Chapter Twelve

A GARDEN OF EDEN

*

We may not expect that ever again we will live in a Garden of Eden, but through man’s knowledge of natural phenomena — a knowledge of things of the soil and of the sea and of the air, we may regain something of that condition; a condition in which spiritual and cultural development outranks the greedy grasp for individual material gain.

Wilkins’ speech, 19401

During the first decade of the 20th century. it appeared to many people, if only briefly, that civilisation had reached its zenith. Western nations such as France, Germany, and England had circled the globe to colonise, convert, and cash in. It was expected that any non-Christian country not ruled by Western Europeans would soon have that benefit conferred upon it. God would sit in heaven, kings would sit on thrones, and everyone would be better for it. The Western world was inventing marvels such as motor cars, aeroplanes, and telephones. Ships were suddenly powered by steam instead of wind, and some boats even travelled underwater. Moving pictures entertained, and medicines cured illnesses that only microscopes could see. The world, many people believed, could not get any better. When Australia was federated in 1901, one newspaper was moved to write, ‘conditions of human existence and the civilisation of mankind was … almost reaching perfection’.2

But the smug self-satisfaction of peace, possibility, and pleasing God barely lasted a decade before it was trampled under marching boots. At the beginning of the century, some people may have seen the war in Europe coming, but certainly no one expected it to last years, or that those predominantly Christian countries would slaughter each other’s citizens in the millions. By 1918, optimism for the future of mankind had been replaced with despair. People questioned the very meaning of ‘civilisation’.

Later in life, Wilkins told a story about leaving the Arctic in 1916. He recalled how, as he was packing his equipment, he was encouraging the Eskimos to help him and urging them to hurry:

They said, ‘What’s your hurry?’

I said, ‘I’ve got to get back to the war’.

They said, ‘What war? Who are you fighting?’

I said, ‘We’re fighting the people of Germany’.

They said, ‘Have you seen the man you are going to fight? What does he look like? Is he a big man?’

I said, ‘Oh, I’m not fighting any one man. I’m fighting for our kind of civilisation’.

It was an anecdote that Wilkins was fond of using to introduce a speech he regularly gave, titled Next Steps Towards Civilisation:

I found when I was travelling among the Eskimo, people who are considered to be among the lowest of civilised people, that they didn’t want to have anything to do with our sort of civilisation. At least not after they saw some evidence of how we handled our ideas.3

What was the answer to a civilisation seemingly intent on destroying itself? Wilkins had witnessed the Balkan War, where Christian people had unleashed their pent-up hatred on Muslim Turks. Religion, it appeared, did not offer an answer. ‘Religion does include moral principles which, if practised, would lead to the brotherhood of man. But it has not yet provided the solution’, Wilkins would say in his speech. Nor had science provided the answer. Science had advanced technology greatly in the years leading up to the war; but scientific inventions, while bringing benefits, had also given nations more efficient means of destroying one another. Politics had no answer. Politicians, in democracies, were only interested in their own countries. ‘If they work exclusively in the interest of their own country, it is evident that the result will not be for the greatest benefit of any other country.’4

If religion, science, and politics could not divert the world from its course to inevitable self-destruction, what could? Throughout 1918, Wilkins sought an answer. And the conclusion he arrived at, while he photographed the war, would set him on his quest to raise humanity to a higher state of civilisation, beyond what it had reached, and, he hoped, ensure that war on the scale he was witnessing would never happen again.

After the failure of the spring offensive, Germany had not lost the war, but it had certainly not won it. The big German push had been halted on the doorstep of Amiens, and for Germany it was now a matter of defending the blood-soaked ground it had gained. Some observers expected the fighting would settle back into the trenches and last, perhaps, another two or three years. Others believed that Germany, having played all its cards, would capitulate. Millions of Germans were without food, and families watched as young boys were put into uniforms to be sent to the front.

Meanwhile, changes were taking place in the AIF. Since the Anzacs had first rushed the beach at Gallipoli, the 1st Division, and subsequent divisions, had been under the command of a British officer, General Sir William Birdwood. ‘Birdy’ had been respected by the Anzacs and had, in turn, championed their rights and praised their fighting abilities. But, in three years of fighting, Australian commanders of individual divisions had emerged and proven themselves to be capable. Two in particular stood out: John Monash and Cyril Brudenell White. With Birdwood about to be moved to command the British Fifth Army (replacing General Hubert Gough, who had been made a scapegoat for the initial failure to halt the spring offensive), a new overall commander of the Australian Corps was needed. British prime minister Lloyd George, Field Marshall Haig, and Australian prime minister Billy Hughes all felt the new commander of the Australian divisions should be an Australian.

Bean made no secret of the fact that he favoured White who, like Bean, was modest and hard working. Monash, according to Bean, was too given to self-promotion. Also, White actively supported Bean’s work at every opportunity, while Monash was critical of Bean’s pragmatic method of presenting the facts. Monash declared he wanted an Ashmead-Bartlett to report the war — someone whose prose would stir and inspire, instead of Bean’s matter-of-fact style, which Monash considered ‘the apotheosis of banality’.5 Against Bean’s lobbying, it was Monash who was promoted, assuming command of the Australian Army Corps on 30 May 1918. At the time, the corps protected a front of 15 kilometres, with the British on its left and French on its right.

Monash knew there had been no Allied offensive on any front since the Battle of Passchendaele eight months earlier, and was keen to put on a display of aggression to prove that the trust put in him was justified. He wanted to show ‘there was still come kick left in the British Army’.6

He inspected, and was impressed by, the new Mark V British tank, which was a major step forward from the tanks that had failed the Anzacs at Bullecourt a year earlier. The Mark V had a more powerful engine and increased mobility, and could be driven by one man, instead of four. Monash seized upon it as a weapon that could help him smash the Germans, recapture the town of Hamel, and show the British High Command what he was capable of doing. He envisaged a plan where the tanks would grind their way across no man’s land and, after reaching the dreaded German pillboxes, ‘blot them out, much as a man’s heel would crush a scorpion’.7

Monash began planning a battle that would change the course of the war.

After the exhibition at the Grafton Galleries, Wilkins and Bean returned to France on 12 June. With Hurley gone, Wilkins was officially appointed the head of the photographic unit of the AWRS and was promoted to acting-captain. His absence from France had resulted in a two-week gap in the E-series photographs, and he was ready to get on with the job. His first task was to photograph the battlefield at Dernancourt, where the Anzacs had fought against greatly superior numbers. Much of the area was now no man’s land.

The Allied front ran around the edge of an old casualty clearing station, used to treat and evacuate the wounded. One hut stood in no man’s land, and Wilkins decided the best way to photograph the now-famous battlefield, while it was still covered by the debris of the battle, was to crawl into no man’s land, past the hut, and then turn his camera back towards the Australian lines.

On this occasion, Bean observed Wilkins crawl forward ‘close under the other side of the railway embankment [and] was photographing our front line from a point in advance of it’. Bean noted that ‘the long grass hid him perfectly from the Germans’.8

The photograph (E02499) is unspectacular and has probably never been published. But it shows the ground where a small group of Australians had, against overwhelming odds, fought and died to hold the Germans. Of all the historians who wrote about the war, only Bean would have wanted such a photographic record of the ground. Of all the photographers, only Wilkins would have understood, and been willing to risk his life to get the shot. The caption for the photograph is also an example of how Wilkins calmly recorded detailed information, even when under fire or in a precarious position. It reads:

A view of one end of the casualty clearing station and beyond it the Australian lines. The curved white line to the left was the Australian front-line trench; the German posts were situated where the white dots appear on the right, and also in the bank between the last two buildings of the clearing station. This photograph was taken from behind the railway embankment in No Man’s Land. The area was the scene of one of the finest exploits by Australian troops: the defence of the 12th and 13th Brigades in the Battle of Dernancourt, 5 April 1918. Assaulted by four divisions, knowing that no reserves were available at the moment, and knowing, too, that the breach, if made, would be fatal, these two brigades out-fought the attackers and beat back the Huns in a bloody repulse.

The stout defence of Amiens had been a magnificent achievement that had been pivotal to the war, but Bean still felt the Australians had been overlooked and that the credit, as always, had gone to the British. Previously, the Australians had been ignored because they were fighting as part of a much larger force, but at Dernancourt, ‘our people for one short hour have stood between France and Germany and had at [the] time, the whole fate of the Allied nations depending on them’. Bean felt wronged that the British newspapers still only spoke of, ‘our troops in Villers-Bretonneux’, or ‘our troops made a daylight raid near Morlancourt’, and failed to mention the Australians. He concluded, ‘it can only be left to me, if possible, to make known someday … what the Australian have done in this time’.9

Monash’s background as an engineer had taught him to plan every detail and to then ensure everyone understood their role. In the lead-up to the attack on Hamel, he issued detailed instructions for his officers. Every point was discussed, and his officers were asked for their input. Trenches were dug, and barbed-wire barriers erected so that the tank crews could practise the attack. Men from the infantry battalions, who had been let down at Bullecourt, were invited to witness demonstrations of the new tanks’ capabilities. Throughout June, Monash repeatedly checked every detail of his plan. For the forthcoming battle, 2,000 American soldiers would fight under Australian command and, it was hoped, gain battlefield experience. To boost the morale of the Americans, Monash set the attack for 4 July — America’s Independence Day.

Monash wanted a complete photographic record to showcase what he expected to be a grand victory. He summoned Bean and Wilkins, and explained the coming battle in detail to them. Wilkins was given three sergeants whom he could deploy along the north bank of the Somme River, where their cameras could overlook the battlefield. Wilkins planned to spend the night with the front-line troops, and then rush forward with them, when the time came.

But on 3 July, with everything in place, the American general, Pershing, got cold feet. American newspapers were questioning why American troops were being sent to fight under an Australian commander. Caught between saving face just before the battle, and appeasing the press, Pershing ordered half the Americans to withdraw. Many of them, keen to enter the fight, simply pretended they had not received the order. As often happened, Wilkins brought news back from the front lines, which Bean recorded:

Wilkins, coming down from the line on the afternoon of July 3rd passed some of the American companies coming out — those that the order had reached. They were most depressed. It is said that there are probably a fair number of Americans who will refuse to hear that order — I have no doubt about it.10

The battle went ahead with the Australians having to fight with reduced numbers, but everything went according to Monash’s detailed plan. The tanks crushed their way across the trenches and barbed wire, blasting the concrete pillboxes, before, right on cue, the troops followed. Previously, advancing machine-gunners had found they had run out of ammunition as they got further from their supply lines. This time, Monash had another innovation. The machine-gunners would place a sign on the ground beside them, and planes flying overhead would drop ammunition by parachute. The Battle of Hamel was well orchestrated and, despite the shortage of troops, the German were driven back quickly. Wilkins remembered:

I went out into the attack and found that these new American troops were not at all behind the veterans in going into the German trenches, doing their full share of cleaning them up, and establishing the new line after the ground had been taken. Though it was a successful battle, it was a strenuous one for everyone because we were short of men.11

Monash later wrote that ‘a perfected modern battle plan is like … a score for an orchestral composition, where the various arms and units are the instruments, and the tasks they perform are their respective musical phrases’.12 After the clashing of instruments for four years, the Battle of Hamel was music to the ears of the Allies. Every objective had been reached, 1,500 Germans had been taken prisoner, and a similar number had been killed or wounded. Anzac and American casualties were 800, the majority of whom walked from the battlefield, merely wounded. Two field guns, 26 mortars, and 171 machine-guns had been captured. Monash had predicted that the battle would last 90 minutes. It lasted for 93. The Germans had not known what hit them. French and English leaders sent their congratulations. The Australians, supported by 1,000 American troops, had changed the war.

In the following week, as the Allies pressed their advantage, Wilkins captured German prisoners. Near Monument Wood, on 10 July 1918, members of the 5th Brigade were advancing on German posts and firing on them. Bean noted that, ‘He naturally, being Wilkins, went over too’. Australian patrols were moving forward cautiously, lobbing mortars at the German trenches. ‘We had taken that day practically the whole German front line opposite Villers-Bretonneux without the loss of a man’, Bean wrote. ‘And when Wilkins was up there our trench mortar men were carrying up their ammunitions over the top and placing their mortars in the German front line.’13 Wilkins came upon two Germans in hiding, who came out and surrendered to him. It was another feat unique to Australian war photographers.

Buoyed by the success of Hamel, the Allies planned a major offensive to drive the Germans back from where they were still shelling Amiens. This time, Monash would command all five Australian divisions. The Anzacs would advance on a 6-kilometre front at the centre of a force of a million men. With five divisions available to him, Monash introduced another innovation that would later be studied and repeated by military tacticians. He would use four divisions in attack; two would spread out along the front, covering 3 kilometres each. They would push forward to their objective, then halt and hold it, while the divisions to the rear of them would leap-frog past and advance to the next objective. Having reached the objective, it would be held while the leap-frog was repeated. The fifth division would be held in reserve. Using this tactic, Monash planned to advance his section of the front more than 8 kilometres — a distance previously thought impossible.

The day before the battle, Monash briefed Bean and Wilkins on what was to happen, so that Wilkins could place his photographers and go forward with the troops himself. The only records of Wilkins’ movements during the battle are descriptions left by Bean, along with the photographs. On the morning of the battle, Bean recorded:

Far along the railway forward we saw a figure, which was quite possibly [Wilkins]. He went along the Canadian side. They got much further than our men. Our people were held up by two machine-guns and the Canadians sent forward one of their tanks along the south side of the hedge by the railway to clear out these posts. Wilkins got a photograph of them going along beside the railway hedge with the men all lying on their faces under heavy fire — he said you could see the dust spurts from the machine-gun bullets and that within a quarter of an hour there were twelve men wounded there.14

The Canadians cleaned out the machine-gun nests, and Wilkins ‘walked across towards where our infantry were, obliquely from the north of the railway’. At one point he was ‘800 yards [730m] in front of the [Australian] infantry’, calmly taking his photographs.

Later, he reached a trench and found men of the 6th Battalion who had lost their officers. Wilkins took their photograph. The caption is another example of how he carefully recorded details, even when under duress:

A photograph taken in the morning, during the Australian advance towards Lihons, showing members of the 6th Battalion resting in an old trench. The battalion had sustained very heavy casualties in the attack upon the Crepy Wood position, and this little group, found themselves without officers and in charge of the staff-sergeant on top of the bank, who is making a check roll call. Left to right, sitting on the bank: Sergeant (Sgt) Hunt; Quartermaster Sergeant Kirby; Sgt Ward. Front row, in the trench: unidentified; unidentified; Tullock, on the right (leaning).15

Having got the photograph, Wilkins scrambled off to another trench or embankment, dodging bullets to find another group. Or, coming across a dead German in a trench, he took a photograph and acknowledged, ‘he stuck courageously to his gun until the very last minute and died fighting’.16

Again, Monash’s plan worked. The Australians had been at the centre of a major assault (known as the Battle of Amiens) that had finally dislodged the Germans from a substantial length of the front. It was now a matter of driving the Germans back behind their Hindenburg Line and, once that had been broken, forcing them to surrender.

Following the Battle of Amiens, the French and the British heaped praise on Monash. It was immediately announced that King George V would travel to the Australian Corps HQ at Bertangles to knight him. It would be the first time such an honour had been granted on the battlefield in 200 years. (As it turned out, it was also the last.) Monash understood the importance of the occasion, and wanted it recorded. It would also make a splendid picture to have some of Australia’s war trophies on display. Bean arrived at Bertangles to find ‘the front garden was simply full of guns and howitzers and machine-guns and trench mortars, facing all ways. And there were two lorries bringing down more at the end of the drive.’ Never one to endorse either showy ceremony or the self-promoting Monash, Bean felt the whole exercise a ‘damned waste of time and energy at a moment like this’. Bean was further annoyed when Monash insisted that Wilkins arrive early at the chateau to arrange the trophies for the photograph. ‘Wilkins was probably very tired after his work up at the front’, Bean noted.17

The King arrived at 3.00 p.m. on Monday 12 August. One hundred men from each of the Australian divisions lined the road to the chateau to greet him. The King mounted the front steps to where, on a square of carpet, a table with a sword and a small footstool waited. ‘Wilkins’ cameras immediately opened their barrage’, and he captured a photograph that has been repeatedly published ever since, particularly in Monash’s many biographies.

A few days later, Wilkins wrote to his mother:

The happenings of the last few weeks makes it seem that the tide has turned and that we may hope at last that we are on the road toward making the enemy understand that we mean to fight to the finish. It may not take long, but now I’m sure everyone wants to go on until the job is done. If only the people at home could see the war as the soldier sees it, the war would soon be over.18

THE PHOTOGRAPHS July–August 1918

The Battle of Hamel

The Battle of Amiens

The photograph of the casualty clearing station, taken when Wilkins crawled into no man’s land and turned his camera back towards the Australian lines, is E02499. When he crawled past the advance lines, hidden by the grass, to photograph a village (Bean observed this, and noted it in his diary), the photograph is E02490. The subject matter is much closer than it appears in the photograph — usually less than 100 metres. Another example of attempting to photograph the enemy during this period is E02548.

The difficulty of taking shots of the barrage at night are illustrated in E02630 and E02631. These photographs were most likely taken by Wilkins at the commencement of the Battle of Hamel. For a series of photographs of the Battle of Hamel, see E02617 to E02637. Note that E02626 and E02627 are not part of the sequence, and that not all photographs have been digitised by the AWM.

When Wilkins was with the trench-mortar men, who were lobbing mortars into the German front line at Monument Wood (shortly before he captured prisoners) he took photographs E02673, E02677, and E02639, among others.

During the Battle of Amiens, Wilkins went with the Canadians, who had pushed further forward beside a railway hedge. (See photographs E02881 and E02882.) Wilkins wrote in the notes to accompany one photograph, ‘Some difficulty was experienced in obtaining this photograph as the men were at the time under heavy fire from machine-guns from the trees on the skyline in the distance on the right.’ After leaving the Canadians, Wilkins worked his way across to the Australian lines, approximately 600 metres away, and photographed men of the 6th Battalion (E02866 and E02867). The dead German, ‘who had stuck courageously to his gun’, can be seen in E02900. A well-known photo from the Battle of Amiens shows the young Lieutenant Rupert Downes addressing his seriously depleted platoon from B Company while they rest, having achieved their first objective. (E02790).

E02964 shows Monash being knighted. Film footage of Monash being knighted can be seen in F00018, starting at the displayed time code, 01:33:12:00.