Chapter Nine

DASH IN, GET PHOTOGRAPHS

*

I soon came to know the systematic German methods. I learned that the safest time to visit an area was immediately after it had been strafed by German artillery. There was usually a let-up for a few minutes when I could dash in, get photographs, and be out again before the attack was resumed.

Wilkins’ manuscript1

When it was apparent that the rain had put an end to any major battles until spring 1918, Hurley offered to go to Palestine to film and photograph the Australians fighting there. No official photographer was with the Anzacs in the Middle East. Whether Bean wanted to be rid of Hurley, or Hurley wanted to be free of Bean’s interference, both men would have been glad to see the back of one another. Reflecting on his time at the Western Front, Hurley felt, ‘it has been successful … with Wilkins’ record work, practically every branch has been dealt with’. Hurley thought the amiable Wilkins was, ‘an excellent fellow. Enthusiastic, conscientious and diligent. The innumerable hair-breadth escapes and our marvellous good luck I only hope may continue. And we return our thanks for it.’2

A brief reflection from Wilkins survives for this period:

For more than two months the fighting had been continuous in our sector of the Ypres salient, and under conditions impossible to imagine or represent in any realistic measure by photography.

The fathomless mud, the broken duckboard tracks leading to foul and pseudo-safety dugouts, where lingering odours of the enemy dead made one sick of heart and stomach. The shell-strafed corduroy tracks, spreading like leprous fingers from the Menin Road, the sloughs in front of Passchendaele, raked by shell-fire and drenched with shrapnel pellets, had been passed, and the goal — Broodseinde Ridge — was occupied when the orders came to march to another sector.3

By the end of the Battle of Passchendaele, Bean was completely absorbed in his ambition to establish an Australian war museum. His vision was not for a collection that was simply a reminder of the past. Bean believed Australia was forging its identity in steel and blood, a long way from its home shores. A national war museum — in fact, a series of them located around the country — was how Australia could tell its citizens they were the proud equals of any race in the world.

‘The war museums mean far more to Australia than they do to Great Britain’, he wrote. ‘One wants to see in Australia centres of study and research or art and culture which are not to play a secondary part to any others in the world, but which are, as far as they can be, the most complete and efficient that our nation can maintain.’ According to Bean, Australia would never get the best from its citizens until, ‘this national spirit is established’.4

Bean also spoke of the war museums as ‘universities’, and believed that Australia’s national spirit would grow from the foundation of four things he would collect or compile during the war. The first was a complete written record — not simply overviews of the major battles, but reports from every battalion in every brigade in every division. Battalion commanders were instructed to keep diaries and to hand them over to the AWRS. Bean also wanted an artistic interpretation of the war. The first Australian official war artist, Will Dyson, had already been appointed with the task of painting war scenes. Bean’s third aim was to collect artefacts that could be displayed in the museums. He wanted items, taken straight from the battlefield, that people could see and touch, and thereby be transported back in time. Fourth, Bean wanted accurate photographs and film. Bean’s vision was for a written, visual, and physical record of Australia’s role in the war that would be incomparable.

During the Battle of Passchendaele, it had all started to come together. Bean was working tirelessly interviewing officers and collecting details of the battles. Dyson had been joined by some of Australia’s finest young artists, who were producing canvas after canvas, depicting the life of the Anzacs. A young corporal, Ernest Bailey, had been attached to the AWRS with the specific task of collecting artefacts, and Bean was pleased to observe him enthusiastically cycling to salvage dumps and ordnance depots, then convincing some truck or wagon driver to carry a load of equipment back to Bean’s collecting point. Wilkins was willingly going into the tightest corners to get film and photographs. And Treloar was in London, heading up the AWRS and cataloguing the material Bean was shipping across. The history of the AIF was being systematically collected and collated. No other country was doing anything like it. Bean had the team he wanted and, with Hurley out of the way, he could spend the winter preparing the groundwork for the most extraordinary war memorial in the world.

On 18 November, Bean and Wilkins went to London to discuss with Treloar how best to run the photographic branch of the AWRS. ‘There is abundant work accumulating for it’, Bean noted.5 They decided to set up a darkroom at the AWRS headquarters to relieve Wilkins of the work of printing. Glass plates still had to be developed to be shown to the censor, but they could then be shipped to London, accompanied by the field notes.

But while he was in London, Bean’s vision for Australia’s war museums received a blow. He was surprised to learn that Great Britain was setting up its own museum. A committee had been appointed to set up a ‘National War Museum’ in London. Most alarming was the fact that the committee wanted the artefacts currently being collected by the AWRS. Bean protested loudly, arguing that the battlefield relics won by the Australians should remain the property of Australia. A few days later, the name of Britain’s proposed museum was changed to the ‘Imperial War Museum’ to signify it would be more inclusive of the dominions, and the committee continued to claim relics gathered by the AWRS. Bean continued to argue that anything collected by Australians should go to Australia.

Equally alarming to Bean was the realisation he would also have to fight to retain the services of Wilkins. Beaverbrook had wangled his way into various positions of influence to serve his business interests and his newspapers, and was aware that no British or Canadian photographers had produced anything like what Wilkins and Hurley had. Consequently, he was keen to get control of the Australians. Beaverbrook was already exploiting the Canadian photographs for his own profits by publishing them in his newspapers and staging exhibitions. Originally, money raised from exhibitions of official photographs was to be given to the Red Cross to help injured soldiers, but Beaverbrook had managed to ensure he would profit from this, too. He got himself appointed chairman of the committee to administer the funds from photographic exhibitions, and immediately claimed he needed the money raised to cover his expenses. Bean, who was used to wealthy businessmen profiting from the war, wryly observed, ‘it will probably go as he desires’.6

What really annoyed Bean, however, was that Beaverbrook had already spoken to Hurley, who indicated he would be willing to sell photographs directly to the publisher. ‘Hurley had an offer made to him by the Canadians — of all this we knew nothing whatever’, Bean noted tersely in his diary. Beaverbrook had offered Hurley further incentives, explaining that he could get photographs out of France without the need to have them cleared by the censor. Nor would Hurley have to restrict himself to just six composites. Working for Beaverbrook, he could make as many as he wanted. According to Bean, Hurley, ‘of course knew of this plan but said nothing’. Beaverbrook, through an intermediary, had also approached Wilkins. Bean recorded:

Cassells, the Canadian photographer, saw Wilkins the other day and told him that … [Beaverbrook] had arranged a Canadian exhibition for December. [By ‘Cassells’, Bean is most likely referring to the Canadian photographer of this time, Ivor Castle.] Cassells said that, ‘they had not more than about fifty photos altogether’. They went to Passchendaele twice — or tried to — but were bogged and shelled; and so they had really not been able to get their record of it — not enough for an exhibition, anyway.7

Two days after arriving in London with Wilkins, Bean met with Beaverbrook, who ‘broached the question of control of the photographers’ and said he wanted to use the Australian photographs for an exhibition he was planning. Beaverbrook explained that he would be staging the exhibition in London at Christmas, and the Australian photographs would be included. There was not a lot Bean could do about it. Bean realised that Beaverbrook’s ‘idea is to have one big exhibition of pictures covering the whole front … the Australian … photographers are to go under the control of the committee’. This upset Bean because, ‘We have our own policy — records and no faked pictures. Charteris [the censor] objects to faked pictures … [but] Beaverbrook is simply going to ignore him.’8

On the same day that Bean met with Beaverbrook, Hurley left England for Palestine, so the issue of smuggling pictures past the censor was put on hold temporarily. It would flare up again on Hurley’s return and would jeopardise the work of the AWRS.

After their meetings in London, Bean and Wilkins returned to France to continue their work through winter. Dyson and the artists produced sketches and paintings, Bailey collected artefacts, Bean filled notebooks, and Wilkins took photographs.

Shortly before Christmas, Bean and Wilkins went back to London, where Beaverbrook’s plans for his photographic exhibition were well advanced. Canada and Britain would feature prominently. The Times (London) described it as:

The first exhibition arranged by the Imperial War Museum, and it will be an unusually complete record of every phase of the world war. Not only every picture, but every exhibit will tell its story; and war relics of every kind will be shown. The Canadian War Records Committee are sending a fine contribution of pictures taken in the field … the Imperial War Museum also forwards a remarkable collection of official photographs; and there are others from the Commonwealths of Australia and New Zealand.9

Wilkins, always trying to impress his mother with the respectability of his career choice, explained to her:

I believe that I told you in my last [letter] that I was over here [in London] preparing some [moving] pictures and photographs for an exhibition in the Royal Academy building, which is perhaps the most notable place in the world for pictures to be shown, and I daresay we may be honoured to have ours shown there … I will send you a catalogue, if possible, and I understand that the pictures will later go to Australia. You may see them.10

After the exhibition opened, Bean’s evaluation of it was less generous: ‘The Red Cross exhibition of photos by Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and ourselves opened today. Canada’s photos were largely faked; ours were simply and strictly true and I would rather have them so a thousand times. Wilkins did the work’.11

After attending the opening, Wilkins and Bean went to dinner, where Wilkins revealed that he had been asked to be the official photographer for the Australian Flying Corps. The enticement was a captain’s rank. He had declined. Bean noted, ‘I shall have to try and get him a captain’s rank.’

More surprises awaited Bean in London. He and Wilkins went to Gaumont’s theatre to view the Pozières film that had been shot a year earlier. It had been edited by William Jury’s staff, and Bean was horrified to see the mess that had been made of it. As previously explained, Bean had followed the cinematographers about the battlefield at Pozières, carefully recording everything that had been filmed, produced a shot list, and asked that the film be put together ‘in order [to make] a thoroughly true, interesting story of the Australians in France’. Watching the edited film with Wilkins, Bean was shocked to see that the finished product bore no relationship to what he had planned. ‘I couldn’t believe this was the film in question. It seemed impossible’, he wrote. Scenes from other battles had been added, sequences were out of order, and the shots of Pozières were scattered through the ‘miserable production on the screen’. For Bean, it was another example of wanting to make a ‘show’ that would attract an audience, while ignoring historical accuracy. ‘The whole of our Pozières cinema work has gone for nothing thanks to these British and their private enterprise’, he wrote.12

Unfortunately, the Pozières film coloured Bean against moving images. It was too easy to change history through editing, he believed. His focus, for the remainder of the war, was to be on still photographs.

After visiting Gaumont, Bean stayed in London attempting to sort out the Pozières film, while Wilkins returned to France, because:

He wants to get a flashlight photo of a German being ambushed in No Man’s Land. Some infantry officer has told him of a point where almost any night the Germans could be seen to pass. His idea is to get out there with a flashlight, wait until they came by and then photograph them as they sometimes do with wild animals in America.

There is no excitement in the war in France, he says, but plenty of anxiety. He is a brave hunter of excitement. I can see that is the motive.13

Throughout winter, Wilkins diligently went about photographing and filming the Anzacs. The result is a series of images that vary greatly in content, detail, and creativity. A lot of his time and energy was spent in visiting the battalions and lining up officers in neat rows, like school children for a class photograph, and then ensuring that everyone’s face could be seen clearly in the photograph, and that everyone’s name and rank was recorded.

Wilkins also revisited battlefields to photograph the aftermath. He traipsed over old ground to get a picture of an unexciting pile of rubble that had once been a German pillbox — an object of little interest, except for the fact that 20 Australians may have died attempting to capture it. He photographed washed-out trenches where men had lived for weeks — eating, sleeping, and defecating in the mud — and all the time keeping their heads down for fear of being shot by snipers 100 metres away.

Wilkins went up in planes to take panoramic shots from the air. Knowing the importance of Messines, he went back there repeatedly to photograph the battlefield and the ruins. He photographed the men building Nissen huts in which to stable the horses, gathering firewood for the winter, playing football, or even helping local farmers with their harvest. And, when he had time, he took the artistically posed photographs that were prized by the newspaper publishers. No one else produced such a detailed record of life at the Western Front during the fourth winter of the war.

***

In Palestine, the capture of Jerusalem on 9 December 1917 meant the main battles were finished and the objectives of the Allies had been achieved. Six days later, Frank Hurley arrived with the intention of securing ‘a series of publicity and record pictures’.14 As author Peter Rees wrote in his history of Australian desert fighting, ‘Hurley knew that if his images were to have an impact in Australia, they would have to show Australian troops. If this meant massaging the facts here and there, then he saw nothing wrong with it.’15

Hurley was interested in photographs he could sell, just as he had been in France. He considered them his creations and his property. History was not the important thing. Producing a show — a saleable show — was. In Palestine, Hurley set about staging photographs for his show. He had missed the charge of the Light Horse at Beersheba and the triumphant march of the British and Australian troops into the Holy City. Never mind — he would simply restage them. Ultimately, his photographs would be combined with photographs actually taken during the battles, leaving historians to try to sort out the mess. A photograph purporting to show the charge of the Light Horse, reproduced in Rees’ book, is captioned:

This is the most controversial photo in Australian military history: is it a real photo of the Light Horse charge at Beersheba, or a re-enactment, possibly taken by the official photographer, Captain Frank Hurley? There are proponents for both positions, but the majority view is that it is probably a re-enactment.16

The charge of the Light Horse to capture Beersheba is one of the most famous events in Australian military history, but today no one can be sure which photographs of it are real and which are faked. In Palestine, free of Bean’s annoying insistence on getting a true record of the fighting, Hurley was able to produce the Frank Hurley Show unhindered. He was delighted, both with the opportunity and with the co-operation he received, writing:

It is amusing the keenness of the staff and brigades to have their photos taken. I have had three brigades turned out! Generals coming from distant parts of the country! and all the impossible stunts enacted for the cinema. Fancy taking a party of troops to Jerusalem for the sole object of taking part in a cine performance! Flying stunts and bombing raids! Every department solicits my presence, even the GOC [General Operational Command]. This unbounded vanity and desire for publicity, I regret, is absorbing much time and I shall be glad to be on the move again.17

Hurley stayed in Palestine for four months, happily taking advantage of willing officers, and the absence of Bean, to stage a series of dramatic, artistic photographs. He also made use of the bright desert sunshine to shoot a series of Paget colour plates. These, he knew, would be an exciting part of any show he staged in London on his return.

THE PHOTOGRAPHS November 1917–February 1918

After Hurley’s departure for Palestine, it cannot be assumed that Wilkins took the majority of photographs from that period onwards. Even though he was put in charge of the photographic unit of the AWRS, he and Hurley had, by November 1917, begun to train others to use the cameras. One of the first to do so was Sergeant William Joyce, who had begun as an assistant and, by the end of the war, was credited with many photographs. Therefore, Wilkins’ reluctance to claim credit for his work continues to be a problem in assigning specific photographs to specific people. Wilkins wrote that:

The duty of one of these photographers was to photograph every unit in reserve or at rest behind the lines, so that the Australian War Records [Section] would have a picture of every individual in the army. This left me free to continue my front line work, and I took precautions to know each day the area from which the photograph was taken and the name of at least one or more individuals in the photograph.

This enabled me, at the end of the war, to title the pictures taken, so that our record now consists of actual photographs of historical value. Every one is listed with the day of the year, the time of day, the name of the unit … and in most cases, by sending the photograph to the unit for identification, the name of every individual recognised in the photograph.18

E01525 is an example of the logistical difficulties that were involved in taking the many formal portrait photographs of this period. In this photograph, 155 men of the 26th Battery of the Australian Field Artillery take their positions in front of a large shed at Bailleul on 24 January 1918. The caption lists all their names and ranks. One consequence of this is that, 100 years later, if descendants of these men enter a name into the AWM website search facility, they are directed to this photograph and are able to identify their ancestor. The insistence on getting the small details exactly right — a personal quality shared by Bean and Wilkins — is another factor that makes the Australian official photographs unique. No one else was taking the trouble to record the names of the individuals in the photographs, especially when there were hundreds of people.

After the war, when Wilkins and Bean went to Gallipoli, AWRS photographers continued taking group portraits in France, but in many cases they did not record the names. Such photographs are of little value to historians or the descendants of the men today.

Throughout the winter of 1917–18, Wilkins spent time photographing the battlefields. E01496, showing the Messines area in January 1918, is an example. Wilkins repeatedly went up in planes to get such photographs. Examples of two of them, showing an Anzac camp, are E01380 and E01381. Wilkins initialled E01381 in Wilkins Volume XII. Explaining his aerial photographs, Wilkins wrote:

Of course, my special interest was in the flying corps. I would go out with an attacking squadron, but I would select a good pilot from an RE8 observing squadron and fly over the lines with an escort. But it was often necessary for me to give up my reconnaissance through being attacked by some German planes. We would rarely stop to fight, but would turn tail and fly home. Even so we had some narrow escapes in the air and had our machine riddled with bullets, although we were never wounded or forced down.19

Knowing that Bean wanted a photographic record of the battlefields of Messines before they were altered, Wilkins went back to them repeatedly. Details of each site were carefully recorded. For examples of this, see E01284 to E01297 and E01484 to E01491.

Wilkins carefully composed shots to show the work behind the scenes. E01304 illustrates the interior of a nursing station. The resolution of the full-plate glass negative is so fine that, if enlarged, the names on the bottles in the background can be read. E01310 shows the men erecting stables to winter their horses. Not only are the men in the photograph listed, but the caption — ‘Lieutenant Hassel died of wounds 30 September 1918’ — again illustrates the fact that identifying information was transcribed from field notes after the war.

The controversial Pozières film, which so upset Bean, can be viewed online via the AWM website. (See F00047.) Film historian Paul Byrnes has written:

This appears to be the more complete [film], the one that most closely resembles a rough scene plan outlined in [Bean’s] diary in January 1917. One of the problems is that the film is not complete. There is no ‘Part Two’ in the surviving titles, for one thing. Another is that we don’t really know with certainty what [Bean’s] diary plan was for — a rough draft, or a firm plan.

The other film, entitled With the Australians in France 1916, appears to be the film he claimed was butchered in London in 1917.20

This film is not on the AWM web site but can be viewed at: http://aso.gov.au/titles/documentaries/with-the-australians-in-france/

After the war, when Wilkins was in Melbourne preparing to go to Antarctica, Bean wrote to him, instructing him to edit the Pozières film, but it is uncertain whether Wilkins completed this work.