In September 1914, a charming young doctor and OGG (as the old boys of Geelong Grammar were called) wrote a note to The Corian, the magazine of his old school on the outskirts of the Victorian port city. ‘I have volunteered, and though I have not heard definitely, am hoping to be taken in one of the Field Ambulance Corps with the 2nd Expeditionary Force,’ he told the magazine. ‘I have seen some other OGGs who are going with the First Force. My work if I go will not be as arduous or dangerous as theirs, but a man must do what he is most fitted for.’
Sid Campbell was writing from his study inside the austere quadrangular Gothic splendour of Ormond College, at the University of Melbourne. The college bears the name of its principal benefactor, Francis Ormond, son of a Scottish sea captain, and an early self-made Victorian grazier and philanthropist. Founded to serve the needs of the Presbyterian elite in Victoria, Ormond College is a severe-looking nineteenth-century institution, with its 165-foot tower and baronial dining room with open fires in the winter and a high table for the academic staff. Campbell, previously an undergraduate here, had now returned as resident medical tutor for the first two terms of 1914.
A month later he was in very different surroundings, and wrote, ‘First attempt at keeping a diary – how long will it last!’ The first entry read modestly enough: ‘Entered Broadmeadows Camp 14th October 1914 as M.O. to 8th Light Horse knowing nothing of military work.’ Within a few weeks, however, Sid Campbell would be known to officers and troopers alike as the most popular man in the regiment.
Sydney James Campbell was just 27 years and four months old, an all-round sportsman, a complete product of the wealth and privilege of the time. He was born in 1887, fifth child in a family of eight, in Portland, home port for the pioneering Western District families, especially the Hentys and the Campbells. Indeed, Sid was related to Ted Henty, the keen young lieutenant from Hamilton, and it may well have been Ted who helped persuade him to join the 8th.
Sid Campbell’s father had become very wealthy and in 1895 bought a magnificent mansion called ‘Maretimo’, where the family spent many happy times. His schooling took place at Hamilton College, where he was probably a weekly boarder, and then Geelong Grammar, from 1900, as a day boy. He quickly excelled in both studies and sport. In 1905, Sid won a scholarship to Ormond to study medicine, and five years later he graduated with final honours in medicine, surgery and pathology, plus winning a scholarship in pathology with first-class honours. He moved on, just down the elm tree avenue of Royal Parade in Parkville, to become a senior resident at Melbourne Hospital. After a year he was back at the university as Stewart lecturer on pathology and acted as assistant in that department to Professor Sir Harry Allen, ‘taking the lectures to the dental students’. During the first two terms of 1914 he was resident medical tutor at Ormond before he joined up.
In one way, Sid Campbell is still there at Ormond – in the form of a photograph staring down from a wall as today’s students hurry along the corridor in their jeans and T-shirts. The picture is of a rowing crew and includes one of his friends, Mervyn Bourne Higgins. Merv, or ‘Buggins’ as he was known, would also become a brother officer, both serving together in the 8th.
Merv Higgins was the only son of the first president of the Arbitration Court, Mr Justice Henry Bourne Higgins. After a year at Ormond, Merv went on to Britain to study classics and history at Oxford University and was a member of the victorious Oxford rowing crew in 1910. He returned home to practise as a barrister and then joined the army.
Ormond College followed the rest of Australia in its enthusiastic response to the outbreak of war. It was a continuum: you owed it to your family, school, college – and yourself – to answer the call. On hearing the news, eight Ormond students immediately cut short their studies and ‘volunteered to flap a towel in Great Britain’s corner during the encounter at present “on” in Belgium’s stadium’, quoted Stuart Macintyre in his ‘Ormond College Centenary Essays’.
At least one other Ormond man joined the 8th. Eric Whitehead, a grazier’s son from Minhamite, had been a medical student. He came to Ormond from Geelong College, where he had been a prefect, a member of the cricket XI and a rower in the senior fours. Eric enlisted as Trooper 545 and would die in the dust at The Nek, with no known grave, as a temporary second lieutenant.
Altogether, 437 Ormond students, past and present, would serve in the First World War. Of the 356 medical men, graduates or undergraduates who joined up, 142 would be killed. More names on yet another one of those long wooden honour boards that survive today, with carved laurel leaves and surnames and initials written in faded gold, asterisks marking the fallen, the Glorious Dead.
Among the new recruits that Sid examined at Broadmeadows was John Dodd Mack, the third of the Boys from Berrybank, who signed up early in January 1915. Jack was now 34 and a station manager. Sid noted that he had small moles on his back and a scar on his left hand between the thumb and first finger. He pronounced him fit for service. The commanding officer of the 8th, Colonel Alexander White, scrawled his signature again boldly and appointed the eldest Mack brother to ‘A’ Squadron.
Jack was to find that the pace of training was quickening. The 8th and 9th were being licked into shape, now that two-thirds of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade were stationed at Broadmeadows. The Bullant, as usual, was making his presence felt. Regardless of Antill’s approach, Trooper Tom Austin of the 8th reported that ‘the instructors had a congenial task because every man was so keen … everybody getting most impatient to get away to the scene of operations, serious doubts began to arise in many of our minds if we would get away at all. Every imaginable rumour was spread about, regarding German defeats and the Kaiser’s death that we almost began to despair.’
Dave McGarvie, the sniper from Pomborneit, just kept going to church regularly on Sundays, sometimes holding prayer meetings in his tent with his new friend Lance Corporal George Hughes, the Presbyterian minister from Balranald who had ridden down to Broadmeadows and joined Ted Henty’s troop. ‘Lecture on attacking positions and practical demonstration,’ noted Trooper McGarvie one day during this time. As usual, he was writing in pencil in his pocket diary. ‘In afternoon, lecture on defending position. Demonstration.’ Then, ‘Parade at 8 pm till 9.30 pm for night work’.
But after the long days and nights during the week, with the surprise turnouts, the weekends at Broadmeadows were often lonely for a young man from the country. ‘Wrote letter to father. Had some pistol practice – 50 shots. I am the only one in the tent tonight. Very few men in camp,’ Dave recorded one Saturday.
Nothing too exciting on the Sunday either, it seems: ‘Had a shower bath. Church parade near YMCA tent. Warm day. Had a quiet time all on my own. Went to service in Church of England tent. Text: “Lord Teach Us to Pray”.’ And after he prayed, Dave McGarvie would make sure he’d entered his scores from that day’s shooting at the Williamstown rifle range, neatly, in pencil: ‘Grouping 20 out of 20, 100 yards; 200 yards 19 out of 20; 300 yards 18 out of 20.’
At the same time, Aub Callow and the signallers were practising semaphore with flags and transmitting messages in Morse by means of heliographs and electric lamps. Field telephones were still primitive and unreliable, as shown in an account of signal training at the time: ‘Particular attention is devoted to buzzer work. The buzzer is fitted to a field telephone and instead of the voice the receiving signaller hears a succession of long and short buzzes that would be distinct above the sound of battle.’
Wireless was in its infancy and there were no portable walkie-talkies. For signallers training in Australia, these were still the stuff of dreams. In 1913 the government had bought the first six wireless sets ever in use in the Australian Army, known as 500 Watt Marconi Wireless PACK sets. They had more than 250 kilograms of gear, and in the field were carried on four horses and needed six men to set up. Each set had two 10-metre-high antenna masts, which had to be erected 100 metres apart using guy ropes and earth mats, and a petrol engine to generate power. The sets had a range of almost 50 kilometres, sometimes a bit more in clear conditions. Four of the sets, accompanied by 30 men and 40 horses, would be sent to Gallipoli, where they were mainly attached to British Army units and used to help artillery observers aboard Royal Navy ships pinpoint attacks.
In Australia, flags, flashing lights and buzzers on field telephones all sounded fine – and looked fine when rehearsed on the flat fields of Broadmeadows. In practice, on Gallipoli, communications were a nightmare. How could a signaller wave his semaphore flags above the parapet in trench warfare without getting his head shot off? Or erect a heliograph on a tripod? If there were no effective radios in existence, how could orders be transmitted between the different units dug in on the ridges, and how could they be received from senior commanding officers who chose to float offshore in ships far removed from the front lines? Field telephone lines on Gallipoli were often destroyed in the shelling, so messages would have to be delivered by runners dodging snipers’ bullets as they dashed between the trenches.
And as for the field telephones, Antill himself would write in his war diary in November 1915: ‘Phone connections rotten – same all through – no wire, bad, obsolete phones and commutators – and we are using phones condemned in Australia before the war we cannot get any others. This means disaster in an attack, but no one appears to bother – requisitions have been in and renewed for nine months …’
This was a reality of a frightening, new type of warfare. It would be just one of the many revelations for these troopers who were still being trained in the ways of cavalry from the era of the 1854 Charge of the Light Brigade.
But now it was the beginning of 1915 and the men at Broadmeadows were ready for action. On 20 January 1915, the 8th and 9th regiments of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade paraded through Melbourne. It was a day that stopped the city.
Joseph Mack travelled up from ‘Berry Bank’ and stayed at Scott’s Hotel the night before. He noted succinctly in his diary afterwards: ‘Good horses and men looked well. Jack, Ernie and Stanley amongst them.’ The Age had plenty more to say on the subject, having despatched a team of reporters to cover the momentous event. It was a huge day for everyone, and, for many, it was the last opportunity to see the pride of Australia’s young men before they rode to war.
The following day, the four decks of headlines read:
AUSTRALIA’S LIGHT HORSE
MARCH THROUGH CITY
WELCOME TO THIRD BRIGADE
ENTHUSIASTIC CROWDS LINE STREETS
Below which the reporters wrote:
By 8 o’clock the long column of 2,000 men was formed in fours and the head of the column was already moving out of camp. Through Essendon, Moonee Ponds and Flemington the brigade reached Melbourne shortly after 10 o’clock and, at Campbell and Sons horse bazaar on the outskirts of the city, halted for a few minutes to water the troop and transport horses – just time to smoke a cigarette, then tighten girths and straighten slouch hats, ready for the two mile parade before the eyes of Melbourne.
Meanwhile Melbourne was ready and waiting their arrival. Every suburban train that reached Flinders Street or Spencer Street station before 11 o’clock, and every tram car that ran on city routes helped to swell a crowd that lined the whole marching route three deep and gathered in mass round the saluting base.
Collins Street and Bourke Street were avenues of flags and bunting, shop and office windows from ground floor to roof were crowded points of vantage. Prompt, at 11.40 am the head of the brigade turned from King Street into Collins Street and met the first cheers of the crowd.
‘Where’s your hankies?’ called a mother to her girls. ‘You’ll have to give a shout for Cyril.’
Shout they did – and not for Cyril only.
As the head of the column wheeled into Collins Street, the mounted band struck up a swinging march, the men stiffened on their horses, and it took the most persuasive calls from sweethearts at the barricades to get the least flicker of recognition from the trooper on parade.
An old gentleman watching eagerly leaned out of the crowd with a handkerchief tied to the end of his umbrella ready to raise it frantically as his son rode by. He received a grave, dignified nod of the head, and waved so frantically that the line of horses shied and nearly broke the column.
All along the route of march it only required one voice to raise a ‘hip’ and a hundred voices finished the cheer.
Another reporter took up the story at Parliament House:
Punctually at noon three khaki horsemen swung into the road from Collins Street. A rattle of applause, the shrill notes of a distant band and the thudding of a drum announced the approach of the troops; in another minute the leading squadrons came into view and the march past had begun.
Three military police head the column, acting as outriders, and, sitting like statues in their saddles, with rifle butts resting upon their right thighs. Then came the staff officers, Lieutenant-Colonel Antill and Captain McFarlane and they in turn were followed by the brigadier, Colonel Hughes, riding at the head of a group of buglers and headquarters details.
The Governor-General’s hand rose to the salute, a sword blade glistened in the sun. The head of the column passed by, and then followed the brigade, squadron after squadron, passing at a walk and led by the mounted band of the 8th Regiment with burnished instruments and drums swathed in the Union Jack.
In many respects the march past of cavalry differs from that of infantry. Infantry march by solemnly with a mechanical effect of swinging legs and arms and swaying rifle barrels. Cavalry pass with a merry dash. They typify the joy of life in a military spectacle, passing with a music all their own and a lilting air of irresponsible jauntiness.
So it was with the Light Horse yesterday. The six squadrons of the 8th and 9th Regiments rode by to the shrill bell-like treble of jingling chains; the staccato rattle of hoofs on the hard road and the soft creaking of burnished leather. They rode with sheen and sparkle of burnished chains, a glitter of spurs; and in the sun the officers’ swords gleamed and flickered as they were brought up to the salute.
And so the light horse clattered away from the city towards the outer-Melbourne suburb of Heidelberg, to camp beside the River Yarra. Their transport wagons had been loaded with rations and baggage. With absolutely no idea of where they were going, and almost completely untrained for the realities of the close-quarter, brutal trench warfare that lay ahead, the innocent Australian mounted infantry prepared to sail on their adventure.