Charles Bean: Man, Myth, Legacy

By Peter Stanley

Australia's official war correspondent during WWI, Charles Bean was also Australia's first official war historian and the driving force behind the creation of the Australian War Memorial. Famously criticized for his deliberate myth-making as editor of The Anzac Book, Bean was also a public servant, institutional leader, author, activist, thinker, doer, philosopher, and polemicist. In Charles Bean, Man, myth, legacy, Australia's top military historians – including Peter Stanley, Peter Burness, Michael McKernan, Jeffrey Grey, Peter Edwards, David Horner, Peter Rees and Craig Stockings – analyze the man, the myth, and his long-reaching legacy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NewSouth
• Release date: Sep 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781742242866

Peter Stanley

Peter Stanley is Professor of History at UNSW Canberra and has been a winner of the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History. He has published over thirty-five books on British India and on Australian military social history, including White Mutiny: British Military Culture in India, 1825–75.

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Charles Bean

MAN, MYTH, LEGACY

PETER STANLEY is one of Australia’s most active military-social historians. Formerly the Principal Historian of the Australian War Memorial, where he worked from 1980 to 2007, he has been a research professor at UNSW Canberra since 2013. Peter has published over 30 books, including Lost Boys of Anzac (2014) and his Bad Characters was jointly awarded the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History in 2011. Peter is immediate past President of Honest History.

Charles Bean

MAN, MYTH, LEGACY

Edited by

Peter Stanley

A UNSW Press book

Published by

NewSouth Publishing

University of New South Wales Press Ltd

University of New South Wales

Sydney NSW 2052

AUSTRALIA

newsouthpublishing.com

© Peter Stanley 2017

First published 2017

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is copyright. While copyright of the work as a whole is vested in Peter Stanley, copyright of individual chapters is retained by the chapter authors. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Creator: Stanley, Peter, 1956– author.

Title: Charles Bean: Man, myth, legacy / Peter Stanley.

Edition: 1st edition

ISBN: 9781742234892 (paperback)

9781742242866 (ebook)

9781742248356 (ePDF)

Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.

Subjects: Bean, C. E. W. (Charles Edwin Woodrow), 1879–1968.

War correspondants – Australia – Biography.

Historians – Australia – Biography.

World War, 1914–1918 – Journalists – Biography.

Design Josephine Pajor-Markus

Cover image George Lambert, C.E.W. Bean, AWM ART07545

Printer Griffin Press

All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book, but in some cases copyright could not be traced. The editor welcomes information in this regard.

This book is printed on paper using fibre supplied from plantation or sustainably managed forests.

Contents

Foreword, Anne Carroll OAM

Contributors

Abbreviations

Introduction

PART 1 Charles Bean: Life and work

1  Finding the man? Stephen Ellis

2  Bean on the Western Front Peter Burness

3  Bean at Tuggeranong Jennifer Horsfield

4  Reading Bean Michael McKernan

5  Bean and the making of the National Archives of Australia Anne-Marie Condé

6  The distributed Bean archive Michael Piggott

7  Rethinking Bean’s philosophy of history Martin Ball

8  Bean and official history Jeffrey Grey

9  Bean’s straight line Peter Rees

PART 2 The Australian official history tradition

10  An adequate memorial Peter Stanley

11  Conflicts and controversies over Southeast Asia Peter Edwards

12  The Malayan Emergency Peter Dennis

13  The Vietnam Conflict Chris Clark

14  Peacekeeping, humanitarian and post-Cold War operations David Horner

15  Doing history in the digital age Garth Pratten

16  A continuing tradition … but a whole new ballgame Craig Stockings

Apendix

Notes

Index

Foreword

One of my most vivid recollections of my grandfather, Charles Bean, who was in his mid-60s when I was born, was the puzzling discovery – as a five-year-old – that there was a bullet in his right thigh. I now wonder if there was a connection between that bullet fired by a Turkish sniper on 6 August 1915 and my grandfather’s zest for his life’s work.

I refer to Charles Bean’s poem ‘Non Nobis’, which was sung by choirs at the ‘Charles Bean’s Legacy’ conference at UNSW Canberra on 29 July 2016. Written by Bean in December 1915 as he and the Australian and British Empire troops left Gallipoli, it begins:

Not unto us, O Lord, to tell

Thy purpose in the blast,

When these, that towered beyond us, fell

And we were overpast.

Although written in the first person plural, is the author actually asking a more personal question about why he, Bean, an honorary captain, survived while Major-General William Bridges, co-founder of the AIF and the most senior Australian on Gallipoli – one of ‘these, that towered beyond us’ – did not? They had both suffered similar gunshot wounds to the thigh.

I wonder whether the bullet, which was still there when Charles Bean died in 1968, acted as a providential spur, constantly sparking the responsibility he felt to Australia and its citizens to honour the loss of so many lives. He responded to this responsibility through his well-known military history works and his lesser known social missionary work, both in print and in person.

In 1930 Bean founded the Parks and Playgrounds Movement in New South Wales. It aimed to promote the preservation of adequate recreation spaces and reserves for flora and fauna; to ensure that existing and future parks and reserves were properly used; and to maintain the right of all Australians to enjoy the natural beauties of Australia and of healthy open-air sport and play. Papers rescued from a backyard bonfire and now contained in a file in the Mitchell Library record the copious meetings Bean attended and the letters he wrote in his ‘spare time’ to advance this cause.

In his post-war books, In Your Hands, Australians and War Aims of a Plain Australian, written in 1919 and 1943 respectively, Bean drew upon his experience on the Great War battlefields alongside the troops to articulate the values and actions required in peacetime by everyday Australians to ensure a compassionate, educated and healthy nation.

Bean’s works were visionary and wide-ranging. His contributions to the sphere of military history and, increasingly, his social missionary activities, invite continued exploration. The papers arising from the conference ‘Charles Bean’s Legacy’ hosted by the Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society continue to inform and stimulate our reflections on and conversation about this deeply thoughtful, caring and dedicated Australian.

Anne Carroll OAM

Contributors

Dr MARTIN BALL has published widely on the place of the Anzac story in Australian cultural history. His PhD explored the intersection of Anzac narratives with the mythic dimensions of Australian national consciousness, focusing on what is hidden and suppressed in this process. His articles have explored how the Gallipoli story has woven stories of nationhood into itself and revealed Bean’s original vision for the official history. He currently teaches at Melbourne Grammar School.

PETER BURNESS AM has recently retired from the Australian War Memorial, where he worked for over 40 years. He has been a head curator and worked on numerous exhibitions, has travelled to the Western Front and other battlefields on a regular basis, and, as a historian, has written extensively on Australian military history.

ANNE CARROLL OAM worked as a physiotherapist in Sydney and London before a career change when she joined the Prime Minister’s Department in the Australian Pavilion at Expo 70 Japan. As a full-time mother she served in various community volunteer positions, co-founding and becoming the president of a community-based environmental and heritage organisation – a position she held for 18 years. She was awarded a Centenary Medal and, in 2003, a Medal of the Order of Australia.

Dr CHRIS CLARK graduated from RMC Duntroon in 1972 and served as an intelligence officer in the Australian Army until 1979. He was appointed in 1987 to write a history of the RAAF 1921–39. Completing a PhD at UNSW Canberra, he commenced work in 1990 on a volume of official history on RAAF operations in the Vietnam War. After working at the Australian Dictionary of Biography at the Australian National University (1999–2001), he became Historian for Post-1945 Conflicts at the Australian War Memorial. In 2004 he was appointed to establish the Office of Air Force History in the Department of Defence, which he headed until retiring in 2013. He is the author of 17 books on Australian military history and editor or contributor to 30 more.

ANNE-MARIE CONDÉ is a senior curator at the National Archives of Australia. She formerly worked as a curator at the National Museum of Australia, and a historian at the Australian War Memorial. Her published work mainly concerns the history of archives, record keeping and museums in Australia.

Emeritus Professor PETER DENNIS has written several volumes on aspects of 20th century British defence and foreign policy, and wrote the first half (on the Malayan Emergency) in the joint publication with Jeffrey Grey, Emergency and Confrontation (1997). He was the joint editor and author of The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History (1995, 2008), and was the founding joint editor of the international journal, War & Society. He led the development of the AIF database at <www.aif.adfa.edu.au> and has also developed a complementary NZEF database at .

Professor PETER EDWARDS AM FAIIA is an honorary professor at both the Australian National University and Deakin University. As the Official Historian of Australia’s Involvement in Southeast Asian Conflicts 1948–75, he was general editor of the nine-volume series and author of the volumes dealing with strategy and diplomacy, Crises and Commitments (1992) and A Nation at War (1997). He is also the author of Australia and the Vietnam War (2014) and Arthur Tange: Last of the Mandarins (2006). His books have won the Colin Roderick Award, the Queensland Premier’s Prize for History, the WA Premier’s Book Award for non-fiction, and a short-listing for the National Biography Award.

Dr STEPHEN ELLIS is Executive Director of the Australia–Pacific Historical Pathology Project and Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Education Science Technology and Mathematics at the University of Canberra. He read American and Australian history at the University of New England and Russian history at Duke University in the USA. After teaching history in a number of Australian universities, he spent 30 years at the National Archives of Australia, where he developed the Archives’ web-based system RecordSearch. He also led development of the Archives’ internationally recognised digital preservation approach.

Professor JEFFREY GREY was, until his sudden death at 57 in July 2016, Professor of History in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, at UNSW Canberra. He wrote or edited 26 books in the fields of Australian and comparative and international military history, and published numerous articles, chapters and reviews in these fields. He founded the Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society at UNSW Canberra and was President of the Society for Military History.

Emeritus Professor DAVID HORNER AM was Professor of Australian Defence History at the ANU for 15 years. A graduate of RMC Duntroon, he saw active service as a platoon commander in Vietnam. As a Reserve colonel he was the first Head of the Australian Army’s Land Warfare Studies Centre. He is the Official Historian of Australian Peacekeeping, Humanitarian and Post– Cold War Operations. Among his 32 books he is the author or joint author of two volumes of the six-volume official history series. He is also the official historian for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the first volume of which, The Spy Catchers, won the 2015 UK Intelligence Book of the Year prize and was joint winner of the 2015 Prime Minister’s Award for history.

JENNIFER HORSFIELD is a writer and historian with a special interest in the landscape and human stories of the Canberra region. She has written five books, the most recent being Building a City: C.S. Daley and the Story of Canberra, which was the ACT Writers’ Centre non-fiction Book of the Year for 2016. Jenny is Chair of MOTH (Minders of Tuggeranong Homestead), a community group founded in 1992 to help protect the historic Tuggeranong Homestead, where Bean lived and worked for five years.

Dr MICHAEL MCKERNAN is a professional writer, reviewer and commentator in the area of Australian history. He has written many books on sport, war, politics, rural Australia and religion. They include This War Never Ends, Strength of a Nation, Victoria at War 1914–1918, When This Thing Happened and Here Is Their Spirit: A History of the Australian War Memorial . He has worked as a historian, museum administrator and battlefield tour guide. He lives in Canberra.

Since 2009 MICHAEL PIGGOTT AM has been a historical consultant, having previously worked for 37 years as an archivist with the National Library, Australian War Memorial, National Archives and the University of Melbourne. He is a 2016 National Library Fellow; the Deputy Chair, Territory Records Advisory Council; Treasurer, Honest History; and President, Friends of the Noel Butlin Archives Centre, ANU. A collection of his writing was published in 2012 as Archives and Societal Provenance: Australian Essays.

Dr GARTH PRATTEN is a senior lecturer in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University. Dr Pratten was a member of the research staff for the Official History of Australia’s Involvement in Southeast Asian Conflicts and is a contributing author to the Official History of Australian Peacekeeping, Humanitarian and Post–Cold War Operations. Between 2008 and 2010, while working for the British Ministry of Defence, Dr Pratten deployed to Afghanistan on three occasions, including six months attached to the team compiling the war diary for the International Security Assistance Force’s Regional Command – South.

PETER REES is a writer whose books include political biography and military and social history, including The Boy from Boree Creek: The Tim Fischer Story, The Other Anzacs, re-released (and filmed) as Anzac Girls, Desert Boys, Lancaster Men and Inside the Vault: The History and Art of Australian Coinage. His biography of Bean, Bearing Witness: The Remarkable Life of Charles Bean, Australia’s Greatest War Correspondent , was awarded the Nib Anzac Centenary Literary Prize in 2015.

PETER STANLEY FAHA is Research Professor at UNSW Canberra. He has published over 30 books, mostly in Australian military history but also in medical history, about the 2009 Black Saturday bushfire, and the military history of British India. He is the General Editor of the Army’s Cambridge University Press series and immediate past President of Honest History. His most recent book is The Crying Years: Australia’s Great War, which re-interprets the nation’s experience of the First World War through the collection of the National Library of Australia.

Professor CRAIG STOCKINGS is a Professor of History at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, and the Official Historian of Australian Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Australian Peacekeeping Operations in East Timor. His recent works include: Swastika over the Acropolis: Reinterpreting the Nazi Invasion of Greece in World War II (co-authored with Eleanor Hancock), Before the Anzac Dawn: A Military History of Australia to 1915 (co-edited with John Connor); and Britannia’s Shield: Lieutenant-General Sir Edward Hutton and Late Victorian Imperial Defence, which was awarded ‘first runner up’ for the UK Templer Medal.

Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used, mostly in endnotes:

AWM Australian War Memorial

NAA National Archives of Australia

NAUK National Archives (United Kingdom)

NLA National Library of Australia

UQP University of Queensland Press

References to volumes of Charles Bean’s Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918 are abbreviated to (for example) Bean, vol. III, p. 304. The details of the individual volumes including title, author and first publication date are listed in the Appendix.

Throughout the essays in this book the Australian War Memorial, as Bean’s creation and the repository of his papers (and, with less certainty, of his spirit), is referred to often. In each essay it is referred to initially by its full title, and thereafter as ‘the Memorial’.

Introduction

Peter Stanley

Charles Bean, for those unfamiliar with the man and his work, was one of Australia’s most distinguished and (as this book demonstrates) influential historians. The son of a clergyman-headmaster, he was born in Bathurst, NSW, in 1879, and educated in Australia but mainly in Britain, at Brentwood School, Clifton College and Oxford. Graduating without any clear career before him (he did not do well in the Indian Civil Service examination), he returned to Australia in 1904 and worked for a time as a lawyer. In 1906 he turned to journalism, joining the staff of the Sydney Morning Herald as a features writer. In the decade before the Great War, Bean became one of the Herald’s senior writers, representing the paper in Britain and producing several books of reportage.

Bean discovered his native land through a series of journeys through far-western New South Wales. Travelling either as a judge’s associate (before he gave up the law as a bad job) or as a journalist, he fell in love with the harsh outback. His encounters with the environment of far-western NSW, and even more the people it produced, gave him an enduring admiration for the qualities he thought the hardships of bush life fostered. (Almost a century on, the distinguished journalist Michelle Grattan followed Bean’s formative travel in Back on the Wool Track, in the footsteps of the journeys that produced his books, On the Wool Track (1910) and The ‘Dreadnought’ of the Darling (1911).)

In 1914, his fellow journalists narrowly elected him to become the official correspondent for the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). He left with its first contingent to Egypt and in due course travelled to Gallipoli and the Western Front. He lived alongside the troops (he was wounded on Gallipoli) and reported on virtually every major Australian action as an eyewitness. Even more importantly, his notebooks and diaries constitute a unique contemporary record. In 1917 he was instrumental in creating the Australian War Records Section, which collected documents, art, photographs and artefacts describing the AIF’s part in the war, and he conceived and worked for the establishment of an institution that eventually became the Australian War Memorial, formally opened in Canberra in 1941. By then Bean had edited the 15-volume Official history of Australia in the Great War, of which he wrote six volumes. That endeavour consumed his working life, though in retirement he published more books, writing in all some 19 books of history, reportage and social commentary. He believed in the value of education and civic responsibility, and worked for the creation of parks and playgrounds. As a commentator he showed a notable flexibility of mind, such as his celebrated ‘Recantation’ of Appeasement and his rethinking of the White Australia policy.¹ He spent the last four years of his life in Concord Repatriation Hospital after developing dementia in the late 1950s; he died in August 1968. The revival in the study of Australian military history from the 1980s saw Bean’s reputation reconsidered and valued afresh, and he has now attracted several biographies.

Among Bean’s many achievements was effectively to create what we now call the Anzac legend – the ideal of how Australians behave in war – and his Official History is the canon of Australia’s part in the Great War. The centenary of the Great War prompted a welcome re-examination of this history that extended the familiar Australian narrative of Gallipoli–to–Montbrehain. Notable outcomes include Joan Beaumont’s Broken Nation, Douglas Newton’s Hell-Bent, the five volumes of the Oxford Centenary History of Australia and the Great War (conceived and edited by the late Jeffrey Grey), Melanie Oppenheimer’s history of the Red Cross, The Power of Humanity, and Bruce Scates and Melanie Oppenheimer’s The Last Battle. All of these works offer fresh insights into an epic which occasionally seems so ingrained in Australian mythic understandings that it resists revision. The centenary has also seen predictable and often egregious retellings of battles – especially of Gallipoli and Fromelles – that essentially entrench and buttress myths: the less said about them the better. Less prominent in the centenary has been the reinterpretation of the ways in which we know what we think we know. This book offers an opportunity to reflect not just on the substance of Bean’s life, but also on his part in creating our understandings of the Great War, the Anzac legend and the place of war in Australia’s national story. These remain significant streams in both the popular imagination and scholarly interpretations.

Charles Bean: Man, Myth, Legacy offers a reminder of how scholarship advances understanding. Books like this are a product not only of years of research, but also of the development of networks and relationships between researchers and institutions. The impulse for a conference about Bean came more or less simultaneously from a group of historians, curators and others interested in the complex and important place Charles Bean occupies even today. Bean not only documented and interpreted Australia’s experience of war, he himself constituted a part of the story. That impulse prompted historians in the Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society at UNSW Canberra to convene a conference, ‘Charles Bean’s Legacy’, held in July 2016. The papers presented at that conference form the substance of this book.

An exhibition, Charles Bean: Life and Work, was mounted in the Australian Defence Force Academy Library to complement the conference. It brought together artefacts, images and other items from three sources: the Academy library’s own books and Special Collections holdings, the National Archives of Australia, and most significantly the wider Bean family, represented by Bean’s granddaughter, Mrs Anne Carroll OAM. Mrs Carroll, in fact, became a co-curator of the exhibition along with Ms Anne-Marie Condé of the National Archives of Australia and me. The exhibition presented aspects of Bean’s character and his contribution to national and historical interpretation. The inclusion of family items revealed facets of Bean’s life and character not easily visible in his official writing, which Anne hints at in her fine Preface to this book; while the display of largely previously unseen records from the National Archives enabled us to glimpse the war’s effects on him (through his Repatriation files, for