A societal provenance analysis of the First World War service records held at the National Archives of Australia

ABSTRACT

This article offers a societal provenance analysis of the First World War personal service records held at the National Archives of Australia as Commonwealth Records Series B2455. It describes the communities of people and communities of records with which the series has its origins. Since creation, the records have enabled intricate interactions between individuals, families, government agencies and communities. They have facilitated personal, local, and national processes of grieving and commemoration, and bridged spatial, temporal and emotional distances. They have contributed to national projects such as the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial, and the provision of pensions and support for veterans and their families. Their use by historians continues to shape our understanding of the history of the war. Access to the records helps build new personal identities, and new online communities of users. It is suggested that all these interactions are part of the history of the records we now have. The losses in the records, the gaps and silences, are also identified.

KEYWORDS:

• First World War
• service records
• societal provenance
• digital access
• commemoration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Peter Stanley, The Lost Boys of Anzac, Newsouth, Sydney, 2014, pp. 148–227.

2. The Age, 14 September 1915, p. 9.

3. Ernest Scott, Australia during the war, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1941, p. 889.

4. A Report upon the Department of Defence from the first of July 1914 until the thirtieth of June 1917, Government Printer, Melbourne, n.d., p. 211. This implies that the office was established on 20 October 1914. In fact, Lean’s appointment to Base Records was announced in the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, no. 784 on Saturday 19 September 1914 (p. 2230). See also ‘Officer’s Record of Service’, B4717, LEAN/JAMES MALCOLM. Newspaper reporting: Brisbane Daily Standard, 23 September 1914, p. 5. In general, see Carol Rosenhain, The Man who Carried the Nation’s Grief, Big Sky Publishing, Newport NSW, 2016. All archival references in this article are to records in the collection of the National Archives of Australia unless otherwise noted.

5. Report upon the Department of Defence, p. 211.

6. Rosenhain.

7. Ken Inglis, Sacred Places: War Memorials in the Australian Landscape, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 1998, p. 97.

8. Paul Dalgleish, ‘Keeping the AIF’s Personnel Records’, in Jean Bou et al., The Australian Imperial Force, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 2016, pp. 175–91; and see also his essay in this special issue: ‘Recordkeeping in the First Australian Imperial Force: the Political Imperative’.

9. Melanie Oppenheimer and Margaret Kleinig, ‘ “There is no trace of him”: the Red Cross, its Wounded and Missing Bureaux and the 1915 Gallipoli campaign’, First World War Studies 2015, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 277–92.

10. Tom Nesmith, ‘The Concept of Societal Provenance and Records of Nineteenth-Century Aboriginal-European Relations in Western Canada: Implications for Archival Theory and Practice’, Archival Science, vol. 6, no. 3–4, 2006, pp. 351–3. See also Nesmith’s earlier work: ‘What’s History Got to Do With It?: Reconsidering the Place of Historical Knowledge in Archival Work’, Archivaria: the Journal of the Association of Canadian Archivists, vol. 57, Spring 2004, pp. 1–27, especially p. 12 where he acknowledges the critical work of Australian archivists Peter Scott and Chris Hurley in recognising and forging regimes to describe the multiple provenances of institutional records.

11. Michael Piggott, Archives and Societal Provenance: Australian Essays, Chandos Publishing, Oxford, 2012, pp. 3–4, 175–95.

12. However, in anthropology and archaeology, there is a broadly similar field of enquiry known as ‘object biography’. This concept is founded on the insight articulated by Igor Kopytoff and Arjun Appadurai that material objects have a ‘social life’ that can be researched and explored. They can be interrogated for their interactions with people and systems; for the history of their manufacture, use, preservation and deterioration; and for the impacts they have as they move through place, space and time. The emphasis is on the agency objects: people make objects and objects can make people. See Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986. This volume contains Igor Kopytoff’s influential essay ‘The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process’, pp. 64–89. Museum curators have taken to object biography with considerable enthusiasm. See, for example, Karen Schamberger et al., ‘Living in a Material World: Object Biography and Transnational Lives’, in Desley Deacon et al. Transnational Ties: Australian Lives in the World, Canberra, ANU Press, 2008, available at < https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt24hcg1> , accessed 27 December 2019.

13. I have explored some of these themes in some of my own earlier work. See in particular: ‘Capturing the Records of War: Collecting at the Mitchell Library and the Australian War Memorial’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 37, no. 125, April 2005, pp. 134–52; ‘Imagining a Collection: Creating Australia’s Records of War’, reCollections: Journal of the National Museum of Australia, vol. 2, no. 1, March 2007, available at < https://recollections.nma.gov.au/issues/vol_2_no_1/papers/imagining_a_collection >, accessed 27 December 2019; and ‘A “gift to the nation”: the diaries and notebooks of C. E. W. Bean’, Archives & Manuscripts, vol. 39, no. 2, Nov 2011, pp. 43–64, available at < https://publications.archivists.org.au/index.php/asa/article/view/10157 >, accessed 27 December 2019.

14. B2455, COOPER L F.

15. MT1486/1, COOPER/LOUIS FREDERICK. See also Erin Cooper, ‘What is the Origin of the Joke About Tasmanians Having Two Heads?’, available at < https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-13/curious-hobart-origin-of-two-headed-tasmanian-myth/11197982 >, accessed 28 December 2019.

16. Report upon the Department of Defence, p. 213. See also Michael McKernan, The Australian People and the Great War, Thomas Nelson Australia, West Melbourne, 1980, pp. 25–6.

17. Where the Australians rest: a description of many of the cemeteries overseas in which Australians, including those whose names can never now be known, are buried, Department of Defence, Melbourne, 1920; ‘1914–18 Memorial Plaque’, available at < https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/memorial_scroll/plaque >, accessed 5 September 2019.

18. On the significance of photographs and information about graves and cemeteries, see Bart Ziino, A Distant Grief: Australians, War Graves and the Great War, University of Western Australia Press, Crawley, 2007, pp. 82–9, 139–40.

19. P1868, T1864.

20. ‘Summary of activities of Base Records Office’, n.d., c. June 1929, MP742/1, 396/1/1133.

21. ‘Report by Major J.M. Lean to Adjutant-General’, 4 December 1922, B197, 1925/1/54.

22. ‘Report of the Committee appointed … to formulate instructions for the disposal of documents held by Base Records’, 19 January 1931, B1535, 753/1/34.

23. ‘Summary of activities of Base Records Office’.

24. Report upon the Department of Defence, pp. 212–3.

25. Report, Base Records to Adjutant General, 4 February 1926, MP742/1, 396/1/1133.

26. Report by W. Mackintosh to Adjutant-General, 27 June 1929, MP742/1, 396/1/1133.

27. Report by A. Robinson to Adjutant-General, May 1930, MP742/1, 396/1/1133; ‘Report of Committee: appointed … to formulate instructions … ‘, January 1931, B1535, 753/1/34. This report and its appendices demonstrate that the numbers of records held by Base Records then was vast compared to what was eventually transferred to archival custody.

28. For example, in January 1931 1,300 ‘London’ attestation papers were filed with Base Records’, ie Australian, attestation papers. See A. Robinson, ‘Base Records Office – monthly report for January 1931ʹ, MP742/1, 396/1/1133.

29. 95,051 forms for men who never made it into the AIF did survive. They were transferred to the Archives and registered in 1975 as MT1486/1. The reasons for rejection for service in the AIF can be illuminating. Rejection was mostly on medical grounds but some men were found to be underage, or not of ‘natural-born British decent’ (often meaning Aboriginal or Chinese). A study of the medical reasons for rejection would offer a snapshot of the health of that generation and would finally extend with some hard data the analysis done many years ago by Alison Pilger in her pioneering article: ‘The Other “Lost Generation”: Rejected Australian Volunteers, 1914–18ʹ, Journal of the Australian War Memorial, no. 21, 1992, pp. 11–9.

30. For example B2455, Jones F E.

31. In January 1931, 2,300 attestation files were ‘purged’ of ‘useless’ documents, in an ongoing process. This wording suggests that these documents – ‘useless’ – were destroyed. MP742/1, 396/1/1133.

32. ‘Report of the Committee appointed … to formulate instructions … ‘, 19 January 1931, B1535, 753/1/34.

33. ‘Base Records Office – activities’ [April 1930], MP742/1, 396/1/1133. See also letter, Arthur Bazley (assistant to Charles Bean) to John Treloar (Director Australian War Memorial), 18 February 1938, Australian War Memorial, AWM315, 201/001/023.

34. ‘Statement of Activity of Base Records Office’, n.d., c. June 1929. See also the report on that statement by W. Mackintosh, 27 June 1929, MP742/1, 396/1/1133.

35. By the end of April 1930, 42,000 index cards had been typed by Base Records for this purpose. ‘Base Records Office – activities’ [April 1930], MP742/1, 396/1/1133.

36. Inglis, pp. 43–6, 179–89.

37. Minute, Director of Works to Secretary, Department of Defence, n.d., c. early 1939, MP927/1, A1/1/276.

38. Agenda and Minutes from the 23rd meeting of the Board of Management, Australian War Memorial, 15 June 1938, agenda item no. 17, copy on Australian War Memorial AWM315, 2001/001/023. On this file see also letter from A J Withers to Arthur Bazley, 8 February 1938.

39. Peter Londey, ‘Known Soldiers: the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial’, in Martin Crotty (ed.), When the Soldiers Return: November 2007 Conference Proceedings. Brisbane: University of Queensland, School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, 2009, pp. 261–8, available at < https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=725803849978034;res=IELHSS >, accessed 27 October 2019.

40. Australian War Memorial, series note for AWM145. See also ‘Statement of Activity of Base Records Office’.

41. Letter, John Treloar to Secretary, Department of Defence, 19 March 1938, Australian War Memorial AWM315, 201/001/023.

42. See in general MP927/1, A1/1/276.

43. See in general MP927/1, A259/18/340, and A274/1/200.

44. CARO’s origins lay with 2nd Echelon (CA 2002), established in 1939 at the outbreak of the Second World War. 2nd Echelon was succeeded by CARO in July 1948.

45. Australian Archives (AA, now the National Archives of Australia) internal minute, 14 November 1986, B899, 1986/453.

46. Letter, B.E.W. Kelson (Australian War Memorial) to Department of Defence, 21 July 1983, Australian War Memorial AWM315, 417/020/063 01.

47. Letter from R. Waller (CARO), to Margaret Wade (AA) 15 July 1992, B899, 1986/453.

48. AA internal minute, 5 July 1990, B899, 1986/453.

49. AA file note and letter, Margaret Wade (AA) to John Egan (CARO), 18 December 1989, B899, 1986/453.

50. AA internal minute, 7 October 1991, and file note, 21 September 1992, B899, 1986/453. The AIF database can be searched for free at < https://aif.adfa.edu.au/index.html >.

51. Copy of information from the Soldier Career Management Agency, c. May 1993, B899, 1986/453.

52. ‘What Do Service Records Mean to Families?’, 3 April 2007, A14195, 2007/1103.

53. See especially Archival Science, vol. 16, no. 1, March 2016, special issue: ‘Affect and the Archive, Archives and Their Affects’. More recently: James Lowry, ‘“Displaced Archives”: proposing a research agenda’, Archival Science, vol. 19, no. 4, December 2019, pp. 349–58.

54. Peter Stanley, Men of Mont St Quentin: Between Victory and Death, Scribe, Melbourne, 2009; Peter Stanley, The Lost Boys of Anzac; Peter Stanley, Digger Smith and Australia’s Great War: Ordinary Name, Extraordinary Stories, Pier 9, NSW, 2011.

55. Scott Bennett, The Names of the Nameless: Recovering the Missing Anzacs, Scribe, Brunswick, Victoria, 2018.

56. < https://research.monash.edu/en/projects/diggers-to-veterans-risk-resilience-and-recovery-in-the-first-aus >, accessed 12 October 2019.

57. < https://honouringanzacs.net.au/ >, accessed 12 October 2019.

58. Carolyn Holbrook, Anzac: the Unauthorised Biography, Newsouth, Sydney, 2014, p. 147. The subject is touched upon lightly in the chapter she co-wrote with Bart Ziino, ‘Family History and the Great War in Australia’, in Bart Ziino (ed.), Remembering the Great War, Routledge, London, 2015.

59. David Stephens, ‘Honest History: Lessons in the Politics of History’, in Carolyn Holbrook and Keir Reeves (eds), The Great War: Aftermath and Commemoration, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2019, pp. 232–43. Among many fine essays in this book, there is no consideration of the archival aftermath of the war.

60. MT1486/1 and MT1139/1.

61. Joan M Schwartz and Terry Cook, ‘Archives, Records, and Power: the Making of Modern Memory’, Archival Science, vol. 2, no. 1, 2002, pp. 1–19.

62. Verne Harris and Wendy M Duff, ‘“Stories and Names”: Archival Description as Narrating Records and Constructing Meanings’, Archival Science, vol. 2, no. 2, p. 284.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anne-Marie Condé

Anne-Marie Condé is Senior Curator of Exhibitions at the National Archives of Australia. She has previously worked as a curator and historian at the National Museum of Australia and the Australian War Memorial. She publishes on the history of archives and museums in Australia.