Читать книгу Australia in Arms - Phillip F. E. Schuler - Страница 7

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It is impossible to look back and recall without a glow of intense pride the instantaneous response made by the young manhood of Australia to the first signal of danger which fluttered at the central masthead of the Empire. As time goes on that pride has increased as battalions and brigades have followed one another into the firing-line; it has become now a pride steeped in the knowledge that the baptism of fire has proven the young nation, has given it an indelible stamp of Nationhood, has provoked from the lips of a great English soldier the phrase, "These men from Australasia form the greatest army that an Empire has ever produced." To-day that pride is the courage with which the people face and mourn the loss of their thousands of braves.

Let me recall the first dark days of August 1914, when the minds of the people of the Australian Commonwealth were grappling with and striving to focus the position of the British Empire in the war into which they had been so precipitately hurled. On Sunday, 2nd August, I well remember in Melbourne an army friend of mine being hastily recalled from a tennis party; and when I went to see him at the Victoria Barracks that same night, I found the whole place a glare of lights from end to end of the grim, grey stone building. It was the same the next and the next night, and for weeks, and so into the months. But even when the Governor-General, Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson, sent to the Prime Minister (Mr. Joseph Cook), at noon on 3rd August the telegram bearing the announcement that we all knew could not long be withheld, the strain seemed unlifted. "England has declared war on Germany" was the brief but terrible message quickly transferred to the broadsheets that the newspapers printed at lightning speed and circulated, while the crowds in the streets cheered and cheered again as the message was posted on the display boards.

That night the streets were thronged (as they were for weeks to follow), and there was a series of riots, quickly subdued by the police, where raids had been made on German premises. Feeling was extraordinarily bitter, considering the remoteness of the Dominion. The Navy Office was barred to the casual visitor. Military motor-cars swept through the streets and whirled into the barracks square. Army and Fleet, the new Australian Naval unit, were ready. More than one person during those grey days felt a thrill of satisfaction and comfort in the knowledge that of that Fleet unit the battle-cruiser Australia was greater and more powerful than any enemy vessel in Pacific waters.

Now it is no secret that arrangements exist with the British Admiralty under which the Commonwealth naval authorities receive at the first signs of hostilities a telegram in the nature of a warning. The second message simply says "Strike." The fact that the Navy Office in Melbourne received its warning cablegram not from the Admiralty, but from a message sent from H.M.S. Minotaur, then flagship of the China Squadron, asking particulars concerning the Australian unit, and "presuming" that the naval authorities had received their warning, was only subsequently whispered. Where, then, was the Australian message? The original cable apparently was sent at the moment when Mr. Winston Churchill and Prince Louis of Battenberg between them took steps to keep mobilized the Grand Fleet in British waters, subsequent to the review, and sent them forthwith to their war stations. According to the pre-arranged understanding, the Australian unit was to pass automatically under the control of the Admiralty. Urgent wires were sent to the then Minister of Defence, Senator E. D. Millen, who was absent in Sydney, and the missing cablegram was brought to light in his possession. As soon as that final message came, the Australian ships, having coaled and prepared, moved to their war stations. It is not within the scope of this brief review to go further into this naval mobilization, though I shall make reference later on to the Fleet unit and its war history.

On everybody's lips there now (4th August) arose the question of the young nation's part in the war. Would there be need of contingents? For the first period, at least, the Australian military authorities were too keenly occupied with home defence to vouchsafe much attention to this question, though high officers told me that it was inevitable that Australia would play her part very soon—to what extent and when, they could not judge. The immediate need lay in the mobilization of part or all of the available forces at hand for coastal defence. The nervous tenseness of the situation was apparent on all hands; an underflow of intense uncertainty was plainly traceable in all the military movements. At the barracks day and night I found the military machine that Australia had so recently set running, rapidly speeding up.

All leave had been stopped on 1st August, and officers were hurrying back to their posts from various States of the Commonwealth. The defences of the ports along the coast were manned, and on the day when war was declared arrangements were completed for the extension of these defences to a mobile army, certainly of no great size as armies now are, to be used as shore patrols round the entrances of the great harbours of the capital cities. These men were the first draft of the Citizen Army that the Australian nation was training, and the rapidity with which they were mobilized, albeit it was only a small group, gave off the first spark from the machine, tested in a time of need. Yet the question that was ever to the fore during the first forty-eight hours after the declaration of war, and in fact until the following Wednesday, 10th August, was whether the whole of the Citizen Army was not to be mobilized. In other words, would there be a general mobilization, the plans for which were lying ready waiting to be opened all over the Commonwealth? The higher commands were told to hold themselves in readiness, and every one, from the youngest cadet to the Chief of the Staff, was expecting the word.

What would have been the need for such action? Remotely, of course, the position of the German High Sea Fleet and the integrity of the British Grand Fleet, but more closely the proximity of the German Pacific Squadron, consisting of two powerful cruisers, the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, a number of smaller warships, colliers, and perhaps transports. Fortunately, the battle-cruiser Australia had been kept in Australian waters, and while she remained afloat, the German ships would not venture in her vicinity. But the possibility to which the military authorities looked was that of the German squadron eluding our patrols that stretched across the north of Australia from Darwin to the Marshall Islands, and convoying a landing party, arriving off our eastern or southern coasts. They might or might not land; they might content themselves with shelling the towns. At one time it was believed that secretly Germany had been pouring troops into German New Guinea and collecting stores there. That she had intended New Guinea or Papua as a base in the Pacific was evident enough. However, the worst fears were far from being realized. The British Fleet in the Pacific (now containing the Australian warships), and soon the Japanese Fleet cooperating, after an unsuccessful attempt to trap the enemy, edged them from the Australian coasts across the Pacific to South America, where they were eventually destroyed in the Falkland Islands engagement.

By this time the need for a general mobilization in Australia was daily becoming less, as the enemy's ships were swept from the sea and the High Sea Fleet had been reduced to the category of floating forts. Accordingly the Government and military authorities turned their attention to the sending of an army to help the Motherland. German hopes had led them to suspect that the war would present for the people of the Commonwealth an excellent opportunity for revolt. Never did a young Dominion cling more closely or show its deep-rooted sense of gratitude and affection and responsibility to the parent nation. Having helped to secure herself, Australia immediately offered troops for active service overseas. A tremendous wave of enthusiasm swept over the land, and the acceptance by the Home Government of the offer was the occasion of great outbursts of cheering by the crowds that thronged the streets of the chief cities and eagerly scanned the news sheets and official announcements posted outside the newspaper offices. Recruiting began without delay. Already, in anticipation of events, the Defence Department had received names of officers and men from every State offering their services and anxious to join the first force. The composition of the force, after due consideration and consultation with the War Office, was to be a complete Division and a Brigade of Light Horse, 20,000 men in all. Depots were established at the barracks, and soon in the suburban drill-halls—halls which were already the centres of the Compulsory Service movement in Home Defence—as well. The men poured into the depôts. There was the keenest competition for selection.

In making these drill-halls centres for recruiting the authorities were anxious to link up the regiments of the established Citizen Army with those that were going forth to battle across the seas, giving them in this way a tradition for all time. Young as the new army was, some 10 per cent. enlisted, those whose age was just twenty-one years. In this way, throughout the battalions was a sprinkling of the young Citizen Army, while the rest of the men were from the old militia regiments that had existed in past years. There were, I suppose, 60 per cent. of these men who flocked to the colours, and of these a proportion had seen service abroad, mostly in the South African War. Only a small number that went sloped a rifle for the first time.

Who would lead the force—Australia's first complete Division to take the field? No doubt seemed to cloud the minds of the General Staff, however much the mind of the Minister of Defence, Senator Millen, was swayed hither and thither. Brigadier-General Bridges was just entering on the fourth year of his command of the Duntroon Military College. The success of that college was already an established fact; the men who have left it have since proved that beyond question. It was, therefore, on Brigadier-General Bridges (raised to the rank of Major-General) that the choice eventually fell, and he at once handed over the control of the college to Colonel Parnell, Commandant of Victoria, and immediately commenced, on or about the 14th August, the selection of his higher commands for the force designated "The First Australian Imperial Expeditionary Force."

His task was no light one. Essentially a just man, but a man who demanded the utmost capacity from those beneath him in rank, he soon drew round him a brilliant Staff. The college, indeed, he robbed of most of its English leaders, and their places were filled by Australian officers. The Brigadiers were left the choice of their battalion commanders, and that choice fell on the men actively engaged in leading the young Citizen Army in the various centres, each State contributing its quota. The battalion commanders at first had free choice to select their officers, but subsequently a Board was established. Thousands of names were available, and, with one or two exceptions, it is with satisfaction I can write that every man chosen has proved himself in that force again and again as being worthy of the trust put in him, from high leaders to the most junior subalterns.

While recruiting went on apace, the Barracks remained illuminated day and night, and the tension remained for many weeks at a high pitch. Though the matter had been pondered over, the truth was, little or no provision had been made to form the nucleus of an Expeditionary Force. All Australia's energies had been devoted to preparing her Home Defence Army. Yet the machinery that had been created for that army now proved itself to be capable of such expansion as to provide all the mass of material necessary for the organization and equipment of the Division under Major-General Bridges. The rapidity, the completeness, and efficiency with which that First Australian Contingent was equipped (referred to now by the men with such pride in comparison with other Empire troops) is eloquent enough praise in itself for the several war departments that met the strain, always remembering that in addition there was the partially mobilized Citizen Army to equip and maintain, and the growing army of 30,000 young soldiers each year, to train. Much impatience was exhibited at the delay in getting the Expedition away from Australia. That delay was inevitable in the circumstances, though apparently comparing so unfavourably with the Continental armies that were in the field in a few days, and in three weeks numbered millions of men. Australia in times of peace had never contemplated raising an Expeditionary Force, and what reserve supplies she had were not intended for such an emergency as this. Nevertheless, the General Staff rose to the occasion in a manner which, as I have said, reflects on them not only the greatest credit but high praise. Too much cannot be said either of the manner in which the general public co-operated in the assembling of the army, and especially in regard to the gifts of horses for all branches of the service.

I consider myself indeed fortunate in having had an opportunity of witnessing the march through the streets of Melbourne of 4,000 Victorians who were to form the backbone of Victoria's contribution to the first 20,000 men. When I think of those lads on that bright August morning, and the trained army which General Sir Ian Hamilton reviewed in the desert in Egypt, one can laugh at those croakers who predicted the need for eighteen months' training to make these men real soldiers. I remember them on this morning, a band of cheerful youths (for the army is, and always must be, thought of as a young army—a mingling of freshness, vigour, eagerness, and panting zeal, the stuff that veterans are made of), headed by a band of Highland pipes and bugles that had volunteered to lead them, swinging with irregular, broken step along the main streets. Their pride swelled in their veins as they waved brown felt hats, straw-deckers, bowlers to their mates watching from office windows and roofs. It was the first sight of the reality of war that had come to really grip the hearts of the people, and they cheered these pioneers and the recklessness of their spirits. There were men in good boots and bad boots, in brown and tan boots, in hardly any boots at all; in sack suits and old clothes, and smart-cut suits just from the well-lined drawers of a fashionable home; there were workers and loafers, students and idlers, men of professions and men just workers, who formed that force. But—they were all fighters, stickers, men with some grit (they got more as they went on), and men with a love of adventure. So they marched out to their camp at Broadmeadows—a good ten-mile tramp.

As they swung round through the break in the panelled fencing of Major Wilson's property (placed generously at the disposal of the Government), there was weariness in their feet and limbs, but not in their spirits. Some shuffled now, and the dust rose from the attenuated column right along the undulating dusty road, stretching back almost to the city's smoke, just faintly visible on the horizon, where the smoke-stacks and tall buildings caught the last rays of the setting sun. And they found their tents pitched, and they had but to draw their blankets and break up into groups of eight or ten or eleven for each tent. Then they strolled round the green fields till the bugle called them to their first mess, cooked in the dixies. And the rising odour of well-boiled meat and onions whetted their appetite.

Then on the morrow they rose before the sun. Every morning they were thus early roused, were doing exercises with rifle and bayonet, and the drab black of their clothing changed to khaki uniforms; and as rapidly as this change came, so the earth was worn more brown with the constant treading of thousands of feet, and the grass disappeared altogether from the camp and the roads became rutted. More men and still more men crowded in and filled the vacant tents till other lines had to be pitched. The horses began to arrive, and motor-lorries with immense loads thundered across the paddocks to the stores, where huge tarpaulins covered masses of equipment and marquees tons of meat and bread. From four thousand the army grew to ten; for fresh contingents were offered, accepted, and sent into training. Tents peeped from between pine-trees that enclosed a field, and guns began to rumble in and were parked in neat rows pointing to the road. They waited for the horses which the gunners were busily lashing into control. It was rapid, effective horsebreaking that I saw in this artillery school, where the animals were left to kick logs till they tired, and then were compelled to drag them, in place of the valuable artillery pieces. The foam gathered on their haunches at such times and they flung themselves to the earth—and then they threw their riders for a change—until at length they grew weary of the play and subsided as fine artillery horses as ever dragged guns