“We refused to work until we had better means for handling the bodies”. Discipline at the Australian Graves Detachment^*

* This article has benefited from the insightful comments and suggestions of anonymous reviewers whom I would like to thank heartily. I also received feedback on this work at the Flinders University History Seminar in May 2017, and would like to express my gratitude to my colleagues Johanna Conterio, Matt Fitzpatrick, Prudence Flowers, Carol Fort, Catherine Kevin, Peter Monteath, Andrekos Varnava and Christine Winter for their thoughtful input. Colleagues at the Australian Historical Association’s annual conference in July 2017 and at the Globalising and Localising the Great War seminar at the University of Oxford in January 2018 also helped me refine my work and select an angle through which to study the Detachment. Thanks are also due to Melanie Oppenheimer and Guillaume Piketty for their detailed comments on my work. In particular, I am indebted to Martin Crotty for the honest and knowledgeable feedback he provided me with on earlier drafts of this article. Last but not least, I wish to acknowledge that this article has benefited from the research conducted for a project which received funding from Flinders University’s DVC-R portfolio.

Abstract

The Australian Graves Detachment, a unit over 11 hundred men, was formed in March 1919 on the Western Front. Its mission was to exhume and re-bury the war dead in a small area of Northern France where the Australian Imperial Force had fought. While war memorialization and grief are significant fields of research in First World War studies, much remains to be written with regard to the processes of burying the millions of dead. Little, for example, has been written about the men who undertook the daunting tasks of exhuming and burying. This article seeks to contribute to this emerging area of inquiry by exploring how discipline was enforced at the Australian Graves Detachment through a range of strategies such as negotiation and care for both the men’s physical and mental wellbeing. It argues that at a time where inflexible military discipline and justice were difficult to enforce, such non-coercive forms of control proved more effective for disciplining the men than formal military sanctions. This article first examines the nature of the work undertaken by the Australian Graves Detachment. Second, it turns to the disciplinary issues which arose from the ranks. Third, the article analyses the strategies put in place by the Commanding Officer of the Detachment to maintain discipline within the unit. In particular, the article highlights how entertainment played a key role in maintaining discipline and morale within the detachment, providing the men with a wide variety of amusing activities that kept them under their officers’ watch and control. Sports, games, theatre, movies, the camera club, afternoon teas and other forms of entertainment insured that men had as little idle time as possible. Entertainment became the cornerstone of the Commanding Officer’s attempts to limit misconduct, and to ensure that the unit would complete its mission.

Keywords:

• First World War
• Graves
• Discipline
• Morale
• Entertainment

Notes

* This article has benefited from the insightful comments and suggestions of anonymous reviewers whom I would like to thank heartily. I also received feedback on this work at the Flinders University History Seminar in May 2017, and would like to express my gratitude to my colleagues Johanna Conterio, Matt Fitzpatrick, Prudence Flowers, Carol Fort, Catherine Kevin, Peter Monteath, Andrekos Varnava and Christine Winter for their thoughtful input. Colleagues at the Australian Historical Association’s annual conference in July 2017 and at the Globalising and Localising the Great War seminar at the University of Oxford in January 2018 also helped me refine my work and select an angle through which to study the Detachment. Thanks are also due to Melanie Oppenheimer and Guillaume Piketty for their detailed comments on my work. In particular, I am indebted to Martin Crotty for the honest and knowledgeable feedback he provided me with on earlier drafts of this article. Last but not least, I wish to acknowledge that this article has benefited from the research conducted for a project which received funding from Flinders University’s DVC-R portfolio.

1. Australian War Memorial [AWM] file AWM224, MSS611, 1.

2. Strength returns, AWM 25 911/21, 4.

3. Prost, “The Dead”; Longworth, The Unending Vigil; Le Naour, Le soldat inconnu; Pau-Heyriès “La démobilisation des morts” and “Le marché des cercueils”. In the American Civil War context see Faust, This Republic of Suffering and, for the Second World War, see Roberts, “Five Ways to Look at a Corpse: The Dead in Normandy, 1944.”

4. Hodgkinson, “Clearing the Dead”; Smart, “‘A sacred duty’”, Scates, 100 Stories, 115–118.

5. Summers, Remembered, 13–17.

6. Longworth, The Unending Vigil, 58.

7. Summers, Remembered, 29.

8. Australian Graves Detachment, Mobilisation Store Table, AWM25/135/20.

9. Australia Imperial Force (AIF) H.Q. Detachment, 04/04/1919, AWM18 9966/1/21.

10. Smart, “‘A sacred duty,’”10.

11. Sergeant Wigzell, Daily Advertiser (Wagga Wagga), 3 July 1919.

12. Ibid.

13. McBeath, Diaries of Graves Detachment Digger, 36.

14. Ibid., 36.

15. Ekins, “Fighting to Exhaustion,” 117.

16. Watson, “Morale.”

17. On discipline and poor discipline in the Australian context, see Blair, Dinkum Diggers and Stanley, Bad Characters; on punishment see Garstang, “Crime and punishment” and Westerman, “Soldiers and Gentlemen.”

18. Westerman, “Soldiers and Gentlemen,” 236–239.

19. Routine Order [RO] no. 42, 6 May 1919 and RO no. 61, 28 May 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

20. Wise, Anzac Labour, 8–15.

21. Wise, “Job Skill,” 114.

22. Sheffield, Leadership in the Trenches, 153.

23. Nathan Wise has demonstrated the resurgence of forms on industrial actions in the AIF from mid-1918 onward and the circumstances of the clemency demonstrated by the hierarchy towards them. Wise, Anzac Labour, 90.

24. See AWM25 861/21 part 24.

25. Lamb, Mutinies, 1917–1920.

26. Butler, The Official History,148–189.

27. RO no. 6, 29 March 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

28. Butler, The Official History,158.

29. RO no. 14, 8 April 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

30. Ibid.

31. Stanley, Bad Characters, 193, 194.

32. https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C971006?search; see also 3DRL/6487 item 55.

33. Cochet, “Prostitution et bordels militaires,” 853, 854.

34. RO no. 10, 4 April 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

35. RO no. 14, 18 April 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

36. RO no. 43, 7 May 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

37. RO no. 75, 18 June 19, AWM 25 707/21.

38. RO no. 10, 4 April 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

39. RO no. 16, 10 April 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

40. McBeath, Diaries of Graves Detachment Digger, 10 April 1919, 35.

41. Pages de gloire de la Division marocaine, 61.

42. McBeath, Diaries of Graves Detachment Digger, 21 and 25 July 1919, 46.

43. Ibid., 23 April 1919, 37.

44. RO no. 59, 25 May 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

45. RO no. 66, 3 June 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

46. Report entitled ‘Villers-Bretonneux’, 24 September 1921 in ‘Voyage de M. Loucheur’ section of 99 M 47 at the Archives Départementales de la Somme.

47. RO no. 65, 2 June 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

48. Providing good food and a sufficient amount of it was also the role of an efficient CO and one the men were appreciative of. Westerman, “Soldiers and Gentlemen,” 221–226. ‘Visit to Villers-Bretonneux, July 31,’ Evening News (Sydney), 4 October 1919.

49. RO no. 11, 5 April 1919 and RO no. 12, 6 April 1919.

50. Mott, Diary of Australian Graves Detachment, 2, AWM 224 MSS 611.

51. RO no. 65, 2 June 1919.

52. Mott, Diary of Australian Graves Detachment, 5, AWM 224 MSS 611.

53. RO no. 76, 19 June 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

54. And quite a popular offence among Australians. Stanley, Bad Characters, 185.

55. Personal records B2455, Whooler H. B., (7164) and B2455, Downie A. J., (7977) at National Archives of Australia (NAA).

56. Personal records B2455, McKenna A G (7096) and B2455, McEgan L. J., (5066), NAA.

57. Sergeant Wigzell, Daily Advertiser (Wagga Wagga), 3 July 1919.

58. Personal record B2455, Mott John Eldred, NAA.

59. Beyond press reports, Mott also gave a ‘splendid’ lecture on his escape at the YMCA tent, which was much appreciated by the men. McBeath, Diaries of Graves Detachment Digger, 29 April 1919, 38.

60. Ariotti, “I’m awfully fed up with being a prisoner,” 281.

61. Ibid.

62. John E. Mott quoted in ‘Escape from Germany’, Bendigo Advertiser, 16 October 1917.

63. Details of his escape can be found in Pegram, “Bold Bids for Freedom,” 30, 31.

64. Westerman, “Soldiers and Gentlemen,” 247.

65. Ekins, “Fighting to exhaustion,” 118.

66. Westerman, “Soldiers and Gentlemen,” 237–242.

67. Richard White has documented the relationship between Australian soldiers and tourism during wartime. See Richard White, “The Soldier as Tourist”; “Cooees across the Strand”; “Sun, Sand and Syphilis.”

68. Tambellup Times, WA, 26 July 1919.

69. Daily Advertiser, Wagga Wagga, 3 July 1919.

70. RO no. 84, AWM 25 707/21.

71. RO no. 91, 30 July 19, AWM 25 707/21.

72. McBeath, Diaries of Graves Detachment Digger, 19 April 1919, 36.

73. RO no. 19, 13 April 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

74. RO no. 31, 25 April 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

75. Guénel, “La grippe ‘espagnole’ en France,” 166.

76. RO no. 15, AWM 25 707/21.

77. NAA: B2455, William James Bridge (influenza) and Clarence Brushfield Shepley (lobar pneumonia).

78. This rate is established counting all the men ‘sick to hospital’ during the life of the unit in relation to the total amount of men in the unit, and its active service over a little less than five months. See AWM 25 707/21 and AWM25 861/21 part 24.

79. RO no. 14, 8 April 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

80. Sheffield, Leadership in the Trenches, 139.

81. Tambellup Times, WA, 26 July 1919.

82. Mott, Diary of Australian Graves Detachment, 3, AWM 224 MSS 611.

83. Ibid., 4.

84. Ibid., 5.

85. Mott, Diary of Australian Graves Detachment, 2, AWM 224 MSS 611.

86. RO no. 26, 20 April 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

87. On the important of reading materials at war and the role of charities in providing them, see Laugesen, Boredom is the Enemy, 17–22.

88. RO no. 89, 25 July 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

89. Daily Herald (Adelaide), 30 May 1919.

90. McBeath, Diaries of Graves Detachment Digger, 29 April 1919, 38.

91. RO no. 32, 26 April 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

92. AWM 25 861/21 part 24.

93. Oppenheimer, “Opportunities to Engage,” 85–104.

94. By 1918 the YMCA had set up over 300 centres in France. Hanna, “Young Men’s Christian Association.”

95. Queenslander, 26 January 1933.

96. Sunday Times, 30 May 1920.

97. RO no. 49, 13 May 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

98. RO no. 69, 5 June 19, AWM 25 707/21; Ashwell, Modern Troubadours, 197–209.

99. Amanda Laugesen, Boredom is the Enemy, 83–87.

100. RO no. 61, 28 May 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

101. RO no. 67, 4 June 1919, AWM 25 707/21. Laugesen, Boredom is the Enemy, 94, 95.

102. RO no. 78, 21 June 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

103. RO no. 33, 3 June 1919, AWM 25 707/21. On cinema and morale see Véray, “Cinema,” 486, 487.

104. Mott, Diary of Australian Graves Detachment, 4, AWM 224 MSS 611.

105. Again, the context is important here and Mott’s action were in line with those of other Australian officers overseeing demobilization, trying to keep the men busy, with educational schemes for instances. See Bean, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, vol. VI, 1055–1071.

106. Guyra Argus, 20 November 1919.

107. Headquarters to companies, 6 July 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

108. RO no. 87, 18 July 19 AWM 25 707/21.

109. Sheffield, Leadership in the Trenches, 139.

110. Amanda Laugesen, Boredom is the Enemy,79.

111. McBeath, Diaries of Graves Detachment Digger, 13 May 1919, 39.

112. RO no. 60, 26 May 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

113. Private Alexander Simula was court martialled and found guilty of wounding Private Ogilvie with intent to do him grievous bodily harm and sentenced to three years penal servitude commuted to one year of imprisonment with hard labour. RO no. 88, 21 July 1919, AWM 25 707/21.

114. Welch, “Military Justice.”

115. Mott, Diary of Australian Graves Detachment, 6, AWM 224 MSS 611.

116. Mott to Rose Venn-Brown, 19 August 1919, AWM27 570/2.

117. AWM 25 755/12.

118. MP367/1, 446/10/1840.