Anzac's Dirty Dozen (6 page)

Looking from Gallipoli, we also see Australians fighting and dying against the odds and always in a good cause. That's fair enough when considering the two World Wars. But looking again at the squalid frontier, and past the blunders of the Boer War, opens our minds to the thought that our soldiers often fight safely on the side of the big battalions against puny enemies for causes which, however politically pragmatic and even necessary, are not entirely virtuous.

Looking from Gallipoli also places us within a national love affair between citizens and slouch-hatted soldiers. But looking from, say, the celebrations that marked the arrival of news of Waterloo, we know the love affair predated Federation and that the earliest object of civilian affection was an army in red coats recruited outside Australia. The tradition that slouch hats gave us had to be chalked in big letters over an old and well-used slate, not a blank one, and there was still room for other scribbles. A romance with the troops of great allies and old homelands has endured at the margins of Australian military engagement. It encompasses respect and affection for, say, British fighter pilots during World War II, and the secret admiration among some migrant communities for national enemies from the Kaiser to the Taliban.

Within some marginalised sections of Australian society the understanding and experience of war largely remains a privately inherited one, sometimes indifferent to the public story, or even at odds with it. Just as redcoat settlers passed their stories of Waterloo and the Charge of the Light Brigade into their community's consciousness, migrants from Vietnam, Somalia and Afghanistan transplant their own memories of recent wars that have little to
do with the bravery of men and women in bush hats or Kevlar vests. But these alternative understandings also hold out hope for strengthening Australia's military forces – if the enormous popularity of the old ethnic volunteer units is any guide. Colonial military forces were attractive to civilians and healthily bustling in themselves partly because of their acceptance of Irish, Scottish and similar units. Perhaps today's socially isolated and chronically under-strength Australian Defence Force should consider raising Lebanese and Vietnamese regiments?

No one thinks our military experience really began in 1915. But we ought to acknowledge the earlier and sometimes contrary military strands to that experience. Even on Anzac Day we should admit that our martial story doesn't begin on Gallipoli.

Further reading

J. Bach,
The Australia Station
, UNSW Press, Sydney, 1986.

J. Barrett,
Falling In: Australians and Boy Conscription 1911–1915
, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1979.

J. Connor,
The Australian Frontier Wars 1788–1838
, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2002.

J. Grey,
A Military History of Australia
, 3rd edn, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2008.

K.S. Inglis,
The Australian Colonists
, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1974.

M. McKernan & M. Browne (eds),
Australia: Two Centuries of War and Peace
, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1988.

H. Reynolds,
The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia
, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2006 (first published 1981).

G. Souter,
Lion and Kangaroo
, Text, Melbourne, 2001.

P. Stanley,
The Remote Garrison: The British Army in Australia 1788–1870
, Kangaroo, Sydney, 1986.

C. Stockings,
The Torch and the Sword: A History of the Army Cadet Movement in Australia
, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2007.

C. Wilcox,
Australia's Boer War
, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2002.

C. Wilcox ,
For Hearths and Homes: Citizen Soldiering in Australia 1854– 1945
, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1998.

—— ,
Red Coat Dreaming: How Colonial Australia Embraced the British
Army
, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2009.

[2]

THE ‘SUPERIOR', ALL-
VOLUNTEER AIF

John Connor

Every Sunday night in homes across the country, procrastinating students – and harassed parents – hunch over computers frantically Googling to finish school assignments due the next day. For students studying World War I, such internet searches invariably produce this statement: the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) was the only all-volunteer army in the war of 1914–1918. This fact sounds significant. It proves the uniqueness of the Australian soldier, and can be guaranteed to appear in most students' assignments. The only problem with this important and well-known fact is that it is totally false. The AIF was not the only all-volun-teer army in World War I. Every Irish member of the British Army was a volunteer. No conscripts served in either the South African or Indian armies, or in British colonial forces such as the King's African Rifles and the British West Indies Regiment.Another, perhaps even more insidious myth has developed out of this basic factual error: that the volunteer status of Australian troops in World War I made them inherently superior to their conscript counterparts.

Both mistaken notions may be attacked on two fronts. Leaving aside the erroneous idea that Australian soldiers were the only
true volunteers during the war, the first is that many men who joined the AIF were not volunteers as the term would be understood in twenty-first century Australia. Unlike today, when individuals generally make their choices according to self-interest, free from external pressure, the Australians of a century ago were less individualistic. The decision whether a man did or did not join the AIF was often made not by him, but for him by parents who selected which sons would go to war and which would stay at home. Employers, workmates, fellow church-members and friends also helped determine enlistment. At a time when the unemployed received little financial assistance, and the Australian economy was faltering due to drought and the wartime disruption of trade, many men joined up simply because they needed a job.

The second argument against the myth of Australian uniqueness in this regard is that wars throughout history have shown that volunteers are not necessarily superior soldiers to conscripts. For example, the British volunteer professional soldiers led by the Duke of York to northern France in 1793 were defeated by the mass conscript army of the French Republic. The myth of the superior AIF volunteers appears to have originated in the latter part of World War I as a consequence of the conscription debate. The failure to introduce conscription in Australia in the referenda of 1916 and 1917 led some to claim that the ‘No' vote meant most Australians were opposed to war and disloyal to the British Empire. In response, other commentators turned the all-volunteer nature of the AIF into a virtue, and created this special – although mythical – status for the force.

It was General Sir John Monash, commander of the Australian Corps on the Western Front, in his 1920 book
The Australian Victories in France
who first made the claim that the AIF was ‘the only purely volunteer army that fought in the Great War'. Monash went on to assert that the Australians in the offensives
in 1918 were, at least partially as a consequence, a superior type of force in that they ‘contributed … in the most direct and decisive manner, to the final collapse and surrender of the enemy', playing ‘an important' and sometimes ‘predominating part' in the Allied victory.
¹
Monash's claim has been repeated as fact by subsequent authors. Patsy Adam-Smith, in
The Anzacs
in 1978, compared the all-volunteer Australian army to those of ‘other Commonwealth countries, all of whom were conscripted'. Ken Inglis, in a 1988 article, stated: ‘In 1915 an army composed entirely of volunteers was not unusual. By 1918 the Australian force was alone among armies on either side in remaining so.' Jonathan King, in
The Western Front Diaries
in 2008, describes the AIF as ‘the only all-volunteer army in World War I'. The mistaken claim can also be found on the internet on websites ranging from ‘Sands of Gallipoli' (which sells medallions and other items featuring vials of Gallipoli beach sand) to the Dynamic Learning Online site (that offers an ‘inexpensive online library … designed for use by schools, parents, seniors').
²

It is true the AIF was made up entirely of volunteers, but it is not true that the Australians were the only such force in World War I. Charles Bean, Australia's official historian of this conflict, certainly described Australian soldiers as volunteers, but he was careful not to say they were the only ones. Bean does not explicitly state why, but it would have been because he knew that the 1st South African Infantry Brigade serving on the Western Front was also an all-volunteer force. Both Australian and South African units faced the difficulties of declining recruitment as the war went on. In the final volume of the official history, Bean commented on the under-strength nature of Australian infantry battalions in 1918. He made the same point about the South Africans, where the brigade (consisting of four battalions) ended the war with its formation strength equivalent to just one battalion.
Jeffrey Grey, in his
A Military History of Australia
, first published in 1990, and in his 2001 history of the Australian Army, explicitly described the South African Brigade as an all-volunteer force and pointed out that the ‘popular perception' of the AIF as being the only all-volunteer army in World War I ‘needs to be modified'.
The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History
, and the Australian War Memorial's website make similar clarifying statements.
³

Other British Empire forces consisting of volunteer soldiers and auxiliary troops need to be assigned their places alongside the Australians and South African Brigades on the list of all-volunteer forces of World War I. But first, the extent of conscription within this conflict needs to be briefly outlined. With the exception of the United Kingdom, all the major combatant nations fought the war with conscript soldiers. The ‘Great Powers' of France, Russia, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Germany and the Ottoman Empire had long traditions of compulsory military service, as did smaller European nations such as Serbia, Belgium, Bulgaria and Romania. When the United States entered the war in 1917, it too created a conscript army under the
Selective Service Act
.

For its part, the United Kingdom entered the war with a small volunteer professional army of about 250 000 men that was largely destroyed in the initial battles of 1914. In its place, the ‘Kitchener army' of 2.4 million volunteers was raised, trained and suffered heavy losses in the battles on the Somme from July to November 1916.
⁴
With the decline in voluntary enlistment, conscription was introduced in Britain – but not in Ireland – in January 1916. Initially limited to single men and childless widowers between the ages of 18 and 41, within six months all men in this age range became liable for military service, and the upper age limit was extended to 50 in April 1918.
⁵
Two and a half million men were thus called up in Britain, joined the remaining veterans of the
pre-war regular army and the surviving wartime volunteers to fight the indecisive battles of 1917; to face and stop the German offensive of March 1918; and to take part in the Allied ‘Hundred Days' offensive that brought final victory in November 1918.
⁶

Of the five self-governing Dominions in the British Empire during World War I – Australia, Canada, Newfoundland (now a part of Canada), New Zealand and South Africa – three followed Britain's lead in introducing conscription: New Zealand in June 1916, Canada in January 1918 and Newfoundland in May 1918.
⁷
These Dominions conscripted far fewer men than did Britain, even when the differences in population are taken into account. The New Zealand government decided to limit its Western Front commitment to one infantry division of three brigades (temporarily supplemented by a fourth infantry brigade created in March 1917 and disbanded February 1918). For this reason New Zealand conscripted only 32 270 men – less than half the number who voluntarily served in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force.
⁸
In Canada, 124 588 men were called up into the Canadian Expeditionary Force (in comparison to about 600 000 volunteers), but only 24 132 conscripts had gone overseas before the end of the war, and of these only a few thousand actually reached the front line. Although the Newfoundland government did introduce conscription, none of the conscripts left home before the Armistice, and the Royal Newfoundland Regiment serving on the Western Front retained its all-volunteer identity to the end of the war.
⁹

With the Australians having being joined on the list of all-volunteer forces by the South African Brigade and the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, it is now time to add another group. As mentioned above, conscription was never instituted in Ireland, so all 210 000 Irishmen who served in the British Army in World War I were volunteers.
¹⁰
The 10th (Irish) Division served alongside
the Anzacs at Gallipoli. The 36th (Ulster) Division, formed out of the Unionist (wanting Ireland to remain united with Britain) paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force, lost about 5000 men on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The 16th (Irish) Division, which included many prominent Nationalists (who wanted Ireland to have its own government, separate from Britain), also served on the Somme. On 7 June 1917, the 16th (Irish) and the 36th (Ulster) Divisions put aside their political differences and fought alongside each other in the successful attack on Messines. As voluntary enlistment in Ireland declined, Irish battalions were bolstered with British conscripts.
¹¹
An attempt to introduce conscription in Ireland in 1918 failed when it met with strong public opposition that can be compared in many ways to the opposition to conscription in Australia.
¹²