covered with decorations and acclaimed overseas as one of the most notable fighting forces of history created a new confidence in the nation and in Australia’s national undertakings.’

Now Bean was right. He had covered the war from start to finish, and the return of the world-conquering Australians had created a new confidence in the nation and in Australia’s national undertakings.

A CENTENNIAL RESOLUTION: CREATING A NEW FOUNDATION FOR AUSTRALIAN CULTURE

I, as author, now believe that this great moment should become the birth of modern Australia — rather than Gallipoli. The great achievement by our first successful international ambassadors who laid down their lives for a worthy cause should become the foundation of the Australian identity — 100 years down the track. This will result in a national identity based on a sense of moral duty in the fight against brutal tyranny, centring around selfless community service, courage, sacrifice, persistence, hard work, teamwork, good cheer, and the undying sense of humour that helped bring an end to the worst war the world had seen. It would mean Australia’s identity is founded on success under our own leadership rather than on a failure under foreign leadership.

Major-General John Monash served with the AIF from the landing at Gallipoli until the Armistice on the Western Front, and beyond. He is considered by historians to be one of the best commanding officers of WWI. AWM AO1241

The AIF had fought without respite for the full two and a half years, won those 53 VCs in different battles, and were still (despite two conscription referendums) all volunteers — the only all-volunteer army in WWI. In his post-war book Australian Victories in France 1918, Monash said the AIF punched well above their weight; their achievements were well out of proportion to their small numbers and they helped bring the war to an end, six months ahead of the original British planned schedule of May 1919.

Of course, we still paid a high price, as more than 61,000 Australians died in all battlefields achieving this victory in the so-called ‘War to End All Wars’. Yet Monash claimed their sacrifices were justified, reassuring his soldiers in 1918 that their ‘glorious and decisive victories’ would re-echo throughout the world, and ‘live forever in the history of our homeland’. All soldiers wanted to be remembered, especially those like Canada’s visionary Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, who, sitting in his trench, wrote ‘In Flanders Fields’ knowing that every time he climbed over the top of the trench to fight another battle he could be killed. He died in the last year of the war, in January 1918; McCrae’s poem ‘In Flanders Fields’, reproduced in the front of this book, has become the iconic poem for those killed on the Western Front.

But those ‘glorious and decisive victories’ Monash heralded did not ‘live forever’ in the homeland of Australians; their achievements were not fully appreciated by a Gallipoli-obsessed post-war generation, and so were not handed down from generation to generation at all. These great victories were certainly not taught in schools, and today, a century later, many Australians have not heard of the major Western Front battles nor of where they took place, so preoccupied are we all with Gallipoli. This is partly because the British claimed most of the credit for winning Western Front battles, camouflaging Australian efforts in official reports and history books, which dominated Australian markets, for decades. The AIF were seen by many as part of the British forces anyway. Some German prisoners of war revealed they did not even know Australians were involved — they thought they fought only the English.

Commonwealth war correspondent Charles Bean served from the landing at Gallipoli to the Armistice on the Western Front. He went on to write the official history of WWI and establish the Australian War Memorial. AWM G01561

There have been thousands of books written on the Western Front but very few acknowledged the existence of the AIF. Although Charles Bean’s official history of World War I set the record straight, it did not enjoy a very large readership. Bean’s light-hearted 1916 The Anzac Book on Gallipoli by contrast was a bestseller, selling more than 100,000 copies immediately.

Yet some even-handed historians have acknowledged Monash and the AIF’s key fighting role — including a leading British WWI historian A.J.P. Taylor, who reported, ‘Monash was the only general of creative originality produced in the first war.’ Some Australian authors have also tried to switch the focus from Gallipoli to the Western Front — including Les Carlyon in his definitive tome The Great War; and the late founding president of the Families and Friends of the First AIF, John Laffin, who moved to the French battlefields to set up an educational service for visiting Australians. Ron Baker also moved to the Somme, where for years he guided Australians around the battlefields dressed in a 1918 uniform. Canberra historian Peter Edgar, who wrote a thesis on the battles of the Somme, also confirmed Australia’s contribution. Flinders University historical scholar Frank Holland, who lobbied the Australian War Memorial to expand its displays on the Somme, argued Monash’s blitzkrieg tactics pioneered at Hamel on 4 July 1918 were later studied by German strategists, who developed the tactics in World War II.

Monash not only helped design and perfect mobile warfare that overcame static trench warfare with its great loss of life, Holland argued, but he also applied this at the battle of Amiens in August 1918 to help win the war — persuading other Allied commanders to adopt his strategies. Monash’s 2004 biographer Roland Perry also stated that Monash had actually changed the way the Allies planned their battles, as he introduced careful, inclusive, and detailed map-based discussions well before each battle.

Monash himself never sought promotion nor recognition even though he fought throughout the whole war. He landed at Gallipoli on the first day and, according to his 1962 biographer John Hetherington, was, by 1918, the only original Australian brigade commander at Gallipoli who had not been killed nor evacuated because of disease, wounds, or physical or psychological breakdown. Monash, whose Jewish Prussian background was resented by his Australian Christian comrades, wrote home when passed over repeatedly by the Allied Command, saying, ‘my only consolation has been the sense of faithfully doing my duty to my country, which has placed a grave responsibility upon me and to my Division which trusts and follows me, and I owe something to the 20,000 men whose lives and honour are placed in my hands to do with as I will.’

Recognition for Monash and his AIF’s achievements took a long time indeed. Although grateful for the Australians liberating France in 1918, the French government did not officially recognise their achievements until the 80th anniversary of the war — when they belatedly awarded the Legion of Honour to all remaining Australian veterans, about 60 of whom were still alive. The French also invited the last four veterans fit enough to travel to France to receive their award on the battlefields in 1998. These lonely four received their awards at Villers-Bretonneux, where they had earned those medals all those years ago — representing the 250,000 soldiers who had fought on the Western Front. But all four sadly told the author — who was travelling with them — ‘it was too little too late’, because most of their deserving comrades had died many years earlier. While we were in Villers-Bretonneux, a middle-aged French tour guide asked me why we were visiting France. When I replied that it was because Australians had fought to liberate France, she was astounded, saying she had no knowledge of the AIF serving there. The British government did not even fully acknowledge the AIF’s achievements until that 80th anniversary in 1998, when they finally endorsed an appropriate World War I memorial for the AIF in London.

Despite Bean’s optimism, the AIF’s heroic achievements never really took root from the start, because in 1919 many Australians were ambivalent about that costly war. The anti-war ‘Wobblies’ (Industrial Workers of the World), who claimed munitions factories had created the war to make money, jeered returning soldiers, saying they were just pawns in a materialist game. The ‘shirkers’ who refused to volunteer also spurned returning diggers, ridiculing their war service rather than congratulating them. The country had after all been split asunder in 1916 and 1917 by two conscription referendums — both of which had failed, causing bitter resentments. The Catholic archbishop Daniel Mannix tried to stop the prime minister Billy Hughes from inspiring men to enlist, and his anti-war campaign defeated Hughes and prevented the introduction of conscription. So the ‘shirkers’ taunted the returning soldiers, calling them ‘five-bob-a-day murderers’ who deserved to get wounded because they had been stupid enough to volunteer — and for such a low wage of five shillings (five bob) a day.

So while the tragic defeat