Anzac's Dirty Dozen (17 page)

The rules of war to which Australian soldiers were supposed to adhere in World War I were embodied in the ‘Hague Rules'. These conventions, set down in 1899 and revised in 1907, moved toward more explicitly guaranteeing the humane treatment of
prisoners and gave extensive consideration to the obligations of governments and armies in the treatment of prisoners of war. Of specific pertinence to the conduct of the individual in combat was Article 23. Under this clause it was especially forbidden to kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army; to kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down his arms, or having no longer means of defense, has surrendered at discretion; or to declare that no quarter will be given.
¹⁶
Britain incorporated the Hague Convention in its
Manual of Military Law
published in 1914 and again in 1916. Chapter XIV, paragraph 50, reiterated that the act of killing prisoners who had laid down their arms was forbidden. Furthermore, in the next paragraph the British manual stated that:

This prohibition is clear and distinct; there is no question of the moment up to which acts of violence may be continued without disentitling the enemy to being ultimately admitted to the benefit of quarter. War is for the purpose of overcoming armed resistance, and no vengeance can be taken because an individual has done his duty to the last but escaped injury.
¹⁷

Acceptance of the rights of surrendered enemies was also unequivocal. So, too, was the undertaking in the following paragraph: ‘Care must therefore be taken that all ranks are acquainted with the laws of war and that they endeavour to observe them'.
¹⁸

As members of the British Expeditionary Force in France fully conversant with the
Manual of Military Law
, there can be no doubt that Australian officers were aware of their obligations in this respect. Moreover, given the large portion of Australian officers drawn from the legal fraternity, there exist few reasons to suggest they did not comprehend their responsibilities toward
ensuring the prevention of such treachery. The degree to which the rank-and-file understood their responsibilities is perhaps less certain. Nevertheless, it was the responsibility of officers to instruct them in such matters if they did not already know. Another important aspect of the
Manual of Military Law
was contained in paragraph 433, which required combatants to obey all commands issued by a superior officer. This, as Joanna Bourke points out, ran counter to the prevailing custom that soldiers were only compelled to obey ‘lawful orders', or those they considered appropriate to the moment.
¹⁹

The British Army during World War I certainly endeavored to make these rules understood. Treatment of enemy prisoners was one of the many topics taught to officers and non-commissioned officers in the schools of instruction behind the lines during the war. Circulars, too, were distributed. These included details on how to conduct prisoners to the rear with specific instructions on what could and could not be taken from them.
²⁰
Of particular interest was a circular issued and titled ‘The Soldiers' Don'ts of International Law'. This document was clearly designed as a ready-reckoner for soldiers to know and apply their and their enemy's rights in battle. It concluded with commendable legal and Christian intent: ‘Don't go beyond your rights, and Do as you would be done by'. A close reading reveals some odd inconsistencies of intent and admiration. With quirky British grace, it suggested: ‘Don't shoot a spy off hand; he is doing a very plucky thing, and deserves a trial'. It preceded this with a stern and unsympathetic warning: ‘Don't rub or file your bullets; if you are caught with such bullets on you, you will be shot, and serve you right'. Yet in regard to the act of killing surrendering soldiers, the circular was ambivalent. What interpretation would a soldier put on the advice, ‘Don't kill a man who has thrown his arms down as a sign that he has ceased to resist', when it was followed by
‘DON'T be heartbroken if you kill such a one by mistake – it is his fault for having resisted up till too late'?
²¹

Australian soldiers in World War I were undoubtedly aware of the basic rights of the individual in battle. Generally speaking, it is difficult to see how they cannot have had some understanding of how to act toward the surrendering or captured enemy, given the British Army's obvious – even if ambiguous – commitment to upholding international law. Translating these understandings from the manuals and applying them under the duress of combat was, however, often a process tinged with uncertainty. Such application of the laws (as they were understood) would vary with the emotional intelligence of the individual as well as the discipline and leadership within the units to which soldiers belonged. It is apparent that some Australian officers harboured an uncompromising attitude toward the enemy from the outset that was clearly communicated to their soldiers. For example, one can only surmise at what attitudes were fomenting within the Victorianraised 22nd Battalion prior to its arrival at the Western Front. At its first battalion parade, the unit was addressed by its Commanding Officer, who pronounced the regimental motto to be ‘Wipe out the bloody Germans'. Despite criticisms from prominent clerics and some newspaper discussion, the motto stuck in abbreviated form – W.O.T.B.G – and formed part of a chorus in the regimental song.
²²

An unsigned and undated letter held by the Australian War Memorial reveals the abhorrence of one person, at least, over alleged atrocities committed by Australian soldiers during this conflict.
²³
The letter was sent to Australian Administrative Headquarters in London and is worth quoting in full, not only because of the extraordinary claims it makes but also because of the principled (if occasionally misspelled) position that the writer adopts:

Dear Sirs,

I have been told by wounded soldiers in hospitals and walking cases storeys [of ] cruelity and murder of German wounded and prisoners committed by Australian soldiers. From the evidence I have, there can be no doubt.

I asked a soldier in Kings College Hospital if [he] had seen any German prisoners he said Yes – he saw some been brought in by English Tommies and when they got near the Australians the Australians told the English Tommies to clear or they would kill both of them. The Australians killed the whole of the German prisoners – now this was simply cold blooded murder. Another Australian told me he and another was coming back after a trench raid, the other fellow had two German prisoners and they could not get along as fast as they would like so he killed the two German prisoners. Brave men these, where they not – A Canadian told me he (an officer) had seen the Australians jump on the wounded Germans as they lay on the field of battle and told German prisoners to go back [as] they did not want them and when they turned to go back they turned the machine guns on them and mowed them down – A A.M.C.A. [medical corps soldier] told me one of his stretcher-bearers carried a razor in his pocket and when he came to a wounded German he would finish him off by cutting his throat and he is still doing it – all these and other men have signed their statements. Disc nos given and names of places where these events took place – I am engaged in collecting evidence from all classes of soldiers both sides not from Govt. statements. I have seen some of these and even these prove that the British Army and the Allies are [far] from been saints or even civilized.

Facts are stubborn things and this book will not be plesent
reading for young Australians or cover those [who] fought in this war with glorey – I thought if your attention [is drawn] to this matter you might be able to do something to stop the crulity and murder. For two wrongs don't make a right. We ought to show the Germans we are far above this kind of work. If the men saw the officers were determined to put a stop to it, they would [not] do that wich spoils the fine work they have done during the war. At present the officers only wink at it the men say and take no steps to stop it.

Yours trully
²⁴
 

Unfortunately, the statements that the writer mentioned do not accompany the letter. They have either been lost, destroyed or are still to be discovered. Nonetheless, the commandant of the Australian Administrative Headquarters kept the letter for posterity's sake and after the war forwarded it to the Australian War Museum section for preservation – an indication, perhaps, that he did not reject the claims out of hand. It would be easy to dismiss such claims as outrageous. The thought that a stretcher-bearer was engaged in slashing the throats of German prisoners seems highly unlikely given the compassion generally understood to have been extended by such men collecting the wounded of friend and foe alike. One is certainly less sanguine, however, about dismissing the possibility that Australian soldiers could act in such a manner given the incidents Bean portrayed with regard to ‘ratting' at Pozieres and the events which followed Captain Moore's death at Passchendaele.

It is also clear that, despite Bean's willingness (albeit somewhat guardedly) to address the issue officially, some senior officers of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) wished to avoid any controversy that might besmirch the name of Australian soldiers. Brigadier General ‘Pompey' Elliot, for example, was keen to
distance his soldiers from allegations of unseemly behaviour. In the New South Wales Returned Sailors' and Soldiers' Imperial League of Australia journal
Reveille,
he penned a rebuttal to a claim by Robert Graves that Australian troops had murdered German prisoners at Mourlancourt.
²⁵

In a similar vein, the correspondence generated between Brigadier General John Gellibrand and Bean, in response to an article published in the
Sydney Sun
by the recently repatriated commander of the 9th Brigade, Brigadier General Alexander Jobson, is also of special interest. Jobson claimed that troops under his command had openly and deliberately ignored the rules of war and given ‘no quarter' to enemy troops. An outraged Gellibrand wrote to Bean expressing his doubt as to the veracity of such claims, stating he had only heard of two cases in the whole war and that both were hearsay. He suggested Jobson had been ‘gulled' or was suffering battle strain. ‘If it is true', Gellibrand wrote, ‘it is not typical of our men or officers and it is an abortion of spirit if it is false'. Gellibrand urged Bean to publish a letter celebrating ‘the Australian as a fighter, with clean hands and a clean record'.
²⁶
Yet Bean did not provide the unequivocal response that Gellibrand was looking for. Instead he replied:

Candidly I don't know what to do in that case. I am up against this, that one has so constantly heard our men and officers talk as if these things did happen, and laugh about them, that I am half inclined to think they must have happened more often than we would like to believe. I have never had any first hand evidence of this on either side except in one or two cases; but if the rumour does get round that it happened, at least our men and officers have done nothing to stop the rumour being spread … Whether these things are done or not, one hates the attitude which approves of them,
and the publication of them could only excuse the German for refusing to take prisoners from amongst our own men … You see I cannot well come out and say I don't believe that this is done, because I have heard so many wild stories which I don't know the truth of.
²⁷

The stories were not so wild. In another incident an officer of the 27th Battalion shot seven prisoners with his revolver after a corporal, commendably, had refused to do so.
²⁸
Such episodes were far more widespread than senior commanders wished to acknowledge. Australians, too, were sometimes on the receiving end of unlawful treatment when captured by the Germans. Australian wounded were killed and Australian prisoners shot down for no apparent reason. Whether this was a response to Australian indiscretions, as Bean had feared, cannot be determined.
²⁹
More likely the incidents were examples of the same brand of spontaneous unregulated violence.

Bean argued that a ‘primitive bloodthirstiness' took possession of most men, particularly in close-quarter fighting. He accepted its presence as inevitable on both sides because men were ‘wrought up by the strain to an intense desire to strike' with orders ‘to inflict as much loss as possible'. In trench raids in particular their duty required that ‘they spend the few allotted minutes in striking at everything around them, killing, wounding, or capturing'. The introduction of such trench raids as an Allied tactic on the Western Front, born of frustration at the usual stalemate, undoubtedly compromised a soldier's ability to act lawfully: such raiders operated with time limits, had to look to their own safety, and were ordered specifically – in contravention of existing rules of war – to kill the enemy as opposed to taking a position. In any case, Bean admitted that the details of the actions of some Australians did not make pleasant reading, and in another footnote cited the
case of a German sergeant who was hauled from a dug-out and shot several times after showing plucky resistance. The German was described as sinking helplessly to the ground, although Bean does not state whether he was dead or not, and the ‘brave man' was later ‘brained by the knobkerry of some soldier whose lust for blood was not yet satisfied'. Bean was not condoning such behaviour. Yet he reconciled his disappointment against the argument that such an act was ‘inseparable from the exercise of the primitive instincts'.
³⁰
The wider question for us is whether we should accept such a premise or is it at its heart incompatible with understanding humans as rational and moral beings?

The history of the 3rd Battalion provides one of the most illuminating examples of the idea of ‘no quarter' and how it was enacted. Its account of the unit's part of an attack on Bayonet Trench, on 5 November 1916, raises a number of issues. The bomb and bayonet work that was proudly described shows that giving quarter was simply not countenanced. Privates Weger and Meaker were the first two bayonet men in this encounter and were instructed to ‘start the dirty work' – the killing of the unlucky German survivors in the dug-outs after a bomb had been thrown in. The pressure on inexperienced men to engage in this ‘standard' practice was immense. One soldier reported to his sergeant that he had found a German in a shelter. He was told to ‘fix' the German, but he replied that he could not kill a man that way. The sergeant's reply was devoid of morality and compassion: ‘Go on, you haven't killed one yet; I'll give you one more chance and then I'll fix him myself '. To his credit the soldier in question did not compromise his stand and it was left to the sergeant to kill the hapless German. The victim was clearly beyond the point of being a threat. In all likelihood he would have attempted to convey some sign that he wished to surrender and to plead for mercy. There was no justifiable legal or even military reason to kill
him. However, the men had been addressed prior to the fight by a Lieutenant Loveday and told that the upcoming battle was ‘an excellent opportunity to avenge the death of their colonel', who had been mortally wounded a few days beforehand.
³¹
Killing as retribution was something that was specifically outlawed in the Hague Rules.