Chapter Five

THE NEARNESS OF THE CREATOR

*

In the polar regions one can truly feel alone. One’s own pygmy personality stands beside the magnificent features and forces of nature, and there, more than any other place on Earth, I have come to know the magnitude and nearness of the Creator.

Wilkins’ speech, circa 19501

Wilkins felt betrayed, after working so hard and risking his life and reputation to carry out Stefansson’s instructions, only to discover that Stefansson had changed his mind again and did not need his help. At Bernard Harbour, Canada, in August 1915, Wilkins had to decide whether to stay a third year in the Arctic or return to London and cover the war. Wilkins felt that with only a small amount of unexposed film remaining, ‘there is little else for me to do but carry on with the expedition as a labourer. I might as well be carrying bricks for a mason in a one-horse town of the provinces’.2

But after two years, the restless adventurer from the edge of the South Australian Outback had found his place in the world. In the Arctic he had discovered that there was no guile and no privilege. One man did not assume a position above another because of wealth or birthright. The only measure of a man was how hard he worked, and Wilkins thrived on hard work. Wilkins’ heart, soul, and destiny were in the frozen regions at the ends of the Earth, and although he would return to the civilised world, he would never again feel at home in it. There was more to it than merely having a chance to test and prove himself in the harshest, most unforgiving environment on Earth. In the Arctic, Wilkins sensed the God he never felt when he sat on the hard wooden pews listening to Methodist sermons at Mount Bryan East.

And so, despite logic and reason telling him he should return to London as instructed by Gaumont, and despite knowing that there was a full-scale war underway in Europe, Wilkins spent the next nine months following the erratic wanderings of Stefansson. First, he followed Stefansson back to Banks Island, where they set up another winter base. In February 1916, Wilkins travelled north-east to Melville Island, then back down the west coast of Victoria Island, where he finally met and filmed the Blonde Eskimos, who had eyes of a lighter colour and more European features than other Eskimos. Then, after staying at an Eskimo village for a month, Wilkins returned to Bernard Harbour in July 1916, where he learnt that the war in Europe was still raging. In fact, more countries had become involved, and millions were being killed. It had become the biggest conflict in human history. This time, Wilkins resolved to return to Europe.

At Bernard Harbour, Wilkins found that the members of the Southern Party were also winding down their operation and preparing to go home. On 12 July 1916, they loaded the last of their supplies on the Alaska and sailed west. After various stops along the coast, they reached Seward, Alaska, where Wilkins received a letter from his brothers in Australia telling him that his father had died and urging him to come home to help settle the estate. He also collected old letters and cablegrams from Gaumont, ‘ordering me to return at once to help cover the war’.3

Wilkins emerged from the Arctic determined to one day return and continue exploring the frozen, unknown area at the top of the world.

***

When the Anzacs arrived in France and Belgium at the beginning of 1916, the war had been bogged down in the trenches for a year and a half. Germany’s western front (they were fighting Russia on their eastern front) meandered from the coast of Belgium to the French–Swiss border. For more than 700 kilometres, the opposing forces had dug trenches and strung barbed wire. The enemies glimpsed each other across the desolate ground of no man’s land. Generals on both sides were at a loss as to how to break the stalemate. The Germans defended their trenches with concrete pillboxes and deadly machine-guns. It was a form of warfare where the entrenched defender held the advantage over the exposed attacker, but that didn’t stop either side’s generals from trying to break through by throwing thousands of soldiers against fortified enemy lines.

The Anzacs arrived in time for a major Allied push forward. During the winter of 1915–16, the commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force, Field Marshall Douglas Haig, had built up his divisions and hoped to smash through the German line in the Somme River region. His idea was as simple as it was inefficient. First, soften up the enemy by bombarding them with artillery fire. Then, get as many men as possible to rush forward in a wave of sacrifice and, he hoped, overrun the German trenches.

The Battle of the Somme began on 1 July 1916. Haig sent in thirteen British divisions (approximately 250,000 men). The Germans, having seen the build-up of troops and endured the softening-up process of the shelling, knew what was coming. As the British soldiers charged the German trenches, machine-guns cut them in half. It was the bloodiest day of war in history. Twenty thousand British soldiers died in 24 hours, and another 40,000 were wounded. The Germans were unmoved. Haig’s response was to get more men and try again. The Battle of the Somme would eventually last until the following winter, and more than a million men would be killed or wounded during the campaign.

The arrival of the Anzacs from Gallipoli represented fresh machine-gun fodder to charge the German defences. The Australians, Haig believed, were undisciplined, unruly, and disrespectful. Still, their bodies could stop bullets as well as anyone’s, so they might be of some use.

Knowing that the uninspired Haig would keep throwing waves of young men at their lines in the Somme, the Germans planned to reinforce that area of the Western Front by transferring troops from other areas. Haig sought to slow this reinforcement by making an attack elsewhere, giving the Germans reason to pause. For the location of the diversionary attack, General Sir Richard Haking, who commanded the British XI Corps, suggested the village of Fromelles to the north.

Australia, by this time, had raised five divisions to send to the war. The 5th, under the command of an arrogant and incompetent officer, Major General Sir James McCay, was chosen to join the British troops in the attack against Fromelles.

The Battle of Fromelles took place on 19–20 July. It went badly from the start. No man’s land was 400 metres wide in places — much wider than elsewhere — and the Anzacs, as they rushed forward, made easy targets for the German guns. The 5th Division’s 7th Battalion still managed to break through the line, but had no orders telling them what to do next. Haking, realising the offensive was pointless, called off the second wave of attack, stranding the survivors of the first. McCay received news that the second wave had been aborted, but ignored it, allowing hundreds of Anzacs to still rush to their inevitable death. Finally, the first wave, realising their position was hopeless, tried to retreat. Staggering, bleeding men were shot in the back as they attempted to recross no man’s land to their own trenches. Haking commented that their first battle in Europe did the Anzacs ‘a lot of good’.4 The Australians had learnt what fighting on the Western Front was all about. The 5th Division suffered 5,553 casualties, including 1,917 killed. Nothing was gained.

Shortly after Fromelles, the Australian 1st and 2nd Divisions, reinforced with Anzacs from the 4th, played their role in the main game and attacked a small village called Pozières. In the continuing Battle of the Somme, Haig wanted to capture Pozières because it housed a strong German garrison — British forces had already tried to take the village and the nearby high ground of Mouquet Farm. Squeezed between British divisions, the Australians fought their way forward, captured the already bombed-out village, and successfully held it against German counter-attacks. In seven weeks of fighting, the Anzacs suffered 23,000 casualties, including 6,741 dead.

Pozières marked two years of warfare. During that time, the attitude of the British GHQ to correspondents and photographers had changed significantly. At the outbreak of the war, which no one thought would last long, British leaders had little call for propaganda or censorship. Britain was the major player on the world stage, had the most powerful navy and the largest empire, and was the leading industrialised economy. It was immune to criticism, and felt no need to explain or justify its policies. As newspapers required reports about what was happening, GHQ set up a press bureau whose task was to disseminate information — usually in the form of statistics, or profiles of the officers in charge. The English papers did not feel it necessary to send correspondents, let alone photographers, across the channel to report the war. They received their information from the press bureau.

Britain had also set up a War Propaganda Bureau, but its task was not to filter or manipulate news reaching the public. If the public had an opinion, GHQ was not interested in hearing it, nor would it affect its decisions. The role of the propaganda bureau was simply to convey false information to the enemy.

It was the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign that brought war correspondents and, in their wake, photographers to the fore. Gallipoli was further than a ferry-ride away, so news of what was happening was more eagerly sought in England. Correspondents such as Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett painted colourful word-pictures of heroism, while photographs, many of them taken by the soldiers, showed Englishmen in exotic locations such as Greece and Turkey.

By September 1915 it was clear that the Turks were not going to relinquish the Gallipoli Peninsula as easily as had been expected, nor was the war in France going to be concluded as quickly as originally thought. As the public became disenchanted with the rising death toll, newspapers moved from simply reporting the news, and, increasingly, began calling for changes in the way the war was being managed. The propaganda bureau redirected its efforts from the enemy to focus closer to home. Its first step was to appoint censors to stop the free flow of letters and photographs from soldiers. Cameras were banned, and letters had to be checked before they could leave the theatre of war.

After stopping soldiers from taking pictures, the propaganda bureau appointed its first official photographer, Ernest Brooks, at the beginning of 1916. A second photographer, Warwick Brooke, joined him soon after. The bureau would clear the photographs of Brooks and Brooke before they were passed to the press bureau for distribution to the newspapers. Anyone else caught taking photographs at the Western Front was liable to be court-martialled.

Field Marshall Haig, meanwhile, conscious that the death toll from his ham-fisted efforts could undermine his position as commander-in-chief, instructed his chief of intelligence, the exuberant and unconventional Brigadier-General Sir John Charteris, to oversee the role of the propaganda bureau and make doubly sure that any material critical of the war effort was destroyed. Haig wanted photographs from the Western Front to encourage more young men to enlist in the great adventure that was taking place. The images had to show British ‘Tommies’ relaxing behind the lines, German prisoners surrendering with their hands in the air, or men posing proudly beside the captured trophies of war. Any photographs that showed anything disturbing were destroyed. As Shaune Lakin, an historian at the Australian War Memorial, has written:

The work of these British photographers [Brooks and Brooke] was in no way a reliable record of the fighting. Their photographs were for the most part staged re-enactments and regularly indulged in pictorial clichés, including dramatic silhouettes, smiling soldiers, and sure-footed commanders. The image produced of British forces at the Somme during 1916 was still, in spite of the losses of thousands of men, but in line with the requirements of effective propaganda, one of order and authority.5

When he had arrived in France in March 1916, Bean noted that the soldiers were instructed to get rid of their Soldier’s Kodaks. Bean asked Brigadier-General Brudenell White, of the AIF administrative headquarters, if he could still carry a camera. White made inquiries, and a letter arrived from GHQ pointing out that Bean was a civilian journalist. He could take photographs if he were given a commission in the AIF, but, like all commissioned officers, he would also be subject to orders. Initially, Bean considered the commission, ‘because it recognises, in a sort of way, that one is doing one’s duty for the country and not making money out of the war’. Bean talked with White, who explained that having a commission would mean that he would come under the command of the AIF and would therefore not be free to criticise the force or any of the officers. White added, ‘I’ve a feeling that it is wrong in principle, and yet I do think it is important that you should get the record.’

Bean’s reaction to the dilemma was, ‘Of course, all my inclination is in favour of the commission; undoubtedly it carries privileges, which are invaluable; but if it is going to tie one’s hands in writing this war, it isn’t worth it.’

As a result of their conversation, White agreed to raise the matter of a commission and the photographs with General Birdwood, the commander of the AIF. A few days later, White reported back that, ‘Birdie was against it.’6 Bean remained a civilian journalist, and was not permitted to carry a camera.

But as he watched the battle for Pozières, Bean became more determined to get a photographic record. He was also conscious that the British photographers and correspondents were going nowhere near the front lines or seeing any of the real action. ‘None of them came within shellfire, much less rifle fire — and they simply don’t know [what is happening]’, he criticised in his diary. Worse, British newspapers were making a great fuss about spurious ‘eyewitness accounts’, but these accounts never mentioned the Australians. Bean complained, ‘[Australia has] fought the greatest battle in our history and one of the greatest in [British history], but not a suspicion of it would you get from the English papers.’7

Bean became more frustrated when he learnt that his attempts to publicise Australia’s role in the Battle of Pozières had been thwarted because the censor, Charteris, was stopping his despatches. He noted:

GHQ has apparently chosen at this time to insist that too much appreciation shall not be given to the Australians … Still it appears to be deliberate … I can’t help thinking it is another far more important instance of jealousy. They put us in to fight the brunt of this battle and the AIF has done it — broken itself and broken the kernel of the fight opposite to it. Most British officers give us credit for this. But an officer or two at the head of Intelligence or Censorship is able to grant or withhold the credit for it and they have … decided to withhold it. I don’t think the public has the least idea of the battle we are fighting.8

Bean continued to push his cause and to be a thorn in the side of the administration. Finally, he was granted permission to escort one of the British photographers to the area where the Australians were fighting. He seized the opportunity, not only to show the Anzacs in action, but to get a photograph he particularly wanted. At Pozières, the Germans and Australians carried their wounded from no man’s land under the protection of a white flag. It was a courtesy the enemies showed one another, but it was not officially allowed, nor was it practised anywhere else. GHQ was denying that it was happening. When Bean learnt of the practice, he asked the men how it had come about. He was told, ‘We started it by not sniping on them when they had the white flag, and now they don’t snipe at ours.’

Bean thought that this initiative, which was unique to the Anzacs, was an important part of the war to record. He wanted a photograph to show it. On 28 August, in the company of Brooks, he travelled to the front at Pozières, where ‘[Brooks] got almost exactly the photos I wanted him to’. Brooks’ photo clearly showed soldiers carrying a wounded man from the battlefield under the protection of a white flag. Bean felt that the arrangement of using British photographers was completely unsatisfactory, but was still ‘glad we got the stretcher bearers coming in with their white flag and the German barrage behind them — so now it stands on record’.9

Having got his photograph, Bean understood he now had a job to get it past the censor. He knew that Charteris had issued orders that any photographic negatives of stretcher-bearers carrying a white flag had to be destroyed. Bean met with Charteris to ask that the negative be preserved. There was no point destroying it, Bean pointed out, because he had already written about the practice of carrying white flags in his reports — therefore it was already known that it was happening. Charteris disagreed, and countered the argument by saying, ‘you could deny what was published in a book, but you could not deny the truth of a photograph’.10 Charteris held back the photograph from publication, pending a decision about what should be done with it. [The photograph (E04947) was preserved and released at the end of the war.]

Bean also wanted moving footage of the battle at Pozières. GHQ had appointed official cinematographers to film the war, but had given the sole right to exploit the films to William Jury (later Sir William), an independent filmmaker and distributor. Jury’s film, The Battle of the Somme, had opened in London in August, and sold twenty million tickets in six weeks. Jury was making a fortune. GHQ consented to let Bean hire Jury’s cinematographers for a limited time, on condition that the Australian government paid for their services. The cinematographers followed Bean about the battlefields, and filmed what he asked for. As they did, he carefully recorded each scene, noting where the action took place and which battalion was involved. The film should have been an accurate depiction of the Anzacs at Pozières, but, as events would unfold, it became an incoherent mess.

By September 1916, with the rains approaching, the generals on both sides knew that nothing major could be achieved in the next four months. In winter, water flowed through the trenches, and the mud in no man’s land became so thick it was possible for men to drown in it. Both sides settled down to rest their troops, call for reinforcements, and plan their spring offensives.

Bean was determined to get photographs of the battlefields before they were altered. He travelled to London, and demanded that an official photographer be found who would immediately return to Pozières and Mouquet Farm, and record the devastation that had taken place. Perhaps now aware of the value of the Australians, GHQ began to take notice of the civilian correspondent. Bean was told that Brooke would meet him in France to photograph Pozières and Mouquet Farm. Bean returned to France on 9 October and waited at Amiens. Brooke arrived two days later, ‘shaken up’ because he had been to the front and had got caught in shellfire. Bean went with him to Pozières, where Brooke took photos and Bean picked up artefacts. After the brief trip, Bean was still not satisfied, and continued to lobby for Australia to have its own dedicated official photographer.

While the Anzacs had struggled to capture and hold Pozières, the idea of an Australian war museum also began to grow in Bean’s mind. The Canadian politician, tycoon, and newspaper publisher, Colonel Sir Maxwell Aitken (later Lord Beaverbrook), always on the lookout for ways to promote the role of the Canadians, had established a Canadian War Records Office (CWRO).* Bean wanted something similar for Australia. In November 1916, shortly after Pozières, he wrote to the Australian minister for defence, Senator George Pearce, about obtaining photographs of the battlefield. Bean pointed out to Pearce that the photographs ‘would eventually find a place in some national museum, when a national museum exists’.11

[* After the disastrous Battle of the Somme, Aitken used his newspapers to oust the ineffectual British prime minister, Herbert Asquith, and install Lloyd George. As soon as he was prime minister, Lloyd George rewarded Aitken with a peerage. From the beginning of 1917 he was known as Lord Beaverbrook. Bean refers to him as Aitken in his 1916 diaries and as Beaverbrook in his 1917 diaries.]