Bean, the Third Battle of Ypres and the Australian Narrative of the First World War

Abstract

In 1917 the Australian Imperial Force suffered thirty-eight thousand casualties in Flanders, far outstripping those endured at Gallipoli. Despite this, the AIF's campaign in Belgium has received relatively little attention from historians or the public. As Australia's official war correspondent and historian, C.E.W. Bean has long been recognised as one of the principal Anzac mythmakers. Scrutinising his correspondence, diaries and Official History, this article argues that Bean struggled to integrate the third Ypres offensive into his vision of the Anzac legend and this may have helped marginalise Belgium's place in the Australian memory of the war.

Notes

1 Joan Beaumont, Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2013), 196–200.

2 C. E. W. Bean et al., Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, 12 vols (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1921–42).

3 K. S. Inglis, ‘The Australians at Gallipoli—I’, Australian Historical Studies 14, no. 54 (April 1970): 222.

4 Peter Stanley, ‘Gallipoli and Pozieres: A Legend and a Memorial’, Australian Foreign Affairs Record 56, no. 4 (April 1985): 287.

5 William F. Mandle, Going It Alone: Australia's National Identity in the Twentieth Century (Melbourne: Allen Lane, 1977), 4.

6 C. E. W. Bean, Letters from France (London: Cassell, 1917), 115.

7 Bean, Letters from France, 113; Michael McKernan, Here Is Their Spirit (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press in association with the Australian War Memorial, 1991), 30; Stanley, ‘Gallipoli and Pozieres’, 287.

8 Bill Gammage, ‘Introduction’, in The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918: Volume IV: The Australian Imperial Force in France in 1917, ed. C. E. W. Bean (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1983), xxv.

9 For example, Bean lost a cousin—‘the finest specimen of manhood in Hobart'—at Pozieres. Dudley McCarthy, Gallipoli to the Somme: The Story of C.E.W. Bean (Sydney: John Ferguson, 1983), 240.

10 E. M. Andrews, ‘Bean and Bullecourt: Weaknesses and Strengths of the Official History of Australia in the First World War’, Revue internationale d'histoire militaire 72 (1990): 47.

11 Gammage, xxvi.

12 Beaumont, Broken Nation, 391.

13 Jenny Macleod, Reconsidering Gallipoli (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 6.

14 Fred Benchley and Elizabeth Benchley, Myth Maker: Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, the Englishman Who Sparked Australia's Gallipoli Legend (Brisbane: John Wiley and Sons, 2005).

15 For example, Kevin Fewster, Gallipoli Correspondent: The Frontline Diary of C.E.W. Bean (Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1983); D. A. Kent, ‘The Anzac Book and the Anzac Legend: C.E.W. Bean as Editor and Image–Maker’, Historical Studies 21, no. 84 (April 1985): 376–90; Janda Gooding, Gallipoli Revisited: In the Footsteps of Charles Bean and the Australian Historical Mission (Melbourne: Hardie Grant, 2009).

16 Mick Taussig, ‘An Australian Hero’, History Workshop 24 (Autumn 1987): 126; Alistair Thomson, ‘“Steadfast until Death”? C.E.W. Bean and the Representation of Australian Military Manhood’, Australian Historical Studies 23, no. 93 (October 1989): 462–78.

17 John F. Williams, Anzacs, the Media and the Great War (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1999).

18 Bean to 1st Australian Division Headquarters, 27 June 1915, Official History, 1914–18 War: Records of Charles E W Bean, Official Historian (hereafter Bean Papers): Correspondence, 1914–16, AWM38, 3DRL 6673 item 270, Australian War Memorial (hereafter AWM), Canberra.

19 Denis Winter, Making the Legend: The War Writings of C.E.W. Bean (Brisbane: University of Queensland, 1992), 6–7.

20 Fewster, Gallipoli Correspondent, 11; McCarthy, 162.

21 Martyn Lyons, A History of Reading and Writing in the Western World (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 3; Troy R. E. Paddock, ed., A Call to Arms: Propaganda, Public Opinion, and Newspapers in the Great War (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2004), 7.

22 Lyons, 4–5.

23 C. E. W. Bean, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, Vol. IV: The Australian Imperial Force in France in 1917, 11th edn (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1941), 833.

24 Kevin Fewster, ‘Ellis Ashmead Bartlett and the Making of the Anzac Legend’, Journal of Australian Studies 6, no. 10 (June 1982): 20–1.

25 Raymond Evans, Loyalty and Disloyalty: Social Conflict on the Queensland Homefront, 1914–1918 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987), 6.

26 Beaumont, Broken Nation, 313; Robert Bollard, In the Shadow of Gallipoli: The Hidden History of Australia in World War I (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2013), 108–9.

27 L. L. Robson, The First A.I.F.: A Study of Its Recruitment (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1970), 142.

28 Fewster, Gallipoli Correspondent, 13.

29 Michael Piggott, A Guide to the Personal, Family and Official Papers of C.E.W. Bean (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1983), 7

30 Fewster, Gallipoli Correspondent, 19.

31 Alistair Thomson, Anzac Memories: Living with the Legend (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994), 58–9.

32 Herald (Melbourne), 7 August 1917.

33 Age, 9 November 1917.

34 Winter, 16; John Laffin, Guide to Australian Battlefields of the Western Front 1916–1918, 3rd edn (Sydney: Kangaroo Press and Australian War Memorial, 1999), 31; Pamela M. Etcell, ‘Our Daily Bread: The Field Bakery and the Anzac Legend’ (PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2004), 239–40.

35 Williams, 151.

36 Commonwealth Gazette, 27 August 1917, 8 November 1917, 23 November 1917, 21 February 1918.

37 Winter, 6.

38 Italics added. Argus, 9 May 1919.

39 Bean, diary, 7 September 1917, Bean Papers, AWM38, 3DRL 606 item 88, AWM.

40 Bean, diary, 24 September 1917, Bean Papers, AWM38, 3DRL 606 item 88, AWM.

41 Bean, diary, July 1916, Bean Papers, AWM38, 3DRL 606 item 53, AWM; Bean, diary, July–August 1916, Bean Papers, AWM38, 3DRL 606 item 54, AWM.

42 Bean to Treloar, 7 December 1920, Bean Papers, AWM38 3DRL 6673 item 813, AWM.

43 Argus, 22 September 1917.

44 Sydney Morning Herald, 27 September 1917.

45 Register, 11 December 1917.

46 Argus, 6 October 1917.

47 Bean's entry for this battle was not completed until 1932. Bean, diary, 17 March 1932, Bean Papers, AWM38, 3DRL 606 item 91, AWM.

48 Sydney Morning Herald, 8 October 1917.

49 Argus, 8 October 1917.

50 Argus, 8 October 1917; West Australian, 8 October 1917.

51 Sydney Morning Herald, 8 October 1917.

52 Argus, 11 October 1917.

53 Argus, 11 October 1917; Register, 13 October 1917.

54 Register, 13 October 1917; Age, 15 October 1917; West Australian, 15 October 1917.

55 Sydney Morning Herald, 16 October 1917.

56 Some units played supporting roles during the Canadian advance to Passchendaele. Bean, Official History, IV, 929–36.

57 Bean diary, 8 October 1917, Bean Papers, AWM38, 3DRL 606 item 89, AWM; Bean, diary, 13/14 October 1917, Bean Papers, AWM38, 3DRL 606 item 90, AWM.

58 Bean, diary, 13/14 October 1917, Bean Papers, AWM38, 3DRL 606 item 90, AWM.

59 Andrews, 27; Gammage, xxvii.

60 Bean, diary, 15 November 1917, Bean Papers AWM38, 3DRL 606 item 94, AWM.

61 The subtitle for the article in The Age was ‘A Comparison with Pozières’. Age, 19 November 1917; Daily Telegraph, 17 November 1917.

62 C. E. W. Bean, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, Vol. III: The Australian Imperial Force in France in 1916, 12th edn (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1941), 862; Bean, Official History, IV, 946–7.

63 Advertiser, 17 October 1917; Daily Telegraph, 19 October 1917; Argus, 24 October 1917; Register, 1 November 1917; Mercury, 7 January 1918.

64 Register, 24 December 1917.

65 Daily Telegraph, 19 October 1917.

66 Ashley Ekins, ‘The Australians at Passchendaele’, in Passchendaele in Perspective: The Third Battle of Ypres, ed. Peter H. Liddle (London: Leo Cooper, 1997), 244–5.

67 Mercury, 7 January 1918.

68 K. S. Inglis, ‘Conscription in Peace and War, 1911–1945’, in Conscription in Australia, eds Roy Forward and Bob Reece (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1968), 38.

69 Mercury, 7 January 1918.

70 West Australian, 8 January 1918.

71 Michael McKernan, ‘Writing About War’, in Australia: Two Centuries of War and Peace, eds Michael McKernan and Margaret Browne (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1988), 13; Williams, 265; Kent, 377; Andrews, 44.

72 John Monash, The Australian Victories in France in 1918 (London: Hutchinson, 1920); McKernan, ‘Writing About War’, 13.

73 Joan Beaumont and Vijaya Joshi, Australian Defence Sources and Statistics, Vol. IV: The Australian Centenary History of Defence (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2001), 3; Peter Stanley, ‘Reflections on Bean's Last Paragraph’, Sabretache 24, no. 3 (July–Sept 1983): 4–5; Tony Hastings, ‘Writing Military History in Australia’, Melbourne Historical Journal 13 (1981): 52.

74 C. E. W. Bean, ‘The Writing of the Australian Official History of the Great War: Sources, Methods and Some Conclusions’, Royal Australian Historical Society Journal and Proceedings 24, no. 2 (December 1938): 91.

75 Beaumont and Joshi, 2; Hastings, 53–4.

76 Peter Stanley, A Stout Pair of Boots: A Guide to Exploring Australia's Battlefields (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2008), 64; Joan Beaumont, ‘Anzac Day to VP Day: Arguments and Interpretations’, Journal of the Australian War Memorial 40 (February 2007). www.awm.gov.au/journal/j40/beaumont/ (accessed 12 May 2012).

77 C. E. W. Bean, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–18, Vols I–VI (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1921–42).

78 Gammage, xxiii.

79 Stanley, A Stout Pair of Boots, 84–6.

80 Bean, ‘The Writing of the Australian Official History’, 86.

81 Gammage, xxv.

82 Bean, Official History, IV, 761.

83 Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, ‘Passchendaele: The Untold Story’, 2nd edn (New Haven, CT: Yale Nota Bene, 2002), 119.

84 Bean, Official History, IV, 761.

85 Ibid., 623.

86 Argus, 22 September 1917.

87 Bean, Official History, IV, 624.

88 Ibid., 772.

89 Ibid.

90 Bean, Official History, I–VI; Dale Blair, No Quarter: Unlawful Killing and Surrender in the Australian War Experience 1915–1918 (Canberra: Ginninderra Press, 2005), 31.

91 Thomson, ‘“Steadfast until Death”?’, 465–6.

92 Bean, Official History, IV, 833.

93 Ibid., 877.

94 Bean called these battles ‘Passchendaele I’ and ‘Passchendaele II’. Ibid., 878, 901.

95 Ibid., 884.

96 Ibid., 926.

97 Ibid., 929.

98 Ibid., 936.

99 Ibid., 946–7.

100 Ibid., 948.

101 Bean, Official History, III, 958.

102 Bean, Official History, IV, 948.