The Myth of Classlessness in the Australian Imperial Force

Abstract

The issue of class remains strikingly absent from much of the historical literature on the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) during the First World War. This article briefly explores the pre-war class backgrounds of soldiers, the traces of class in their writings and their experiences, the class-based selection processes of soldiers’ writing by post-war archives, and how key historians of the AIF have paid insufficient attention to class. It argues that as a result of middle-class hegemony, before, during and after the war, the memory of the First World War in Australian popular culture and much historical writing is largely a memory based upon skewed sources and a lack of recognition of class in the AIF.

Notes

^*The author would like to thank the two anonymous referees for their constructive feedback, and the editors of Australian Historical Studies, Professor Richard Broome and Professor Diane Kirkby, for their assistance with this paper.

¹C. E. W. Bean, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918 (hereafter Official history), Volume I: The Story of Anzac, From the Outbreak of War to the End of the First Phase of the Gallipoli Campaign, May 4, 1915 (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1921), 45.

²K. S. Inglis, ‘The Anzac Tradition’, Meanjin Quarterly 24, no. 1 (March 1965), 25–44. For comments relating to Inglis’ importance see A. Thomson, Anzac memories: Living with the legend, (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994), 190–1.

³Geoffrey Serle, ‘The Digger Tradition and Australian Nationalism’, Meanjin Quarterly 24, no. 2 (June 1965), 149–58; Noel McLachlan, ‘Nationalism and the Divisive Digger: Three Comments’, Meanjin Quarterly 27, no. 3 (September 1968), 302–8.

⁴B. Gammage, The Broken Years: Australian soldiers in the Great War (Ringwood: Penguin Books, 1990).

⁵L. L. Robson, The First AIF: A Study of its Recruitment (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1970); J. N. I. Dawes, and L. L. Robson, Citizen to Soldier: Australia before the Great War. Recollections of Members of the First AIF (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1977).

⁶Thomson, Anzac Memories.

⁷D. Blair, Dinkum Diggers: An Australian Battalion at War (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001).

⁸Blair, Dinkum Diggers, 3.

⁹Dawes and Robson, Citizen to Soldier, 2.

¹⁰R. White, ‘Motives for joining up: self-sacrifice, self-interest and social class, 1914–1918’, Journal of the Australian War Memorial 9 (1986).

¹¹J. F. Williams, German Anzacs and the First World War (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2003).

¹²Elena Viktorovna Govor, Russian Anzacs in Australian History (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2005).

¹³See for example Nathan Wise, ‘Playing soldiers: Sydney private school cadet corps and the Great War’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society 96, no. 2 (December 2010); Nathan Wise, ‘“In military parlance I suppose we were mutineers”: Industrial Relations in the Australian Imperial Force during World War I’, Labour History, no. 101 (November 2011); Nathan Wise, ‘The Lost Labour Force: Working class approaches towards military service during the Great War’, Labour History, no. 93 (November 2007).

¹⁴E. P. Thompson, The making of the English working class (Ringwood: Penguin Books, 1974), 9.

¹⁵Wise, ‘“In military parlance I suppose we were mutineers”’; and Wise, ‘The Lost Labour Force’.

¹⁶See for example P. Joyce, ‘Class and the Historians: Introduction’ in Class, ed. P. Joyce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 127–8.

¹⁷Thompson, The making of the English working class, 11.

¹⁸‘Other ranks’ and the ‘rank-and-file’ include non-commissioned officers (NCOs) who performed duties much akin to foremen in civil occupations. For more details on this see Nathan Wise, ‘A Working Man's Hell: Working class men's experiences with work in the Australian Imperial Force during the Great War’ (PhD Thesis, UNSW, 2008), 260–2.

¹⁹From Table 1: Comparison of the occupations of the 1^st Battalion officers against occupations of the original 1^st Battalion, Blair, Dinkum Diggers, 24. These details are extrapolated further below.

²⁰Thompson, The making of the English working class, 9.

²¹Dale Blair provides a detailed chapter on these divisions, ‘Class is everything’, in his book Dinkum Diggers. See Blair, Dinkum Diggers, ‘Class is everything’, 37–68.

²²For a discussion of this style of ‘travel writing’ popular at the time, see A. Hassam, Sailing to Australia: Shipboard diaries by nineteenth-century British emigrants (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1995), 33; and S. Ryan, ‘The Holiday-Maker's Happy Hunting Ground: Travel Writing in Queensland, 1860–1950, Queensland Review 13, no. 1, (2006): 65.

²³R. White, ‘The Soldier as Tourist; The Australian Experience of the Great War’, War and Society 5, no. 1, (May, 1987).

²⁴Wise, ‘The Lost Labour Force’.

²⁵For a recent analysis of these styles of writing see Alistair Thomson, ‘Anzac Stories: Using Personal Testimony in War History’, War and Society 25, no. 2 (2007): 1–22.

²⁶Marshall Burrows, No.753, Train Driver, Australian War Memorial (hereafter AWM) 2DRL/0303.

²⁷William Thomas Hennell, No. 5835, Painter, Mitchell Library (hereafter ML) MSS 1620. Diary entry dated 3 July, 1917.

²⁸For a discussion on Gramsci's use of the term ‘leadership’ see K. Smith, ‘Gramsci at the margins: subjectivity and subalternity in a theory of hegemony’, International Gramsci Journal no. 2 (2010).

³⁰Francis Vincent Addy, No. 2553, Iron Turner, ML MSS 1607. Diary entry dated 12 July, 1917. Addy's uses the terms ‘Heads’ and ‘Fish-heads’ as references to his officers.

²⁹Thompson, The making of the English working class, 9.

³¹See for example Bean, Official History, Vol. 1, 45.

³²From Table 1: Comparison of the occupations of the 1^st Battalion officers against occupations of the original 1^st Battalion, Blair, Dinkum Diggers, 24.

³³Blair, Dinkum Diggers, 188.

³⁴In an earlier study I note that of the Old Boys examined who had served in a private school cadet corps before the war, 66 per cent were commissioned as officers, 14 per cent were non-commissioned officers, and only 21 per cent were from the rank and file (with a 1 per cent margin of error). See Nathan Wise, ‘Playing Soldiers: Sydney private school cadets and the Great War’ (BA Hons. Thesis, UOW, 2003), 13.

³⁵Blair, Dinkum Diggers, 35.

³⁶Leadership experience in cadets was quite different from leadership experience, or war experience, in the Great War, yet this could have helped and must not be discounted. Wise, ‘Playing Soldiers’ (2003), 13.

³⁷Blair, Dinkum Diggers, 35, 56–7.

⁴⁰John Bruce, No. 34710, Telephonist, AWM PR87/115. Diary entries as dated.

³⁸Blair, Dinkum Diggers, 37–68.

³⁹Blair, Dinkum Diggers, 54.

⁴¹Cited in Blair, Dinkum Diggers, 38; emphasis in original.

⁴³Cited in Blair, Dinkum Diggers, 23, see also F. M. Cutlack, War Letters of General Monash, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1934, 233.

⁴²Information on Larking from from 1^st Infantry Battalion Embarkation Roll, C Company, Australian War Memorial (hereafter AWM) 8, Unit embarkation nominal rolls, 1914–18 War, 11.

⁴⁴Wise, ‘The Lost Labour Force’.

⁴⁵Wise, ‘A Working Man's Hell’ and White, ‘Motives for joining up’.

⁴⁶Thomson, Anzac Memories.

⁵⁰Henry Ernest Wyatt, No. 1445, Boundary Rider, AWM 1DRL/0608. Diary entries as dated.

⁴⁷See for example Wilfred Evans, Major, Medical Practitioner, Letter dated 24/6/17, AWM 2DRL/0014.

⁴⁸See for example Hector Llewellyn Beale, Captain, Medical Practitioner, Letter dated 10/10/17 in A. Jones, ‘Martial Heirs’, unpublished compilation of Beale brothers’ letters, AWM PR00312.

⁴⁹See for example Eric Stanley Kater, Captain, Grazier. Letter dated 6/5/15, AWM PR01205.

⁵¹For an analysis of these two archives see A. Condé, ‘Capturing the Records of War: Collecting at the Mitchell Library and the Australian War Memorial’, Australian Historical Studies 37, no. 125 (April 2005): 134–52.

⁵²Wise, ‘A Working Man's Hell’, 49–50, 223.

⁵³NPL 242. State Library of New South Wales, cited from Condé, ‘Capturing the Records of War’, 136–7.

⁵⁴Although the Mitchell Library stated that ‘originals, not copies are required’ (Condé, ‘Capturing the Records of War’, 137), it appears as though some well-written copies may have made their way through. Reynold Clive Potter, for example, wrote a diary in a personal form of shorthand during his military service, and then translated this into two separate copies upon returning to Australia to provide an account that all could read; Reynold Clive Potter, No. 6080, Carpenter, Haberfield, Mitchell Library (hereafter ML) MSS 2944. Similarly, John Booth ‘summarised’ his diary and provided this summary to both the Mitchell Library and the Australian War Memorial; John Booth, No. 164, Shipwright, Balmain, ML MSS 1496 and John Booth, No. 164, Shipwright, Balmain, AWM 1DRL/0134.

⁵⁵Letter from Mitchell Librarian to R. C. Bond 23 December 1919, in Letterbooks of out-letters ML8, 15 September 1919–March 1920 cited in Conde, ‘Capturing the Records of War’, 139–140. Information on ‘H. E. Gissing’ from First World War Nominal Roll Page – AWM133, 19–152 and Embarkation Roll of 1^st Field Ambulance, 2^nd Reinforcements, AIF, AWM8, 26/44/4, 2. Information on ‘R. C. Bond’ from First World War Nominal Roll Page – AWM133, 05-008 and Embarkation Roll of 11^th Infantry Battalion, 20^th Reinforcements, AIF, AWM8, 23/28/4, 138.

⁵⁶K. Smith, ‘Gramsci at the margins’; emphasis added.

⁵⁷R. Gerster, Big-Noting: The Heroic Theme in Australian War Writing (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1992); Thomson, Anzac Memories; Blair, Dinkum Diggers, G. Seal, Inventing Anzac: The Digger and National Mythology (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2004); H. Reynolds and M. Lake, What's Wrong With Anzac?: The militarisation of Australian history (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2010).

⁵⁸See for example Wise, ‘The Lost Labour Force’, Wise, ‘Playing Soldiers’ (2010) and Wise, ‘A Working Man's Hell’.

⁵⁹Gammage, The Broken Years, xiv–xvii.

⁶⁰J. McQuilton, ‘Enlistment for the First World War in Rural Australia: the case of north-eastern Victoria, 1914–1918, Journal of the Australian War Memorial 33 (2000).

⁶¹To use the example of Gammage's sources. See Gammage, The Broken Years, 310. Based also upon A. G. Butler, The Australian Army Medical Services in the War of 1914–1918: Vol. I (Melbourne: Australian War Memorial, 1938), see ‘Appendix No. 6: Occupations of members of the AIF’, 874.

⁶²Cited from Thomson, Anzac Memories, 144.

⁶³Thomson, Anzac Memories, 47.

⁶⁴Blair, Dinkum Diggers, 25.

⁶⁵Blair, Dinkum Diggers, 10.

⁶⁶Blair, Dinkum Diggers, 25.

⁶⁷Blair, Dinkum Diggers, 10.

⁶⁸Blair, Dinkum Diggers, 28–9.

⁶⁹For more on the promotion of the ‘Anzac’ over the ‘digger’, see D. Kent, From Trench and Troopship: The Experience of the Australian Imperial Force, 1914–1919 (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, Alexandria, 1999), 122 and Seal, Inventing Anzac, 1–9.

⁷⁰Kent, From Trench and Troopship, 13.

⁷¹Seal, Inventing Anzac, 6.

⁷²Seal, Inventing Anzac, 5–6; Thomson, Anzac Memories.

⁷³D. J. Silbey, ‘Their Graves Like Beds: The British Working Class and Enthusiasm For War, 1914–1916’, (PhD Thesis, Duke University, 1999), 38–9.

⁷⁴G. J. DeGroot, Blighty: British society in the era of the Great War (London: Longman, 1996), 46–8.

⁷⁵Silbey, ‘Their Graves Like Beds’, 39.

⁷⁶ Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October 1914, as cited in Blair, Dinkum Diggers, 19.

⁷⁷Blair, Dinkum Diggers, 18.