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Abstract
When war erupted in 1914, Britain embarked on its prewar plans of mobilising resources from its vast Empire, and created an imperial coalition which fought within a wider coalition with France, Russia and, later, the United States of America. This article examines the limited role performed by Australian naval and military forces within this wider imperial effort and assesses the extent to which Australian forces relied on British command, technology, and logistic support. It challenges common assumptions about Australia’s wartime performance, including the degree to which Australian forces and commanders contributed to tactical innovation and wider planning and operational thought.
Notes
1 G. F. Pearce, ‘Foreword: What Anzac Means’, in The All-Australian Memorial: History, Heroes and Helpers, ed. H. B. Manderson (Melbourne: British-Australasian Publishing Service, 1917), 5.
2 Peter Pedersen, The ANZACS: Gallipoli to the Western Front (Melbourne: Viking, 2007), 184–97.
3 ‘Enemy Still Retiring; 80 Miles Front Abandoned; Peronne, Nesle, and Chaulnes Fall; British Occupy Sixty Villages’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 March 1917, 7; ‘West Front; Cavalry in Action; British and French Advance’, The Argus, 30 March 1917, 7.
4 H. B. Manderson, ‘Editor’s Preface’, in The All-Australian Memorial, 9.
5 Trevor Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War: Britain and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986); Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, Command on the Western Front: The Military Career of Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1914–1918 (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military Classics, 2004); Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, The Somme (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2006).
6 Tim Travers, How the War Was Won: Command and Technology in the British Army on the Western Front, 1917–1918 (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military Classics, 2005); Tim Travers, The Killing Ground: The British Army, the Western Front and the Emergence of Modern Warfare, 1900–1918 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987); Gary Sheffield, Forgotten Victory: The First World War: Myths and Realities (London: Review, 2002); Dan Todman, The Great War: Myth and Memory (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2005).
7 Elizabeth Greenhalgh, Victory through Coalition: Britain and France during the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Elizabeth Greenhalgh, Foch in Command: The Forging of a First World War General (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); William Philpott, Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme (London: Abacus, 2010); Hew Strachan, The First World War (London: Simon & Schuster, 2003); John H. Morrow, Jr, The Great War: An Imperial History (New York: Routledge, 2004); Michael S. Neiberg, Fighting the Great War: A Global History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).
8 David Horner, Australia’s Military History for Dummies (Brisbane: Wiley Publishing, 2010), 72. Despite the questions one may have over the quality of this series, this book is an excellent survey of Australian military history.
9 Stephen Badsey, ‘Ninety Years on: Recent and Changing Views on the Military History of the First World War’, in 1918 Year of Victory: The End of the Great War and the Shaping of History, ed. Ashley Ekins (Auckland: Exisle Publishing, 2010), 248.
10 The Army History Unit conference proceedings are available online. www.army.gov.au/Our-history/Army-History-Unit/Chief-of-Army-History-Conference (accessed 21 May 2014).
11 For example, see Simon Cameron, Lonesome Pine: The Bloody Ridge (Sydney: Big Sky Publishing, 2013).
12 Julia Gillard, ‘Anzac Day Address’, Townsville, 25 April 2013. http://pmtranscripts.dpmc.gov.au/browse.php?did=19272 (accessed 20 May 2014).
13 The exception was his acknowledgement of the Japanese battlecruiser, Ibuki, which escorted the first convoy from Albany. Tony Abbott, ‘Address to the Anzac Day National Ceremony, Canberra’, 25 April 2014. www.pm.gov.au/media/2014-04-25/address-anzac-day-national-ceremony-canberra (accessed 21 May 2014).
14 Julie Bishop, ‘Anzac Day Dawn Service at Villers-Bretonneux’, 25 April 2014. http://juliebishop.com.au/anzac-day-dawn-service-villers-bretonneux/ (accessed 21 May 2014).
15 Neville Meaney, ‘The Problem of “Greater Britain” and Australia’s Strategic Crisis 1905–1914’, in 1911: Preliminary Moves, eds Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey (Canberra: Big Sky Publishing, 2011), 85.
16 Neville Meaney, ‘The Problem of “Greater Britain” and Australia’s Strategic Crisis 1905–1914’, in 1911: Preliminary Moves, eds Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey (Canberra: Big Sky Publishing, 2011), 85.
17 Neville Meaney, ‘The Problem of “Greater Britain” and Australia’s Strategic Crisis 1905–1914’, in 1911: Preliminary Moves, eds Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey (Canberra: Big Sky Publishing, 2011), 56–89.
18 Keith Jeffery, ‘The Imperial Conference, the Committee of Imperial Defence and the Continental Commitment’, in 1911: Preliminary Moves, eds Dennis and Grey, 24.
19 Meaney, 66–7.
20 Timothy Moreman, ‘Lord Kitchener, the General Staff and the Army in India, 1902–14’, in The British General Staff: Reform and Innovation c. 1890–1939, eds David French and Brian Holden Reid (London: Frank Cass, 2002), 64; Meaney, 64.
21 ‘Prime Minister’s Department: Correspondence and Papers’, A1108, Volume 37, National Archives of Australia (hereafter NAA), Canberra; John Connor, ‘Coronation Conversations: The Dominions and Military Planning at the 1911 Imperial Conference’, in 1911: Preliminary Moves, eds Dennis and Grey, 45.
22 Jeffery, 20.
23 Jeffery, 37–8.
24 Connor, ‘Coronation Conversations’, 43.
25 Jeffery, 39.
26 Letter, M. L. Shepherd, Secretary, Prime Minister’s Department, to Official Secretary to the Governor-General, 11 August 1914, MP1049/1, 1914/0299, NAA, Melbourne.
27 Defence Act 1903, s. 49; Cable, Governor-General to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 3 August 1914, MP1049/1, 1914/0276, NAA, Melbourne.
28 Peter Dennis, Jeffrey Grey, Ewan Morris, Robin Prior and Jean Bou, The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History, 2nd edn (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2008), 62.
29 C. E. W. Bean, Anzac to Amiens: A Shorter History of the Australian Fighting Services in the First World War (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1968), 31.
30 Ross Mallett, ‘The Preparation and Deployment of the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force’, in Battles Near and Far: A Century of Overseas Deployment, eds Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey (Canberra: Army History Unit, 2005), 24.
31 David Horner, ‘The Evolution of Australian Higher Command Arrangements’, Command paper 3/2002 (Canberra: Australian Defence College, 2005), 5.
32 Russell Parkin, ‘A Capability of First Resort: Amphibious Operations and Australian Defence Policy 1901–2001’, Working Paper No. 117 (Canberra: Land Warfare Studies Centre, May 2002), 4; John Connor, ‘The Capture of German New Guinea’, in Before the Anzac Dawn: A Military History of Australia to 1915, eds Craig Stockings and John Connor (Sydney: NewSouth, 2013), 283.
33 Rhys Crawley, ‘Sustaining Amphibious Operations in the Asia-Pacific: Logistic Lessons for Australia, 1914–2014’, Australian Defence Force Journal 193 (March/April 2014): 31.
34 Alastair Cooper, ‘Lost at Sea: Missing out on Australia’s Naval History’, in Anzac’s Dirty Dozen: 12 Myths of Australian Military History, ed. Craig Stockings (Sydney: NewSouth, 2012), 170.
35 ‘Convoy duties and the Emden fight’, attached to memo no. 18/7871, 17 December 1918, ADM 116/1686, The National Archives, UK (hereafter TNA).
36 David Stevens, ‘1914–1918: World War I’, in The Australian Centenary History of Defence, vol. 3, The Royal Australian Navy, ed. David Stevens (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2001), 40.
37 ‘HMAS Australia collision with HMS New Zealand’, MP1049/1, 1916/0133, NAA, Melbourne.
38 Cooper, 170.
39 David Stevens and James Goldrick, ‘Victory at Sea, 1918’, in 1918 Year of Victory, ed. Ekins, 198.
40 David Stevens and James Goldrick, ‘Victory at Sea, 1918’, in 1918 Year of Victory, ed. Ekins, 183.
41 David Stevens and James Goldrick, ‘Victory at Sea, 1918’, in 1918 Year of Victory, ed. Ekins, 188–9.
42 Stevens, ‘1914–1918: World War I’, 30.
43 Great Britain War Office, Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War, 1914–1920 (1922; reprint, Dallington: Naval & Military Press, 1999), 770.
44 Cooper, 170.
45 ‘Report of the committee appointed to investigate the attacks delivered on and the enemy defences of the Dardanelles Straits’, series AWM 124, item 3/48, Australian War Memorial, Canberra (hereafter AWM), 22–9.
46 Horner, ‘The Evolution’, 6.
47 Cable, Governor-General to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 3 August 1914, MP1049/1, 1914/0276, NAA, Melbourne.
48 ‘Force Order No. 1’, 13 April 1915, General Headquarters, Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (hereafter GHQ MEF) war diary, AWM 4, 1/4/1 part 2, AWM.
49 Memo, ‘Instructions for GOC A& NZ Army Corps’, 13 April 1915, AWM 4, 1/4/1 part 2, AWM.
50 The ‘cannon fodder’ claim is one that has been made to me by many people during visits to the Gallipoli peninsula, and can still be seen in the comments sections on various internet forums. See, for instance, www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/gallipoli-was-not-churchills-great-folly-20110413-1ddzb.html (accessed 1 October 2014).
51 Rhys Crawley, Climax at Gallipoli: The Failure of the August Offensive (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014).
52 ‘State of the MEF according to returns prepared by GHQ, 3rd Echelon, MEF’, 31 July 1915, WO 162/69, TNA.
53 Some light horse regiments went with the AIF to France as corps cavalry. See Jean Bou, Light Horse: A History of Australia’s Mounted Arm (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 150–1.
54 Dennis et al., Oxford Companion, 128.
55 Telegram, Chief, MEDFORCE, to Chief, London, 19 March 1916, GHQ MEF war diary, AWM4, 1/4/12 part 5, AWM.
56 ‘A short history of the Desert Mounted Corps prepared by Lieut-Genl. Sir H.G. Chauvel’, A1194, 33.68/15152, NAA, Canberra.
57 Jean Bou, Australia’s Palestine Campaign (Canberra: Army History Unit, 2010), 6.
58 Bou, Light Horse, 154–5.
59 Horner, Australia’s Military History, 125.
60 Bou, Light Horse, 157.
61 Dennis et al., Oxford Companion, 128.
62 Bou, Light Horse, 158.
63 Memo, ‘A general review of the situation in all theatres of war, together with a comparison of the military resources of the Entente and of the Central Powers’, W. R. Robertson, CIGS, October 1916, CAB 24/2/39, TNA.
64 Horner, Australia’s Military History, 126.
65 Bou, Light Horse, 168–9.
66 ‘A short history of the Desert Mounted Corps prepared by Lieut-Genl. Sir H.G. Chauvel’, A1194, 33.68/15152, NAA, Canberra.
67 Bou, Light Horse, 165.
68 Horner, Australia’s Military History, 129.
69 Archibald Wavell, The Palestine Campaigns, 3rd edn (London: Constable, 1931), 101–2.
70 Bou, Light Horse, 171.
71 Bou, Light Horse, 171.
72 Joan Beaumont, Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2013), 368–70.
73 Wavell, 103.
74 Wavell, 112–13.
75 Wavell., 124.
76 Dennis et al., Oxford Companion, 83–4; Horner, Australia’s Military History, 130–1.
77 Bou, Light Horse, 185, 188–9; Dennis et al., Oxford Companion, 128, 407.
78 Bou, Australia’s Palestine Campaign, 7.
79 Bou, Australia’s Palestine Campaign, 6.
80 Roger Lee, The Battle of Fromelles 1916 (Canberra: Army History Unit, 2010), 7.
81 Jeffrey Grey, A Military History of Australia, 3rd edn (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 102.
82 Lee, Fromelles, 32.
83 Lee, Fromelles, 95.
84 Gary Sheffield and John Bourne, eds, Douglas Haig: War Diaries and Letters 1914–1918 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005), 208.
85 For more on these battles and the context in which they were fought, see Gary Sheffield, ‘The Australians at Pozières: Command and Control on the Somme, 1916’, in The British General Staff, eds French and Reid, 112–26; Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, Passchendaele: The Untold Story (Melbourne: Scribe Publications, 2003).
86 Gary Sheffield, ‘Finest Hour? British Forces on the Western Front in 1918: An Overview’, in 1918 Year of Victory, ed. Ekins, 59.
87 Elizabeth Greenhalgh, ‘A French Victory, 1918’, in 1918: Defining Victory, eds Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey (Canberra: Army History Unit, 1999), 96–7.
88 Robin Prior, ‘Stabbed in the Front: The German Defeat in 1918’, in 1918 Year of Victory, ed. Ekins, 48.
89 Elizabeth Greenhalgh, ‘Australians Broke the Hindenburg Line’, in Zombie Myths of Australian Military History, ed. Craig Stockings (Sydney: NewSouth, 2010), 71, 76.
90 Prior, 48.
91 S. F. Wise, ‘The Black Day of the German Army: Australians and Canadians at Amiens, August 1918’, in 1918: Defining Victory, eds Dennis and Grey, 22.
92 Gary Sheffield, ‘The Indispensable Factor: The Performance of British Troops in 1918’, in 1918: Defining Victory, eds Dennis and Grey, 80.
93 Beaumont, 467–77.
94 Roland Perry, Monash: The Outsider Who Won a War: A Biography of Australia’s Greatest Military Commander (Sydney: Random House, 2004).
95 Liddell Hart quoted in Geoffrey Serle, John Monash: A Biography (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1982), 377.
96 John Blaxland, Strategic Cousins: Australian and Canadian Expeditionary Forces and the British and American Empires (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006), 34–43; Wise, 1–32.
97 John Connor, ‘The “Superior”, All-Volunteer AIF’, in Anzac’s Dirty Dozen, ed. Stockings, 48.
98 Sheffield, ‘Finest Hour’, 60, 65.
99 John Monash, The Australian Victories in France in 1918 (Tennessee: The Imperial War Museum in association with The Battery Press, 1993), 3.
100 Horner, ‘The Evolution’, 7–9.
101 Serle, Monash, ch. 13.
102 Peter Pedersen, Monash as Military Commander (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1985), 295–6.
103 John Bourne, ‘The BEF’s Generals on 29 September 1918: An Empirical Portrait with Some British and Australian Comparisons’, in 1918: Defining Victory, eds Dennis and Grey, 100.
104 This claim was made by C. E. W. Bean in 1942, and is repeated even today on Wikipedia. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_Penetration
105 Bourne, ‘The BEF’s Generals’, 99; Sheffield, ‘The Australians at Pozières’, 124–5.
106 Ian M. Brown, ‘Feeding Victory: The Logistic Imperative behind the Hundred Days’, in 1918: Defining Victory, eds Dennis and Grey; Greenhalgh, ‘Australians Broke the Hindenburg Line’, 81–2.
107 Great Britain War Office, Statistics, 740, 756.
108 ‘Enlistment statistics and standard, First World War’. www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/enlistment/ww1/ (accessed 20 May 2014).
109 Great Britain War Office, Statistics, 756.
110 Great Britain War Office, Statistics, 739, 759–60.