Wartime Autumn 2023

WARTIME

TERROR WEAPONS OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

FRAGILE BEASTS

The tanks of the Great War inspired shock and awe despite their limitations

WAR LEADERSHIP

Relations between government and armed forces have been the crucial factor in Australia’s wars

ASSAULT BY FIRE

Flame-throwers aroused terror and revulsion, but they came to be used by all

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WAR LEADERSHIP

Relations between government and armed forces have been the crucial factor in Australia’s wars.

BY DAVID HORNER

THE END OF EMDEN

HMAS Sydney sealed the fate of the famous German raider. Eyewitness accounts bring the action to life.

BY THOMAS J. ROGERS, LACHLAN GRANT AND SHANE CASEY

FRAGILE BEASTS

The tanks of the Great War inspired shock and awe despite their limitations.

BY SCOTT DENIS MCCARTHY

POISON GAS

In the First World War, its role shifted from terror to utility.

BY ALBERT PALAZZO

ASSAULT BY FIRE

Flame-throwers aroused terror and revulsion, but they came to be used by all sides in warfare.

BY SHANE CASEY

Though greatly feared in the early stages of the First World War, their effectiveness

BY DUNCAN BEARD

REFLECTIONS

FROM THE DIRECTOR, MATT ANDERSON PSM

of our fallen at our daily Last Post Ceremony. Over one million visitors have attended, with others watching online. On a small number of occasions, a social media post promoting the Last Post Ceremony used the pronoun ‘their’. It was both innocent and well intentioned, but I accept full responsibility.

Some in the media falsely accused the Memorial of changing its policy on pronouns. The journalist knew before going to print that there has been no change to the Memorial’s policy. Where the gender of a soldier, sailor or aviator is known, we use it. When dealing with possessive plurals, we use ‘their’. There has been no change to the Memorial’s policy, no backflip: it was simply an error. Additional processes are in place to prevent a repeat.

Supervising Editor Karl James

Editor Andrew McDonald

Manager Michael Kelly

Memorial Editorial Staff Lachlan Grant, Thomas Rogers, Craig Tibbitts, Duncan Beard, Meghan Adams

Editorial Contributions

The Editor, Wartime

Australian War Memorial

GPO Box 345, Canberra ACT 2601

E: wartime@awm.gov.au

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2023 promises to be an exciting year. All the enabling works for the Development have finished, and contracts have been let for the main works. We remain on track for a 2024 opening of the Southern Entrance, Parade Ground, the Bean Building and Research Centre. ANZAC Hall and the Glazed Link are scheduled for completion in 2025. We will then start work on the lower ground floor of the Main Memorial Building, where new or expanded gallery spaces will be built, and we will return the much-loved but improved Discovery Zone.

The Memorial will remain open throughout. Because of the temporary changes to the number and location of emergency exits, we remain subject to regulations imposing a strict limit on how many people we can have in the building. Free ticketing must therefore remain in place, so please plan ahead and book online. But please visit!

Over the past decade the Memorial has told the stories of more than 3,300

There was much commentary in late 2022 about the Memorial’s inclusion of frontier violence in the Development. Frontier violence has been depicted in our galleries since 1986. The Memorial Council has agreed to expand its treatment in the refurbished ‘Pre1914’ Galleries (with updated displays on Sudan, the Boxer Rebellion, the New Zealand Wars and the Boer War): we can do better than a couple of lithographs and an interpretive panel in the previous gallery. The display will be proportionate and informed by Indigenous and Veterans’ Reference Groups.

It is my great pleasure to welcome the Hon Kim Beazley AC back to Council and congratulate him on his election as Chairman. I look forward to the passion, empathy, knowledge and experience he brings to the role. I thank the outgoing Chair, Dr Brendan Nelson AO, for his leadership, vision, friendship and unfailing support.

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Cover: The British Small Box Respirator significantly lowered the rate of death of soldiers subjected to gas attacks.

Photographer: Frank Hurley. AWM E00825

The most comprehensive collection of Australian military history is available on the Australian War Memorial’s website: www.awm.gov.au. It contains 200,000 photographs, 102,800 names of Australia’s war dead, details of 8,000 private records, items available at the Memorial shop and much more.

MAIL CALL

YOUR LETTERS

A subtler understanding of the events in Tasmania has been vilified because of its position outside the conventional narrative. The combination of ignorance and fear is powerful. It is not a denial of dispossession and disadvantage to acknowledge a deeper understanding.

C R MAIN

Thomas J Rogers replies: My article provides the context behind Governor Arthur’s proclamation board, drawing

Tasmanian frontier

“A Painted Proclamation” by Thomas J Rogers in Wartime 101 uses otherwise sound material to promote a current but errantly simplistic account of the encounters between Indigenous Australians and newcomers. This view proclaims that Europeans were murderous, thieving, faithless in their dealings and hypocritical; and that Indigenes were defiant warriors, valiantly defying the odds. This massively understates the complexity of the situation.

Among the new arrivals there were those who honestly held to terra nullius and those who didn’t care. There were those who had no regard for ‘lesser’ races and those committed to respecting them. There were those who murdered and those who tried to bring killers to justice. (The difference between those of Enlightenment or no faith, and those of Catholic or Evangelical faith, is rarely pursued.)

About the defenders, there is rare acknowledgement and common justification of actions such as the burning of occupied buildings or the killing of women and children. These today would be war crimes. In their cultural context, perhaps not.

ABOUT WARTIME

The opinions expressed in Wartime are those of individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian War Memorial or Hardie Grant Media. It is not the intention of the publisher to sensationalise human tragedy that is the result of war, nor to promote militaristic or chauvinistic sentiment, but to offer truthful, readable and

Matron Drummond

on government and contemporary settlers’ records. This is colonisation in its own words. Nowhere did I invoke the caricatures Main suggests, nor did I excuse atrocity. Colonisation was complex; my aim was to contextualise the lithograph. Horrific events occurred in Van Diemen’s Land: for an overview I recommend Nicholas Clements’ book, The Black War (2014).

In Wartime 101, the Last Post story relates the service of Irene Drummond, but refers to her as Sister, when she was in fact Matron at the time. Her hospital was the 2nd/13th Australian General Hospital, not the 113th. ANTHONY WEGE AFSM

Editor: Mr Wege is right on both counts; our apologies for the oversight.

In our next issue

entertaining stories that reflect the Australian experience of war.

© All material appearing in Wartime is copyright. Reproduction in whole or part must be approved by the publisher. Every effort has been made to determine and contact holders of copyright for materials used in Wartime. The Memorial welcomes advice concerning omissions.

Indigenous readers are advised that this magazine contains stories and images of deceased people.

The Australian War Memorial acknowledges the traditional custodians of Country throughout Australia. We recognise their continuing connection to land, sea and waters. We pay our respects to Elders past and present.

COLLECTION INSIGHTS

The destructive power of modern weapons necessitated the construction of the trenches that are now synonymous with the First World War. To break through those trenches, even more terrible weapons were produced. Attempts were made to protect soldiers through the introduction of helmets and gas masks, but casualties remained high until the very end of the war.

Once in a trench, soldiers resorted to anything they could use in close-quarters fighting. Pistols and grenades were the most important weapons, but clubs

Although steel helmets provided some protection to soldiers, they could not stop large pieces of shrapnel from artillery. REL/00993

Introduced in 1915, the Phenate Hexamine (PH) hood protected British Empire forces from chlorine and phosgene gas. It was replaced in 1916 by the small box

to destroy the fortifications on the Western Front. RELAWM01861

Demonstrating the ferocity of an artillery bombardment, this destroyed Lee-Enfield rifle was recovered from the Pozières battlefield. RELAWM12066

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INSTRUMENTS

The feelings of excitement and responding to duty that rippled across the country after the declaration of the First World War extended to the documentation of Australian efforts by soldiers and civilians alike. As the war dragged on, the ability of the camera to sustain connections and purpose, while creating a shared photographic language between Australians across great distances, made it the ultimate resource. An anchor for collective memory, the camera’s ability to intertwine narrative and visual testimony worked to support the connection between country and front line.

Cheap to produce and easy to transport, photographs printed on postcard paper became popular and novel mementos for soldiers in the trenches on both sides of the front, helping to bridge the divide between battlefield and home. The small prints travelled across the ocean to create a peephole into the soldier’s everyday life for the friends, parents, sweethearts and spouses left behind. Photographic postcards played a vital part in allowing families and communities to remain linked during long absences; they became physical symbols of one of the AIF’s most powerful resources, the bond between Australian servicemen and their homeland.

Armed with a Vest Pocket Kodak (VPK) neatly in his breast pocket, 11717 Private Rupert Arthur Dunne embarked from Melbourne aboard HMAT Afric (A19) on 5 June 1916. With the aid of his VPK, Dunne assembled a personalised history of his service, with messages and captions on the reverse, which he mailed eagerly to loved ones. Over three years, Dunne created photographic postcards (the Memorial holds four)

CONNECTION of

depicting the mundane moments of waiting for battle that formed the bulk of wartime experience.

The ability of photographs to render a convincing personal truth provided comforting layers of reassurance, warmth and authenticity that were often lacking in official communications. Dunne sent an image of Christmas dinner to his wife Muriel, creating a poignant shared celebration despite his absence. With the greetings the card reads, “Dear Murie, This was taken after most of the good things

had disappeared on Xmas night. It is a flashlight photo and enlarged from the V.P.K. I think it is very good.” Among the surviving photographs is a portrait, taken during Dunne’s initial voyage to England, of Teddy, an expatriate koala. The print bears the scars of its long journey back to Australia, worn and creased across the caption that recognises the animal as the mascot of the 3rd Divisional Supply Column.

Though technological advancements have transformed the way the camera has been used in conflict, its ability to maintain connection and stimulate memory remains central to its use. Years later, Rupert and Muriel Dunne gave their son Bryan a Kodak Box Brownie for his 11th birthday, starting a lifelong interest. Bryan later served with the Royal Australian Navy in Malaya and Korea before becoming an army photographer in Vietnam. The photographs of Warrant Officer 2nd Class Bryan Rupert Dunne share the intimacy and documentary value of his father’s well-worn photographic postcards.

BELLE WILSON Assistant Curator, Photographs Film & Sound

Clockwise from left: “Teddy” the Koala mascot on deck during the voyage to England.

Christmas dinner, 1917. Daimler lorry after it was hit by enemy fire.

“From your loving son…” SILK POSTCARDS FROM THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Throughout the First World War, silk postcards were widely produced and sold to troops serving at the front. Most were produced by machine, while other postcards were hand-embroidered by French and Belgian women at home. The designs were often produced on long strips of silk mesh by embroidery machines, before being sent to factories where they were cut and mounted on postcards. Silk postcards reached peak popularity during the war, when an estimated 10 million were produced. Though they were expensive, these colorful postcards proved to be immensely popular with men serving far from home.

A huge variety of these cards were produced throughout the war. They often incorporated patriotic slogans or flags as well as regimental badges and crests, such as Australia’s rising sun. Sentimental messages were also popular, as well as greetings for Christmas, New Year and birthdays. These were often featured with floral emblems including wattle, roses, holly and violets. Some examples of these postcards also contained an embroidered pocket in which a smaller card, handkerchief or a pressed flower could be placed. Cards were even produced with phrases, crests and flags for sale to German soldiers.

The Australian War Memorial holds a vast collection of silk postcards from both the First and Second World Wars. Collecting these items began in the 1920s, and today the Memorial holds more than 1,000 woven, printed and

embroidered silk postcards from the First World War alone. They are held in 51 albums, and the majority of the cards are embroidered. These albums contain 17 collections relating to specific soldiers and their families. It is a fascinating record, especially as most of the cards are still in remarkably good condition. Silk postcards do not always include a message on the back, and were often simply sent as a single memento. When soldiers did choose to write on them, the message was usually brief, with only limited space to write a few words. In other cases, when the cards were left blank, they were enclosed in an envelope with a letter containing a longer message. The accompanying letters have not always survived, however these souvenirs

from the war and from their loved ones were kept and cherished by families for years.

The Memorial’s collection contains five postcards which were sent by Private Thomas Herbert Wragg of Tasmania, who served with the 26th Battalion. The cards he sent are typical of popular designs and slogans of this period, as are the brief messages hastily scrawled on the back in periods of boredom, or before being returned to the front. The first of Wragg’s cards features a floral motif with the Union Jack and French flags alongside the message, “To my dear mother”. Wragg included a brief letter home on the back, which he continued on a second card embroidered with “God be with you until we meet again.”

His closing words echoed the wishes of many diggers serving far from home: “Hoping to be home again soon, your loving son, Tom.”

Wragg’s last postcard was dated February 1917. Over the months which followed, he saw action during the enemy’s withdrawal to the Hindenburg line, including at Lagnicourt where Australian units were badly outnumbered. Three months after sending his final postcard, Wragg was involved in the Second Division’s attack on German positions near the town of Bullecourt, where he was killed in action on 3 May 1917.

MEGHAN ADAMS Military History Section

Clockwise from top: Private Tom Wragg was killed in action, 3 May 1917. “With hopes to be home again soon…” many of these cards echoed the desires of soldiers to be reunited with their loved ones back in Australia.

BY DAVID

Relations between government and armed forces have been the crucial factor in Australia’s wars.

HORNER

Prime Minister Billy Hughes oversaw two unsuccessful conscription referenda and confirmed the appointment of Lieutenant General John Monash as commander of the Australian Corps. AWM E02533

War is a deadly serious business: so serious that during the First World War the French Prime Minister and War Minister, Georges Clemenceau, famously declared that it was too important to be left to the generals. If war is so serious, it is startling to note that in a span of just under 90 years, from August 1914 to March 2003, Australia went to war nine times: the First and Second World Wars, the Korean War, the Malayan Emergency, the Indonesian Confrontation, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Further, in the century between 1914 and 2013, Australian military personnel were on active service during 47 of those years. This from a nation – an island continent – that is largely remote from countries that might pose a major threat. Why then did Australia go to war on these nine occasions? And why have Australian military personnel been on operations for almost half of that time?

In a broad sense, the answers might be found in Australia’s history as a British colony, in the nation’s insecurity as a thinly populated country in a vast continent on the edge of Asia, and in the desire of a small country to seek security as part of a protective alliance. But to understand why Australia became involved in specific wars we need to focus on the political leaders, particularly the prime ministers. The crucial factor has been the capability of Australia’s war leaders.

In each war the players have been the same – the prime ministers, their senior ministers, their military (and sometimes civilian) advisers and, because Australia has always fought as part of an allied coalition, the political and military leaders of Great Britain and the United States. The issues have also been constant, primarily the need to respond to the imperatives of being a member of an alliance, whether it be the British Empire or the US alliance. Further, all of Australia’s wars have involved commitments far from home, except in the case of the Pacific War, which began at some distance from Australia but was soon on the nation’s doorstep.

The war leaders

S o who were these war leaders, and who were their advisers? In the First World War Australia had three war

leaders. Sir Joseph Cook was prime minister for only the first six weeks of the war, because he lost the general election being held then, but this was a crucial time. He did not commit Australia to the war – it was assumed that because Britain was at war, the empire’s dominions were at war also. But Cook and his government decided to raise and send the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) overseas to fight with Britain, and he appointed the AIF’s first commander, Major General William Bridges.

The next prime minister, Andrew Fisher, expanded Australia’s war commitment; but it was a measure of the limitations on his capacity to manage the war that the Australian government did not find out that its troops had landed on Gallipoli until a few days after the landing. After about a year as prime minister, Fisher handed over to Billy Hughes, who was Australia’s war leader for the next three years. By this time Bridges had been killed and an officer of the British Indian Army, Sir William Birdwood, had taken over as commander of the AIF. Hughes dealt with three crucial issues: seeking input into imperial decisionmaking through the Imperial War Cabinet; conducting two unsuccessful referenda to introduce conscription; and confirming Lieutenant General John Monash as the commander of the Australian Corps to succeed General Birdwood.

Robert Menzies was prime minister on the outbreak of the Second World War. He set up the War Cabinet and later the Advisory War Council to help manage the war effort. The influential Sir Frederick Shedden was secretary of both bodies and became the government’s principal adviser on strategic and defence issues. Menzies and his government made numerous critical decisions: to place RAN ships under British Admiralty control, to raise a second AIF for service overseas, to appoint Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Blamey as commander of the AIF, to take part in the Empire Air Training Scheme, to send the 7th Division to the Middle East, to send two brigades of the 8th Division to Malaya, and to commit Australian forces to the Greek campaign.

S ir Arthur Fadden succeeded Menzies as prime minister, but before then, as acting prime minister, he had

made several important decisions about the defence of Australia, including refocusing Australia’s strategy to allow for deployments in the region. In his short tenure as prime minister, he confirmed the Menzies government’s decision to insist on the withdrawal of Australian troops from Tobruk.

Menzies and Fadden were advised by the chiefs of staff of the three services. A British officer was Chief of Naval Staff for the entire war and a British officer was Chief of the Air Staff during 1940 and 1941. However, the Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Vernon Sturdee, was an Australian and he carried a special responsibility.

John Curtin was prime minister when Japan attacked in December 1941. With Australia under threat of invasion, he faced deeply challenging tasks as war leader. His war leadership was shared with General Douglas MacArthur, the American commander-in-chief of the Southwest Pacific Area. This was an abrogation of Australian sovereignty, but in the emergency there was little alternative. Once he returned to Australia from the Middle East, General Blamey, commander-in-chief of the Australian army, sought to ensure that the government received advice from an Australian officer. Under Curtin, in October 1943 Australia restructured its war effort. Australia’s military effort was wound back, but troops were committed to fighting in New Guinea, Bougainville and Borneo to ensure Australia had a seat at the peace table.

New dynamic

M enzies was back as prime minister when Australia committed forces from the three services to the Korean War in 1950 and aircraft to the Malayan Emergency the same year. War leadership now had a new dynamic. Australia was no longer fighting an existential war, but military forces were still on operations. Unlike the situation in the world wars, the government now had some discretion as to whether Australia should be involved in the wars of the 1950s and 1960s.

The extent of Australia’s involvement became one of careful calibration. Australia supported Britain in dealing with Indonesia’s confrontation with Malaysia. But the commitment to the Vietnam War was highly contentious. Of Australia’s nine wars between 1914 and 2003, Menzies took

Clockwise from right: French Premier Georges Clemenceau famously stated that ‘war is too important to be left to the generals.’ AWM H12178

As prime minister, John Howard’s management of Coalition and Labor politicians left little room for manoeuvre prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Photograph: Brad Rimmer. AWM P04192.161

Prime Minister John Howard oversaw Australia’s commitment to both Afghanistan and Iraq, placing the nation at the forefront of the ‘Coalition of the willing.’ Photographer: Kerry Alchin, 23 October 2003. AWM PAIU2003/146.16

Through the Imperial War Cabinet, Prime Minister Billy Hughes sought greater input into how Australian troops were utilised on the Western Front. Photograph: Broothorn Studios. AWM H16071

If war is so serious, it is startling to note that in a span of just under 90 years ... Australia went to war nine times.

Left: With Australia under threat in 1941, Prime Minister John Curtin shared war leadership with US General Douglas MacArthur, a necessary abrogation of Australia’s sovereignty. Photographer: William Donald Martin. AWM 052512

Below: On his return from the Middle East, General Sir Thomas Blamey sought to ensure the government received advice from a senior Australian officer. Photograph: Damien Parer. AWM 005779 Above: General Sir John Wilton was keen for Australian forces to be involved in Vietnam, and pushed for Australian troops to have their own province to operate in. Photographer: Brian Rupert Dunne. AWM DNE/65/0162/VN

Right: Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Prime Minister Robert Menzies set up the War Cabinet and later the Advisory War Council to help manage Australia’s war effort. AWM 006414

Political leaders have a critical role in selecting their principal military advisers and commanders.

Australia into five of them, including Vietnam. Harold Holt, who succeeded Menzies in 1966, increased Australia’s commitment, but his successor Sir John Gorton (after the short prime ministership of Sir John McEwen) had to work out how to withdraw from Vietnam. This was eventually achieved under the prime ministership of Sir William McMahon.

The Menzies government was not eager to hear from its foreign policy advisers about whether it was wise to contribute to the Vietnam War. At the same time, its senior military advisers, Air Chief Marshal Sir Frederick Scherger and General Sir John Wilton, were keen for Australia to be involved. Whereas in the past military advice had been provided by the chiefs of staff of the services, now there was a separate Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, the position held successively by Scherger and Wilton.

B ob Hawke was prime minister during the 1990–91 Gulf War. Hawke did not establish a formal cabinet committee, but a small group of ministers approved the commitments to the maritime interception force in August 1990 and to the Gulf War in February 1991. This was the first war for the Australian Defence Force, and military advice was now provided by the Chief of the Defence Force (CDF), in this case General Peter Gration.

John Howard was prime minister for the commitment to the war in Afghanistan in 2001 and to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Howard had a finely developed mechanism for managing these commitments. He had a National Security Committee of Cabinet and received advice from the CDF, General Peter Cosgrove. The management of Australia’s commitment to the invasion of Iraq was handled quite brilliantly. However, Howard never sought contrary advice from anywhere in the bureaucracy, and this leaves open the important question of whether the commitment was wise and could be justified, even though it might have been managed well.

The civil–military interface

All of the eleven prime ministers I have mentioned were civilians, and indeed only one of them, John Gorton, had even seen active service, in his case as a fighter pilot in the Second World War.

Prime ministers do not naturally have any great expertise in military matters. Only one of the prime ministers, Joseph Cook, had previously been a defence minister when first taking up his office. Gorton was the first to admit that he was “no trained strategist nor a trained tactician”. Billy Hughes, a lawyer, declared that he was “an AttorneyGeneral not a Major-General”.

T he prime ministers and their defence ministers therefore needed to rely on the service chiefs for advice about the availability and capabilities of military forces. Service chiefs fulfil two roles: they are the government’s principal military advisers, and they have an executive role to implement the government’s decisions. It falls to them to deploy the forces efficiently, to ensure they are trained to the best possible level, and to make sure they are employed properly to achieve the government’s goals. The military chiefs achieve their second role through the command structure. When forces are deployed, they generally have a commander who reports back to the government and ensures its policies are followed. Hence, political leaders have a critical role in selecting their principal military advisers and commanders.

War leadership therefore involves tension between the two parties, the civil and the military – what political scientists call the civil–military interface. In a democracy there is no question about who is in charge: it is the civilian political leaders. But the military leaders have the professional military expertise. At times military leaders might find themselves being ordered to carry out directions that they believe to be against the national interest. It is often argued that in those circumstance military leaders are left with two alternatives: either to obey the government or to resign. However, there is a contrary argument: so long as the government’s direction is lawful, military chiefs should not resign, because in doing so they would enter the political sphere, which the military is not permitted to do.

L ieutenant General Sir Sydney Rowell, Australian Chief of the General Staff from 1950 to 1954, wrote in his memoirs that when faced with an unpalatable decision, a chief might consider threatening to resign. But he concluded that “loose talk of threatening to resign is twaddle; to

take the issue to the point of no return merely leads to the protester being replaced by someone more pliable.”

A n interesting issue is the extent to which political leaders should become involved in the conduct of operations. They need to appoint commanders in whom they have confidence, but ultimately the political leaders are responsible for ensuring that the operations achieve what the government intended. Many political leaders believed they needed to visit the troops in the field, both to gain an understanding of the conditions in which the troops were operating, and to demonstrate their personal responsibility.

H ence, Billy Hughes visited the Western Front in 1916 and 1918, emphasising to Monash in September 1918 that the troops needed to be given a break from operations. Menzies visited the troops in Libya in February 1941 towards the end of their successful campaign. But Curtin never visited soldiers in the field, not even in Australia, let alone on operations. Harold Holt and John Gorton made a visit to the troops in South Vietnam a high priority early in their prime ministerships. Considering the nature of Australia’s commitment to the 1991 Gulf War, it was not easy for Hawke to visit the ships, but Defence Minister Robert Ray did. John Howard visited the troops in the Gulf region as soon as the invasion of Iraq was completed.

O nce the prime minister has committed the nation to war, the next decision is to determine the level and nature of the commitment. In the First World War this decision was taken before the formal outbreak of the war. The Menzies government was more cautious about sending forces overseas after the war began in 1939. The decisions in the Vietnam War were made incrementally. But during all the wars from Korea to Iraq, the Australian government tried to keep the commitment as small as possible while reaping the benefits of being seen to support the alliances with Britain and the United States.

Expert military advice is important, but so too is the advice of senior ministers, with their specific responsibilities. In the First World War the cabinet was relatively small, and the prime minister did not establish a War Cabinet. By contrast, at the

beginning of the Second World War Menzies established a War Cabinet to which the service chiefs were regularly invited. The Advisory War Council, formed for political reasons, became a source of further advice. Curtin’s Prime Minister’s War Conference was formed because of the special position of General MacArthur.

When Menzies formed the National Security Resources Board in 1950, he was building on the Second World War experience. More importantly, in 1963 he established the Foreign Affairs and Defence (FAD) Committee of Cabinet in the lead-up to the Vietnam War. Unfortunately, Gorton disregarded the FAD Committee, to the detriment of good policy-making. Hawke did not have a formal committee but used an informal group of ministers. The Howard government had a National Security Committee of Cabinet.

Selecting commanders

As noted earlier, political leaders need to select military commanders in whom they have confidence. These include not only the service chiefs, who become the government’s principal military advisers, but also the commanders of the forces deployed overseas. In the First World War, Birdwood, an officer of the British-Indian Army, selected himself to command the AIF, although Hughes was involved in the later decision to retain Monash as commander of the Australian Corps. I n the Second World War the government selected several British officers as service chiefs but made a major decision in appointing Blamey to command the 2nd AIF. From 1942 to 1945 the government’s principal military adviser was an American general, Douglas MacArthur.

In the Vietnam War the government gave much consideration to the appointment of the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee but was not closely involved in selecting the successive Commanders Australian Force Vietnam. In later wars the commanders in the field were largely selected by the service chiefs and approved by the defence ministers. In the Gulf War, Admiral Ken Doolan commanded the naval force by virtue of his role as Maritime Commander.

T here is one view that the government should give the military its orders and allow them to carry

them out. But there is another view that political leaders need to take a more hands-on approach. In 1918, Hughes intervened to ensure that troops were given leave or rest from operations. In 1945 the Acting Minister for the Army, James Fraser, visited the operational areas in New Guinea and Bougainville to check on possible equipment shortages. In Vietnam, the government largely left the conduct of operations in the hands of the military commanders until Malcolm Fraser, as Defence Minister, took a more active approach.

T he field commander’s prime responsibility is to ensure that operations are in accordance with Australia’s best inter ests. For that reason, Blamey fought, with the government’s support, to withdraw his troops from Tobruk, and on Blamey’s advice the Curtin government stopped the 6th Division taking part in the invasion of Java. Wilton was keenly aware of this responsibility during the Vietnam War. In the invasion of Iraq, Brigadier Maurie McNarn prevented RAAF Hornets from conducting certain missions that were not in accordance with government policy.

Managing the alliance

Australia’s war leaders have always faced the problem of gaining access to allied strategic decision-making. It took until 1918 for Hughes to appreciate this requirement fully. Menzies and Curtin struggled with this issue in the Second World War, and it persisted in the later wars. In the invasion of Iraq, the Australians detected that plans for the post-invasion phase were deficient, but they were unable to change them. The lesson for Australia is to remain constantly vigilant, and a prime task for war leaders is to manage Australia’s role in the alliance.

A fundamental requirement for good decision-making is information and intelligence. In the First World War, Australia had little ability to make its own judgements about the world situation. In the Second World War Australia started to develop its own diplomatic services and appointed representatives to several countries, including Japan and the United States. In the Vietnam War, the government was not made aware of, or ignored, US reports indicating that the allies were unlikely to prevent a

Communist victory. Before the Iraq War, Australia’s intelligence agencies made assessments that appeared at variance with those of their allies.

The lesson is not just the need to have effective diplomatic and intelligence agencies, but also for the government to listen to them. The Australian Defence official, Rod Barton, who was at the coalface of intelligence collection in Iraq, wrote: “One thing my intelligence career has taught me is that, with a few exceptions, politicians only take professional advice when it supports their policies, and even then, only pick the bits that suit them.”

The political arena

Operating in a democracy, Australia’s war leaders must also give attention to the political arena. Hughes split his own party over conscription, believing it was necessary to achieve the government’s war aims. With the assistance of Curtin, Menzies introduced the Advisory War Council, which largely nullified the threat from the Opposition, but he failed to manage the politics of his own party in 1941. It is just as important to deal with the politics within the party as to deal with the Opposition. Hawke understood this as he sought to deal with critics in his party before committing to the Gulf War. Howard managed the Coalition’s politicians superbly and gave the Opposition little capacity to manoeuvre in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.

Needing to deal with the political arena, war leaders have been keenly aware of the requirement to manage the media. Hughes did this through the ruthless use of regulations to ban critical newspapers. Curtin ran up against the restrictions General MacArthur imposed on the release of information. Hawke and Howard gave much attention to the management of media during the Gulf War and the invasion of Iraq.

Many of the lessons drawn from the past century are still relevant today. The failure of the United States in Iraq, brought out in Thomas Ricks’ book Fiasco, should lead to at least two vital conclusions: that the US process for going to war was deeply flawed and Australia would be wise to treat any US plan for war with deep suspicion; and that Australia should not smugly assume that it might not display the same faulty process in the future.

M ost Australians possess at least a vague knowledge of the landing on Gallipoli in 1915 and the fighting on the Kokoda Trail in 1942. The personal experience of war continues to hold a fascination. But the big challenge is to understand why Australia was

involved in its wars, and how the Australian government went about managing them. Ultimately these decisions are about war strategy. This might seem to be an esoteric matter, but if governments get the strategy wrong, the cost is borne by soldiers on the ba ttlefield, their families, the nation’s treasury and its reputation. War leadership continues to be the crucial factor in considering Australia’s experience of war. •

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Horner is an Emeritus Professor in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University. His most recent book, The War Game: Australian War Leadership from Gallipoli to Iraq, is published by Allen & Unwin.

As Prime Minister of Australia, William McMahon oversaw the drawdown of Australia’s commitment to South Vietnam.

Photographer: John Fairley. AWM FAI/70/0252/VN

THE END OF EMDEN

HMAS Sydney sealed the fate of the famous German raider. Eyewitness accounts bring the action to life

BY THOMAS J. ROGERS, LACHLAN GRANT AND SHANE CASEY

MDEN, SEA TERROR DESTROYED” proclaimed the headline of one American newspaper. “GERMAN RAIDER EMDEN – HER CAREER ENDED” headlined Melbourne’s Age, continuing, “MEETS AUSTRALIAN CRUISER SYDNEY – EMDEN A COMPLETE WRECK”. Until it was defeated in battle by HMAS Sydney off the Cocos Islands on 9 November 1914, the German light cruiser SMS Emden had wreaked havoc as a commerce raider in the Indian Ocean. Described variously by newspapers as “elusive”, a “high seas peril”, and the “scourge of the Indian ocean”, Emden’s bold exploits had brought the German raider global fame, and its defeat in battle duly brought acclaim to HMAS Sydney.

The defeat of Emden was the Royal Australian Navy’s first victory in a ship-on-ship action. Emden represented a threat to allied shipping, troop convoys, and communications in the opening months of the First World War; its defeat gave Britain and her allies unfettered passage across the Indian Ocean. Perhaps encouraged by the fame of the engagement, sailors from both Sydney and Emden left a rich trove of personal accounts of the action.

Some of these were published in contemporary newspapers, others in published memoirs, or deposited in libraries and archives, including the collection of the Australian War Memorial. The following narrative draws from these eyewitness accounts of the battle, told by those who were there.

The raider

At the outbreak of war in 1914, Imperial Germany’s light cruiser SMS Emden was stationed at Tsingtao (today’s Qingdao), the port of Germany’s leased territory in north-eastern China. A graceful presence in the harbour, the ship was known as the “swan of the east”. When news of war reached Tsingtao in July, Emden was the only German warship in port, as the German East Asia Squadron under Vizeadmiral Maximilian von Spee was scattered throughout the Pacific (see Wartime 101). On hearing of war, the admiral had chosen to use

his squadron to attack British ships off the coast of Chile.

Emden’s captain, Karl von Müller, saw an opportunity for his little warship. Emden was fast enough, and heavily armed relative to its size, to disrupt British shipping in the Indian Ocean. Once Emden had joined the rest of the fleet in the Pacific, von Müller met with von Spee and suggested his plan. The admiral acceded to the request – but von Müller did not tell his crew.

The next morning when orders came through for Emden to leave the fleet, the crew broke into cheering and rejoicing. One officer remembered the excitement: “At last we were to be on our own and could act independently, as we, or our Captain, pleased … Our Captain was the right man for such an undertaking.” So began the voyage that would make Emden a household name.

Fuel was the great constraint. Germany had coaling stations in

the Pacific, but von Müller correctly predicted that British ships would soon capture these. Throughout its voyage, Emden had to find calm waters and engage in ship-to-ship coaling, a dangerous, time-consuming, and dirty procedure. Initially, Emden took from the fleet the collier Markomannia, a ship named after an ancient Germanic people who had resisted the Romans. Perhaps their modern namesake could defy a still greater empire.

Emden was followed by several colliers on its journey, some of which had been captured and their crews pressed into service. With these colliers, Emden steamed into the Indian Ocean. Among many exploits, the raider shelled and set alight fuel stores at Madras (now Chennai), sank a Russian cruiser at anchor in Penang harbour, and then sank the French destroyer Mousquet. Machinist’s Mate Hans Harmes described the French ship sinking just after sunrise. “I grew

From left to right: HMAS Sydney, 1913. AWM H17502

The route taken by Emden from her departure in China, July 1914. Most likely drawn by a member of the crew while a prisoner of war in Australia. c. 1915

AWM 3DRL/3902

Previous page: German Dresden-class cruiser SMS Emden, c. 1914. AWM P00718.001

philosophical and then I pondered on the rising of the God-made sun as contrasted with the going down of the man-made ship.”

Sinking played on other minds too. First Officer Hellmuth von Mücke recalled in his memoirs:

“All things considered, there was every reason to believe that the Emden was being vigorously pursued. The day when her career must come to an end could not, therefore, be far distant. The men aboard her did not allow this prospect to dampen their spirits, however. When the fateful moment had arrived, the enemy should be made to realize that in the Emden he had met a worthy foe.”

Emden stopped many merchant ships, captured any that belonged to the British or their allies, and took the crews aboard one of Emden’s colliers. The men of Emden stripped all needed items from the captured ship, before it was unceremoniously sunk, or sent with its crew and other captured crews to the nearest British port. Von Müller raided merchant shipping without bloodshed, which earned him the reputation as the “gentleman raider”, as well as depriving the British of war materiel of an enormous value.

One historian estimated that in the three months that Emden was active, the value of British exports from the Indian Ocean declined by nearly two-

thirds. This drastic decrease was due to losses as well as reduced shipping, as merchant captains became unwilling to leave port.

To British eyes, Emden resembled a twentieth-century revival of the old European privateers – a statesponsored pirate ship.

To deceive the enemy, the crew of Emden had fitted a fake fourth funnel so that at a distance Emden would appear to be a British warship like HM Ships Hampshire or Yarmouth, both four-funnelled cruisers also operating in the region. “The happy thought came to me,” recalled First Officer von Mücke, “that much might be gained if the Emden were provided with a fourth funnel.” This removable fourth funnel was made from wooden posts and sail cloths. “When the wind got hold of it, it looked like a floppy macaroni noodle,” remembered Ordinary Seaman Friederich Lochau, but at a distance it was enough to disguise the ship.

Perhaps the oddest part of Emden’s journey was the time spent at Diego Garcia. By October 1914, Emden’s hull needed cleaning, and the harbour of this undefended British outpost in the southern Indian Ocean offered the best place for this. The growth of barnacles and other marine life

To British eyes, Emden resembled a twentieth-century revival of the old European privateers – a state-sponsored pirate ship.

P10592.002

on ships’ hulls increases drag in the water, and Emden ’s chief strength was its speed. As it turned out, news of war had not yet reached this bastion of the British Empire, and Emden ’s crew did not feel the need to break it to them. An elderly British man who came aboard to welcome the Germans was astonished by the state of the ship – coal dust everywhere, minimal furniture in the officers’ mess, woven anti-splinter mats adorning the guns. German hospitality soon prevented any awkward questions; as von Mücke wrote, “We treated him so generously with whiskey, that presently he gave up thinking at all.”

Cutting the cables

Emden ’s next move was to cut the cables and destroy the British radio and telegraph station at Direction Island in the Cocos Islands. The purpose was to cut rapid communication between Britain and Australia and New Zealand. Superintendent Dover Farrant was in charge of the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company station on Direction Island. He wrote of the incident:

At 5.50 am on the 9th I was informed that a warship with four funnels was steaming for the entrance … Quickly investigating and finding that the fourth funnel was palpably canvas, I found Mr La Nauze and instructed him to proceed immediately to the wireless hut, and to put out a general call that there was a strange warship in our vicinity.

Observing through a telescope, Farrant watched as Emden lowered its steam pinnace and two launches with an armed landing party. They were soon heading quickly towards the station. First Officer von Mücke, commanding the party, later wrote of the destruction of the telegraph station: “Our next duty was quite to the taste of my vigorous boys in blue. A couple of heavy axes were soon found, and, in a few minutes, Morse apparatus, ink bottles, table legs, cable

ends, and the like were flying about the room.”

The landing party, in the words of one of its members, had “got to work in double quick time”. All mechanical equipment in the wireless transmitter station and telegraph house were destroyed, and the wireless transmitter mast was blown up, as was a house holding spare wireless cable. Meanwhile, in the lagoon, other members of the landing party “fished up the cable and cut it through” with axes. Unwittingly the German sailors had wasted precious time. The German pinnace was “searching the foreshore

for our cables”, Farrant reported, “and I noted with delight that she first raised a small type, which would be our halfnought of spare laid out in the lagoon” as a decoy.

Only after severing the spare cable did Emden’s landing party then find, raise, and commence cutting with axes the real cable connecting to Perth. In the tropical sun this was hard, intensive work.

Around this time, one of the landing party recounted: “ Emden suddenly blew her siren; we collected everything quickly, got into the boats and left the island. We had gone about 200 metres

Peter Henseler was a crew member on SMS Emden and became a prisoner of war on the island of Malta. He was repatriated to Germany in 1919. c. 1913.AWM

when we saw that the Emden was also under way.” Watching proceedings from shore, Farrant stated “ Emden raised her anchor and was standing out to sea” as another “cruiser was seen coming up at a great rate.” In Emden’s haste to leave, its landing party was left behind on Direction Island as HMAS Sydney had arrived on the scene.

The Royal Australian Navy light cruiser Sydney was part of the armed escort for the first Anzac convoy of troopships transporting Australian and New Zealand soldiers to the Middle East. The convoy had departed Albany, Western Australia, on 1 November. Leading Signalman John Seabrook, a member of the Royal Navy serving in Sydney, wrote: “During the day orders were issued to all ships warning them not to use their wireless during the night unless absolutely necessary, as we should be passing Cocos Islands during the night, & if any attack was intended against the convoy, it would in all probability be from these islands.” The passing convoy had intercepted the emergency message being transmitted from Direction Island. On receiving the message, the captain of HMAS Melbourne , leading the convoy, detached Sydney to go and investigate the “strange cruiser”, which many in the convoy suspected to be Emden

Action

Picking up speed and steaming toward Direction Island, Sydney ’s Captain John Glossop ordered his ship be cleared for action, and an atmosphere of quiet determination descended. “Two outstanding sounds divided the general attention – the whirr of the propellers and the swish of the sea,” wrote Sydney ’s chaplain, Rev. Vivian Little. He continued, “Above

our heads streamed a mass of black smoke belched freely from the four funnels blurring the azure blue of the cloudless heavens.”

Emden fired first, and rapidly – ten rounds per gun per minute, Glossop estimated. “The Emden had the Sydney ’s range to a nicety,” wrote Seabrook. “Emden undoubtedly had the best of matters for the first 20 minutes.”

The German ship scored several early hits on Sydney, some of which failed to explode. Shipwright William White remembered, “Every single shell that struck the ship could be felt throughout the ship.” These early hits wounded 16 sailors aboard Sydney, four of whom died of their wounds (see Wartime 89).

Sydney took longer to find Emden’s range, but fired a larger round (45 kg shells, as opposed to Emden’s 17 kg shells). Once Sydney’s shells began to hit Emden, the destruction was rapid and devastating. “Each shell struck with a horrible nerve-racking shriek as the flying missile found its mark and forced its way into solid steel and then exploded with a deafening roar,” wrote Ordinary Seaman Friederich Lochau. “For a second after the deafening noise of destruction everything seemed ominously quiet. Then the loud groaning of the wounded and the dying became audible. Of the entire complement of my own gun only another man besides myself was left standing.” Emden’s foremast and two of three funnels were struck and collapsed across the deck. Emden lost 136 men killed in the battle, and of the 182 survivors about 80 were wounded.

Most of Emden ’s gunners died during the battle; many of the firsthand accounts therefore come from crewmembers below deck. Engineer Hugo Haass, in one of the stokeholds,

remembered, “We below knew nothing of the condition of affairs on deck.” In another engine room, Machinist Willy Kampf later said, “Flames shot out into the stokehold, apparently the result of shells striking the funnels or somewhere near them.” To protect themselves from the heat and smoke that poured into the stokeholds, Haass recalled, “the men held caps or handkerchiefs up to their faces.”

Meanwhile, Emden ’s torpedo compartment had been hit and was filling with smoke and water. The second torpedo officer was Leutnant zur See Franz Joseph, Prince of Hohenzollern, a nephew of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Although the hatch to the compartment had been jammed shut, he managed to get his men out through a torpedo transport hatch and up to safety. “I then saw for myself a frightful amount of damage,” he later wrote, “everywhere dead and severely wounded men ... The most distressing part was the realisation that there was nothing one could do, and that the pain could not be assuaged, for everything was a heap of wreckage.”

Captain von Müller gave the order to beach the ship on North Keeling Island. With him on deck was Oberleutnant zur See Robert Witthoeft, who later wrote, “Our ship came to rest, a burning, sinking charnel house. Our cruise had ended.” Sydney’s telegraphist’s signal was rather more laconic: “ Emden beached and done for.”

Survivors

Captain von Müller’s decision to beach Emden saved the lives of many of his men, but it was not the end of their ordeal. Sydney chased down Emden’s last remaining collier, which was scuttled by its crew. Glossop returned to the beached raider that evening, and saw Emden ’s battle ensign still flying – meaning the ship was still a combatant. Concerned that Emden might still fire or launch torpedoes if Sydney approached, Glossop signalled using flags but received no clear answer. He ordered Sydney ’s gunners to open fire on the beached ship, and finally one of Emden’s crew scaled the mast and tore down the flag. A German sailor remembered bitterly, “Instead of sending us help they sent us shells. They fired on a defenceless ship with a wounded crew. We could naturally not return the fire.” One of the sailors from Sydney despatched

“Above our heads streamed a mass of black smoke belched freely from the four funnels blurring the azure blue of the cloudless heavens.”

to rescue the Emden ’s crew, Stoker Alfred Ruskin, described the wreck: “a few hours before a smart ship and now a mass of twisted steel and her deck like a slaughterhouse.”

Once Emden was aground, von Müller had allowed those willing among his crew to abandon ship and try to make it through the reef and surf to the uninhabited island. Not all departed the ship voluntarily, as recorded by Machinist Peter Henseler:

In the crush I was pushed overboard. I tried to swim ashore, but could not do so owing to the heavy surf, and held myself up by clinging to the foremast which was lying suspended in the water. Some of the men, however, had not sufficient strength to hold on in the heavy surf and were drowned.

Those who made it to the island, about 20, were not rescued until the evening of 10 November, spending two days and a night tormented by thirst and facing unspeakable horror. Lochau remembered, “My lips were cracked and my throat so dry and raw. How long could one survive without water I wondered.” Machinist’s Mate Hans Harmes still had some strength, and protected others from wildlife: “Large birds were descending on us and with sharp hooked beaks were tearing

away parts of the flesh of those who were too weak to resist … we found it necessary to maintain two guards to beat them away from the wounded.” Adding to the survivors’ horrific ordeal, the island is home to the coconut crab –the world’s largest species of land crab. These emerged from their burrows to eat the dead or those who were too far gone to resist.

Sydney returned on 10 November, and began the process of bringing some 180 German sailors on board. For the next two days, Sydney’s surgeon, Leonard Darby, assisted by the doctor from the island and a surviving surgeon from Emden, operated on the wounded of both crews. “Our ship represented a hospital of the very worst kind,” wrote Shipwright William White. “The surgeons were operating continuously for thirty-six hours.” Safely on board Sydney , Ordinary Seaman Nicolaus Mayer of Emden recalled: “We were at once properly bandaged and were treated as far as circumstances allowed. Next to me was a sailor of Sydney ; he had his right foot blown away. He bent himself towards me and gave me his hand.”

Over the following days, many of Emden ’s wounded crew were transferred to other British ships,

“In the crush I was pushed overboard. I tried to swim ashore, but could not do so owing to the heavy surf”

Ayesha and landing party AWM P11611.013.003

while Sydney took the remainder to Colombo, in today’s Sri Lanka. The Australians and New Zealanders in the harbour were ordered not to cheer, but not all obeyed. The Germans were amazed at the size of the ANZAC convoy, and one commented: “Forty thousand men ready for departure to Europe. They made a big noise as we entered. They had good cause to, as the way was now free. We wished them God speed and soon a meeting with German infantry.”

In 1931, Machinist’s Mate Hans Harmes reflected: “There are only a few of us original ‘Emdens’ left; about fifty, I think. I have met a few of them since the war, but they do not seem to be the same. The experience at the Cocos Islands has taken something

vital from everyone.” As living memory of the event faded, Sydney and Emden have been remembered for more than a century. The names Sydney and Emden were later bestowed upon successor ships in both the RAN and German navy. Whilst the action at the Cocos Islands caught the world’s attention, in Australia it was an event that elevated the navy’s position in the public consciousness, bringing home the reality of war, and reaffirming Australia as a maritime nation that needed the protection of a capable and modern navy. The Sydney–Emden battle continues to be relevant. Today more than 95 per cent of Australia’s data comes through undersea cables which connect Australia to the world, and merchant shipping is vital for trade

The escape of the landing party

On Direction Island, von Mücke and his 50 men soon realised that Emden was unlikely to return to pick them up. As one of the sailors recounted, the landing party declared the “island to be under German law and hoisted the German flag as evidence of this.” They then dug in their machine-guns and prepared for defence. But “as both ships disappeared across the horizon”, von Mücke pointed to an old schooner in the bay, Ayesha, and said, “probably no ships will come back, we will get this sailing ship ready in order to escape being made prisoners.”

Having decided to commandeer Ayesha, they spent the day preparing the schooner for sailing. The ship was rotting, and the British on the island warned von Mücke that it wouldn’t stand a sea voyage. Trusting to a ship that had seen better days, though, was better than being captured.

In his memoirs, von Mücke recalled, “I made a short speech, and with three cheers for the Emperor, [our] first in command, the war flag and pennant fluttered up to the masthead of His Majesty’s latest ship, the schooner Ayesha.” Von Mücke and his men sailed to Sumatra, scuttled

and resources. If not for the rich and vivid written accounts recorded for posterity by so many veterans of both Sydney and Emden, the battle may not have captured the imagination across generations as it has. •

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr Thomas J. Rogers, Dr Lachlan Grant and Shane Casey are members of the curatorial team working on the new Sydney–Emden exhibition in development for the Memorial’s Anzac Hall.

the unseaworthy Ayesha, and proceeded in a German freighter across the Indian Ocean to the Arabian peninsula. By turns in coastal ships and camel caravan, dodging British naval blockades and fighting Bedouins, the men made their way to the town of El Ula. From there, they caught an Ottoman train and were given heroes’ welcomes at Aleppo, Damascus, and Istanbul, eventually returning to Germany. For their tenacity during this remarkable sixand-a-half-month journey, von Mücke, his subordinate officers and men were all awarded the Iron Cross.

FRAGILE

BEASTS

BY SCOTT DENIS MCCARTHY

Australia’s experience of tank warfare began on 15 September 1916, at Flers-Courcelette during the Somme Offensive – the same day that their German adversaries first encountered Britain’s new, intimidating weapon of war. The deployment of tanks (initially called ‘landships’ by the committee responsible for their development) was intended to break through the stalemate of trench warfare on the Western Front. British command saw the tank as the means by which the infantry would cross no man’s land and overpower the enemy’s wellentrenched defensive positions.

The Australians were only witnesses that day to the machines’ assault on the German line along the Somme, and would not be directly involved in a tank operation until April 1917. But they watched, intently, from their own defensive positions. One of these men was an Indigenous soldier of the 1st Machine Gun Company,

The tanks of the Great War inspired shock and awe despite their limitations.

Alfred “Tiny” Ryan. He wrote home that the new weapons “caused a bit of a stir when they first went over.” It was certainly unsurprising that the sight of these iron-clad behemoths caused a stir among the allied troops, particularly for soldiers who, by late 1916, were well wearied by the devastation of industrial weaponry. For men such as Private Reynold ‘Cleve’ Potter, (who even before arriving in France recorded in his diary his disgust at the “number and variety of instruments of death devised by man for the murder of man”) the tank appeared as the conjunction of modern industrial combat and Gothic horror. The German enemy perceived the new threat to their defences in a corresponding manner. In a letter home to Australia, Corporal John R. Allan wrote that, since the introduction of tanks on the Somme, “Fritz has started to whine piteously … that this new innovation is not warfare but downright butchery and murder.” There was a sense, on both sides, that the new weapon had rendered the war no longer a fair fight.

These reactions, however, were largely unwarranted by the machine’s actual efficacy as a supposedly ‘tideturning’ weapon of war. The first British tank to see action, the Mark I, was essentially a death-trap. Its eight-

man crews had very poor vision and directional sense, owing to design flaws. They were subjected to neardeafening noise and searing heat, the tank’s internal temperature regularly reaching 50° C. The machines were fitted without suspension, meaning that each encounter between the tank and a shell-hole threw the operators around, often causing them to lurch and burn themselves on the engine and exhaust manifolds, which were situated inside and to the front of the cab. The corollary of this design was the incineration of the crew in the event of a frontal hit by the enemy’s defence, a possibility made all the more likely by the fact that the tank drove at a maximum speed of six kilometres per hour and required a complete stop in order to turn.

Though tank technology improved throughout the remainder of the war, most of these design flaws persisted to some degree, effectively preventing the tank from producing anything like unmitigated “butchery and murder”. Despite this, soldiers such as Private Potter continued to view the machines with a fearful reverence, his diary describing the machines as “uncouth demons drawing nearer and vomiting death at every inch”. These perceptions were quite common among

the Australian infantry generally, and were reflective of the machines’ shock value rather than their performance on the battlefield.

Bullecourt

The flaws in the earliest tank models meant that Australian troops’ first engagement with tank support took place alongside technology that was far from dependable and far from impregnable. Along with British command’s inflated confidence in the tank’s capabilities and their general ignorance of practical tank doctrine, the new weapon’s limitations contributed to one of the more disastrous actions involving the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) on the Western Front: the first battle of Bullecourt, 11 April 1917. With the goal of breaching the

Left: By September 1918 the performance of British tanks and their crews had earned the respect of the once-wary Australians. Photograph: Deutsche Reichsarchiv. AWM H13436 Below: A Mark V tank, loaded with wooden bridging material and a ‘Crib’ for crossing trenches, stranded in a trench in the Hindenburg Line. This tank was part of C Company 8th Battalion. The starboard sponson door has broken. AWM E03832

infamous Hindenburg Line in support of the Arras Offensive, British General Sir Hubert Gough’s Fifth Army centred its operational strategy on armour as the primary means of advance. Tanks were to be employed as the attack’s spearhead alongside the 4th Australian Infantry Division’s 4th and 12th Brigades. So much faith was placed in the tanks’ capabilities that a lifting or creeping barrage was abandoned and the use of artillery ordered to be minimal.

The fate of the attack hung on the capacity of the tanks of the Motor Machine-Gun Service, Heavy Section’s D Battalion, to advance at the pace of the infantry, crush barbed wire entanglements, and erase major pockets of enemy resistance. Had they been able to do this, the tanks would have achieved the results of a traditional artillery barrage. In retrospect, this was an absurdly ambitious task to impose upon the section, both with regards to the available technology – the tanks were primitive Mark I and II models –and to the competence of the crewmen. The British tankmen at Bullecourt were highly inexperienced; for many it was their first time in battle, given

the battalion had only been formed at the beginning of 1917.

Soon after zero hour, it was clear that D Battalion would fail to hold up its end of the strategic bargain, its efforts riddled with mechanical malfunction and operative inexperience. The battalion’s vulnerability was compounded by impassable shellholes and intensive enemy fire from fortified defensive positions. This left the Australian infantry effectively exposed to enfilading fire from German posts, resulting in a casualty rate of 75 per cent for the 4th Division and a mass retreat.

Among Australian command, the action was considered to have been an abysmal failure. The 14th Infantry Battalion’s unit war diary recorded: “The Tank Co-operation in the attack made on the Hindenburg Line on the night of 10/11th April 1917 was useless, or worse than useless.” Further reports of the operation spoke to what was perhaps the inevitable outcome of marrying inexperience with new, experimental technology: tanks were reported to have failed to reach their starting point, or to have been knocked out as soon as they began their assault.

Worse still, several tanks lost their bearings and, having drifted away from the infantry, fired on the allies’ attacking line, killing several and wounding many others. In his later reflections, Lieutenant-General Sir John Monash declared the debacle to have made tanks “anathema to the Australian troops”.

Among those Australian troops, however, impressions of the tanks and their performance were multifaceted. For many, the machines’ failures could not displace the romantic novelty of mobilised armour. Second Corporal Alexander McKay concluded that the tanks had merely “met with bad luck … in spite of bad luck they put up a magnificent fight.” Private Wilfred Gallwey noted his amazement that wherever the tanks went “shells follow them but make not the least impression on them.” Such perceptions were truly bizarre, given the horrific casualty figures suffered by D Battalion, with 52 of the 103 men from the tank company dying during the battle. This was a case of soldiers being swept up in the aesthetic appeal of the tank at the expense of an objective assessment of its proficiency. Certainly there were

infantrymen, such as Captain George Mitchell, who had been frustrated with the seeming impotence of the machines used at Bullecourt. He recorded in his diary that, during the assault, the tanks’ malfunctioning was a constant anxiety for the infantry, and he “cursed them and cursed them for their sloth.” But these impressions were generally outweighed by the infantry’s reverence for the novel mode of warfare. Tank commander Major W.H.L. Watson noted that the introduction of armour was “coloured with the romance that had long ago departed from the war.” Many Australian infantrymen, it seemed, tended to agree. This tendency contributed to the growth in the symbolic stature of the tank as a dominant weapon of war, despite its

readily apparent limitations on the modern battlefield.

The disappointment inspired by tanks at Bullecourt and throughout the broader Arras offensive provided allied command with valuable experience towards the formulation of tank doctrine. The greatest lesson from the offensive was what tanks could not do, which amounted to a longer list than their domineering presence might have suggested. These limitations were catalogued and circulated among British command as early as April 1917. These reports advised the narrowing of tank objectives to more modest ends, the importance of tank–infantry training, and the need to use artillery and counter-battery fire to assist the infantry’s advance and protect allied armour from German anti-tank measures. Though these conclusions had not been applied to strategy at Bullecourt, they did shape the employment of armour in the offensives of 1918.

Hamel

The battle of Hamel, 4 July 1918, is remembered rightly or wrongly as

the tank’s day in the sun, when the new weapons proved their mettle and restored the Australians’ faith in their brilliance. This legacy is attributable partly to the man who planned and executed the day’s strategy, John Monash, who afterwards insisted that the action had been “primarily a tank operation”. This view is also found in the unit histories which concluded that “the need for any apology for the use of tanks was swept away by the successful action of Hamel.” Certainly, tanks contributed to the operation’s success, which was achieved after only 93 minutes. But this contribution was made not as the spearhead of the attack, but by performing in a supporting role in an all-arms strategy. The day’s action had been meticulously planned, consistent with notes made on operations in 1917. Allied strategy involved extensive preliminary reconnaissance, tank-infantry training, and the demotion of tanks to a less central role alongside artillery and air support. Monash’s decision to employ low-flying aeroplanes and artillery just before zero hour, to disguise the noise of the tanks’ approach, might have been the only development in tank strategy at Hamel, but even this had been a natural response to issues reported in 1917.

T heir valuable contribution to a hugely successful operation reflected very well on the tanks. Although the implementation of sensible doctrine was key, this success was partly the result of advancements in tank technology. The Mark V models used at Hamel were a vastly improved breed of weapon from the earliest designs. Their advanced manoeuvrability – now requiring only one man to drive, while the Mark I had required four – offered greater opportunity to demonstrate their frightening capabilities to the infantry, one of which was the literal pulverizing of enemy positions. A unit history of the 13th Tank Battalion wrote that the Mark V was of great value in managing the resistance of German machine-gunners, “many cases being reported of tanks running over and crushing the guns, which were frequently kept in action until the tanks [were] actually on top of the gun position.”

But even this advanced model offered its crew horrific interior conditions. While unbearable heat from the engine and cordite from the firing of its guns were problematic, the tank

Left: By late 1918, the attitude of the AIF was generally favourable to fighting alongside tanks. AWM H12514

Above: A British Mark I Male tank, believed to be the prototype named Mother. Note the white censorship blotches to mask the tank’s markings, the steering tail at the rear and the extended 8-pound guns. AWM H19323

For many, the machines’ failures could not displace the romantic novelty of mobilised armour.

Clockwise from top:

German soldiers pose around a captured British Mark IV female tank, now bearing a German cross. It was probably used by the Germans in action, as often happened with captured tanks. AWM P02882.015

A British Mark I Female tank east of Pozières, damaged by shell fire. The wheels at the back were designed to aid in steering but were not very effective. April 1917. AWM C01379

Lieutenant John Hampden Barton recorded that mentioning tanks to a fellow soldier ‘started his knees shaking’. AWM2018.19.28

operators’ plight was now compounded by carbon monoxide poisoning. This was the consequence of a new design to cool the engine by allowing in air – and the exhaust fumes carried with it – from outside the tank, leaving many drivers violently ill or incapacitated. While the tanks’ strengths were utilised to good effect on the day, the innate flaws in their make-up ensured that instances of tank disorientation and friendly fire featured throughout the assault, much as they had at Bullecourt.

The real success of armour at Hamel came from its proper use in a supportive role as part of a combinedarms approach. In this, artillery and air support could protect the advance and obstruct enemy anti-tank resources. British tanks in the Great War were especially vulnerable to anti-tank tactics, at which the Germans were, by 1918, particularly proficient, employing mines, low-velocity shells, anti-tank rifles, machine-guns and artillery. At Hamel these threats were negated by the mass employment of allied artillery and counter-battery fire. Artillery fired approximately 132,000 rounds

and counter-battery fire effectively neutralised all German batteries to the front of the attack, which would otherwise have torn the tanks to shreds, as they had done throughout operations in 1917. At Hamel, operational planning hid the limitations of the tank on the modern battlefield, and in so doing allowed the tank to achieve its strategic potential as a fearsome but intensely vulnerable element in a combinedarms assault.

T he legacy of Hamel was to show that tanks could take on modest responsibilities with success. By mid1918, the tank had proven itself to be, perhaps above all else, a critical influencer of morale. The mere presence of armour was enough to encourage the side which possessed it. This is evidenced in reports describing the fear the German infantry felt at the sight of allied armoured support. Even at Bullecourt, where British tanks had been rendered effectively impotent, intelligence gathered from German prisoners indicated that the tank had been significantly demoralising for the defenders. The effect was the same for Australian troops, who dreaded the German A7V models which were almost comically cumbersome and ineffective relative to the efficacy of other, less aesthetically intimidating weapons of war. Lieutenant John Hampden Barton recorded in his diary in mid1918 that even the mention of tanks around a fellow soldier “started his

knees shaking so much that he had to press them in to the side of the trench to try and keep them steady.”

A s armour was employed more effectively throughout the actions of the Hundred Days, these inflated perceptions of the tank in Australian troops’ imaginations grew. Infantrymen took to naming the machines and painting the names on them. Lieutenant T.R. Lydster, when asked to christen one of the tanks he was to fight alongside, dubbed the machine “Oodnadatta,” after the South Australian town known to regularly record the country’s hottest temperatures. A knowledge of the conditions inside the tank cabins was sure to have inspired such a name.

Despite having had no tank units during the Great War, by the armistice of November 1918 the AIF had had ample opportunity to fight alongside them and formulate a general attitude towards them. This attitude was typically favourable. In many cases, the awe-inspired reaction to the tank so common in the earlier stages of their introduction persisted unwaveringly throughout the war, enduring even those first-hand experiences of tank operations in which their limitations had been exposed. And even then, in instances where the Australians had been disillusioned by the tank, by mid1918 those grievances had often given way once more to reverence. This shift occurred predominantly as the result of effective employment rather than improvements in tank technology, which had by no means eliminated the machines’ shortcomings. This shaped a split between the perceptions of tanks and their performance, which contributed to a broader split between the romantic imagery of tank warfare and the actual, restricted limits of the tank’s potential. •

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Scott Denis McCarthy researched tanks as a Memorial Summer Scholar in 2022. He is a PhD candidate at Deakin University, studying the Catholic middle class in Victoria and NSW at the turn of the 20th century.

British tanks in the Great War were especially vulnerable to anti-tank tactics, at which the Germans were, by 1918, particularly proficient.

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