CHAPTER XI1 AUSTRALIA DOUBLES THE A.I.F.

THEAustralians and New Zealanders who returned from Gallipoli to Egypt were a different force from the adven- turous body that had left Egypt eight months before. They were a military force with strongly established, definite traditions. Not for anything, if he could avoid it, would an Australian now change his loose, faded tu& or battered hat for the smartest cloth or headgear of any other . Men clung to their Australian uniforms till they were tattered to the limit of decency. Each of the regimental numbers which eight months before had been merely numbers, now carried a poignant meaning for every man serving with the A.I.F., and to some extent even for the nation far away in Australia. The ist, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Infantry Battalions-they had rushed Lone Pine; the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th had made that swift advance at Helles; the gth, ioth, I ith, 12th had stormed the Anzac heights; the igth, iqth, igth, 16th had first held Quinn’s, Courtney’s and Pope’s; the battalion numbers of the were becoming equally famous-and so with the light horse, artillery, engineers, field ambulances, transport companies, and casualty clearing stations. Service on the Gallipoli beaches had given a fighting record even to British, Egyptian and Maltese labour units that normally would have served far behind the front. The troops from Gallipoli were urgently desired by Kitchener for the defence of Egypt against the Turkish expedition that threatened to descend on it as soon as the Allies’ evacuation had released the Turkish army ANZAC TO AMIENS [Dec. igiij-Jan. 1916 also. It was estimated that the Turks might concentrate 250,000 men for this purpose; and the plans announced by the Germans might, Lord Kitchener feared, “set the East in a blaze”. His own proposal for countering this threatened invasion by striking at Alexandretta had been rejected by the British government, and he therefore reluctantly fell back on the plan of the British War Office for defending Egypt by holding the line of the Suez Canal. Thither, then, the troops from Gallipoli and others were directed, making a force of some twelve infantry and two cavalry divisions for the defence of Egypt but also as a reserve “for the whole Empire” against other coming needs. Sir Arcliibald Murray, hitherto Chief of the General Staff at the War Office, was sent to command it. Instead of “making the Canal defend him” --a policy much criticised-he was to defend it by pushing his garrison about eight miles east of it. The line they were to fortify there was already being surveyed and was guarded by a few isolated posts. The forces from Gallipoli urgently needed their ranks to be filled, and also re- equipment and reorganisation in accordance with the new composition of British infantry divisions. For these purposes the two Australian divisions, I st and 2nd, were sent to a huge camp on the hl E OITERRANEAN SEA site of -4rabi Pasha’s old battlefield at Tel Alexand el Kebir, on the desert thirty miles west of Ismailia and the Suez Canal; the New Zea- land and Australian Division was sent to Moascar Camp near by, outside Ismailia. The line east of the Canal was still being surveyed, and the front along the

184 I 9 15-19161 THE A.I.F. DOUBLED

Canal was held by one English and one Indian division, the newly arrived 8th Australian Infantry Brigade, and some Indian troops. The nearest large body of Turks comprised 13,000 men at their railhead in southern Palestine at Beersheba, 120 miles away, on the other side ot the Sinai Desert. Turkish forward troops were 70-1 oo miles away, making and guarding preparations for an advance through the desert against Egypt.’ The 8th Brigade was far from being the only Xus- tralian force found in Egypt by the troops returning from Gallipoli. In addition to the A.I.F. headquarters staff in Cairo, and the transport troops there and at Alexandria (the base of the hlediterranean Expeditionary Force), there were in the Australian training and con- valescent depots very great nuinbers of sick and wounded and of reinforcements. Most of those who during recent months would normally have been shipped to Gallipoli had been stopped in Egypt by the decision to abandon the Peninsula. After the Evacuation over 10,ooo joined their units in Lemnos. But the depots near Cairo still held at least zo,ooo, and more were arriving. The chief reason for these numbers was the flood of recruiting in Australia. The plunge of the A.I.F. into Gallipoli, and the sudden, first, terrible casualty lists, had caused more Australians to offer. The sinking of the crowded liner Lusttanta by a submarine without warning increased the bitterness against Germans; but the chiet urge came from the realisation that, contrary to the opti- mistic communiques, the war was going badly-with the repulse of all efforts to break the stalemate in France, and with the drive of the Germans into Russia. It is true that the entry of Italy on the side of the Allies showed that she expected them to win. But eager citizens demanded a properly organised recruiting cainpaign; and, in the energetic recruiting that followed, the enlist- 1During the Turhish spies and scouo had occa- sionally reached the Canal A mme placed in it had sunk a British areamer.

185 ANZAC TO AMIENS [~girj-Jan.1916 inents rose from Gn50 in April, 10,526 in May, and 12,505 in June, to 36,575 in July, 25,714 in August and 16,571 in September. The numbers in training camps in Aus- tralia swelled from 16,424 in June to 73,963 in October. It happened that in October Australia experienced a change of Prime Ministers: Andrew Fisher, on whom the responsibilities of that position had borne heavily, was appointed to succeed Sir George Reid as High Com- missioner for Australia in London, and William Morris Hughes, who already was the chief force in the Ministry, became Prime Minister in his place. At this juncture a War Census, which largely by the action of Mr Hughes had just been completed, showed that 244,000 single men of military age were still available for enlistment- according to the classification of the statisticians, not, of course, of the medical authorities. Australia was then maintaining overseas a force of some 60,000 men. The government thereupon decided that, in addition to the monthly quota of 9500 reinforcements, it would send, if desired by the British government, 50,000 fresh troops, organised as nine infantry brigades with attendant troops -in effect, three infantry divisions without artillery. This decision, announced on November 26th, would raise Aus- tralia’s oversea force to about 1 io,ooo men. The War Office subsequently indicated that it would prefer three divisions ,complete, but the Defence Department could not promise artillerymen, guns, or rifles. A.I.F. headquarters at the front had been informed of this offer. At that time the A.I.F. was being adminis- tered by General Godley, commander of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, who, during Birdwood’s appoint- ment to the Dardanelles Army, was commander of the Anzac Corps. On arrival in Egypt Godley-who was still holding these commands, with as chief of his staff-was faced by the problem of what to do with the 40,000 unallotted Australian and New Zealand reinforcements already there. He was most desirous of

186 Jan. 19161 THE A.I.F. DOUBLED organising the New Zealand troops in Egypt into a divi- sion, the existing New Zealand Infantry Brigade being expanded with reinforcements to lorm two brigades, and the Rifle Brigade (then arriving from New Zealand) pro- viding the third. The Australian reinforcements could similarly be used to expand the A.I.F. from two divisions into four divisions. These, and the , officered and trained by experienced solcliers from Gallipoli, could then form two army corps. Later the 50,000 troops arriving from Australia would allow still another division to be formed besides providing reinforcements. Godley suggested that, for the period of the reorganisation, General Birdwood, with General White as chief-of-staff, should administer the whole Aus- tralian and New Zealand forces. It was mid-January 1916, when Godley made this proposal to Sir Archibald Murray. Murray gave his approval against the advice of some of his staff, who had a very low estimate of the capacity oE the Australian depot in Egypt for training officers and N.C.O.’s. Murray especially desired that the 30,000 Australian reinforce- ments, then unallotted at Cairo, and swarming in the streets and hotels, should be brought quickly into con- trol and training in fighting units. Birdwood reaching Egypt on January 1 gth, enthusiastically developed the scheme, being particularly hopeEd that, with two Anzac corps, the War Office might sanction the formation of an Australian and New Zealand Army. He suggested that the third new Australian division should be formed in Australia. The War Office, though not yet prepared to sanction the grouping of the Anzacs into an “Army”, passed on the rest of the proposal to the Australian and New Zealand governments, which presently agreed. Australia promised to send artillerymen with the third division- but it could not send guns or train their crews. This would ultimately give five Australian infantry divisions.

187 ANZAC TO AMIENS [Nov. 1915-Jan.1916

In addition there would be the New Zealand infantry division, and an Anzac mounted division, formed from the Light Horse and New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigades, which had now returned from Anzac to their beloved horses. Mounted troops were particularly needed for the defence of Egypt; even while the Light Horse were in Gallipoli, at the end of November 1915, a scratch regi- ment of them together with the horse transport of the 1st Australian Division had been sent as part of a composite force (Yeomanry, South African infantry, and ariiioured cars) into the Libyan Desert at Mersa Matruh. This expedition was now thrusting towards Sidi Barrani and Sollum to rescue some torpedoed British subjects held as prisoners by the Senussi Arabs.' Meanwhile part of the Light Horse iiiiniediately on returning from Gallipoli had been sent to guard the edge of the Nile valley farther south against the threatening Senussi. It was known that, even if the Anzac infantry divisions were ultimately, as their members hoped, sent to France, Murray counted on the mounted division to help in defending Egypt. At this juncture reports that the Turks in Palestine were about to start marching across the Sinai Desert caused hlurray to order his main defence forces to take up and fortify their inlended position east of the Suez Canal. On January 23rd the Anzac Corps under General Godley began to iiiove from Tel el Kebir to the central of the three sections of the Canal defences, east of Ismailia, and started to revet and wire a system of care- fully sited posts along a thirty-mile front. Light Decau- ville railways took material to the line; and pipe-lines and endless strings of camels supplied water. In the camps among the sandhills, despite dust storms and fatigues, training was good; and for reserves camped by the Canal,

2 An account of this expedition over famous giound is given in Pol. III, PP. 959-64.

188 Jan.-Mar. 19161 THE A.I.F. DOUBLED with frequent swimming, and with the passing ship traffic as a constant side-show, life was pleasant. Meanwhile, working at Ismailia, Birdwood and White carried through the immense task of, within a few weeks, expanding the Anzac divisions from three to six. In this reorganisation, so far as the Australian troops were con- cerned, General Birdwood conceived the basic principle which thereafter gave a veteran character and a feeling of brotherhood to the whole force-namely that the new brigades and battalions should be formed by splitting in half the oldest ones, and then using reinforcements to expand each half into a whole. Though General White and many unit commanders feared a shock to regimental pride and tradition, General Birdwood with great wis- dom, insisted. The task was carried out through the issue of a suc- cession of about fifty “circular memoranda”, inainly the personal work of General White. Each of the sixteen oldest battalions was split into two “wings”-one to con- stitute the old battalion and one the new. The splitting was most fairly done-in some cases, when it was finished, the new commander was allowed to pick whichever half he chose. Between February 14th and March 7th the “second wing” of each battalion left its old unit and moved back to Tel el Kebir. The separation was a wrench, but ever afterwards the new and old battalions, however far apart, were bound together by the strongest feeling. Each wing at once organised itself into a skeleton bat- talion, and some two days later its reinforcements, arriving from Cairo, expanded it-at Tel el Kebir or at the Canal line-to a battalion of full strength. Most of the reinforcements were very raw, but coming thus into veteran units they quickly assimilated discipline and training. By this means the ist-ihth Battalions (of the 1st-4th Brigades) at the Canal created the 45th-6oth Battalions (of the izth-igth Brigades) at Tel el Kebir. Two brigades

189 ANZAC TO AMIENS Dan.-Mar. 1916

-the 8th, lately arrived from Australia, and the 4th (Monash’s) released from the now disbanded N.Z. and A. Division-were brought to Tel el Kebir to complete there the infantry of the two new Australian divisions. This expansion meant a splendid field for promotion of tried leaders and Inen throughout the force, and, coming on top of the rapid promotions following the heavy casualties ot Gallipoli, it brought to the front a quota of leaders-some of them very young-whose quality, in general, has probably never been surpassed. It was at this stage that FVilliam Glasgow, Duncan Glas- furd, John Gellibrand, and H. E. (“Pompey”) Elliott became brigadiers, Raymond Leane, W. E. H. Cass, H. (;. Belineti, Humphrey Scott (twenty-four years old), and Owen Howell-Price (twenty-five years) battalion com- manders, and so on in lower ranks. For the new divisional commanders Birdwood tried to seize the chance of getting two outstanding British leaders, the dour, capable Anglo- Indian H. V. Cox, and H. A. Lawrence (afterwards chief of the British General Staff in France). The , however, most justifiably insisted that the Gallipoli Campaign must have produced Australians capable of command, and urged ansideration of White, Monash and M’Cay. Birdwood felt that White could not be spared from the staff, but he now selected M’Cay for one new division at Tel el Kebir, and held Monash in view for the division to be raised in Australia. The other division at Tel el Kebir, and temporary charge of the whole force there, he gave to Cox. The Anzac Mounted Division was allotted to Brig.-General Chauvel of the . Ever since the concentration in Egypt had been ordered the influence of the Turco-German threat to the Canal had been dwindling: the divisions under Murray were increasingly regarded as reinforcements for the Western Front, where for the first time (although the fact could, of course, only be guessed at by the troops

190 Jan.-Feb. 19161 THE A.I.F. DOUBLED

and the,public at home) the Allies were approaching the day when they might undertake a formidable combined offensive. Lord Kitchener had long awaited the hour when the New British Ariiiy, raised by him, would be ill France and Belgium in sufficient strength to make pos sible a combined Anglo-French blow on such a scale as to give reasonable hope of breaking the German front in the west. For this great trial Britain would need on the Western Front every division she could muster, and the force in Egypt must be an important source of these. Though only headquarters had any certain know- ledge of this plan, the Anzac troops guessed that their prospect of soon reaching the Western Front was daily increasing. A possible impediment to this-how serious is still, and may always be, undisclosed-lay in General Murray’s views as to the discipline of the Australians. In a draft letter from himself to the new Chief of the Imperial General Staff in London, General Robertson, he spoke of this in the most damning terms. hfurray sent a copy of this draft to Generals Birdwood arid White. White protested that the letter, if sent, should be repeated to the Australian government, which would have the opportunity to consider whether troops held to be so valueless should not be withdrawn from France. Whether the draft was modified is not known, but it is known that, whereas the Anzac divisions had originally been placed first on the list for transfer to France, Murray presently placed them fourth, as being “most backward in training and discipline’’-a not unnatural condition in view of their extraordinary expansion. The chief result was an intense “grooming up” of the divisions by their officers, even including some not very successful “saluting drill”-most of which, however, was a useful corrective to any tendency to be slack or ~lovenly.~ At this juncture there suddenly arrived news that

3 For this inieresting episode see m. 111, pf~.56-61.

191 ANZAC TO AMlENS [~lst-zgthFeb. 1916 changed the face of affairs. The Germans in France had taken the wind from the Allies’ sails by attacking months before the Allies could be ready: on February 21st they struck at the north-eastern bastion of the French front, the fortress of Verdun. The most urgent need of the Allies now was to take the weight off the French. Robert- son telegraphed to hlurray that in withdrawing troops for France some risk to the defence of Egypt must, if necessary, be accepted. As to the Anzacs, Robertson said, three of their divisions in France in April might “be worth six at a later date”. On 29th February 1916 Murray warned Birdwood that the I Anzac Corps (to be com- posed of the 1st and 2nd Australian-and the New Zealand Divisions, under General Birdwood himself) would begin moving to France in a fortnight. The I1 Anzac Corps (comprising Lhe new 4th and 5th Australian Divisions, under General Godley) would for the present remain in Egypt. This sudden order brought to the staes of the A.I.F. probably the most difficult problem in organisation that ever faced them. The Anzac divisions had never yet been provided with artillery on the normal scale. Until the end of the Gallipoli Campaign an Australian infantry division had only nine 4-gun batteries whereas at that time the,standard for the corresponding British divisions was fifteen batteries (including howitzer batteries of which the A.I.F. had none). When the divisions had to be suddenly expanded from two to four, Birdwood and White had felt that, for the moment, the most that could be undertaken was to double the Australian artillery on its existing scale. Accordingly they had arranged for each of the older Australian divisions to give up one brigade to each of the new divisions, while from reinforcements and large transfers of officers and N.C.O.’s there would be created one brigade for each older division and two for each new one. This expansion of the Australian artillery from

192 Feb.-Mar. 19161 THE A.I.F. DOUBLED eighteen batteries to thirty-six had begun on February 18th. But now, with the move to France in immediate prospect, General Murray gave the decision-obviously a right one-that the divisions going to France must have their artillery at full scale. This meant expansion to sixty batteries in all. With notice so short,’the divisions going to France could be supplied only by robbing the two new divisions which were to be left temporarily in Egypt. This was accordingly done; the 4th and 5th Divisions would have to raise their artillery almost entirely from untrained officers and men. How they met this difficulty will be told in due course. Meanwhile on March 5th the older divisions begati marching from the desert to embark, handing over their section of the front to the mounted troops who were presently formed into the Anzac Mounted Division. The 4th and 5th Australian Divisions were to take over the section almost immediately. The I Anzac Corps began to sail from Egypt to France on March 13th. The reorgan- isation of the A.I.F. was then practically complete. In addition to the doubling of the divisions, three entirely new kinds of unit-pioneer battalions, machine-gun com- panies and trench-mortar batteries-had been created in each division, and part of a camel corps under British command. The whole process had ’ been enormously helped by those commanders who, like John Gellibrand, regularly furnished their best men so as to give the best possible start to these infant units, but was equally ham- pered by some leaders who shortsightedly did the reverse. But the leader mainly responsible for the brilliant accom- plishment of this big task was Brudenell White. General Monash, then a brigadier, after seeing these arrangements and those of the Evacuation of Anzac, described h‘lm as “far and away the ablest soldier Australia has ever turned out”. White now went to France as chief-of-staff on Birdwood’s corps (I Anzac). The troopships reached Marseilles without any

11-0s ANZAC TO AMlENS [Mar.-Apr. 1916 sinkings, though German submarines were active. On March 19th the first transports, with men of the 2nd Division, moved past the Ile d’If into the crowded har- bour. The re imental bands, resuscitated after Gallipoli, played the darseillaise; the troops whistled it, cheered, stared (as at some strange animals) at the German prisoners working under guard of French territorials on the quays. The local BriLish staff at this juncture was prepared against two expected contingencies-that the Australians might break out in riot into Marseilles, and that disease from Egypt might slip into France with these troops. But the Anzacs had by then been more thoroughly vaccinated, inoculated and disinfected by their own authorities than even the British troops (for whom vac- cination was not compulsory). Strangely enough, an Aus- tralian hospital, kept for some time at Marseilles as a quarantine depot for any discovered cases, did intercept cases of typhus, but all among the troops of British divisions coming from Egypt.‘ Partly through the fine control of the Australian officers, the fear as to “riots” proved equally groundless; the Marseilles authorities afterwards told Birdwood’s staff that no troops had ever given less trouble. Later, when the passed through, the British commandant at Marseilles wrote to its commander: “Not a single case of misbehaviour or lack of discipline has been brought to my notice.” This, he added, was ‘!a record”. Actually the troops were too interested to give trouble and too eager to reach the Western Front. Day after day as their transports arrived. they marched at intervals through Marseilles to the troop trains that would carry them to the British zone, 130 miles north of Paris. Their journey up the Rhone valley-with the orchards in blos- som, and, beyond, the winding blue river and the distant

4 For this “dramatic” experience of typhus, see Oficial Medical Histo Pol. ZZ, pp. 543-5. The Defence Department in Australia was, however, ba& behindhand in the inoculation of Its troops against paratyphoid.

194 Mar.-Apr. 1 g 161 THE A.1.F DOUBLED

Alps-was like a plunge into fairyland. The halts were thronged by friendly, welcoming French people. From the moment the Australians set foot in France their con- fident approach and breezy friendliness evoked an out- standing response froin the French. Long before they had given any evidence of their quality on the Western Front, the population had them marked as “des bons soldats”; that confidence was never lost and led to some astonishing scenes in the last stage of the war. The weather became wet, cold, and even snowy as the troops neared Paris. After Versailles, within sight of the Eiffel Tower, their trains, to the mild disappoint- ment of the troops, bypassed the city and made for Calais, 140 miles to the north. There they headed inland again towards detraining points at or near several small towns and straggling villages amid the flat, green, tree- and hedge-enclosed fields of French Flanders. Here British soldiers were seen on some of the stations or drilling in the fields, and British transport, a picture of neatness, on the roads. The chief towns in the area in which the journey ended were the old boroughs of Aire and St Omer, and the large country town and railway junction of Hazebrouck. But few of the detraining troops caught more than a glimpse of these. They marched along tree-lined high- ways, over cobbles covered with a thin smear of mud, or down macadamised side roads deeper in mud, past, at intervals, convoys of twenty or thirty hooded motor lorries, to their billets in and around villages. Most officers were given rooms in the village houses or farmhouses, most of the other ranks slept in their blankets in the barns-big, straw-filled buildings with walls of wattle- and-daub, whitewashed. Many friendships sprang up with “Madame”, the mother of the household; but of the kind oE dallying that the cinema afterwards portrayed there was singularly little, the Flemish people being in the main hard-working folk, without thought of, or time for,

195 ANZAC TO AMIENS [Mar.-Apr. 1916

“style” in ways or appearance, and the soldiers fully occupied in settling down and training in these rest areas twelve miles or so behind the line. For, as with other British and Dominion troops sent to the Western Front, the I Anzac Corps was first brought to this quiet sector-generally known as “the nursery”- for a quiet introduction, in training for harsher experi- ences to collie. The British held most of the northern section of the Allies’ front in France; and here, in the northern third of the British zone, there lay just within the lines the considerable French manufacturing town of Armentih-es (about 30,000 people) on the Lys River near the Belgian border. South-east of Armentikres the big French manufacturing city of Lille lay a few miles behind the German line, though screened from it by low hills. The British desired to avoid shelling Lille; and, possibly because this quiet was convenient for the German staffs and troops, the Germans reciprocated by seldom shelling the main part of Armentieres. Moreover the Lys, running diagonally through the region, provided an obstacle to any important attacks. Nevertheless, from the moment when the Australians detrained, their expectant ears caught the “bump, bump” of distant guns, and, as night fell, trees, hedges and houses to eastward were constantly outlined against the swift Bicker of gun Bashes and the pale, .quivering halo of the white flares by which each side illuminated the no- man’s-land between the lines. For two and a half years to come those sights and sounds were never to be absent.

196