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.

Melba's Gift Book of Australian Art and Literature

Last year a friend from my Sydney 'high finance' days, Julie Cleary, visited Melbourne from her home in New Zealand where she has lived for more than 20 years. It was just like yesterday, seeing her again. Lovely. She brought with her from New Zealand a special gift, a one hundred year old copy of 'Melba's Gift Book of Australian Art and Literature', which I was thrilled to receive.  

Melba's Gift Book, 1915

Afterwards, when I sent my thanks, this email came back, explaining how the book came into Julie's possession:

There is quite a story to it, in that our neighbour was a recluse and a hoarder of considerable volumes of everything. In the five years we have lived here I spoke to her three times and then only about getting her trees trimmed - spectacularly unsuccessfully, I may add. She simply shunned people and loved trees.

Recently she fell ill and died shortly thereafter. Somehow I was charged with getting the house cleaned out, a mammoth task. Four industrial-sized bins were filled with rubbish. The Melba book was one of the few things worth saving and I strongly feel it ought to be in Melbourne with someone who appreciates it.  I know you are the perfect recipient.  Julie xx

Perfect is right, for reasons Julie would not have known. For a start, it sparked nostalgia for all the trips I made up and down the Melba Highway during the years when I lived at Yea. Dame Nellie Melba, 1861-1931, the famous opera singer whose choice of stage name honours her home town of Melbourne, owned a country estate at Lilydale. The road now bearing her name branches off the Maroondah Highway on the corner of her old property and heads northwards to Yea.

Dame Nellie Melba, Frontispiece in 'Melba's Gift Book'

A second reason was the purpose of this book. I opened it to find the inside front cover personally autographed by 'Melba' at 'Xmas 1915' as part of her extensive fund-raising efforts for the Belgian Relief Fund in the Great War. This Fund I knew about. Among the Great War letters written by my grandmother's Boulton brothers and published in my recent book 'Brothers in Arms' are one or two letters singling out the pitiful state of the Belgian refugees who reached England in 1914, after their country was invaded. Until I held Melba's book in my hands and read her two-page introduction I didn't know that she too was so moved by their plight that she conceived this book project and donated all its proceeds to the Fund.

Her introduction is followed by 49 other short items, stories and poems contributed to Melba's 'cause' by writers who remain household names today, including Ethel Turner, Mrs Aeneas Gunn, Henry Lawson, C.J. Dennis and Dorothea Mackellar. Lavish illustrations, 34 in total with some plates in full colour, were donated by famous artists such as Norman Lindsay, Hans Heysen, Will Dyson, Arthur Streeton, Fred C McCubbin, Julian Ashton, the children's book illustrator Ida Rentoul Outhwaite and the botanical artist Ellis Rowan. Here was a third reason to love receiving Julie's unexpected gift - the beauty of its words and pictures takes me back into another era.

There was also a fourth and final reason. Ellis Rowan's black & white painting 'A Wild Garden' grabbed my attention, as the subject of my most recent book 'Margaret Flockton: A Fragrant Memory', was another botanical artist. Clearly Margaret Flockton (1861-1953), for all the recognition she receives today and the international art award in her name, did not mix in Nellie Melba's circle of fame back in 1915.

Ellis Rowan's 'A Wild Garden'

Clearly there are many reasons for me to treasure this book. Thank you, Julie Cleary, for saving it from the skip and placing it in my care. 

The book has great significance for others too. In recognition of 'Melba's Gift Book' as one of the best examples of WW1 fund-raising efforts, and as part of the centenary events commemorating the terrible period in world history from 1914-1918, work from this book is currently on exhibition. Signifying Melba's connection with Lilydale and the Melba Highway, the exhibition is on show at the Yarra Ranges Regional Museum, 35-37 Castella St, Lilydale. The Museum is open every day, 10am-4pm, free entry. The exhibition closes on Sunday 4 February 2018.

Fromelles and Pozières, 1916

Paying Tribute to Fallen Soldiers,
Australian War Memorial, Canberra

We are about to commemorate the Battle of the Somme, that horrendous five month period of 1916 when 1.1 million soldiers were killed or wounded on the Western Front – lives wasted, for no appreciable gain by either side.

My grandmother's two brothers (just) survived this experience, so naturally I was attracted to Peter Fitzsimons' latest publication: 'Fromelles and Pozières: in the Trenches of Hell'. These two battles were the two definitive experiences for Australian troops in 1916 and far exceeded the horrors of 1915's Gallipoli.

On 9 March 2016 at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne the author spoke at length on this topic … without notes, an impressive performance as a feat of memory. He emphasised that his goal with the book was for his team of researchers to find every possible bit of evidence which would show, not tell, what it was like to be in those trenches. My gentlemanly great uncles had often glossed over the ‘showing’ bit in an amazing set of wartime letters they wrote, so I bought a copy of the Fitzsimons book.

For someone looking for more information about an important moment in our history, the book was worth reading although frequently irritating for its over-the-top blokiness. The author tried to give a day by day account of developments, with the Australian war correspondent Charles Bean clearly the author’s personal hero and guiding light. Inclusion of German archival material added interest. It was disappointing that, as usual, the focus was almost exclusively on the exploits and experiences of various infantry units. The overall role of the artillery in that appalling was frequently mentioned but quotes from, and recounting the experiences of, individuals in the artillery units were scarce. The book’s military unit jargon, its relentless blood & gore and the 'rah rah, Aussies' content so beloved of a vehemently-Republican author, became so overwhelming that, when I reached the end of the 689 pages of text, I needed to deconstruct it.

The first 272 pages traverse the first six months of 1916. After the Australian troops were evacuated from Gallipoli (in December 1915) they were regrouped, reinforced and ‘prepared’ for service on the Western Front. Lost within the book’s myriad details is their underlying structure. This is important to understand, as Fitzsimons spends much of the book castigating senior military leaders.  To summarise, Australian forces in 1916 were organised as two armies:

• 1 Anzac Corps, commanded by the English General Sir William Birdwood, comprising the experienced Gallipoli veterans of the 1st Division (led by Englishman General Harold Walker) and 2nd Division (led by Australian General James Legge).
• 2 Anzac Corps commanded by another Englishman, General Alexander Godley, comprising the newly-formed 4th Division (led by Englishman Major-General Sir Herbert Cox) and 5th Division (led by Australian Major-General Sir James McCay).

(The Australian Brigadier-General John Monash’s new 3rd Division did not arrive in France until November 1916, long after the battles at Fromelles and Pozières.)

The two Australian armies were under the overall control of British High Command, the infamous British General Sir Douglas Haig and his various underlings. Their gross failures make me glad not to be a descendant of any of them. Too much blood on their hands.

On their arrival in France (from late March 1916 onwards) the Anzac forces were posted to the so-called ‘nursery sector’ near Fromelles in Flanders. Supposedly, not much fighting was happening there; both sides were just holding their lines. Meanwhile, the Battle of the Somme further south was being planned. It commenced on 1 July. Right from the start, it did not go well. Extra troops were needed. The experienced Australians of the 1st and 2nd Divisions and those in the newly-formed 4th Division were moved down to the Somme, leaving the newly-arrived 5th Division to take their place near Fromelles, around 11 July.

The next 230+ pages cover the debacle of 24 hours at Fromelles on 19 & 20 July 1916. Our rookie foot soldiers and artillery gunners had only just arrived in France, yet they were picked to attack crack German troops, well-entrenched for more than a year, intimately familiar with the territory and in an impregnable position. I reached the end of that single day & night battle feeling as angry as the author. The role played by Haig’s underling, the British Lieut-General Sir Richard Haking, in sending the raw recruits of the 5th Division on his ill-judged mission to inevitable slaughter was criminal, even worse than the orders given at Gallipoli. McCay, the Australian in charge of the 5th Division, was equally despicable for not permitting the truce offered by the Germans so that his desperately-injured men could be retrieved from No Man's Land.

Now for the Somme, where Haig's underling General Hubert Gough was calling the shots at Pozières. Frequently I found myself comparing the Fitzsimons account with that of my great uncle Stephen Boulton, whose letters show that Australia’s six week involvement in the Pozières campaign began the day after the Fromelles slaughter. Bombardier Stephen Boulton's artillery unit (within the 21st Field Artillery Brigade of the 1st Division) began bombarding the German troops at Pozières at 10pm on 20 July. The Australian infantry’s brilliant success in capturing the village of Pozières is quietly confirmed when Stephen’s letter of 23 July is headed ‘in a German trench’. Even General Haig admitted 'the capture of Pozières by the Australians would live in history.' (Fitzsimons, p 597.) Stephen and his fellow gunners participated continuously in the greatest artillery barrage of all time until 7 August when the exhausted, deaf and shell-shocked men were briefly rested away from the front line carnage. The three Australian divisions were rotated ‘in the line’, during which time Stephen received a field promotion to Corporal, until Stephen's artillery unit was relieved slightly ahead of the 1st Division's infantry and sent back to Flanders on 27 August for a 'rest'.

Unveiling the Memorial to 1st Division, Pozières, 8 July 1917. Source IWM 02598

 The Australian troops eventually won possession of the Pozières windmill, the highest ground for miles, although it ‘marks a ridge more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth’. (Fitzsimons, p 661, quoting Bean.) One Australian on this battleground accused the British Generals of murder and blamed the extreme level of casualties on ‘the incompetence, callousness and personal vanity of those high in authority’. (Fitzsimons, p 614.) Pozières was a huge strategic win for the Allies in 1916 and I wonder why so few Australians have even heard about this great victory. It seems that we prefer to celebrate our military failures. Even in Fitzsimons’ massive tome the six weeks at Pozières warranted only 150 pages. Perhaps this was because the author and his researchers were mining the voluminous literature published about the 24 hours at Fromelles.

Fitzsimons tries to follow individual soldiers so that we engage with them emotionally but it’s often hard to keep track of so many characters and so many vignettes. My own book about #WW1 (‘Brothers in Arms: The Great War Letters of Captain Nigel Boulton R.A.M.C. & Lieut Stephen Boulton, A.I.F.’) follows only two men through the entire war. It’s less militarily detailed, less bloody, much gentler, and a much shorter first hand account (although more sweeping in its coverage, from August 1914 through to February 1919 and beyond) but equally sad and moving.

In his Epilogue of 30+ pages, Fitzsimons reviews the fate of various officers and men featured in the story. Needless to say, most of the ‘bad guys’ were honoured and most of the ‘good guys’ suffered.

The underlying story woven into 'Fromelles and Pozières: in the Trenches of Hell' is shocking. Whichever way they learn of it, more Australians need to know it – especially the story of our amazing victory at Pozières, against the odds. 

Did you know Germany nearly won the 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 'micro' commentary.

Craving to understand more of the big picture, I was very interested in the latest issue of the Sydney Review of Books, featuring Greg Lockhart’s article Gallipoli Reckoning. It examines two books about Gallipoli, books whose authors were driven by ‘the strong impulse to follow primary evidence and build their subjects from the bottom up’.  This was music to my ears. It’s how I like to work too. Last week, in Churchill’s Silver Bullet, Lockhart reviewed a book using primary resources, rather than conventional wisdom and self-serving books, to examine how the disastrous Gallipoli decisions were made in England, decisions which ultimately led to what Lockhart describes as the ‘heroism in defeat’ narrative in Australia.

Weblinks this year led me to last year's offering, under the heading Imperial Romance,  Greg Lockhart reviewed two other ‘war’ books and argued that ‘Australian histories of the Great War are generally part of an imperial romance that floats free from any workable Australian national framework’. 

Stephen & Nigel Boulton - Brothers in Arms

After reading Lockhart’s commentary on the general shortcomings of WW1 military history books, I felt greatly relieved that my own recent book on this topic offers the reader almost entirely a primary resource document. It cites Bean’s Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18 only once – in a quote on pp 339-340 covering specific events at the end of March 1918.

Should I confess that I was largely ignorant of Australia’s overall role in WW1 when I sat down to ‘do something’ with the Great War letters written by my Boulton grandmother’s two brothers? The letters 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. The originals were immediately requested and they have been preserved in Canberra ever since.

It was those Boulton letters which taught me the history of that appalling war. They offer a wonderful primary resource for the times, largely free of today’s interpretations. Some may be disappointed that my book simply orders the letters, introduces them where necessary and ‘presents the story’. But women readers of my book, in particular, have responded well to this approach because it’s a narrative account of that war, personalised, with intelligent characters whose lives the readers can follow.

I was limited by space, time deadlines and publishing costs from delving much further into the military, political and social history beyond what is revealed within the text of these letters.  The book would have been too long. Thus, the several hundred letters are offered up as an original source for professional historians and general readers who are invited to draw their own conclusions.

Here follow several of mine.

The letters cover the whole war, including the Gallipoli campaign, but do not support the view that the events of 25 April 1915 saw the birth of Australian ‘nationhood’. As Lockhart points out, this happened in the lead up to Federation in 1901, and afterwards too. A sense of nationhood saw the establishment of citizen military forces from 1901 and the building of our own naval fleet, which sailed proudly into Sydney Harbour in 1913.

Nor was Gallipoli the initial generator of Australian ‘mateship’, as we hear so often on ANZAC Day. I'm glad that this claim is morphing into something I can support - that it's the (existing) quality of Australian mateship which helped us survive adversity at Gallipoli and in later battlefronts. My own three books about early convict settlers (listed below) show that Australian mateship dates from 1788 and the convict era. Mateship was an outcome of the long journeys on the transport ships and the ensuing years of struggling to survive physically and psychologically in a land of flood, fire and drought. From 1794 the Hawkesbury district, food bowl for the colony, saw numerous examples of mateship: local residents helped each other with food, shelter & labour and more distant residents donated money following the numerous floods which devastated that district over the next 25 years.

By 1820, community self-help was well-established in Australia. And, as free settlers flooded in after the Napoleonic wars ended, mateship became well-entrenched among the lower echelons of Australian society, the emancipist convicts. I have no doubt that close analysis would prove that a good proportion of the physically tough, stoic, bravely reckless, laconic, larrikin survivors we laud on ANZAC Day could trace their roots and their attitudes back to convict forebears.

The Boulton letters support the argument that it was our ‘self-identity’ as Australians that was forged during the Great War, a process which began at Gallipoli and intensified on the Western Front. The Boulton brothers, born in Australia of English parents, were clearly ambivalent about their own national identity at the start of the war. As Nigel wrote on 19 Sep 1914, ‘How glorious it is to feel one is a Britisher at a time like this. What a wonderful country England is, and what a wonderful nation. I quite agree with you. Mum, I thank God I was born of English parents every time I think of it.’

Over the next four years the brothers rubbed shoulders with men and women from other states; they compared the performance of Australian soldiers against those from other countries; they observed living conditions and cultures in many other countries. They began to feel proud of the strengths of their own countrymen and to think of Australia as ‘home’.  They became Australians, in their minds, as part of a gradual process.

Western Front, 1918. © John Newland, 2015

The other insight I gained from compiling this book was also significant. And it’s something we rarely, if ever, hear in Australia, obsessed as we are with the Gallipoli story. I discovered that in the spring of 1918 Germany's 'Spring Offensive' made a Big Push forward and Germany nearly won the Great War. The map shows how far the German front line extended into France at this time.

The Boulton letters taught me a huge history lesson, that it was the Australians who played a major part in our side ‘winning’ in the end. I learned about the role of the Australian First Division near Hazebrouck in stopping Germany’s spring advance on the crucial Channel ports, then holding and ‘shoving back’ that front line through the summer of 1918.  Down in the Somme valley, on ANZAC Day in 1918, 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.

I ssk myself, was this 'victory' story I extracted from the Boulton brothers’ letters true? If so, why don’t we hear more of this story in Australia? Why are we so scared to claim credit for part of the big picture narrative of the Great War on the Western Front? Instead, we dwell on the successes and more often the failures of individual battles. We continue to seek glory in defeat. This year I expect we’ll hear much more about how many men we lost in 1916 (huge numbers in the costly disaster at Fromelles in July and in the brilliant victory at Pozières in July & August) than we'll hear about what these battles meant, strategically.

Recently I attended an event at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne. It was a large crowd and everyone I spoke to had made a pilgrimage to the war memorials on the Western Front. Many of my personal friends have too. But the impact made on them focused on the terrain and the futile loss of life on individual battlefields, demonstrated so starkly by the endless rows of war graves. When I get to visit the Western Front region, it will mean much more than that to me. The Boulton letters have jolted me into an understanding of the overall significance of the role played by Australians on the Western Front, one hundred years ago.

Footnote: My three books about early convict settlers are 'Robert Forrester, First Fleeter' (2009), 'Paul Bushell, Second Fleeter' (2010) and 'Southwark Luck; the Story of Charles Homer Martin, Ann Forrester and their Children' (2012), with details listed on my website.

Also see my website for details of how to purchase ‘Brothers in Arms: The Great War Letters of Captain Nigel Boulton, R.A.M.C. & Lieut Stephen Boulton, A.I.F.’

Ah Hah! Lightbulb Moment - Monash

Knowing very little about John Monash until recently, it was a revelation to read Grantlee Kieza’s biography of the man.

I can’t say we learned much (if anything) about Monash in my home state of NSW – but in more recent years as a resident of Victoria I’ve at least picked up on the Monash University and Shrine of Remembrance connections. Lately, research for my own book Brothers in Arms during 2015 startled me into awareness of some of Monash’s wartime achievements.

His story reminded me all over again of the Governor Arthur Phillip story – Phillip’s 'never' mentioned as the perfect role model for citizenship on Australia Day, as he should be, and Monash is 'never' mentioned as the archetypal good citizen on Anzac Day, as he should be. I love the fact that both men were such independent and clear thinkers with such a constructive approach. I’m very tired of the lauding of rebelliousness in our culture -  with Ned Kelly and Peter Lalor (Eureka Stockade) and sporting personalities and selected politicians usually presented as our archetypal national heroes.

As an Australian military history, the book had gigantic holes, because it focused only on Monash and the units in which he served while skimming over the military achievements of others, such as the 1st and 2nd Divisions of the AIF. However the book was an eye-opener to the appalling leadership of the Great War - all those wartime military leaders jockeying for position, so lacking in ideas and so careless of the men they sent to be slaughtered. And I marvelled at Monash’s ability to rise above his Germanic background, an obvious cause for suspicion of him as a loyal soldier during WW1.

It must have been wonderful for Kieza to have so  much original source material to work from, plus numerous comments from a diverse range of people who knew Monash well while he was alive, providing plenty of scope for fleshing out a personality. Although the dense layer of detail in the book was sometimes overwhelming and I found myself skimming much of it, unable to keep exact track of so many ‘players’, I found the book interesting from start to finish and couldn’t put it down.

The author’s use of present and future tense was annoying, especially references such as to Bradfield in 1926 as ‘the man who will build the Sydney Harbour Bridge’ (the construction project had been underway since around 1912). However I enjoyed his focus on the societal contribution of an engineer, which took me back decades to the time in my own youth when engineers were ‘king’ in Australia. I recalled my grandfather Engr Lieut Cleon Dennis (a founding officer in the RAN and personally involved in building naval cruisers and the Emden battle) and his engineer brother Spenser Dennis (involved in building the Sydney Harbour Bridge and about 700 other bridges in NSW). (See my book From Buryan to Bondi for their stories.) Then there was the impressive Snowy River Scheme, constructed during my childhood. My first husband was a telecommunications engineer. I guess I was more than ready to embrace Monash as an engineer.

Monash’s family background as a Prussian Jew, his socioeconomic status as a child in Australia, his Jerilderie and bushwalking life experiences, his wonderful obsession with education in its broadest sense, his own particular brand of womanising – all showed fascinating aspects of his character, providing great insights into why he was so creatively different as a general in WW1.

Although the author tried to make a case that Monash suffered significantly from discrimination against Jews, my 'take' on the book was that his real problem as a soldier and citizen was the prevailing and very patronising English attitude to ‘colonials’, no matter what their religion, combined with the good old Australian habit of cutting down tall poppies, especially egotistical tall poppies. WW1 turned society on its head and, with so many suffering victims afterwards, Australia's tall poppy syndrome flourished post-war, with Monash treated disgracefully by officialdom.

But before, during and after that appalling war he steadfastly continued to make an outstanding contribution as an engineer. I’m very glad I read this book and gained an understanding of a great man.

The War That Changed Him

How a boy became a man.

Stephen Philip Boulton was born on 31 March 1890 in the booming gold-mining town of  Clunes, Victoria. His father was a bank manager with the Union Bank of Australia (now today's ANZ Bank). When his father died in 1895, his mother joined other family members in NSW, where Stephen received primary schooling.  Aged ten (pictured), he was sent on his own on the long sea voyage to join his brother at the British Orphans Asylum, a boarding school in England. Both boys returned to Sydney & completed their schooling at The King's School at Parramatta. 

Stephen was a boyish 24-yr-old (pictured) when he left his job in the Sydney head office of the newly-established Commonwealth Bank and enlisted as a Gunner with the A.I.F. on 12 January 1915. 

He served at Gallipoli, in the dangerous job of carting ammunition from Anzac Cove to the trenches, but became seriously ill with dysentery & was evacuated to Imbros in September 1915, ending up in Malta, the nurse of the Mediterranean.

He was 25 when he became a Bombardier, back in Egypt, on 12 March 1916, before the Australian artillery moved to the Western Front.

He was a toughened-up 26-yr-old (pictured) when he was promoted to Corporal on 27 September 1916, just after surviving the horrendous battle of Pozières in France, where Australian troops fell more thickly than on any other battlefield of the war.

He was a mature 27-yr-old (pictured) when he graduated from the Royal Field Artillery School in England and entered the officer ranks, on 3 November 1917. He continued serving on the Western Front throughout 1918, as a Lieutenant in the 2nd Field Artillery Brigade. 

Read more in Brothers in Arms: The Great War Letters of Captain Nigel Boulton, R.A.M.C. & Lieut Stephen Boulton, A.I.F., available online through BookPOD

Brothers in Arms

This is a story of how a book was written. A shaggy dog story, admittedly, but true. 

It begins more than ten years ago. Whenever I got out of the car on those long drives to Sydney I limped for the first 50 metres. My right Achilles tendon had seized up. Eventually a heel spur began to grow steadily on my right heel. I did not connect the two symptoms. People who should have known better told me the spur would most likely disappear as mysteriously as it appeared. Several years ago the pain in my right heel began to wake me from my sleep, often several times a night, just from the pressure of my heel on the mattress. Invigorating morning walks with my neighbour were abandoned. It hurt too much. 

Belatedly I discovered this was not purely an ageing problem. It had something to do with the genes (the structure of the foot bones, the tightness of the Achilles tendon) and young people can suffer too. The ‘high heels’ of my younger days at the office made it worse, as has the subsequent wearing of ‘flatties’ with an enclosed heel. With one foot always slightly bigger than the other, that heel is rubbed more tightly by the shoe back and sets up chronic inflammation. 

Three months ago I seized the day and had an operation, termed 'correction of Haglund's Syndrome and gastroc lengthening'. The surgeon reported afterwards that my heel was a big mess – the inflammation had widely calcified and so had part of the Achilles tendon. The excess bone was sawn away and the tendon repaired as much as possible. The slow road to recovery meant crutches, a moon boot and sitting around for several months with my foot ‘up’ – literally. Not easy when you live alone. 

My youngest sister Cathy abandoned her husband, garden and farm animals and came to stay as my nurse for the first week. So kind. So thoughtful. Four different neighbours did my shopping and collected mail for me over the next few months. Bless them. Friends called in for cups of tea. The company was appreciated. I hated being stuck at home but that cloud did have a silver lining  - the whole experience proved that my house will be user-friendly when I reach my dotage. It’s small and easy to look after. It has no steps. My ensuite has an accessible shower. A high stool in the bathroom and another in the kitchen meant I could reach everything and perform all essential daily tasks. Note to self – ‘never sell this house’. 

But, what was I going to do to pass the time as a temporary invalid? TV has its definite limits. Unusually, I wasn’t in much mood for reading. After a general anaesthetic, with a painful foot, at first I couldn’t focus on anything approaching creative writing either. I remembered the letters my grandmother’s two Boulton brothers wrote home to their mother in World War 1. Nigel Boulton happened to be in London when war erupted and served as a doctor with the British Army. Commonwealth Banker Stephen Boulton became an artillery man with the AIF. Many WW1 soldiers sent letters home, or postcards with a few lines scrawled on them, but it’s rare to find a set of letters like these, literate, from two brothers in different armies, telling the story of that appalling war from start to finish. The letters were typed in the 1920s and a copy was presented to the Australian War Memorial which promptly requested the originals. 

I’d previously had our family's typed copies scanned with OCR (optical character recognition) to create a Word document, the same process as the National Library of Australia uses to digitise old newspapers and publish them on Trove. Since old and faded typefaces don’t scan well, thousands of OCR mistakes occurred, as in the example (where the original typing and spelling was correct and the address At Sea became 21T). Every single line on every page of the Boulton files had to be read and corrected where necessary. It was an excellent if tedious project on which to focus when my brain wasn’t working properly. 

The task took me over. I dropped out of the world for several months and sat on my couch, awkwardly juggling computer, mouse, mouse pad and fragile original documents against which I checked the OCR, along with crutches and moon boot. The letters were later interwoven chronologically and some brief introductions were written to help the story flow.

A book emerged. It had the tentative title of Stout-hearted Men. Remember that stirring song from the 1940 show New Moon? Its rousing chorus repeated in my brain for months. Led by Nelson Eddy it goes: 

Give me some men who are stout-hearted men, 

Who will fight, for the right they adore, 

Start me with ten who are stout-hearted men, 

And I'll soon give you ten thousand more. 

Shoulder to shoulder and bolder and bolder, 

They grow as they go to the fore. 

Then, there's nothing in the world, can halt or mar a plan, 

When, stout-hearted men, can stick together man to man. 

Those words seemed so apt for a book about the Great War, when millions marched off in enthusiastic support of their cause, but too many people today don’t know what 'stout-hearted' means. I road-tested other titles:

• Mummy’s Boys – ironical of course, my grandmother’s brothers were anything but! 

• Mother’s Boys – Nigel was quite formal. 

• Matee’s Boys – Stephen, more of an Aussie, combined the Latin word for mother (Mater) and the word ‘mate’ to address his letters to ‘Dear Matee’. 

• Dolly’s Boys – their mother Dora was known as Dolly. 

Nothing resonated with family and friends until my daughter suggested Brothers in Arms. 'That’s what the book’s about, Mum!’ So that’s the current working title. What do you think? Despite the centenary deluge of World War 1 material, I hope to interest a publisher in the Boulton story. It has a theme and it sucks the reader in to that whirlpool of a hundred years ago.

P.S. I'm still limping, but free of pain and improving week by week.

UPDATE, 30 Nov 2015. My agent and I agreed that commercial publishers had planned their offerings for the centenary of WW1 long ago, so I decided to self-publish this book, which is now available through BookPOD.

Emden Battle Remembered

One hundred years ago today, the first convoy of ANZAC troops sailed from Albany for the battle grounds of the Great War.  Aboard HMAS Sydney, one of 4 naval escort vessels, was one of its young founding officers, Engineer Lieut Cleon Dennis, soon to take part in Sydney's memorable victory against the German raider SS Emden ..............

Country boy Cleon Dennis was born beside the Clarence River in northern New South Wales in 1888 and was a direct descendant of a First Fleeter (Robert Forrester) and a Second Fleeter (Paul Bushell). Cleon fell in love with the open sea when his father was appointed in 1902 as an Inspector of Schools for NSW and the family came to live at Bondi, close to Sydney's world-famous beach. 

Cleon’s surfing adventures are undocumented until 2 January 1907 when nine-year-old Charlie Smith and his cousin were rescued from drowning at Bondi Beach. Within weeks of that surf rescue, Bondi’s volunteers quickly formed themselves into Australia’s first surf life saving club, of which Cleon and his brother Spenser were members.

The Dennis brothers (Cleon on left, Spenser beside him) were of average height but this belied Cleon’s strength: as well as his lifesaving, he played Rugby, and in 1911 he was Sydney University’s middleweight wrestling champion. 

Cleon excelled in his studies at Fort Street Boys High School where he is listed on the Honour Board as a prizewinner in Mathematics. At the University of Sydney in his engineering course he won the University Medal for Geometrical Drawing & Perspective in November 1907, and the Peter Nichol Russell Prize for Mathematics. In December 1910, Cleon shared the Associate Professor Barraclough Prize for a Mechanical Engineering Essay.

One of his university friends was medical student Nigel Boulton and around 1909 Cleon met Nigel’s beautiful sister Thea. She was fourteen years old and Cleon was twenty-one but he decided then and there that Thea was the girl for him, and he waited patiently for her to grow up. 

In the final stages of his degree course, Cleon and his fellow students were approached by Navy personnel, who were seeking officers for the newly developing Royal Australian Navy. Federation had brought a new sense of nationalism as well as the realisation that Australia’s historic reliance upon the Royal Navy was no longer adequate. Cleon’s ‘Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical and Electrical)’ was conferred by the University of Sydney in 1912 and straight away he joined the Navy, on 1 August.

He spent five months with the cruiser Encounter, on loan to Australia from the Royal Navy, learning the ways of a ship’s engine room. Here he formed a friendship with Eric Kingsford-Smith, an older brother of Charlie Smith, a.k.a. the famous aviator Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith, the little boy who'd been rescued at Bondi Beach in 1907 and resuscitated by a nurse fortuitously present on the beach.

Early in 1913, around the same time as his older brother Spenser commenced work as a designing engineer for the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Cleon sailed from Sydney to England aboard HMS Drake, an armoured cruiser stationed in Australian waters from 1911-1913, to help supervise installation of the engines of the first HMAS Sydney, one of Australia’s most famous naval ships. The brand new ship was commissioned at Portsmouth on 26 June 1913 under the command of Captain John C.T. Glossop RN, and sailed for Australia on 25 July. En route to Australia aboard HMAS Sydney, Cleon was promoted to Engineer Lieutenant. 

It was an exhilarating and proud moment when his ship formed part of the flotilla of vessels of the new Royal Australian Navy sailing up Sydney Harbour on Saturday 4 October 1913. Thousands of cheering citizens lined the Harbour foreshores to view ‘the noble sight’ of ‘the Great Grey Fleet’, comprising the new flagship HMAS Australia, the cruisers Melbourne, Sydney, and Encounter and three destroyers. It was a fleet tiny in world terms, but hugely significant to Australians. 

The Fleet Carnival, a full week of celebratory events, included a procession of sailors through Sydney, visits by the citizenry to the flagship Australia, a day out for schools to visit the ships, and lunches at the Town Hall. A special presentation to the Sydney of a silver bell and shield was made at a dinner attended by 2000 citizens of Sydney. Public school children, in a massed display, formed themselves into a living shield inside a living map of Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

Each evening the city and the ships moored in Farm Cove were illuminated. A fireworks display thrilled the crowds. It gave one definite social cachet to send out the Navy’s souvenir Christmas cards.

The excitement abated and Sydney spent the pre-war period in Australian waters, apart from a trip to Singapore in March to escort Australia’s first two submarines on the final leg of their journey from England to Sydney. Sydney, AE1 and AE2 reached Sydney on 24 May 1914. When war came in August 1914, Sydney operated around New Guinea. Her involvement in the brief campaign against Germany’s Pacific possessions included the capture of Rabaul and destruction of the Angaur wireless station, in the Palau Islands. Unfortunately the submarine AE1 was lost with all hands as part of the Rabaul campaign. 

In October the Sydney joined the naval escort for the first ANZAC convoy of Australian troops being sent to the Middle East. The naval ships HMAS Sydney, HMAS Melbourne, HMS Minotaur and the Japanese cruiser Ibuki accompanied the 38 transport ships which sailed from Albany in Western Australia on 1 November 1914. As they neared the Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean, their various wireless telegraphy officers heard suspicious signals and the telegraph station on Direction Island in the Cocos group sighted a strange ship.

HMAS Sydney, the nearest warship to the Cocos Islands, proceeded at full speed to investigate and several hours later found the German raider SS Emden. In the first few months of the Great War this famous ship wreaked havoc in the Indian Ocean, sinking many Allied ships and bombarding Madras in India. On the morning of 9 November 1914 Emden had already despatched a landing party to destroy the cable and wireless station on Direction Island, crippling Allied communications in the Indian Ocean, and was waiting for its collier Buresk to arrive and refuel the ship. 

The Navy’s official website http://www.navy.gov.au/hmas-sydney-i carries the story of Emden’s response to the arrival of HMAS Sydney: 

Emden opened fire at a range of some 10,500 yards using the then very high elevation of thirty degrees. Her first salvo was 'ranged along an extended line but every shot fell within two hundred yards of Sydney. The next salvo was on target and for the next ten minutes the Australian cruiser came under heavy fire. Fifteen hits were recorded but fortunately 'only five burst.' It was during the opening stage of the engagement that Sydney sustained all of her casualties. Two shells from a closely-bunched salvo hit the after-control platform wounding all of the personnel closed up there, while a direct hit on the upper-bridge range-finder took off the operator’s leg putting the equipment out of action. [The ship’s log lists three crew members killed, one dangerously wounded, five seriously wounded and four others wounded.]

Sydney's first salvo went 'far over the Emden'. The second fell short and the third scored two hits. Meanwhile, Emden's captain (Captain Von Muller), aware that his only chance lay in putting Sydney out of action quickly, maintained a high rate of fire said to be a salvo every six seconds. It was to no avail. Sydney took advantage of her superior speed and fire power and raked the German cruiser. Her shells wrecked the enemy's steering gear, shot away both range finders and smashed the voice pipes providing communications between the conning tower and the guns. Shortly afterwards the forward funnel toppled overboard and then the foremast carrying away the primary fire control station and wrecking the fire-bridge.

Despite damage, and the inevitable end, Muller continued the engagement until 'only the artillery officer and a few unskilled chaps were still firing.' Finally, with his engine room on fire and the third funnel gone, he gave the order 'to the island with every ounce you can get out of the engines.' Shortly after 1100, Emden was fast on the North Keeling Island Reef. 

With the Emden removed as a threat, Sydney pursued and caught the fleeing Buresk, firing across her bows and sending a boarding party, but the Buresk’s crew had already taken action to scuttle her. Sydney took her crew aboard and returned to the Emden later that afternoon. It took more gunfire before the Emden was willing to raise its white flag. As darkness approached, Sydney then made for Direction Island, hoping to capture the German landing party, but the Germans had commandeered a schooner and escaped, eventually making it back to Germany. Next morning Sydney returned to the devastation of the wrecked Emden and slowly transferred its survivors on board for ongoing medical attention and removal, either to a point of transhipment at sea or Colombo, which Sydney reached on 15 November. (Emden lost 134 men killed in action or died of wounds.)

That legendary sea battle on 9 November 1914, where the Sydney outmanoeuvred, outgunned and destroyed the Emden, was a significant Allied victory. It remains a proud moment in Australian naval history, marked by a memorial in Hyde Park, Sydney, on which Cleon’s name as one of the officers on the Sydney is inscribed below Emden’s gun, which points up Oxford Street. Cleon’s engines performed superbly on the day and he was remunerated as a Senior Engineer Lieutenant from a date less than two weeks after the battle. 

From Colombo, the Sydney was subsequently ordered to Malta and on to Bermuda for patrol duty in the Atlantic. En route, a group portrait of officers from HMAS Sydney was taken at Gibraltar in December 1914. This photo was later ‘lent’ by Cleon to the Australian War Memorial. Officers identified left to right are: 

Back row: Assistant Paymaster Eric Kingsford-Smith standing next to his good friend Engineer Lieutenant Cleon Dennis; Sub Lieutenant James M C Johnstone; Artificer Engineer G A Hutchinson; Lieutenant Basil Owen Bell-Salter; Lieutenant Frederick L Cavaye; Lieutenant Rupert Clare Garsia; Dr Arthur Charles Robert Todd; Gunner Lieutenant Denis E Rahilly. 

Middle row: Dr Leonard Darby; Engineer Lieutenant Lawrence Parsons Fowler; Lieutenant Commander John F Finlayson; Captain J C T Glossop; Paymaster Ernest Claude Norton; Chaplain Vivian Agincourt Little; Lieutenant Cuthbert John Pope (Navigator).

Front row: Mr Alfred Moule Martin (Boatswain); Mr Edward Charles Behenna (Carpenter); Mr George B Salter (Gunner); Mr John C MacFarlane (Torpedo Gunner). 

Still aboard Sydney, Cleon spent a year patrolling neutral ports along the Atlantic coastline between the West Indies and New York, until he was called home, just before Christmas in 1915. He was needed for the installation of the engines in the Sydney’s sister ship, the cruiser HMAS Brisbane, being built at Sydney’s Garden Island Dockyard. 

Sydney was Cleon’s base for the first 10 months of 1916, and he quickly resumed his courtship of Thea Boulton, the girl he’d been patiently waiting to marry for seven years. Thea turned 21 on 10 January 1916 and they were married in June, at the magnificent St James Anglican Church in Phillip St, Sydney. Cleon suffered such a serious nose bleed on his wedding day that the marriage ceremony was almost postponed. One guest wrote ‘after Cleon’s attack I thought that it could not possibly take place on that day'; another mentioned how 'dreadfully ill' he looked. It was a sign of things to come. 

Cleon’s naval career continued to take him away from Thea for long periods. Just before Christmas in 1916 he sailed off in HMAS Brisbane for the Mediterranean, but the ship was soon ordered back to the Indian Ocean to help hunt down several German raiders. By mid 1917 the Brisbane was patrolling off the West Australian coast. Since the ship came into port regularly, Thea seized the opportunity to spend some precious time with her husband. She travelled across the Nullarbor by train before the newly-laid rails had bedded down. 

That happy interlude ended when the Brisbane was sent to patrol the islands of the western Pacific. For most of 1918 she patrolled Australian waters but was at sea, headed for England, when the Armistice ended hostilities. Cleon heard the dreadful news that Thea’s other brother Stephen Boulton, an artillery officer on the Western Front, was killed five weeks before war’s end.

Brisbane spent a month in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea before reaching Portsmouth in January 1919 for a refit. Cleon was able to visit some of Thea’s English relatives. In April 1919 HMAS Brisbane was farewelled from Portsmouth by the Prince of Wales, who presented every officer on the ship with a message of thanks from the King. Cleon’s friend and demobbed brother-in-law Dr Nigel Boulton travelled home with him. 

As they entered Sydney Harbour in June ‘they were received with the regulation salvos from the guns on South Head Forts, and from the warships in port … the welcome sounding of the sirens of vessels at anchor, and the ferry boats, and the hearty cheering from a gathering of a few thousand people’. 

Cleon enjoyed a brief reunion with his wife who, during his long absences from home, taught music at Trinity Grammar School. Then he was off again, on a short posting to HMAS Cerberus, the naval training facility in Victoria. From January 1920 he provided engineering instruction to cadets at the Naval College at Jervis Bay, living with Thea in a local boarding house, but he resigned in November 1920 due to his continuing ill health. 

Having seen most parts of the world as a naval officer, he now opted for the country lifestyle of his childhood. He began work as a dairy farmer in some kind of partnership with his friend Eric Kingsford-Smith, but the venture at Bellingen soon proved ill-fated.

Returning to Sydney, he donned the business suit required of his new position as Assistant Censor of Motion Pictures. His son Stephen arrived in April 1922, followed by daughter Julia in 1924. 

Cleon found permanent work back in his own profession, as an engineer with the Vacuum Oil Company, a large American company which ultimately grew into Exxon Mobil. In 1925 the family moved to New Zealand for several years. 

Third child Frank was born back in Sydney in December 1927. Cleon was promoted to Brisbane, where fourth child Tim was born in January 1930. But with the onset of the Great Depression, the Vacuum Oil Company overnight sacked all married men, who needed to be paid higher wages. Cleon was unemployed for a period, but eventually found a new job working for the Electric Light Company of Toowoomba. The family photograph, taken at Toowoomba, signifies one of their last outings together.

Cleon's poor health now took a sudden turn for the worse. In July 1932 he was diagnosed with myeloid leukaemia. There was no hope. Telegrams were sent to his parents, sisters and brother, who drove all night from Sydney and arrived on the day he died in Toowoomba General Hospital, aged forty four. Exposure to pollutants such as benzene from 1912 to 1920 when supervising the installation and operation of the engines of large naval vessels may have contributed to his early death. A penchant for smoking did nothing to improve his health. 

His bereft young widow and children packed up and returned to Sydney, in time for the birth of his fifth child in October 1932. Baby Cleon was named in honour of the father he never met. When the mast of HMAS Sydney was erected at Bradleys Head in 1934 as a memorial to this famous ship, Cleon’s daughter Julia, pictured and now aged 90, recalls that she, her mother and her brothers (all deceased) were in official attendance at the ceremony.

Thea had always adored her husband, said to be the kindest man you could ever hope to meet. No-one replaced him in her life. She brought up her four sons and her daughter alone, trying to fulfil her husband’s deathbed wish that she ‘raise the children to be honest and to speak the truth’. When she died, nearly fifty years after Cleon, her ashes were taken to Toowoomba Cemetery and scattered on his grave.

(For additional details of the Dennis family, see Louise Wilson's book 'From Buryan to Bondi, the Dennis Family of West Penwith, Cornwall and some Australian Descendants', available from BookPOD)

Anzac Day and Mateship

I'm back at home, warming up after attending this morning's Dawn Service at Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance. The large crowd endured what I heard one man describe as 'disgusting weather', we couldn't feel our feet by the end, we all wished we'd worn gumboots and everyone went home to change into dry clothes. But tens of thousands stood silently to hear the Anzac Day message.

The bugle calls, the poems, the stories and the choral and band music engendered a tear. But what struck me most was one speaker's attempt to define the Anzac spirit as 'mateship', carrying the implication that Australian mateship was forged at Gallipoli. Having researched and written three books about convicts in early colonial Australia, it puzzles me that the speakers never mention our convict past as the true origin of this spirit of mateship.

My first book (about Robert Forrester) makes it obvious that Australia's version of mateship began with those who arrived with the First Fleet in 1788. The period spent together on the long sea journey and the adversity faced by our earliest settlers forged strong bonds. Governor Phillip seeded this spirit by insisting that everyone receive equal rations at a time when starvation loomed. From the late 1790s, two decades of continuing floods at the Hawkesbury, the colony's food bowl, were the catalyst for the community-sponsored disaster funds and volunteer emergency services we take for granted today.

My second book (about Paul Bushell) began with the suffering on the notorious Second Fleet, proving that its survivors were tough, in mind and body.  His experience on that journey turned Paul into a man with a lifelong focus on the welfare of others.

My forthcoming book (about Charles Homer Martin) mentions the mateship which existed among the young men of the Hawkesbury, nearly all of whom were the sons of convicts. Many became the hardy young men who pioneered the outback. They stuck together as mates, even with the likes of Captain Thunderbolt, the famous gentleman bushranger who was a Hawkesbury lad.

Given Australia's small population at the start of the Great War, a high proportion of the servicemen we honored today must have been the descendants of our convict settlers, their mateship sealed by decades of struggle against, and often triumph over, adversity.

As I walked home I passed many cars parked illegally (on footpaths, in driveways, too close to intersections, in turning circles of nearby streets), all evidence of people arriving too late to find parking and caught by surprise at how early everyone now arrives. These latecomers were clearly desperate to get to the service on time. Today was a tribute to the ongoing willingness of large numbers of people to stand silently, today in the pouring rain, recognising the suffering and sacrifice of those who've gone before us, even if we all acknowledge the ultimate futility and sadness of war.

My visit to Bomana War Cemetery outside Port Moresby taught me that lesson when I was 22 years old. For now, I'd like to see the history lesson delivered to the large crowds each Anzac Day extend a little further in the scope of its coverage of 'the spirit of Australia'. Even a sentence or two providing the background to 'mateship' would help to avoid what seems to be a growing cultural acceptance that Australia's history virtually began at Gallipoli.