1923
From 1920 to 1924 Savige served in the militia under Gellibrand, who commanded 3rd Division, and had come from Hobart to Melbourne to serve as Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police.
Since the war they had always corresponded. Gellibrand had helped Savige overcome his regret at not having been part of the team that had smashed through the German defence lines in Monash’s 90-day blitzkrieg at Amiens, overcoming 39 German divisions and ending the enemy’s chances of winning. Gellibrand knew of Savige’s efforts in risking his life to defend those 70,000 refugees in Persia.
Savige appreciated his former commander’s consoling words, but knew that many of his former colleagues would not be aware of what he had achieved in this remote theatre of war.
Gellibrand urged him to write a book about his Persian experiences, telling him that if nothing else it would be cathartic to put the story down on paper. ‘Remember Monash’s book,’ Gellibrand told him. ‘He wrote a quick tome [published in 1920] on the AIF’s victories knowing that the real story would be overridden by the fiction of British writers and historians. They will never countenance or accept that we were the prime reason for crushing the Germans.’1
Savige responded by using his copious notes to write Stalky’s Forlorn Hope, which reads like a travelogue interspersed with bloody action. It was published in Melbourne in late 1920. It did not make the bestseller lists, yet Savige was most satisfied that he had gone to the trouble. It documented his performances away from the main game in France, and was there for all to peruse if they wished to know what he had achieved.
Over the ensuing years, the two ex-soldiers discussed several issues, foremost among them the reputation of the returned diggers. Many had not fitted back into society. The Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial League of Australia (now the Returned and Services League, or RSL) was not ready to deal with ‘image problems’. Gellibrand helped form the first Australian Rotary Club in Melbourne, which encouraged its businessmen members to do good works for society. This led to the creation of the Hobart Remembrance Club, in 1923, after his return to his Tasmanian home in 1922. Its charter in effect was to help rehabilitate ex-servicemen; to improve their public image, mainly through their involvement in worthy projects; and to formally remember their fallen comrades at parades and on special days. The latter would also mean they did not have to grieve alone, which often led to despair. The club lunches would also perpetuate the mateship so vital during the war, and broken in part when it ended. A further strong motivator that was beginning to alarm Savige was the mounting number of suicides within the former 1st AIF fraternity.
In August 1923, Savige took a boat to Hobart to acquaint himself with the Remembrance Club. On 11 September, back in Melbourne, he held a meeting of ex-diggers, and two days later, Legacy was formed. It began with the same aims as Gellibrand’s club: to help ex-soldiers who for whatever reason had ‘fallen through the cracks’.
***
Seven weeks later, a dispute between the police and the government shook Victoria and had repercussions around Australia. The police wanted increased pay and pensions for retired officers. Their demands were rejected. The situation was exacerbated by the government’s decision to appoint ‘supervisors’ to monitor police officers’ performance at stations around the city. The police branded the watchers as spies and wanted them removed.
Police at Melbourne’s Russell Street Barracks went on strike on the evening of 1 November 1923, the beginning of the Spring Racing Carnival. By noon the next day, 600 metropolitan police – half the entire force – were on strike.
The city of Melbourne was in the midst of one of its worst ever crises; observers likened it to the Eureka Stockade rebellion nearly seven decades earlier, when gold miners revolted against taxes. But the miners’ unrest had remained in the goldfields northwest of the city and had had little or no impact on Melbourne. This time the place was in lockdown, with no protection on the streets for ordinary citizens.
The police strikers were fired. But the Victorian Government and the Melbourne City Council had no idea how to keep order. The Lord Mayor, Sir John Warren Swanson, who was on the point of retirement, called in sick, leaving the crisis to his successor, Lord Mayor elect William Brunton.
Gangs of men began smashing windows and looting shops in the city. Desperate, Brunton formed the innocuous-sounding Citizen’s Protection Committee.
Then he phoned Monash. Could be help? The general did not hesitate to do his civic duty. He suggested that Brunton enlist Brigadiers General Pompey Elliott and George Johnston, who had both served under Monash. Elliott was a most pertinent choice. He had been Monash’s favourite battle commander, responsible for defeating the Germans at Villers-Bretonneux around Anzac Day in 1918.
Monash also contacted an old mate, Major General James Whiteside McCay, who was in Sydney. Monash told him to motor down to Melbourne, now. The situation was urgent.
Whatever the general had in mind, this selection meant the situation was serious. In a heartbeat, Monash was acting like Australian Corps Commander again. He saw immediately that a new armed force would be needed to put down riots and restore law and order. Yet he was hesitant to designate it as a military operation.
On Friday, 2 November, Savige too received a call from Monash. They had met before, but only briefly.
‘I didn’t even reflect for a second,’ Savige later recalled; ‘when this man made a request, you obliged. There was no one like him. His bristling intelligence, his calm, his crisp and clear articulation, his good humour even in such a critical situation. They all added up to authority.’
That night, while Monash was organising his force, mobs hit Melbourne and spread into the suburbs, including Malvern where the Saviges lived. Two hundred people were injured, mainly in shopping areas. Two were killed.
Savige and his digger mates took their weapons out of cases and closets and cleaned them. Savige oiled his Enfield, a ritual that he admitted calmed him.
‘I can’t deny we all felt a surge,’ Savige recorded; ‘we were being called to arms, unpalatably against our fellow citizens. But robberies and murders were going on. We did not hesitate to answer the Old Man’s [Monash’s] call.’
Lilian was nervous but, as ever, supportive. She wanted to know what was going to happen.
‘If I know anything about the big chief,’ he told her, ‘we are going to stop the riots.’2
***
The Citizen’s Protection Committee met early on the morning of Saturday, 3 November. Premier Harry Lawson, Police Commissioner Alexander Nicholson and the State’s attorney general Sir Arthur Robinson were mainly silent. None of them had ever faced a crisis that amounted to civil unrest.
Monash was now the (unpaid) Vice Chancellor of Melbourne University, and had the demeanour to match. He was wearing a fine, light grey wool suit, but still managed the look of a slightly crumpled intellectual. Yet when it came to discussing plans for combating the disturbances, his manner changed. Here again was the general who had commanded the defeat of a fearful enemy army. The others listened and were in awe of his clear, concise logic.
After summing up the situation and what had to be done, he directed Johnston and Pompey Elliott, now a federal senator, to go to the Melbourne Town Hall and start recruiting ‘special constables’, who would be mostly former 1st AIF diggers. Monash was careful with the semantics. He spoke of constables, not soldiers. The instruction to Elliott and Johnston was to form the ‘specials’ into squads under competent former officers, including Savige.
Looting began again on Saturday around noon, after the thugs responsible had slept off all their violence and pillaging of the night before. Monash was alerted. He had his chauffeur drive him into the city to see for himself. The ferocity of the destruction had abated, but the impact was still evident.
It was enough for Monash.
‘He decided to step it up,’ Savige later explained, ‘and create an operation that was more obviously military in nature. He told us that it would be independent of the police.’3
At midnight on Saturday he told Elliott to set up an HQ and a ‘fighting and feeding staff on military lines’.
Monash was going to mop up a city mob before the rampant activity went any further.
‘He did not panic,’ Savige later said; ‘in fact he was the opposite. His manner was so strong, calm and directed. He gave us all confidence. We had seen this all before on a vast scale. Our experience was important and he wanted order restored in quick time.’
This was Monash the military genius once more in action. He shut down Melbourne and placed an indefinite curfew on city and inner-city suburbs. He was designated commander of the special force being organised at the town hall.
The word had spread fast throughout Saturday and into the early hours of Sunday morning. Diggers heard the call to arms on the phone, in the pubs, in the playing fields and at work. The great man wanted them. In response, 1000 men, mostly ex-soldiers, dropped what they were doing and were sworn in within hours.
Savige was at the town hall assisting, along with 30 former senior 1st AIF officers. He felt the electricity building. Remnants of the once formidable army were back. The men knew what was happening to their city and were thrilled to hear the bugle call once more. Whether their lives were now full like Savige’s, or whether they had never had a job since returning to Australia, the response was the same. Inside 24 hours they were formed into sections, and began to patrol the streets before the first fingers of the Sunday dawn crept over the paralysed metropolis. They had been asked to bring their rifles, which many had kept since the war. Some had swords. It was the summer, and several had cricket bats.
McCay drove down from Sydney and contacted Monash early on Sunday morning. Monash put him in charge over Elliott, who he knew would want to be in the action rounding up the gangs of thugs. Elliott was made ‘outside commander’.
The whole operation was important and potentially very dangerous, but Savige felt energised. ‘We all had a sense, unsaid, that our experience [from the Great War] was worthwhile,’ he later wrote; ‘it was revealing how we all slipped into our previous roles as if we had only been away on a week’s leave, instead of five years. The men were exhilarated. They were back on the job that never left them, and they could never really leave, especially for bad or for good in their dreams.’4
Monash and McCay turned to Savige and others to contact more ex-officers. Both officers and ordinary soldiers rallied at the town hall before 7 a.m. on Sunday. They found Monash in complete control, hovering over maps of Melbourne and the suburbs, with coloured pins marking the police depots.
‘Monash was in his element,’ Savige would recall, ‘in civvies – a suit, tie and hat – and smoking [a cigarette]. He was all concentration pointing to places [on the map] just as I imagine he did on the Western Front.’
Savige and the other designated officers each took 20 men into the suburbs and confronted the looters. Seeing the organised groups of ex-diggers, with their rifles slung over their shoulders, most of the rebels dispersed.
‘Some looked as if they would make a stand of some sort,’ he said, ‘but they melted when we came at them.’
Some ex-troopers from the Middle East war had horses, and plenty of them put on their hats with emu feathers, the insignia of the Australian Light Horse, which had defeated the Turks in Syria, the Arabian Peninsula and Palestine. Many had bayonets or swords, which made them appear formidable. The reputation of these men had preceded them. The thugs were soon running scared.
There were fights here and there in the suburbs and the city’s back alleys, but on each occasion, the ex-diggers took control. Their disciplined yet aggressive conduct frightened the formerly brave rioters, who either ran or put up their hands in surrender.
One ex-digger was asked by a newspaper reporter if it was tough going.
‘We faced the Prussian Guard on the Somme,’ he replied; ‘this was easy by comparison.’5
By late Sunday, the volunteer force had grown to 5000: the size of a brigade. Monash and McCay organised them into five battalions of 1000 each.
‘Such big forces moving in disciplined lines through Melbourne streets was a sight to remember,’ Savige later said; ‘disorganised mobs of forty or fifty men dispersed or were taken to lock ups to cool off. Ring-leaders were charged under Monash’s powers of arrest. He had the legal issues worked out from the start so that everyone knew where they stood with what they could do.’6
The curfew kept everyone off the streets day and night. With the thoroughfares empty, any malingerers or congregating troublemakers were isolated and easy to spot. The ‘specials’ were on the job, marching around and keeping law and order.
Monash released a press statement: ‘We are now in great strength. Efficient bodies of experienced men are in reserve in thirty depots in the city and suburbs, ready with horse and motor squad for any emergency.’7
On Sunday night, Melbourne was far quieter than normal, and there were only pockets of disturbance in the suburbs. By Monday, the looting was all but mopped up.
Tuesday, 6 November, was Melbourne Cup Day. More than 125,000 attended the carnival at Flemington to watch the favourite, Bitalli, win, which increased the celebrations of many punters. The surmounting of the mobs over the previous four days brought extra enthusiasm to their reaction.