Australia's Pivotal Role in First World War

Sometimes we can't see the wood for the trees. When we Australians commemorate ANZAC Day each 25 April, that's often how I feel. The big picture, 'macro' story can be lost within the mire of various platitudes and the deluge of  'micro' commentary.

Stephen & Nigel Boulton - Brothers in Arms

Should I confess that I was largely ignorant of Australia’s overall role in WW1 when I sat down in 2015 to ‘do something’ with the Great War letters written by my grandmother’s two brothers? The letters cover the whole war, from start to finish. They were saved by their recipient, my great grandmother, who had them typed in the 1920s. She presented a typed copy to the Australian War Memorial (AWM). The originals were immediately requested and have been preserved in Canberra ever since. As a serving Australian, Stephen Boulton's letters were deemed significant enough to be among the first digitised on the AWM website. (His brother Nigel's letters didn't qualify for digital release, as he served as a doctor with the British Army.)

The Boulton letters offer a wonderful primary resource for the times, largely free of today’s interpretations. Working with them I gained a dramatic new insight - that in the Spring of 1918 Germany's 'Spring Offensive' made a Big Push forward and Germany nearly won the Great War.

It was the Australians who played a major part in our side ‘winning’ in the end.

It’s an insight we rarely, if ever, hear in Australia, obsessed as we are with the Gallipoli story.

This week I discovered that I was not alone in my conclusions. The following statement by Dr Ross McMullin on the website of the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne refers:

The immense German onslaught in March 1918 led to Britain’s gravest crisis of World War I. The Australians were rushed to the rescue in this climax of the conflict. The significance of what they did in 1918 is under-recognised today, but they were influencing the destiny of the world more than Australians have done in any other year before or since.

Australians remain largely ignorant about the huge role played by the Australian First Division near Hazebrouck in Flanders in stopping Germany’s Spring advance on the crucial Channel ports, then holding and ‘shoving back’ that front line through the summer of 1918. My Brothers in Arms book referred several times to this practice as 'peaceful penetration', which is explained further below.

We Australians are generally more aware of events down in the Somme valley in 1918. On ANZAC Day that year, other Australian soldiers recaptured the crucial high ground at Villers-Bretonneux. In the late summer and autumn of 1918, with Monash at last in charge of all the Australian Divisions as a combined force, the Australian strategy turned the German advance into a rout in the Somme Valley, pushing them back well beyond St Quentin. Negotiations for the Armistice began.

Lucas Jordan - Stealth Raiders

Today, at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, I heard yet more evidence about the under-recognised significance of the role played by Australian troops in 1918. The evidence came from historian Lucas Jordan, speaking about his new book Stealth Raiders, a descriptive term he picked up from researching the first-hand accounts written by soldiers directly involved in these raids.

Stealth raiders went far beyond the standard activities of the 'peaceful penetration' described in WW1 military history books.  Several hundred low-ranking Australian infantrymen took it upon themselves over many months in 1918 to seize the initiative, without any orders from above, and set forth in small groups, often in daylight, to seize enemy positions, guns and troops and push the German front line back.

To me their actions sounded like a prelude to the daring exploits of our highly-regarded SAS forces today, but Lucas Jordan did not make this specific claim in his talk.

Today, once again, I asked myself the question: why are we Australians so scared to claim credit within the 'big picture' narrative of the Great War? Why don’t we hear more big-picture stories at our Dawn Services on ANZAC Day? Why do we focus on the trees and not the wood, dwelling on the successes and more often the failures of individual battles? We continue to seek glory in defeats such as at Gallipoli, often paying scant attention to what various battles meant, strategically.

Maybe this year, one hundred years after 1918, we'll begin to change the narrative. Historians like McMullin are starting to make this point. Today I exhorted Lucas Jordan to do the same when next he gives his talk on Stealth Raiders, as he agrees with me that we've undersold the role we played in the final outcome of WW1.

Nearly everyone I know has made a pilgrimage to the war memorials on the Western Front. The terrain and the futile loss of life on individual battlefields, demonstrated so starkly by the endless rows of war graves, makes an indelible impression. No doubt this will also hit home to me when I visit the Western Front region for the first time next month. However those relentless rows of headstones won't come as a complete shock, as I lived in PNG for five years and at Bomana War Cemetery outside Port Moresby I cried over the thousands of young men's graves. Born just after WW2, I knew their story, I knew the strategic significance of what they had done.  When I visit France and Belgium soon, I'll be grateful that the Boulton letters jolted me into understanding the overall significance of the role played by other Australians in world history, exactly one hundred years ago.

Footnote: I wrote briefly about this topic, plus Australian mateship and Australian nationhood in a blog post two years ago. My website contains details of ‘Brothers in Arms: The Great War Letters of Captain Nigel Boulton, R.A.M.C. & Lieut Stephen Boulton, A.I.F.’  and the book can be purchased online through BookPOD and the usual international online outlets.