Chapter Eight

CHARLEY BEAN AND I

*

Charley Bean and I once spent five hours going half a mile. Each time we jumped, we went to another shell-hole. That was in the Ypres salient. Every shell-hole was full of muck and bodies. Yet I remember only once that our nerves gave way on the ground. One day seven of us were going along, single file, on the duckboards. A shell hit the man in the lead, blew his head off and stuck it on a post. All the rest of us roared with hysterical laughter to see his head there, stuck upright on the post. At the moment it seemed hilariously funny.

Wilkins’ manuscript1

The Battle of Menin Road began with a massive artillery barrage, shortly after 5.00 a.m. on 20 September 1917. Thousands of shells shrieked through the air to hammer the German lines. A soldier described the trenches as ‘rocking like a lifeboat at sea’. Hurley wrote, ‘Nothing I have heard in this world, or can in the next, could possibly approach its equal.’2 The Allies had massed 65,000 men along a 12-kilometre front, and they stood ready, after a night in the rain, to charge the German defences.

As the barrage got underway, Wilkins and Hurley carried their cameras along the Menin Road to the Hooge Crater, where they met Bean in the dugouts, 8 metres below the ground. They waited. At 7.30 a.m., word came that the first wave of troops had reached their objective. Shortly after, German prisoners, ‘haggard, emaciated and dejected … mere boys and shadows of men’, began to be led past, to the rear of the lines. Word came that the second objective had been reached.

The mist of the morning cleared and, with the increasing daylight making photography possible, Wilkins and Hurley grabbed their cameras and prepared to take their photographs. As they left the crater, ‘a 5.9 inch shell landed six or seven paces from us’, Hurley wrote. ‘Fortunately it failed to explode.’ They followed the duckboards forward. To either side of them, the field of dead and wounded looked to have been ploughed over, and was ‘littered with bits of men, our own and the Boche [German] and literally drenched in blood’.3 The muffled calls for help could be heard from men buried a metre, or less, below the mud. Wilkins remembered, ‘Most of the men had been shot through the legs by machine-gun fire or been wounded … They could not move their position on the ground although the upper part of their bodies were unhurt.’ Wilkins and Hurley began the grim task of recording the devastation.

Wilkins watched tanks trundling forward, and saw that one was about to roll over wounded men:

One tank, which I had vainly tried to stop and divert so that it would not have crushed three men to death, went lumbering on. Before it had travelled far it was struck by an incendiary shell and caught fire. The explosion jammed the doors of the tank and we could see the tank-men slowly burn to death as we tried unsuccessfully to break open the doors.4

There was no vantage point higher than a tripod from which he could take photographs — any elevated tree, building, or wall had long been obliterated. On this flattened landscape, Wilkins decided that the disabled tank was an ideal place to set up his tripod to get a better overall view of the battlefield. He climbed on the tank, and Bean, who had followed his photographers, saw what happened next: ‘A shell burst under [the tank] and [Wilkins] did not quite know what happened. But his ground-glass focussing screen was broken and a slide with two fine plates ruined.’5 Wilkins fixed his camera, replaced the slide, and got on with his task.

Hurley was also nearly killed that day. He was photographing prisoners of war as they were being herded back to the rear of the lines when a shell exploded 20 metres away, killing the German prisoners.

But, by the end of the day, the two photographers had survived their first major battle. They were back at Steenvoorde by 7.00 p.m., and worked until 1.00 a.m. developing their plates. They had produced a series of graphic images by carrying their cameras close to the action and nearly being killed in the process. But the photographs that one would expect to be spectacular — the ones taken under heavy fire, or with shells exploding close by — were disappointingly uninteresting. They usually showed a flat landscape of mud, debris, and bodies, with a shell exploding 50 or 100 metres away. The photographs were unique, and Wilkins and Hurley may have risked their lives to get them, but they were unexciting to someone wanting the war to burst from the picture in front of them. Hurley would note that, ‘to get pictures one must go into the hottest [places] and even then come out disappointed. To get war pictures of striking interest and sensation is like attempting the impossible.’6

The process of setting up tripods, inserting carriers, removing slides, and exposing plates on the flattened landscape did not lend itself to snapping eye-catching photographs. This did not fuss Bean, who was not interested in spectacular images. Nor did it fuss Wilkins, who believed his job was to produce the accurate, detailed record of events that Bean required. It did, however, frustrate Hurley, who had ambitions to produce a dramatic show and be recognised as the best war photographer at the Western Front. After their first day of photographing a battle, Wilkins and Hurley must have discussed the problem, because they decided that, for the next battle, rather than waiting behind the lines and then moving forward to take photographs, they would go over the top with the Anzacs and run forward with them.

The Battle of Menin Road was a success. The Australian divisions suffered 5,000 casualties, mainly as a result of German artillery, but the enemy was driven back. Haig’s next step in his step-by-step strategy was the German-held Polygon Wood. Haig wanted to capture it quickly, before the Germans had the opportunity to consolidate their defences. Engineers, tunnellers, and transport drivers worked hurriedly to extend the duckboards, build a light-rail system, and bring up the supplies, so that the next hammer blow could be struck by clearing the enemy from the small bombed-out plantation forest. At 5.50 a.m. on 26 September, the battle began with an artillery barrage that rolled ahead of the soldiers like, according to Bean, ‘a Gippsland bushfire’.7

This time, as infantry from the 4th and 5th Divisions went over the top, so too did Wilkins and Hurley in ‘an endeavour to secure a number of shell-burst pictures’. With their heads down and carrying their bulky cameras, they ran forward with shells exploding ‘a few score of paces away’. Hurley recorded:

[W]e had to throw ourselves into shell holes to avoid splinters. A barrage fire [the Germans] also concentrated on the head of the Menin Road, and there about eight motor transports, ammunition dumps, timber for corduroying the roads, etc. were in flames. I took two pictures by hiding in a dugout and then rushing out and snapping … a dump of 4.5 [inch] shells had received a direct hit, the splinters rained on our helmets and the debris and mud came down in a cloud. The frightful concussion winded us but we escaped injury and made off through mud and water as fast as we possibly could. Egad, I’ve never heard such a row in my life.8

Wilkins and Hurley photographed triumphant soldiers with captured pillboxes, ammunition dumps on fire, German prisoners, captured guns, and Anzacs running across no man’s land. But the shell-burst photographs — that brief moment when the war erupted with the deadly and fascinating power that shook the earth — were still unspectacular. Or, at least, when a nearby shell-burst offered a striking image, and Wilkins or Hurley was quick enough to swing his camera to record it, the foreground offered little to arrest the attention of the viewer. Their photographs might have been accurate, but they were not eye-catching.

Hurley decided that the only way to get the spectacular images he wanted was by making composite photographs. He could utilise whatever photographs of shell-bursts that he or Wilkins managed to capture, and then combine them with interesting foregrounds. Hurley’s only problem was that Bean was totally against the idea. His two photographers were in France to produce an authentic record of the fighting and the awful conditions under which the Anzacs lived. Introducing any elements of fakery, according to Bean, would cast doubt over the integrity of the work of the AWRS. Not surprisingly, Bean and Hurley were soon at odds. After spending the day photographing the Battle of Polygon Wood, and then returning to the photographers’ hut at Steenvorde, Hurley recorded that he had had ‘a great argument with Bean about combination pictures. [I] am thoroughly convinced that it is impossible to secure effects, without resorting to composite pictures.’9

Between the battles, Wilkins and Hurley continued to take their photographs. They also recorded moving pictures. When the main fighting had subsided, they moved about photographing and filming men defending the trenches, stretcher-bearers bringing in the wounded from no man’s land, shell holes, ammunition dumps, dead men and dead horses, men laying new duckboards, and more. Never before had life at the front been recorded so graphically and intimately.

But Hurley was not happy. He continued to argue with Bean about the use of composites. ‘Our authorities here will not permit me to pose any pictures or indulge in any original means to secure them’, he seethed in his diary. ‘They will not allow composite printing of any description, even though such be accurately titled, nor will they permit clouds to be inserted in a picture.’ Hurley felt that it was only right to ‘illustrate to the public the things our fellows do and how war is conducted’, and he could only do that by combining ‘a number of negatives or [by] re-enactment’.

Five days after the Battle of Polygon Wood, and six weeks after arriving at the Western Front, Hurley resigned. Not being able to make composites was ‘unfair to our boys and I conscientiously could not undertake to continue the work’.10 He sent in his resignation, and awaited the result of ‘igniting the fuss’, noting, ‘it is disheartening, after striving to secure the impossible and running all hazards to meet little encouragement’. He was emphatic that he would ‘not make a display of war pictures unless the military people see their way clear to give me a free hand’.11

A day after resigning, Hurley was photographing the 1st Anzac staff at their headquarters when he met General Birdwood, who was aware of the problem. Birdwood said he hoped to fix things up, but Hurley noted, ‘I am, however, inflexible, and if my end not be obtained, under no consideration will I retain office.’12

Some time during this period, Wilkins met General John Monash, who would later describe Wilkins as the ‘bravest man in the AIF’. Wilkins recalled the circumstances under which he met Monash, who, at the time, was commanding the Australian 3rd Division:

Hurley was with me. We were just coming back to Ypres. Hurley said he was going to stop any car he saw and ask for a ride. Our own cars were two miles back. Along came this car and he said, ‘Hey, give us a ride’. The car stopped and someone said, ‘Jump in’. Hurley didn’t know the difference between a second-lieutenant and a general. He was just an ordinary general and didn’t amount to much, we thought. We did notice that he seemed to show a great deal of intelligence, which was unusual. Most of them we talked with did not. He told us to come around and get some pictures. We went around and had lunch with him and ever since then I have had a very pleasant association with Monash.13

Haig’s step-by-step plan was continuing to work. Capturing the concrete pillboxes and machine-gun nests was proving costly (the Australians suffered 5,770 casualties at Polygon Wood), but the Germans were slowly being pushed further from Ypres and closer to Passchendaele. The next blow was to be struck by capturing the Broodseinde Ridge, the high ground from which the Germans were shelling Ypres.

The attack, which would follow a creeping barrage, was set for 6.00 a.m. on 4 October. By coincidence, the Germans had planned an attack against the village of Zonnebeke to start at exactly the same time. Both sides began their barrage an hour before the battle, stopped it before the zero hour, and then soldiers from each side scrambled from their trenches to rush, surprised, headlong at each other. The Allies had superior numbers, and the Germans were forced to turn around in no man’s land and flee back to their trenches. The Allies, including Australians and New Zealanders, pushed forward and, after days of fighting, eventually held Broodseinde Ridge. It seemed for a while as if the tide of the war was turning. The German High Command began to question the wisdom of its defensive Hindenburg Line while, buoyed by successive victories, the British High Command were eager to push on to Passchendaele.

During the Battle of Broodseinde Ridge, Wilkins was almost killed again. He spent the first day of the battle moving with the soldiers through areas being heavily shelled, and noted he was ‘twice buried by mud thrown up by shell explosions’. By the end of the exhausting day, he had reasoned that, ‘by the law of averages I should not have any more narrow escapes that day and being badly shaken I was in a hurry to get back’. Wilkins knew the Germans had the habit of shelling the duckboards, particularly in the evening when the troops were moving to the rear to rest, but he was anxious to get back, so he decided to risk it:

I had not more that half crossed the duckboard when I was blown up by a shell. I was not badly wounded, but rendered unconscious. Some Canadian artillery men picked me up and later told me that my camera saved my life. I had landed in a shell hole full of gassed water. My camera, a square half-plate Graflex, was beneath my chest. I was supported by it and in this manner my nose and mouth were kept just an inch or so above the water. Without the camera I would have been drowned.14

He was bundled onto a wagon carrying shells, and taken to a dressing station. Some time during the night, he came back to consciousness, left the hospital, and found his way back to Steenvoorde. He later boasted, ‘although I was wounded on nine different battle days that was the only time I was carried into a hospital’.15

Bean also noted the incident, remarking how his two photographers were constantly putting themselves at risk by being in the thick of every battle. Bean himself was never far behind his photographers as they darted about between the shell holes and explosions, coming across groups of soldiers and getting them to pause for the camera.

Wilkins also recorded that he would slither forward, pretending to be dead, to deceive the snipers. ‘The Germans frequently waved to me, good-naturedly; they knew I was a photographer and would shoot at my camera when they might easily have shot me.’16

After Broodseinde Ridge, Hurley’s tantrum, along with his work, earned him a compromise. He would be allowed to produce six combination photographs, on the condition that he would continue to photograph the war for the AWRS. He was pleased to write in his diary, ‘They must at least appreciate my efforts, as they were dead against this being done. However [the composites] will be no delusion on the public, as they will be distinctly titled, setting forth the number of photographs, etc.’

Hurley would produce his six combination photographs, the most famous of which became known as A Raid, or, as it was sometimes titled, A Hop Over.

Bean was never happy with the compromise. Staged or faked photographs were not the true way to record the war. They were an insult to the men who were dying, while misleading to their families in Australia who wanted to see the conditions under which their loved ones were living, fighting, and sacrificing their lives.

During the push towards Passchendaele in the Ypres Salient, Bean was also aware that the focus of his work was shifting away from that of a newspaper correspondent and towards that of an historian. He began to feel that his job — indeed, his life’s work — was to accurately record the Australians in the war. Within that record there was no place for Hurley’s composite photographs.

With successive victories under his belt, Haig wanted to push on and capture Passchendaele and consolidate his position before the winter rains turned the ground to mud again. The attack was scheduled for 12 October. Three days earlier, a similar attack against Poelcappelle had resulted in a disastrous defeat, when advancing troops had been bogged down in the mud. It should have been a warning. Steady rain had been falling since the beginning of October, and the ground was getting softer each day. But, rain or no rain, the attack on Passchendaele was ordered to go ahead. Despite the mud, a few Anzacs reached the heights of Passchendaele, but only after suffering heavy losses. The fighting went on for weeks. Eventually, the exhausted Anzacs were withdrawn, and fresh Canadian troops were brought in to finally take the village, a month after the battle had begun. After Passchendaele, both sides knew they would be waiting out the winter before any more major battles could be fought.

Bean was also aware that in only three months his two photographers had achieved something extraordinary. He noted in his diary that other photographers and correspondents were ‘timid weaklings’, doing nothing while they sat a long way from the front and that, in the short time they had been in France, Wilkins and Hurley had ‘seen more fighting than any staff officer’. As a result, he recommended Wilkins for the Military Cross and that Hurley be Mentioned in Despatches. In the unprecedented move of recommending a photographer for a combat decoration, Bean said of Wilkins:

During the five battles before Ypres, from September 20 to October 12 and the fighting between those dates and since, Lt. G.H. Wilkins acted as Australian Records photographer. On September 20, early in the fight forward of our old trenches, a shell bursting from beneath a tank from which he was operating, broke some of the gear, which he was carrying. In spite of this he continued to obtain records of every subject of value for Australian history procuring invaluable pictures of the front line during the period of fighting in Polygon Wood. In the subsequent fighting he again had the gear which he was carrying broken by a shell, but he persisted without relief, during a period almost all of the other officers engaged in work of equal danger were relieved.

He was round the front line during the Battle of Broodseinde Ridge on 4 October, obtaining records beyond our furthest objectives and valuable pictures of consolidation … he was blown from the Zonnebeke duckboards by a shell and picked up by a passing party of Canadians; but he has continued his work without relaxation. This work has been imposed on Lt. Wilkins by his own sense of duty, the results being invaluable as records while he rarely obtains the credit of publication. His demeanour has been markedly gallant and has noticeably brought credit upon his office amongst the troops.17

But awarding honours to photographers was unheard of, and Bean’s recommendations were denied. He wrote in his diary that, ‘the Commander-in-Chief [Birdwood] had considered the recommendation … I had sent in, and had decided not to give them an award’.18 Bean was furious but, as usual when confronted with rejection, he resolved to try again.

THE PHOTOGRAPHS September–October 1917

The Battle of Passchendaele (Third Ypres): Menin Road, Polygon Wood, Broodseinde Ridge, Poelcappelle, and Passchendaele

Photographs taken between 20 September 1917 (the Battle of Menin Road) and late October, when the assault on Passchendaele had become bogged down and hopeless, are roughly grouped between E00710 and E01000, although there are many examples outside of these numbers. The sheer volume of photographs that had to be developed, along with the fact that Wilkins and Hurley worked late into the night to do it, meant that, during this period, photographs were not taken to the censor at the same time and therefore not catalogued in chronological order. E00818 and E00850 (a shell-burst near troops advancing from the Hooge Crater) were two shots taken in quick succession, but were assigned numbers at different times.

E00737 is the photograph that Wilkins exposed shortly before being blown from the tank during the Battle of Menin Road. He kept a personal print of it, and later wrote on the back: ‘A shell-burst in a front-line trench in France. This was the last picture I took that day for the next shell wrecked the camera.’19 Most likely it was not the last picture he took that day, because Bean records him continuing his work. Also, there are seven photographs, recorded as taken on 20 September 1917, which Wilkins initialled in Wilkins Volume XII (E00862, E001415, E00747, E00818, E04677, E00780, and E00776).

E01420 shows a disabled tank during the Battle of Menin Road, although it is not certain that this is the tank from which Wilkins was blown.

Wilkins was blown from the Zonnebeke duckboards, and his camera saved his life. The duckboards in the Zonnebeke area are shown in E01236, and illustrate the conditions. Camera assistant William Joyce is shown in the photograph.

E00818 is an example of a German shell explosion taken on 20 September, demonstrating the difficulty of getting close to the action. There are many photographs taken on 20 September. One that is often used is E00711, showing wounded Anzacs beside the Menin Road shortly before an explosion killed them. This shot is credited to Hurley, and was most likely taken by him. Remarkably, like all the photographs from this period — in fact, all the photographs after Wilkins and Hurley arrived — it was accompanied by detailed notes that were written by the photographer, or his assistant, at the time. In this case, the notes not only name the men in the photograph, but explain what happened immediately after the photograph was taken. In E00774, 18 Anzacs in a trench, some partly obscured, are named, and their positions in the trench carefully noted. The work involved in recording this information, sometimes while under fire, must have been enormous.

An early example of a Hurley composite photograph is E00782. To inject drama, Hurley has burnt-in an explosion on the horizon, seen in E00782A. Another example of a composite is E00927. On 4 October (Broodseinde Ridge), either Wilkins or Hurley photographed a dead German in a muddy trench. Two weeks later, Hurley combined the photograph with an explosion to produce P002514.001.

Hurley’s most elaborate composite is E05988B, titled A Raid. It was produced from twelve negatives for the exhibition at the Grafton Galleries (see Chapter 11). For this exhibition, Hurley insisted on having his name put on the photographs, even though the cataloguing of the pictures meant that no one would have known whether he or Wilkins had taken them. A Raid was enlarged for the exhibition at Grafton Galleries, and a photograph of the enormous print being hung can be seen in P01438.001. This print, which measures 6.4 metres x 4.6 metres, illustrates how full- and half-plate glass negatives can be enlarged with minimal loss of resolution.

Two famous and often used photographs from this period are E01220 and E00833.

E01220, which shows dazed soldiers walking through the bombed-out Chateau Wood, has been published so many times as to be considered iconic. Although it is always credited to Hurley, there is no proof that he, rather than Wilkins, took it. The date on the censor’s list is 29 October 1917; however, Hurley’s diary entry for 29 October records that, ‘having had a fair share of excitement yesterday, I decided not to go into the actual fighting front, but remained in Ypres’.20 This means that the famous Chateau Wood photograph had most likely been taken two days earlier, when Hurley ‘went with Joyce and Wilkins on an ambulance lorry to the Hooge Crater. Afterwards we went to the infamous Chateau Wood’. As the three men (Joyce acting as the assistant) walked along the duckboards of Chateau Wood, Hurley noted that, ‘I have not seen a more terrible scene of desolation’, and that, after they exposed their plates, ‘we returned over the duckboards by a safer route to Hellfire Corner, and thence to Ypres’. Either Wilkins or Hurley took this famous photograph; but it was Hurley, liking the image, who added his name to it eight months later for the exhibition at Grafton Galleries.

E00833 shows Anzacs from the 1st Division as they walk the duckboards near the Hooge Crater. It, too, has been published repeatedly and, by default, credited to Hurley. As well as being a striking image, it demonstrates what a loss it is that the original field notes of the photographers are not available. In this case, the official caption, written after the war, states:

Supporting troops of the 1st Australian Division walking on a duckboard track near Hooge, in the Ypres Sector. They form a silhouette against the sky as they pass towards the front line to relieve their comrades, whose attack the day before won Broodseinde Ridge and deepened the Australian advance.

In Wilkins’ copy of the censor’s list, held at OSU, the original caption for the photograph points out a detail that has been overlooked for 100 years. After explaining the location and the troop movement, the caption reads, ‘Supports going up after the battle to relieve the front trenches. Note the three observation balloons above the bright cloud.’

Constant reprints over the years have dramatised the graphic qualities of the photograph until it is almost a silhouette. The observation balloons have disappeared from the sky. It’s the sort of detail that Wilkins would have been careful to record and that Bean would have insisted be maintained.

Some other photographs of note are among the hundreds taken by Wilkins and Hurley during this period: Wilkins is shown, in an obviously posed shot, looking at a cemetery in E00848. E01047 shows a photographer carrying his camera through the mud towards the front line. The caption explains that it is Wilkins carrying the camera, but in Wilkins Volume XII he notes that he took the photograph and it is Hurley carrying the camera. An informal photograph of Hurley, standing with an unexploded shell, is E01059.

Colour photography was in its infancy during World War I. Although various methods of recording images in colour were being used, the most common commercial process was known as the Paget system. It used two glass negatives, sandwiched together. One was a black-and-white negative, while the other consisted of a series of red, blue, and green filters laid down in a matrix. A drawback of the system was that the thickness of the combined emulsions meant that it took a relatively long time for light to penetrate it. This meant slow exposure times. The times could be shortened by thinning out the emulsions, but this, in turn, meant that the colour looked washed out. Because the best results were obtained in bright sunlight, the bleak skies of France and Belgium did not encourage colour photography. Nevertheless, Hurley took a number of fine examples at the Western Front (see P03631.176 and P03631.216). Hurley understood the promotional value of colour photography for his shows, and would probably have taken more colour shots were it not for Bean, who felt colour photography could be manipulated. As the catalogue for an AWM travelling exhibition on colour war photography pointed out:

For Charles Bean … the medium’s ability to reflect reality was of paramount importance. To him photographs were historical evidence; he regarded them as ‘sacred records’ that would allow ‘future generations to see forever the plain and simple truth’. Bean had little time for overly dramatised, staged shots, or the other types of photographic trickery that propagandists felt were justified to enlist public support.21

When he found himself later in the bright sunlight of Palestine, and free of Bean’s interference, Hurley exposed many Paget plates. Wilkins also took some colour shots at the Western Front. (An example is P03631.212) Wilkins also used the brighter light of the Middle East to expose Paget plates when he went to Gallipoli with Bean.

In addition to the photographs they took, Hurley and Wilkins recorded the war in moving pictures. The film was later compiled by Wilkins and titled Fighting in Flanders. The film is 22 minutes long, and can be viewed online by using the same search procedure for still photographs. The catalogue number for Fighting in Flanders is F00056. (The letter F prefixes film.)

Wilkins kept personal prints of photographs taken during the war. Ohio State University has scanned these, and they can be viewed online at https://byrdpolarmedia.osu.edu (by following the ‘List of Collections’ to Wilkins). There are 147 prints. For nine of these prints, there is no corresponding negative or print at the AWM. The OSU website also shows items that belonged to Wilkins, including his war medals.