CHAPTER NINETEEN

‘Very Sad About Everything’:

Painful adjustment to peace

NOVEMBER 1918–JUNE 1919

IN LONDON, faraway Australia and elsewhere around the world, the outbreak of peace was greeted with jubilation and euphoria. Even staid people went berserk with relief. But the reaction in the AIF was generally more muted. The sense of satisfaction was swamped by sober reflection. Victory had come at a terrible price in Australian lives, and the prospect of civilian life seemed strange, daunting. Years of soldiering and strife had prompted many Australians to abandon their former aspirations of a safe return to a fulfilling post-war existence. Scotching such hopes as unrealistic, even unimaginable, amid the relentless slaughter, they had come to accept that they were probably doomed to share the fate of so many fallen comrades. Now, suddenly, they had a big adjustment to make. ‘The feeling is bewildering’, Charles Bean observed, ‘one doesn’t get used to peace in a day’.

Although 11 November was to become, for the rest of the century and beyond, a notable anniversary to commemorate the signing of the Armistice, it was just another day’s training in the 15th Brigade. In fact, the Armistice was not even mentioned in the brigade diary, and Elliott’s personal diary did not refer to it either. ‘Musketry. Gas projector demonstration’ was all he recorded on 11 November. However, to Milly Edwards he described the ‘great rejoicing’ of ecstatic French civilians, and he wrote buoyantly to Violet. ‘Isn’t this just splendid news we have now?’ he enthused; ‘soon I’ll be coming back home to my little darlings’.

How soon was the big question. Organising the return of some 160,000 soldiers to Australia was a complex undertaking. There were a number of complicating factors. Most Australian soldiers had been away a long time, and wanted to get home as soon as possible; there was intense competition for the limited available shipping, and obtaining the necessary vessels was difficult; the AIF was expected to be represented in an army of occupation in Germany; Prime Minister Hughes was wary of unemployment problems in Australia if too many soldiers were sent home too quickly; and, after the biggest war there had ever been, the transition to peacetime conditions involved such immense upheaval that organising anything substantial was bound to be difficult. For some time, while various issues affecting the repatriation of the AIF were worked through, Elliott had no idea when he might get home. ‘No one knows when apparently’, he told Kate. But from what he could ascertain, he wrote in mid-December, peace would not be finalised until ‘at least May … and it will be 9 or 12 months after that before we all get away from here’.

However, the demobilisation and repatriation of the AIF became another organisational feather in Monash’s cap. After Hughes placed him in charge, Monash applied his masterly administrative proficiency to this challenging task with distinct success. Appropriate criteria were established to determine which men were entitled to return sooner rather than later; the requisite ships were prised from the British authorities; and it was eventually resolved, after some confusing toing and froing, that there would be no AIF participation in the army of occupation in Germany. Thanks to Monash’s outstanding organisation and the skilful leadership of commanders closer to the men, including Elliott, the AIF did not experience the serious unrest that plagued the forces of some other countries during this difficult period. By the end of 1918 Pompey was beginning to realise that he might be home much sooner than he had pessimistically predicted.

Oddly, the Armistice actually postponed his reunion with Kate. His persistent efforts to persuade her to come to England, as other AIF wives (including his sister Violet Avery) had done, had finally paid dividends. Kate planned to leave soon after Christmas; Belle would look after young Violet and Neil. Elliott was thrilled. ‘Oh Darling, I am counting the days till you come to me’, ‘I can hardly go to sleep at night for thinking of it’. When he first saw her again, he warned, he might burst into tears. But the Armistice was a spanner in the works: ‘with a very sad heart I have sent … a cable telling you that it is now inadvisable to come’.

Elliott’s chagrin was all the greater because he needed his ‘sunshine lady’ more than ever. Since the Armistice he had been in the grip of a pronounced morale plummet. The fighting from March to October had been almost continuous; he had been sustained through those arduous and stressful months by his unswerving focus and single-minded commitment to the ultimate goal of victory. With that supreme objective attained, a big letdown had materialised in its wake. His purposefulness and motivation had vanished, leaving a void that was filled neither by satisfaction with the war’s victorious conclusion nor by his post-Armistice activities. There was too much waiting and uncertainty, too much time to think and brood.

His surroundings were no help. Late in November Elliott and his brigade were transferred to Favril, 25 miles east of Bellicourt. Pompey was unimpressed. ‘We are still in the same place and a very damp, dull old place it is’, he was reporting within a week. A December shift to Dourlers, near the Belgian border, brought no improvement. ‘It’s a melancholy country in the winter, with dripping skies and hardly a green leaf showing’; the meagre ration of daylight began to disappear soon after three o’clock, and there was ‘unending drizzle for days’.

At a deeper level Elliott was troubled by guilt. The aspect of the war he had found most difficult was having to order men into situations that put their lives at risk. Some, inevitably, had died; yet he was still alive. Most AIF veterans, having seen so many of their comrades perish, had not expected to survive; when they found that they had, many felt guilty as well as relieved. This sentiment was more prevalent among front-line soldiers than brigadiers, but Elliott felt it acutely — no brigadier was a more front-line commander than Pompey, and he identified strongly with his men. His survival was one of the minor miracles of the war.

Remarkable escapes had continued right to the end. On 29 September he went forward with his newly appointed intelligence officer to scrutinise developments in the Hindenburg Line battle. They were ahead of the advancing 15th Brigade when a shell hit the intelligence officer, who was right beside Elliott. Pompey, yet again, escaped unscathed, and proceeded further forward undeterred. It was universally recognised that he would never send a man anywhere he was not prepared to go himself. During the war he proved this time and time again; afterwards the men he led confirmed it time and time again.

Still, he had somehow managed to survive when so many fine men had not. Among them were the Henderson brothers and Jimmy Johnston in the early days at Gallipoli; Norman Greig at German Officers’ Trench; Ken Walker at Steele’s Post; Noel Edwards and Harry Webb at Lone Pine; Geoff McCrae and Tom Elliott and all the others at Fromelles; Jimmy Topp at Bullecourt; Herb Dickinson and John Turnour at Polygon Wood; Dick Simpson at Villers-Bretonneux; Steve Facey and Merv Knight at Hamel; and Stan Neale and Norman Dalgleish at the end. This was not to mention his own relatives, George Elliott and Jack Campbell. With ‘Death as an ever present companion’, Pompey informed Latham in September, ‘we have lost so many good companions that it seems but a step over the border to join them’. Two months later, after the Armistice, he assured Charles Denehy’s wife of his

love and gratitude towards all the gallant boys who have died for us in the ranks of the Brigade. It has been an inspiration to live with them. One might well wish to have died with them.

Similarly, to Belle:

I don’t think that in civilian life one realizes how gradually we come over here to regard death almost with contempt. There were so many of our pals gone before that it seemed little more than a step in the darkness to join them.

Elliott’s frame of mind was not helped by a conference he attended at Corps headquarters on repatriation arrangements. Among the commanders present was Birdwood, exuding as usual what Elliott described as ‘a pretended affability that he imagines deceives us’. But when Birdwood noticed the 60th Battalion colours Elliott had been wearing on his sleeve since that unit’s disbandment — a considerate gesture appreciated by 60th men — the veneer of feigned bonhomie vanished in an instant, and Elliott found himself on the receiving end of an extraordinary full-blown tantrum. Birdwood began to ‘chatter and jibber’ at the miniature colour patch ‘like a demented monkey’ (another Pompey account described the AIF chief spitting like a cornered cat):

‘What is that you are wearing? … How dare you, sir, wear colours which are not authorised? … Quite wrong, a brigadier favouring one of his battalions.’

‘Sir, I am not showing preference to one battalion over another. That battalion no longer exists. It is a tribute to the dead. I put in an application to wear it at the time the dissolution was carried out, and have had no reply.’

‘You’ll get a reply all right.’

With that, Elliott recorded, Birdwood flounced ‘out of the room, calling Generals Monash and Hobbs to follow him, for all the world like a cock wren and his harem’.

What happened while they were outside Elliott did not know. But he concluded that Monash must have spoken to Birdwood ‘very tersely’ about the way Elliott had handled the 60th’s disbandment, because when Birdwood reappeared he had transformed himself into the acme of affability:

he came back and fairly slobbered over me. He wanted to thank me for getting the dissolution carried out so smoothly which he was informed was done using the weight of my personal influence with the men, and that he was informed also that this made possible the carrying out of the dissolution of other units in the force, and so forth. I told him it was mainly due to my officers. ‘Oh no’, he said, ‘I am sure it was due a great deal to your personal influence and your inculcation of a brigade feeling in your brigade’. The little worm omitted to mention that he was one of the greatest obstacles to the formation of a brigade spirit in the beginning.

Moreover, Pompey alleged, Birdwood had been careful not to jeopardise his prestige within the AIF by addressing the men himself on the subject of disbandment.

This incident reinforced Elliott’s rancour. He had already told Kate he would not be following her advice to keep his bitter criticism of the AIF chief to himself: ‘I don’t care who hears my opinion of General Birdwood or repeats it’. In fact, he threatened, he was going to express his condemnation publicly in due course. It was ‘the greatest possible misfortune for the Australian[s] … that they were ever placed under his command’. Pompey suspected — correctly, and perceptively early — that Birdwood’s ultimate ambition was to become governor-general of Australia. ‘General Monash is worth a dozen of him as a soldier’, Elliott told Belle, ‘and as a man there is no comparison at all’.

Pompey was predictably irate about some of the decisions announced at the conference where the Birdwood tantrum occurred. He was, of course, incensed that Birdwood was to continue as GOC AIF — or, as he and certain others saw it, had managed to cling to the Australians. With Monash now Director-General of Repatriation and Demobilisation, and Hobbs chosen to succeed him as the Australian Corps commander, Pompey was also infuriated to learn that the vacated command of the Fifth Division had been given to Tivey. Aspersions previously cast on Tivey within the 15th Brigade — in particular, the jibe that he made a habit of keeping his 8th Brigade out of the fighting whenever he could — were revived in earnest:

I am very dissatisfied. No one here has the slightest confidence in Tivey as a leader, and I think everyone said when they heard of it ‘Thank God the war is over’. They all know it is because Birdwood has a spite against me for standing up to him for the boys’ sake.

Elliott’s burning resentment about being overlooked for divisional vacancies resurfaced with a vengeance:

Passed very restless night … Birdwood’s supersession of me by Gellibrand and Glasgow keeps recurring to me with stinging force and gives me no rest. I must bring this feeling to a head by demanding to have placed before me in black and white what my alleged crime has been and when the punishment for same is going to end.

The following afternoon Elliott raised the matter with Hobbs, who promised to discuss it with Birdwood at the next opportunity. He did. As Hobbs told Pompey afterwards, Birdwood claimed that there was nothing against Elliott except certain episodes of ‘irrational conduct’, and asked Hobbs if he was prepared to recommend Elliott for promotion to divisional command; Hobbs replied that he was. ‘Not likely to do me much good now’, Pompey concluded.

When Haig’s official dispatch concerning the famous Villers-Bretonneux counter-attack was published, Elliott was irked by its implication that the task of Glasgow’s brigade south of the town had been more difficult than his own brigade’s assignment to the north. Pompey sent a forceful correction to Treloar at the Australian War Records Section, contending that this perception had been influenced by Birdwood, who had already decided to supersede him by promoting Glasgow (and Gellibrand). The contrasting treatment he had received in awards for the Villers-Bretonneux triumph was no coincidence, Pompey assured Treloar. Whereas the French had awarded him the Croix de Guerre and a citation of lavish praise, he had received from the British — with Birdwood ultimately in charge of honours and awards to the AIF — nothing at all, even though a copy of his operation orders had been requested by British staff officers and acclaimed at British military schools.

The supersession grievance was not his only gnawing concern. The prospect of being reunited with his wife and children was marvellous, but he was increasingly perturbed about his capacity to provide for them amid post-war uncertainty, disruption, and probable unemployment because, he feared, his professional reputation had been tarnished:

with all the trouble I will have to face as soon as I arrive it will be as hard as any battlefield or rather far worse, for I would rather go on facing the Germans here for 20 years than face those people Roberts has cheated of their money.

He had not heard for some time from those handling his affairs, and realised that they might be reporting as infrequently as possible, professionally at least, because whenever they did the fees they would be charging him would accumulate further. But he became alarmed when Kate mentioned that she had recently endorsed several cheques at his lawyer’s request. For over a week he remained ‘very much upset about this matter’, worried that these amounts may have comprised expenses that he might end up having to pay, until it suddenly occurred to him as he tossed and turned with Christmas Day about to dawn that they concerned something altogether different, and there was no need for anxiety. Still, acute feelings of shame and disgrace about the Roberts defalcation continued to haunt him. The thought of having to deal with its consequences on his return filled him with dread: ‘I am shrinking from it like a child from a scorching fire, but it must be faced’.

Reports reaching him of family friction were another concern. The central figure was his temperamental sister Flory. When Elliott heard that she and Lyn were not getting on, he instinctively sided with his sister-in-law. He then discovered that his mother was finding Flory so obnoxious that she had decided to move to Brisbane with Violet and the other Averys in order to get away from her. Learning of this distasteful quarrelling straight after losing Stan Neale and other fine officers and men in the Hindenburg Line battle ‘seemed just about the last straw’ to Elliott. He sent Flory a blistering letter. ‘I never want her near my house again’, he told Belle. ‘She’d be turning Katie and the children against me next with that poisonous tongue of hers’. Later, when he became obsessed about the impact of the Roberts defalcation on his professional future, his revived anxiety was redoubled by his conviction that Flory was more than capable of maliciously aggravating the situation if she had any inkling of it. He felt extremely vulnerable:

She would ruin me with anyone at all if she could, and I only wish some one would get her away out of Melbourne before I get back there. I never want to see her again.

Other factors contributed to his severe post-Armistice plummet. It was ‘very sad’ to see ‘the old battalions dwindling down’ as drafts of homeward bound veterans departed. He was still receiving distressing letters from relatives of 15th Brigade soldiers who had been killed. And the advent of the Spanish influenza pandemic was a chilling development. Its fatalities included officers in his brigade and a nephew of Milly Edwards, who succumbed when convalescing after a slight wound. Reports of its virulence in Melbourne were alarming. Then, on top of everything else, came the unsettling spectacle of ‘a thick clot of blood’ in his urine.

All this had reduced him to a sorry state:

At times I get fearful fits of depression when I can see nothing but misery for us all, and I wake up sometimes in the night with a shock and my heart feels as if it is on fire and every nerve aches because I can see no way out anywhere, and no promise of getting on with the weight of debt over me.

With his slumber frequently disrupted, he felt ‘constantly dull and sleepy and tired’ in the daytime, unable to shrug off a lethargic ‘good for nothing feeling’ despite various endeavours to get a good night’s sleep. ‘I have tried sitting quietly reading, and walking until I am tired out, but it does not seem to make any real difference’.

Late in January he crossed the Channel for a month’s leave in England. He was feeling ‘very homesick and miserable and depressed’, he told Kate, and longed to be able to ‘rest my head in your lap and feel your fingers over my eyes and hair … to soothe away my troubles’. Elliott spent much of his leave at Bryn Oerog with Milly Edwards, who considerately organised a series of outings to keep him occupied, without managing to ameliorate his depression.

He was feeling more past his prime than ever:

I fear you shall find me greatly changed, dear, very much older. Do you remember having to hunt for grey hairs in my head? I think the difficulty soon will be to find the black ones.

Like many AIF survivors, he was beginning to realise that his best years were behind him. ‘I have been through a lot of things, dearie, and am not what I once was’ after ‘four years of war and disappointment’. But it was more than just a sharpened sense of middle age or anti-climactic past-his-best malaise. Pompey was being tormented by bouts of severe depression — ‘fits of the blues’ he called them. They were ‘terrible, almost more than I can bear’. He tried to ‘cheer up’, but felt essentially powerless to avoid or resist them. His English leave made no difference. ‘I am very sad about everything’, he wrote after returning to Dourlers.

Not everything, of course, caused him anguish. Kate was unflaggingly supportive; her responses to his melancholy letters soothed his torment. He was pleased to learn that his children reacted excitedly to news of the Armistice, realising it would expedite his return. And the telegram he received from Kate in March stating that the household had escaped the Spanish flu was a great relief. So, too, was the all-clear he received about the blood in his urine. The doctor he consulted found no sign of disease or inflammation, and concluded that the most likely cause was ‘worry and weakness’ as ‘I am very much run down’.

Another boost for his morale was the reunion dinner for past and present 15th Brigade officers held at his headquarters on 3 January. This function was a great success. The Dourlers chateau was decorated with the colours of the brigade units (the red and white of the 60th Battalion being especially prominent), and various trophies were displayed. Officers present included former battalion commanders Cam Stewart, Charles Mason, and Neil Freeman. With Pompey presiding, Denehy moved a toast to the brigade in fine style. ‘To toast the brigade’, Denehy began, was ‘to toast our brigadier, for the name of General Elliott would forever be associated with the 15th Brigade’. Denehy recalled the brigade’s inauspicious start as an assortment of disparate remnants and recruits; it was the brigadier who had unified them into a cohesive formation. The first great test was the infamous desert march, ‘a well-nigh impossible task’ which should never have been attempted. It ‘was accomplished … only by the dominating personality of the brigadier’. Denehy went on to salute the ‘spirit of unity’ within the 15th Brigade that had produced its superb record at the Western Front, and referred to the notable contribution its officers had made elsewhere:

We gave General Stewart and Major Cameron to the 14th Brigade, and the 14th got four VCs. (Applause.) We gave [Colonel] Freeman to the 8th Brigade, and their brigadier got promotion. (Applause and laughter.) The toast was drunk with enthusiasm. So spontaneous and demonstrative was its reception that it was several minutes before General Elliott could make himself heard when he rose to reply.

The brigadier thanked everyone present for the loyalty to himself and the brigade encapsulated in Denehy’s speech, reminisced about shaping raw material into cohesive AIF units, and expressed the hope that everyone would soon be home to enjoy the peace that their efforts had done so much to precipitate. Another feature of the evening was music (with fervent renditions of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ a highlight), and there were speeches by Scanlan, Freeman, and Mason. Responding to Scanlan’s toast to ‘Old Comrades’, Stewart said he was delighted to be back at such a happy reunion. Although he now commanded another brigade, he still felt he belonged to the 15th Brigade.

Even more memorable than this gathering of his officers was a unique tribute Elliott was given by his men. Its genesis was his decision to call a brigade parade, ostensibly to present certain medals that had been awarded and not yet received, but mainly for another reason. As he announced to the men paraded before him, this was probably the last time they would be able to assemble as a brigade because of the increasing flow of departures. Accordingly, he wanted to take the opportunity to express to the brigade as a whole his heartfelt thanks. He had set high soldiering standards, but the 15th Brigade had attained them, even during the most severe trials. Because he had insisted on high standards for decorations, everyone with an award in the 15th Brigade knew that it had been genuinely earned. He had scrutinised every recommendation himself, and ‘honour was awarded only when honour was due — there was no eyewash’. As for the decorations he was wearing himself, he regarded them merely as souvenirs won for him by the officers and men of the brigade. It was sad to see the 15th Brigade ‘gradually dwindling away’, but he wanted to extend his best wishes to everyone about to go home. The parade broke up, and Pompey returned to his paperwork.

That afternoon, to his astonishment, the whole brigade marched back to the chateau. After the morning parade the sentiment had spread that a gesture of tribute to the brigadier was called for, particularly in view of the brigade’s limited future. It was a voluntary demonstration, but practically everyone participated. The first Pompey knew of it was when the battalions marched into the chateau grounds at 3.00pm, preceded by their bands and colours. As each company skirted the chateau its commander demanded three cheers for the brigadier, which were lustily given. This cheering brought Pompey outside, where he stood on the front steps with a lump in his throat, acknowledging each company as it passed. The battalions then formed up together, and executed a ceremonial manoeuvre as the bands played the brigade’s marching music.

Gollan described it as a ‘never-to-be-forgotten’ experience. Emotions were stirred, the weather for once was splendid, and there ‘could not have been a more picturesque setting’ with the ‘beautiful surroundings of the chateau’ blending superbly with the bands and regimental flags. At the end of the manoeuvre, Denehy (as the senior battalion commander present) called for three more cheers for the brigadier from everyone. Those cheers were heard a very long way away. Denehy and the other leaders then explained to Pompey that the men wanted to demonstrate their feelings for him. They had the utmost confidence in him, and knew that wherever he sent them he was always ready to go himself.

This marvellous tribute was, of course, a profoundly gratifying fillip for Pompey, especially considering his struggle with depression. It was hard to respond adequately to such an unexpected and moving demonstration, he began. The main thing he wanted to say to supplement his morning remarks was to ‘have faith in yourselves as Australians and in your land of Australia’. When he was forming the 7th Battalion in 1914, he recalled, English officers were available and seeking appointments, but he had refused to accept any officer without experience in the Australian military forces. ‘This is an Australian battalion and will be officered by Australians’, he had insisted. During the war the AIF had repeatedly shown that Australians could match it with anyone:

It has been the fashion in Australia to decry our own, but the men of the AIF will alter this when they return. You men have equalled the English Guards with their strict discipline; you have fought against the pick of the German Army, the Prussian Guard and the Wurtembergers; you have competed on the rifle range with the French Chasseurs Alpins — all with the same result. Think of these things when you go home. Have pride in yourself and in your country and determine, relying on yourself, to make your country the best to live in and die for … When we came to the Somme in March last year it seemed that there was nothing left for us to do but just to die in our tracks in trying to stop the rush. But when we met the Germans in a really determined manner they did not have a chance with us at all … I thank you for your spontaneous token of respect. I am proud to think that for over three years I have served with you, and have at times had to punish you, and yet I hold your respect. It is a great thing, and I thank you for this demonstration of your loyalty and your devotion.

On 26 March the 15th Brigade ceased to exist as a distinct formation. Early in April Elliott took over command of the combined residue of the 8th Brigade and his own. Now based at the unprepossessing Belgian mining town of Charleroi, he was asked to recommend a site for the proposed Fifth Division memorial at Polygon Wood. Visiting Hobbs to discuss this and other matters, Elliott had a conversation with another commander who happened to be at Australian Corps headquarters, the Commander-in-Chief himself. Haig told Pompey that it had been essential to keep hammering away at Ypres in 1917 because the French army had been gravely weakened by mutiny, a fallacious and historically significant claim — the record of this conversation in Elliott’s diary demonstrates that Haig was propagating this deception much earlier than realised by even historians who have denounced him for it. Elliott also had a private quest at Polygon Wood:

I got to see poor Geordie’s grave. The cross is still standing, but has a shrapnel bullet through one arm of it which has splintered it … The cemetery where Geordie is buried is being done up.

The following day he journeyed to another battlefield of grim memory, Fromelles. It was still a forbidding place, especially for AIF visitors; Charles Bean, spending Armistice Day there, found it full of the remains of Australians killed in July 1916. Elliott’s inspection of the German positions uncovered another harrowing dimension:

[A] church … had been turned into a solid cube of concrete, except for a stair so narrow that only with difficulty could a normally built man ascend it. At its head near the ridge pole it terminated in a loophole for an observer, who with a telescope could, with perfect safety to himself, count every sentry in our lines. He also had an extensive view across our back areas, and could at once detect any preparation for attack. A more unsuitable site from which to launch a well-advertised attack could hardly have been found on the Western Front.

There was also the sad task of relinquishing Darkie. After their long association Elliott would have liked to bring him home to Australia, but the cost was prohibitive and he had to be sold in London instead. Before reluctantly parting with him, Pompey arranged for a leather label to be tied around Darkie’s neck with a note outlining his war service and asking the purchaser to look after him well. Subsequently Elliott was delighted to receive a letter of assurance from his new English owner that he was being treated kindly.

Late in April Elliott concluded his duties in France, and crossed to London just in time for the celebratory march past the King by Dominion soldiers on 3 May. Pompey declined to participate himself, being ‘not at all keen on these show jobs’, and aware that if he did march he would be installed at the last minute to lead the Fifth Division column, a role that had been given to his friend Stewart (who may have been looking forward to it). But he did go along to Buckingham Palace to have a look. Securing a good seat in the front row near Haig, Hamilton, Rawlinson, and the King, Elliott felt ‘our boys … looked very well’ as they marched proudly past.

With his own departure for Australia now imminent, he began a busy round of farewells. In the longish letters he sent the children he was about to rejoin there was perhaps a sense that he was consciously preparing himself to resume a direct fatherhood role. He told Violet that he was delighted her music was progressing so well that she would be able to play hymns for him when he returned; he encouraged Neil to strive to emulate his sister’s scholastic commitment, regretting that he had been unable to ‘be near you and advise you’ like other fathers. Even as the war ended he was still giving Belle the same refrain he had sent ever since leaving Australia: ‘Send me lots of stories of the wee people soon, I am never tired of hearing of them’. As for his own frame of mind, Kate’s soothing letters had helped, but

I am still feeling a good deal run down, dearie. I expect it is the Australian sun and your own dear smile and presence that I really need to buck me up and put me right. At times I feel very tired, listless and helpless — nervous breakdown due to war strain. Hundreds of officers have completely broken down in that way and are complete invalids … I believe it is the worry of the business more than the war that has brought it on.

By mid-May he was on his way home. The Orontes left Devonport on 16 May with Elliott allocated a congenially situated cabin alongside his old friend Brigadier-General Bennett. The generals were given a break from official duties; during the voyage the officer in charge was Colonel Ferres, and the adjutant and quartermaster were 15th Brigade lieutenants. Shipboard administration was impressive. The Orontes population (which included a contingent of nurses and AIF wives) had a variety of activities to choose from. For the first few days seasickness was widespread; but within a week the sea was calm, the weather fine, and deck quoits and cricket were all the rage. Empire Day, 24 May, was marked with a special program of events, including a concert, a dinner, and a lecture by Elliott on the origin and history of the commemoration. On 6 June the Orontes arrived at Durban for a two-day stay. Leave was granted to explore ashore, and ‘the people of Durban could not have been more hospitable’. Choppy seas revived seasickness on the 11th, but not for long. Wireless contact was established with Australia on 17 June.

The Orontes reached Adelaide on 26 June. South and West Australians disembarked, and Elliott set foot on Australian soil for the first time in over four and a half years. That Thursday was also special for another reason — it was Kate’s birthday. He sent her a telegram: ‘Expect arrive Melbourne Saturday, can you arrange carrier baggage, happy returns love Elliott’. The message she sent him was full of anticipation: ‘Counting the days till you arrive, will meet you, fondest love Katie’.

It was just after midday on 28 June when the Orontes reached Port Phillip Heads. Quarantine authorities came on board to check everyone’s temperature; medical checks had been scrupulously regular throughout the voyage, and the all-clear was duly given. By the time the Orontes reached Port Melbourne it was getting dark, and the disembarkation officer ruled that the returning men would have to stay on board until morning, although they were only 200 yards away from the pier and their waiting loved ones. This was insensitive bureaucratic inflexibility at its worst. Pompey got hold of a boat and went ashore, and his forthright representations did the trick: the preposterous decision was countermanded, and disembarkation began. At last Elliott found himself able to do what he had rehearsed over and over in his imagination. With a racing heart, he proceeded towards the welcoming embrace awaiting him.