Reginald Biggs sat down to write his memoirs in 1942. At the very moment the old journalist turned to his typewriter, Australian militia at Kokoda were struggling to turn back the Japanese advance. The Second AIF faced a battle at least as difficult as the First – and Australia seemed threatened by defeat and invasion. Biggs – or Ashmead, as he liked to call himself – gazed out on the little garden next to his study in Launceston. Then his fingers sped with practised ease across the keyboard, thumping out each letter: T-H-A-T O-T-H-E-R W-A-R.

At the time, the title seemed obvious enough. But then (as today), ‘that other war’ had other unintended meanings. Biggs’ reminiscences were different to the genre of ‘war books’ that preceded it. Most of these had a tendency towards ‘big noting’: one old soldier after another recounted his martial exploits and explained (often with embarrassing bluster) the part he played in winning the war. In comparison, the claims made in The Other War were modest – and often Reginald Biggs was not the centre of the story.

Little more than a boy when he went to war, Private Biggs served as a signaller.1 He was often near the front line, often shelled, often gassed and often afraid. At Messines his best mate had been killed beside him, cut down by machine-gun fire as they approached the German lines. But Biggs never went ‘over the top’ brandishing rifle and bayonet in pursuit of an unseen enemy. ‘[All] honour to those grand infantry privates who often got the rotten end of the stick,’ he wrote, ‘rather than to the generals who sit back in comfort out of danger and hear about the victories which the humble soldiers have won for them.’2

Nor was this a simple story of righteous Allies versus the evil Hun. It didn’t dwell on the difference between Australian troops and their British contemporaries. The callous incompetence of high command is a much laboured theme in most Australian war writing. Biggs was equally critical of his own side. There was ‘another war’ being fought alongside the battles – a class war that didn’t cease when men put on uniform. In the early days of the war, Australia’s officers were largely drawn from the ranks of the powerful and privileged. Those ‘lazy well fed officers’ thought they were ‘Gods’, Biggs complained. ‘Would be aristocrats,’ they treated enlisted men ‘no better than cattle’.3 And the most passionate passages of the book dealt not with German atrocities but our own. Without recourse to the death penalty to enforce discipline in the line, Australian authorities resorted to more use of Field Punishment No. 1 than many other Allied armies. It reduced ‘brave and good soldiers’ to ‘trembling nervous wrecks’:

Professional bashers . . . working in teams of half a dozen overwhelm a prisoner and belt the life out of him. Their brutality reigns the moment a prisoner is [subjected to Field Punishment No 1]. The flogging was not with whips but a repeated bashing with fists, and with kicks when he fell and lay on the ground.

And that was in addition to hours of being strung up to posts, usually in the open, with ropes bound so tight that they cut off the circulation. Many soldiers suffered gangrene after this treatment, sometimes resulting in the amputation of hands or feet. Biggs believed Field Punishment No. 1 was the invention of sadists, carried out by monsters. He was appalled Australia’s proudly volunteer army could be subjected to this.4

And there was one other important way that That Other War was different to most World War I memoirs. The interwar period saw the rise of what some called ‘stench literature’. In often quite sensationalised detail, veterans dwelt on the horrors of battle – the mud, the rats, the mechanistic murder of Flanders and the Somme. Biggs had seen too much of the slaughter to sanitise it. In sparse and disciplined prose, the boy cadet from the Examiner captured the ‘continuous din’ of the front line, ‘the constant anxiety and danger’; the ghastly sight of men butchered on the parapet, ‘the perennial misery of trench mud’.5

The Other War also told of times outside the actual fighting. ‘Life was blissful in our leisure hours,’ Biggs remembered, hearty meals at village estaminets washed down by bowls of coffee and plentiful vin blanc or vin rouge, served ‘by a lovely blonde’. Biggs walked through beautiful woods beyond the ‘broken countryside’, gazed on the wonders of ancient cathedrals, and ‘felt closer to God than I have ever been’ in the makeshift chapel of Talbot House, a soldiers’ club in Poperinge. He performed in plays alongside the ‘Anzac Coves’, flirted with pretty nurses, mastered jokes of ‘a war time flavour’ and discovered Paris – a city ‘full of kind-hearted ladies who wanted to make the soldiers happy on their leave’. 6 This life behind the lines introduced him to a world a God-fearing teetotaller from Launceston was never likely to see otherwise.

Old Pop: A souvenir from Poperinge. The town was several kilometres behind the lines and offered welcome relief from the horrors of the Ypres Salient. ‘Pop’s’ diversions catered for every taste and every budget; the YMCA dispensed free refreshments, Talbot House offered spiritual guidance, and a range of bars and brothels plied their trade amongst the troops. Biggs partook of several of these pastimes and, like many of his comrades, was fined for being absent without leave in the town. Courtesy Bruce Scates.

The makeshift chapel of Talbot House: One of the shrines inside the informal church where Reginald Biggs came to pray. Talbot House was established by Captain ‘Tubby’ Clayton, the ‘jovial padre’ – and fellow Australian – Biggs took a shine to. The entrance to the club was adorned with a sign reading ‘Abandon Rank All Ye Who Enter Here’. It was a sentiment the democratic private strongly approved of. Biggs later established a chapter of Toc H (the Christian society that ran Talbot House) in Tasmania. Courtesy Bruce Scates.

When Biggs returned to Belgium and France half a century later, a solemn pilgrimage across the battlefields was not the only thing on his mind. What he liked to call ‘fraternisation’ – and simply having a bit of fun – was at least as important as commemoration and mourning. In 1967, he wrote a series of letters to the organisers of Operation Amiens, a plan to return some thirty diggers to the Western Front for the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Villers-Bretonneux the following year. Worried that things were starting to look a bit too serious, he reminded the organisers of what might well be called ‘that other war’:

Simply having a bit of fun: A studio portrait of the Anzac Coves, an Australian Pierrot troupe who entertained at the Front, behind the lines, and even at Buckingham Palace. Of the ten men pictured here, eight are dressed in Pierrot clown costumes and two are dressed as women. The proceeds from their shows were donated to the Australian Comforts Fund. Courtesy State Library of Queensland.

I fully recognise that this tour is partly dedicated to a purpose, namely, a pilgrimage to the battlefields and certain war memorials with the aim of a tribute to the memory of our Fallen Comrades; also that, as the Dept. of External Affairs is identified with it, courtesy receptions at some embassies and consulates are unavoidable.7

But Biggs’ recognition and approval were two quite different matters:

. . . those who are planning the arrangements must equally bear in mind . . . that the veterans are spending their life savings to see as much as possible of the battlefields and their old rest areas to which they became strongly and sentimentally attached. With this in mind, I have just been studying a large area map of France . . . and drafted out an itinerary.8

Of course there were the obvious landmarks, the ‘many marvels to see and enjoy’ all throughout Paris. On the battlefields, Biggs longed to travel the line again, and visit Lille, the German-held town ‘we looked longingly at . . . from our trenches’. Other longings would surely be understood by every old soldier:

. . . the bus could take us to Armentières via the rest and training area we used to go back to. (I’d love to call at the billet . . . near Becourt . . . to see whether that fine girl and my company’s friend Marie is still there.)9

That fine girl and my company’s friend: F T Whitcroft depicts a first encounter between an Australian soldier and a mademoiselle behind the lines. The relationships troops established with civilians ranged a huge emotional spectrum, from respectable and platonic to casual and commercial sex. A happily married man when he wrote his memoirs, Biggs emphasised the innocent nature of these liaisons – but like most troops he was issued with prophylactic kits and could also purchase condoms (which the diggers dubbed ‘dreadnaughts’). Whatever precautions he might have taken, Biggs was admitted to hospital with VD in 1917. ‘The Prodigal Sun: Homeward Ho! On H.M.A.T. “Mahia”’ in Chronicle and Caricature courtesy National Library of Australia.

‘Doubtless several in your party would like to revisit old “Pop”, ’ Biggs continued, ‘lots of diggers frequented Talbot House in Poperinghe’, its warm fires, spacious lounge and cheery atmosphere had been a welcome escape from the cold cramped horror of the trenches.

A number of the ’68 pilgrims threatened to ‘wag it’ if the trips to the cemeteries weren’t balanced by time in bars, cafes and other places ‘diggers frequented’.10 And most were appalled that an Anzac Day service planned in England might prove a very formal occasion. Fred Cahill (an old friend of Biggs and the tour’s official organiser) struggled to explain their ‘requirements’ to (somewhat bewildered) British veterans. The wreath-laying and ceremony at Whitehall was all very well, but ‘[h]ere in Australia Anzac Day is dedicated to . . . fraternisation’. Would it be possible to host some drinks, the letter politely inquired; ‘tea and cakes’ would not quite be the go, perhaps something a little stronger. Above all: ‘Speeches are not our favourite pastime; [no more than] a word of welcome and a reply from our leader’. Music, on the other hand, was entirely acceptable, ‘We always have [a] . . . community song from our World War I repertoire.’11 Writing yet another letter, Reginald Biggs expanded on his own ideal itinerary:

In England, why not a sentimental trip to Salisbury Plain . . .? In France, [let’s do] a round trip . . . through our old rest areas . . . Then have a couple of days doing Paris (wonder whether the Hotel All Nations brothel is still functioning?)12

Though well into his seventies, Reginald Biggs, it seems, was still fully functional. For a good time in Paris, he would happily forgo all but a day’s rest on the homeward journey. In the twilight of his life, battlefield feats seemed far less memorable than youthful exuberance and sexual adventure – this was ‘that other war’ Reginald Biggs chose to remember.

Scholarship on the Great War now stands at a crossroads. Some argue that historians have placed too much emphasis on the horrors of battle, forgetting that most of a soldier’s time (on the Western Front, at least) was spent out of the line and that there life assumed a kind of normalcy. Why focus on the casualties when many men escaped unwounded? Why exaggerate the hardships when men in rest camps were sometimes better housed, fed and cared for than they had been as civilians?

This revisionist line is fraught with danger. While it is true that not every man was wounded or killed, every survivor feared death or maiming. Nor could life behind the lines – an interlude in constant carnage – ever really escape the totality of wartime. Drink and sex only ever offered fleeting oblivion. Men like Biggs missed the friends, the family, the simple comforts and reassuring certainties left behind them.

Even so, his testimony reminds us that there was ‘that other war’: moments of compassion, friendship, even joy amid the madness. Towards the end of his life Reginald Biggs told a historian that though he marked every Anzac Day with what he called ‘a kind of reverence’, it symbolised a sacrifice unimaginable to those who had not seen it.13 But he also never forgot the other side of war.

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING: This story is based on Reginald Biggs’ autobiography That Other War (Launceston: privately published, 1983); his correspondence with the RSL in regards to the 1968 pilgrimage to the Western Front AWM 3DRL6037; his service dossier NAA: B2455, BIGGS R A; and his repatriation file NAA: P107, H12148 PART 1 and 2. We have also benefitted from the 1987 documentary The Unknown Soldier directed by Gus Howard and written by Russell Fewster, with an interview with Biggs before his death filmed by David Foreman. For further reading on relationships behind the lines, see Susan R. Grayzel, ‘Mothers, Marraines, and Prostitutes: Morale and Morality in First World War France’, The International History Review, vol. 19, no. 1, Febuary 1997, pp. 66–82; and James Curran, ‘Bonjoor Mardemwazell! Diggers Discover Gay Paree’, Wartime, no. 3, 1998, pp. 37–41; and Craig Gibson, ‘Sex and Soldiering in France and Flanders: The British Expeditionary Force along the Western Front’, The International History Review, no. 3, September 2001, pp. 535–79. For a comparable account to That Other War see Joseph Maxwell, Hells Bells and Mademoiselles (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1932).

1 Robin Gerster, Big Noting: The Heroic Theme in Australian War Writing (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1987); this quote is taken from an interview with Reginald Biggs in Launceston in 1987. We thank our colleagues Russell Fewster (writer), Gus Howard (director) and David Foreman (cameraman) for their generous assistance in providing a tape of this video interview and the series of audio tapes that accompany it.

2 Private Ashmead [Reginald Biggs], That Other War (Launceston: privately published, 1983). This limited edition is held in the archives of the State Library of Tasmania. We again thank Russell Fewster for providing the same. A journalist himself, Biggs adopted the penname ‘Ashmead’, a reference to the war correspondent who first reported the Landings at Gallipoli.

3 ibid, p. 13, 100, 121.

4 ibid, pp. 172–3.

5 ibid, pp. 157, 274.

6 ibid, pp. 165, 198, 204, 217.

7 Undated letter Reginald Biggs to Fred Cahill, AWM 3DRL 6037.

8 ibid.

9 ibid.

10 Letter from Reginald Biggs to Fred Cahill, October 1967, ibid.

11 Letters from Fred Cahill to Air Commodore B. Roberts (Ret), 29 January 1968, and Frank Kennedy (RSL Representative in ‘Blighty’), 14 October 1967; letter from Frank Kennedy to Fred Cahill, 9 October 1967, ibid.

12 Biggs also modified the American itinerary, suggesting a run up to Niagara Falls instead of ‘the waste of time at the United Nations joint’; letter from Reginald Biggs to Fred Cahill, 5 September 1967, ibid.

13 Reginald Biggs interview with Russell Fewster, Launceston 1987.