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Life Interrupted: Personal Diaries from World War I SPONSORED BY Life Interrupted: Personal Diaries from World War I SPONSORED BY SUPPORTED BY Foreword State Library of NSW Macquarie Street Sydney NSW 2000 Telephone (02) 9273 1414 www.sl.nsw.gov.au Curator: Elise Edmonds Project manager: Amy Simpson Exhibition designer: Elin Thomas Graphic designer: Dominic Hon Editor: Helen Cumming Preservation project leader: Agata Rostek-Robak Photographic work: Digitisation & Imaging Services, State Library of NSW In Life Interrupted, Curator Paper: BJ Ball ecostar silk %100 recycled 130 gsm (text) Life Interrupted: Elise Edmonds reveals the captivating BJ Ball ecostar gloss %100 recycled 300 gsm (cover) personal experiences — often harrowing, This paper is carbon neutral and 100% recycled from post COMMEMORATING WWI Personal Diaries consumer waste. 1914 – 1918 sometimes wry — of the servicemen and Print run: 7000 from World War I women, stretcher-bearers, POWs, in their P&D 4153-7/2014 own words. As the First World War drew to its end, the A century after the start of the war, ISBN 0 7313 7220 4 then Public Library of NSW began collecting we look back on that global conflict which © State Library of New South Wales, July 2014 the personal accounts of those who enlisted so profoundly affected and shaped Australia — farmers, doctors, nurses, journalists and and its people. The diaries are at the heart The State Library of New South Wales is a statutory authority of, artists — to document the war as they had and principally funded by, the NSW State Government. of our contribution to that recollection. experienced it. The majority have been completely This extraordinary collection – including digitised, transcribed and are available on some 1100 volumes of diaries written by our newly launched World War I website around 550 servicemen and women — is <www.ww1.sl.nsw.gov.au>. supported by newspapers, photographs, The Library’s program is about sharing artworks, maps and ephemera. The our stories, your stories, war stories with Library’s collection is one of the richest all Australians on site, on tour and online and, until now, rarely seen records of the over the next four years. This exciting Australian experience of World War I. program would not be possible without the INSIDE COVER: FRONT LINE AT BOIS-GRENIER, generous support provided by our sponsor, APRIL 1916, WH BURRELL PXB 198 News Corp Australia, and through the INSIDE BACK COVER: ‘577’ WRITING HOME, NSW Government funding of our Digital HENRY CHARLES MARSHALL PXA 1861 Excellence Program. ALEX BYRNE NSW State Librarian & Chief Executive iv v Contents Foreword v Introduction by Peter Cochrane 1 Life Interrupted 7 The Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force in German New Guinea 12 The Sydney and the Emden 16 Leaving Home 20 Egypt 26 Gallipoli 30 Western Front 38 Middle East 44 Prisoners of War 48 In Memory 52 Item List 56 vi vii Introduction We do not know how many Australian soldiers took a diary to the First World War, nor how many took to diary- keeping once there. Certainly not a majority, for most of the 330,000 soldiers who went abroad preferred to write letters or postcards if they wrote at all. But thousands kept a diary, not of the ‘577’ WRITING HOME, HENRY CHARLES MARSHALL introspective or confessional PXA 1861 kind, but rather a spectator diary, a record of travel and war, of tourism and duty done, something to be sent home, or to carry home; to be read by family and friends or, perhaps, to be consulted later, to confirm a memory or fuel a reminiscence. Australians are privileged to have a that some diaries subsequently offered Others were cloth or leather bound. many were schooled enough to tell their wonderful collection of these diaries at to Ifould were rejected on grounds of being Occasionally the narrative begins in a hefty story. And what a story! The soldier-diarists, the State Library of New South Wales in insubstantial or in some way rewritten gilt-edged volume but inevitably continues and the airmen, sailors and nurses who Sydney. The collecting began before the or overwritten later. Authenticity was in any kind of notebook that comes to hand. kept a diary, knew they had a big story to war ended. As events at Gallipoli seized at a premium. Most diaries were pocket-sized and fit tell. They often used the word ‘adventure’. the nation’s imagination, the Principal By 1919 the collection was already a for purpose. One even gave his diary a title. He called Librarian, William Ifould, was formulating valuable one. By 1921 the total number of The variety of bindings complements the it ‘the great adventure’. But the innocence an acquisition policy in haste. Ifould was war diaries in the Library had reached 247, range of writing styles. Some are terse and or the optimism suggested by this phrase determined to collect first-hand accounts complemented by collections of letters and random: ‘Getting warmer. Glassy sea with was short-lived. The ‘great adventure’ was of battle written by the front-line men. in some cases photo albums as well. Today strong under currents. Dance for nurses and mugged by war and soon enough we see a With the approval of his trustees, he placed the collection stands at around 550 diarists officers. Commenced growing a moustache.’ change – the language becoming darker as advertisements in newspapers around and over 1100 volumes. Some are prolix and strain for literary the romance disintegrates. Australia and in Britain, offering to buy These diaries take many forms. Some effect: ‘The sun as it arose threw a golden For some their cryptic notes were diaries and letters in original form. The were written on odd sheets of paper or glory over the distant horizon and finally probably no more than an aide-memoir. Library’s Letter Books for 1918–22 reveal in memo books or signal message books. appeared in a great white disc in all its For others, the diary was a way to glittering heat.’ Some don’t strain at all and connect with home. They were writing achieve a lyricism that seems effortless. for an imagined audience, for the family A small number of diaries were acquired and friends they had left behind. The from the families of men killed abroad importance of a ‘conversation’ with home but the majority in this collection were can hardly be overstated. Along with letters purchased from men who made it home, and postcards and sometimes photographs, survivors, many of them diarists over two, the diaries were the Facebook of their day — three or four years. Their chronicles bear impressions and experiences for the kitchen the hallmarks of the true diary. They are table or the mantelpiece. not carefully planned, they are raw and Last but not least, these wartime unpolished and rich with the ‘diamonds’ chroniclers wanted a record of duty done. of more or less spontaneous jotting. Their They wrote of hard training and hard times, pre-eminent quality is an unpretentious of battle and death and ruin everywhere. authenticity and immediacy, a realism There are lines, hastily scrawled upon the that is rarely matched by other records of eve of battle, by soldiers who knew this wartime experience. They are intensely ‘in entry might be their last. There are passages the moment’, all the more so in the trenches where men puzzle as to how they could still where death was everywhere. be alive. Why did they write them? Firstly, they These are voices full of life and fun and did so because they could. Australia was an fear, and resolute purpose. They are voices unusually literate society for the time and from the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century, a tragedy that engulfed an age. [AUSTRALIAN TROOPS ON PYRAMID], C. 1915, COLART’S STUDIO, MELBOURNE PETER COCHRANE PXB 481 July 2014 2 3 AUSTRALIAN IMPERIAL FORCES AT GALLIPOLI, 1915 PXB 250 4 5 Life interrupted ‘I have shut down my practice and closed my doors’ Charles Rosenthal The scene opens at the breakfast table BELOW: FREE TOUR TO GREAT BRITAIN at Cutterabah, Kyogle NSW, one morning AND EUROPE Q940.394/9 in late July, where I was but languidly OPPOSITE PAGE: COL-SERGT JACKSON RESISTING A SNAPSHOT interested to hear that another war had HENRY CHARLES MARSHALL PXA 1861 “started in the Balkans. I had never interested myself in international politics & so took another helping of eggs & bacon without a thought to the monstrous possibilities that a war between Austria & Serbia opened up. Maurice Evans Charles Rosenthal and Maurice Evans Evans was nineteen, 5 feet 10 inches, had enlisted in the first weeks of the war. good teeth and knew how to ride a horse. Architect and soldier Charles Rosenthal Rosenthal had previous military experience, went on to be a Major-General and was given holding the rank of major in the Australian command of the 2nd Division in 1918. By the Field Artillery in 1908. end of the war he would be highly decorated These were the prerequisites for the and respected by his men. Agricultural newly formed Australian Imperial Force student Maurice Evans served with the 1st (AIF): men aged between 18 and 35 years, Light Horse Field Ambulance in Egypt and at least 5 ft 6 ins tall with good teeth and Palestine throughout the entire war. a chest measurement of at least 34 inches. Men who were members of” the military, or had previous military experience, were highly sought after. 7 ABOVE: TWO-PIECE SUITS GIVEN AWAY The AIF was looking for the best, As the war dragged on, recruitment Q940.394/9 ABOVE: A COO-EE FROM AUSTRALIA A FAREWELL CARD BELOW RIGHT: WORLD WAR ONE the healthiest.
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