EVEN THOUGH THERE were no hostilities within Australia during World War I, and limited enemy action during World War II, home fronts in Australia and Britain have played a vital role in mass conflicts. As well as being the place to which all soldiers wish to return as quickly as possible, home is the location of essential industrial, medical, political and social support. Home fronts are as much a part of Anzac as battlefronts—not only during a war but also for many years afterwards. It is on home soil that the national community will attend to the inevitable aftermath of broken minds and bodies, as well as to the expression of grief and commemoration.
In 1915, the alcoholic, depressed and impoverished writer Henry Lawson became the subject of a rescue mission by his friends and journalistic colleagues. A number of them approached then-NSW premier Holman who suggested that the writer be given a literary commission in the recently established (1912) Murrumbidgee Irrigation Areas. The job had a number of advantages. It provided Lawson with somewhere to live rent-free; it got him away from his unhealthy Sydney lifestyle; and, most of all, it provided him with a degree of self-respect. All Lawson had to do was write verse and stories that related in some way to the great experiment in large-scale agricultural irrigation, a subject in which he had a strong interest.
Lawson took up the position, on and off, between January 1916 and the end of 1917. He produced a considerable number of poems and sketches during this period, some published in The Bulletin magazine and in a few other newspapers, by then mostly filled with often grim war news. Now ageing, the once-radical firebrand had become a staunch supporter of the British Empire and of Australia’s role in the war then raging at the other end of the world. Lawson was unfit for service himself, but his experiences and observations of life in the Riverina allowed him to compose his last great poem. It tells a story of the wrenching effects of war, of one among many similar tragedies suffered by families throughout the country.
The boy cleared out to the city from his home at harvest time—
They were Scots of the Riverina, and to run from home was a crime.
The old man burned his letters, the first and last he burned, And he scratched his name from the Bible when the old wife’s back was turned.
A year went past and another. There were calls from the firing-line;
They heard the boy had enlisted, but the old man made no sign.
His name must never be mentioned on the farm by Gundagai—
They were Scots of the Riverina with ever the kirk hard by.
The boy came home on his ‘final’, and the township’s bonfire burned.
His mother’s arms were about him; but the old man’s back was turned.
The daughters begged for pardon till the old man raised his hand—
A Scot of the Riverina who was hard to understand.
The boy was killed in Flanders, where the best and bravest die.
There were tears at the Grahame homestead and grief in Gundagai;
But the old man ploughed at daybreak and the old man ploughed till the mirk—
There were furrows of pain in the orchard while his housefolk went to the kirk.
The hurricane lamp in the rafters dimly and dimly burned;
And the old man died at the table when the old wife’s back was turned.
Face down on his bare arms folded he sank with his wild grey hair
Outspread o’er the open Bible and a name re-written there.
Ethel M. Campbell was a well-born Durban socialite whose fiancé was killed early in World War I. She became a patriotic icon to the diggers sailing to and from the battlefields of France and the Middle East. Born in Glasgow in 1886, Ethel (sometimes known as Edith) Campbell became known as ‘the Durban Signaller’ because of her practice of semaphoring messages of support to the troopships passing through Durban harbour. Also known as ‘the Diggers’ Idol’ and ‘the Durban Angel’ she sometimes threw fruit and other gifts aboard the ships, all much appreciated by those aboard. She renamed her house ‘Little Australia’ and entertained thousands of soldiers there, assisted by her dog ‘Digger’ and the provision of facilities for playing ‘two-up’.
As well as these practical contributions to the war effort, Ethel Campbell composed a large number of patriotic and inspiring verses, publishing them herself and distributing them to the troops at every opportunity with unflagging enthusiasm. The poems’ combination of patriotism, wry observations and humour made them appealing to the soldiers, who often preserved them in their diaries.
Gunner Millard passed through Durban on his way to England during World War I and kept some of Ethel Campbell’s verses for over sixty years, including this one.
We stand on the shores of Durban
And watch the transports go
To England from Australia,
Hurrying to and fro.
And what can we do to show them
Our love, our pride, our thanks?
We can’t do much (I own it),
But give them a passing cheer
While the real elite beat a shocked retreat,
Why, they saw one drinking beer!
If they were lucky enough to survive the war, homeward-bound diggers might be greeted yet again by Edith Campbell as their ships passed back through South Africa.
So highly thought of was Ethel Campbell’s war work that she was made a Member of the British Empire (MBE) in 1919, and in 1923 was invited to Australia to officially open a war memorial. Despite advancing age, the Durban Signaller answered the bugle call again in World War II with a repeat performance of her pastoral work, and more verse. Ethel Campbell never married. She died in 1954 and was fondly remembered by diggers, including Mr Uhr-Henry of Tasmania.
As one of the thousands of Australian servicemen privileged to meet Miss Ethel Campbell and accept her hospitality and motherly interest, it is with a saddened heart and a feeling of personal loss that news of her death is received. Following her kindness in the First World War, when as the ‘Durban Signaller’ she waited on the wharf to greet and farewell every Australian troopship at Durban, she began the same practice early in 1940, but soon found it necessary to move to Hilton, about 70 miles from Durban, for health reasons. Her love for the Digger was such that she would journey to Durban when she knew a troopship or the Navy was in. Her name became a legend, and when, one day, she was not at the wharf, a crowd of fellows ‘thumbed’ their way to her home, where they received a royal welcome. From then on thousands of troops were entertained by her at Hilton, and the boys seemed to think it was their duty to visit her.
I have been inside ‘Little Australia,’ have played two-up on the two-up tower, patted her dog, whom she called ‘Digger,’ sang the songs she wrote about us, and listened to the glowing tales she recited about the old Diggers. But most of all I was privileged to know and learn to love this grand lady, who thought so much of Australians, and who worked so hard, at her own expense, to make their passing through South Africa a happy one. Indeed did she earn the title of ‘The Angel of Durban.’
Should there be any ex-serviceman who would care to contribute to the cost of a small memorial plaque, to be placed on her grave. I would be only too willing to arrange details and to have the work completed.
England’s Salisbury Plain was the location of extensive military camps, depots, hospitals and related facilities throughout World War I. Many Australians and New Zealanders spent time there, either in training or in hospital, often both. On a hillside near one of the local villages, Codford, in Wiltshire, can still be seen a memento of the Great War Anzacs. A large Rising Sun badge, 53 by 45 metres, was carved into the chalk in 1917 by diggers stationed near the village. According to the story, a local commander decided that something striking on the hillside would improve his view. He assigned the 13th Training Battalion to the task as a form of punishment for their malingering. The hill, properly known as ‘Lamb Down’, became ‘Misery Hill’ to the soldiers who had to spend long, cold days building and then maintaining the carving. They did have one consolation, though. According to local historians, the soldiers used beer bottles to dig up the grass to form the design and also to embed in the carving, giving it the appearance of the actual bronze of the Rising Sun badge. Presumably they had to empty the bottles first.
A Tasmanian visitor to the area in 1918 provided some colour to the story and also indicated that the Anzacs had carved other symbols into the hillside, not entirely to the satisfaction of all the locals.
The country all around is very pretty, and both Hurdcott and Fovant camps are well situated on a hill and very healthy. Opposite, with a narrow valley between, there is another low hill; this is of chalk, with a thin coating of grass. The Australian badge, ‘The Rising Sun’, has been formed by cutting away the grass, it is beautifully done; also Y.M.C.A. badge, map of Australia and Tasmania, a kangaroo, and various crosses, etc. I was told that the owner had sued the Commonwealth for damages. He was offered £1500, but refused it, went to law, lost the case, and had to pay his own costs. Truly a just punishment. He should have been well pleased to have his entirely useless hill turned into a work of art for all time.
By 1938 the Codford badge had become so badly eroded that it had to be restored, and its subsequent upkeep was accepted by the Commonwealth government as part of its war memorial program. But it was not long before the carving had to be covered up to avoid its bright outline being used by German bombers as a navigation aid. It has since been uncovered and restored.
Codford was also the location of a New Zealand military hospital during World War I, the inmates producing a lively newspaper called The Codford Wheeze (incorporating The Wiltshire Wangler, The Wyle Wail and The Salisbury Swinger). The paper contained many examples of soldier humour, related especially to injury and, hopefully, convalescence. A patient under the pen name ‘Zeaffirm’ contributed some verses under the title ‘Codford’ that give a good idea of life in the hospital.
A place of wood and rusty tin,
Long corridors that leak like sin,
A dismal place, without, within,
Just Codford Hospital.
In Summer time it’s hot as well
The place of which the Padres tell,
And don’t the paint and Ronuk [wood polish] smell?
In Codford Hospital.
In winter time it gets the worst
Of mud! It takes an easy first
For frozen taps and pipes that burst,
This Codford Hospital.
Still, Diggers, if from fell disease,
From leadswinging or feet that freeze,
You suffer—come, we cure all these
In Codford Hospital.
For, if discomforts we have got,
Are we downhearted? Rather not;
We are a very happy lot
At Codford Hospital.
‘Zeaffirm’ was perhaps feeling happier than usual as he knocked out his rough and ready poem during Christmas, 1918, and having survived the war he probably also survived Codford. At least ninety-seven patients did not. Sixty-six New Zealanders and thirty-one Australians are lying still in Codford cemetery, the largest of its kind in Britain. The cemetery is the site of Anzac Day observances each year.
A similar design, 51 by 32 metres, together with a number of regimental badges of Australian and British army units and the YMCA logo, was also cut into a hillside at nearby Fovant, also in Wiltshire. These striking examples of folk art date mostly from 1919 when Anzacs were encamped in the area awaiting return home. Together with some post–World War II carvings of British regimental badges, they are looked after by the volunteers of the Fovant Badges Society, which traced its lineage to the local Home Guard—or ‘Dad’s Army’—of World War II, with assistance from the Australian War Memorial. Thanks largely to the society and its fundraising efforts, the carvings can still be seen today.
Another British Anzac memento of the Great War was created not too far from Codford. At Hurdcott, in Wiltshire, an outline of Australia was cast in cement across a hillside that was re-christened ‘Australia Hill’. It took volunteer diggers seventeen weeks to finish in 1918. Apparently the structure was still visible in 1999, at least from the air, though unlike the chalk carvings this English home-front monument does not seem to have been maintained.
In World War I, Britain was known to all British, Canadian and Anzac troops as ‘Blighty’, derived from a Hindustani term for ‘foreign’ or ‘away’. For the British it was home and for the Anzacs and other Empire troops it was an opportunity to get away from the fighting, on leave—or for recuperation if they had been wounded. The time taken to sail to and fro between the Pacific and Europe meant that it was difficult for Australians or New Zealanders to return home for even fairly lengthy periods of leave. When asked by an English woman how often he had leave, an Australian soldier was rumoured to have replied ‘Once every war’.
As well as getting ‘Blighty leave’, many soldiers hoped to receive ‘a Blighty one’, meaning a wound serious enough for them to need treatment in Britain, while not serious enough to be life threatening. As the Adelaide journalist and soldier Hugh Garland (DCM) wrote in his Vignettes of War, this ditty was popular with the Australian troops at the front:
Dear Lord our ways we’re wending
To toil and strife again.
Where Fritz is always sending
His shrapnel down like rain.
O, teach us, Lord, to dodge ’em
And, if you don’t do that,
Please tell old Fritz to lodge ’em
For blighties neat and pat.
Sadly, Garland was not lucky enough to receive a Blighty one. He was killed in action in May 1917.
If a digger did win some time in a British hospital, there was an opportunity to spin a few yarns to the locals. Diggers were notorious in Britain during the Great War for the whopping lies they frequently told gullible ‘pommies’ about their goanna farms and the like back home.
I’ve heard Aussies tell stories to the unsophisticated of many different kinds of farms we have ‘out there’—there’s the jackeroo [sic] farm, the nulla-nulla farm, the wombat farm, etc., etc. But the boy with the flea farm is the best novelty I’ve struck. He was a badly wounded inmate of an English hospital. At every opportunity he would tell the nurse about his wonderful flea farm. Finally, the nurse concluded that he had gone off his block and reported the matter to the doctor.
‘What do you do with this flea farm of yours?’ the doctor asked him.
‘Oh’, replied the Aussie ‘we make beer out of the hops.’
While recuperating from his ‘Blighty one’, a digger would often be visited by well-meaning citizens doing their bit for the war effort by cheering up recovering soldiers. While this was appreciated, it could often be a little wearing as the citizens, ignorant of the reality of the front line, invariably asked lots of silly questions. Anecdotes on this theme were many.
In a British hospital a lady had put more questions to a wounded Australian than an insurance agent could. ‘Do you get much windy weather in Australia?’ she at length asked. Then the soldier departed from the strict truth. ‘Windy weather!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why, I should reckon. For instance, sometimes a cold south gale will come on, and blow so darned hard, that it blows the sun out. Then you’ve got to sit round in the dark sometimes for a week, ’till a hot northerly sets in and lights it up again.’
And while being away from the front—even with over-inquisitive locals—was pretty good, it was ‘not all beer and skittles’. A battle-scarred Gunner Millard was welcomed to England as he left his hospital ship by scores of girls carrying fresh fruit for the wounded. But things went downhill from there, not only for himself but also for the British people, as he wrote home from No. 4 Convalescent Camp on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.
In camp we never taste sugar or butter and get very little meat. The main ration is mostly fat at that. Things are getting fairly serious with the civilian population. The people have to wait in queues for hours to get a few ounces of margarine, butter being a thing of the past. The same applies to meat, tea, etc. Hundreds have to go away empty-handed as there is seldom enough to go around. A lot of the London butchers are now selling horse-flesh, having given up the unequal contest for other meat . . .
London was also the location of the Australian Army Headquarters in Horseferry Road. Most Australians would turn up here sooner or later if they were in London, either for some official reason or for the social facilities. It seems the encounters they had at headquarters were not always pleasant. A story about a digger just off the boat from the trenches being upbraided for the state of his uniform by a staff member at Horseferry Road became a poem and a famous soldier song.
He landed in London and straightaway strode
Direct to Headquarters in Horseferry Road.
A Buckshee Corporal said ‘pardon me, please,
But there’s dust on your tunic and dirt on your knees.
You look so disgraceful that people will laugh,’
Said the cold-footed coward that works on the staff.
The Aussie just gave him a murderous glance,
And said ‘I’ve just come from the trenches in France,
Where shrapnel is falling and comforts are few,
And Aussies are fighting for cowards like you.
I wonder, old shirker, if your mother e’er knew
That her son is a waster and afraid of the strafe,
But holds a soft snap on the Horseferry staff?’
By the time the Anzacs went home after the war, the song had changed a bit, but the sentiments remained the same in this version from a homeward-bound troopship in 1919.
Your hat should be turned up at the side like mine,
Your boots, I might state, are in want of a shine,
Your puttees are falling away from your calf;
Said the cold footed b—— of Horseferry staff.
The soldier gave him a murderous glance,
Remember I’m just home from the trenches in France.
Where shrapnel is flying and comforts are few,
Where the soldiers are fighting for b——s like you!
So well did ‘Horseferry Road’ capture the attitude of diggers towards authority that it was also sung in various versions in Australia’s next few wars. By 1941 ‘Horseferry Road’ had grown a chorus and become the famous ‘Dinky-di’ with the chorus ‘Dinky-di, dinky-di, “I am a digger and I won’t tell a lie . . .’.
Other versions were still being sung in the Vietnam War.
Around 10 am on 3 August 1915, the troopship Ballarat entered Outer Harbour at Semaphore in Adelaide. She carried a cargo of wounded men from Gallipoli. A local journalist reported the scene.
Many persons went to the Outer Harbour to meet the soldiers but in view of the fact made public that the South Australian warriors would be conveyed without delay to Keswick, and would there be permitted to be welcomed, the crowd was not so large as would otherwise have been the case. As the Ballarat was nearing the Outer Harbour wharf the signal ‘Welcome home,’ displayed from the local flagstaff, caught the eyes of the troops, many of whom lined the rail and gave rousing cheers. No attempt was made by the returned heroes to hide the nature of the wounds they received. Some were minus a leg, others without an arm, several with an eye gone, and a large number with an arm still resting in a sling, crowded to the vessel’s rail. All were in a merry mood, and frequently the spectators ashore would hear a shout, ‘Are we downhearted?’ and the ready response from others—a long-drawn-out ‘No.’ Immediately the stretcher-bearers on the wharf received an order to march, the troops on board called ‘Left, right, left, right’ as the men marched, and other-wise good-humoredly chaffed them.
A squad of the A.M.C. lent assistance to those who were unable to walk down the gangway, but although many of the returned warriors needed no help, there were a few who could not have reached the wharf without it. If anything was required to bring forcibly home to Australians the awful effects of war, the sight of maimed and shell-torn men carried down the gangway on the backs of comrades must have done so. Three South Australians among those who landed were minus portions of their legs, but all bore their bufferings cheerfully, and one could not but admire their spirit. At the foot of the gangway Captain Butler checked the names of the sick and wounded as they crossed to the wharf, and the soldiers were at once escorted to the waiting ambulance train. In a little more than half an hour the disembarkation was completed, and at 10.45 the train moved off for Keswick amidst the cheers of the spectators and farewells from those still on the troopship . . .
The premier and other dignitaries welcomed the soldiers home with patriotic words and expressions of gratitude for their bravery and sacrifice. The reporters interviewed some of the men, mostly wanting to know the more grisly details of the hand-to-hand fighting. Some yarns were spun.
There is a more kindly feeling than ever between themselves, and though they make light of their own wounds there is obvious sympathy in their demeanour to the other wounded. But when it comes to killing an enemy it is only a matter of business, and if they felt a pity for their antagonists they would not be so well fitted to do their work. It is not surprising, therefore, that they chat about the number of Turks they have bayoneted without the slightest shudder. ‘War is murder,’ said one, but ‘War is good’ said most of them. ‘It is tip-top,’ said Private Sheppard. ‘I advise all the lads to go and have a cut at it. There is plenty of fun and plenty of good shooting to be had. The Turks are not such bad fellows. During the 24 hours armistice some Turkish soldiers exchanged money and cigarettes with our own boys who were burying the dead. Some of the Turks can talk a little English, and the German officers seem to understand English well.’
On the same page of the newspaper that carried this account was a report of 1000 men out of work at Broken Hill in New South Wales.
Civilian questions to soldiers returned home from the front often betrayed such ignorance of what the soldiers were experiencing that they were parodied in digger humour. On this occasion, the question seemed to be a sensible one, though the answer could perhaps be taken with a grain or two of salt.
‘Do the Australians still keep up their cheerfulness at the front?’ I asked a soldier at the Cheer-Up Hut [a solider’s comfort facility—see ‘The Lady of Violets’ in the chapter entitled ‘Memories’], Adelaide, recently. He had just returned from France.
‘Yes, easy,’ he replied. ‘I only struck one feller who didn’t. He was as cheery a chap you ever seen too. ’E was all grins and jokes. ’Is smile was like a sunrise on a patch o’ golden wattles. One day ’e went with ’is battalion bayonetin’ Germans. It was a ’ell of a scrap. ’E was singin’ “Australia will be there” all through it, and every time ’e notched a German, ’e’d yell somethin’ funny. ’E got six wounds in different parts of ’is frame. When ’e was bein’ carried on a stretcher to the dressin’ station ’e laughed over the fight as it is ’ad been a little game o’ ticky touchwood. ’E was fixed up with bandages until ’e looked like a bloomin’ mummy, and every time ’e moved ’is wounds stung ’im like scorpions. But ’e just laughed as merry as a baby in a bath tub. Suddent ’e lost all ’is joy, and began to swear like—like—lemme see—well, like an A.S.C. man ’e was wild!’
‘And what made him so cross?’ I asked.
‘Why, ’e found ’e’d lost ’is pipe in the fight.’
Just sixteen when he enlisted in the AIF, ‘Ted’ Lording’s story is one of horror and fortitude that highlights the usually forgotten aftermath of war. Born in Balmain, Sydney, Lording served in Egypt and on the western front as a signaller in the 30th Battalion. In July 1916 he was savagely wounded by a burst of enemy machine-gun fire at the battle of Fromelles. This shattered his chest and right arm, and a few minutes later several scraps of shrapnel embedded themselves in his spine. Miraculously still alive, Lording spent the rest of the war undergoing medical treatment after medical treatment in Britain and in Australia, where he returned in 1917. These treatments continued after the war and by 1928 he had undergone fifty-two mostly serious surgical operations. Lording should have died many times but refused to surrender to what must have seemed the sweet release of death.
In 1935 he published his memoir under the title There and Back. It is an unvarnished account of his suffering and survival, which is described by the journalist, soldier and historian F. M. Cutlack in his original review of the book.
When the doctors opened up his chest in the field hospital, the full extent of Lording’s dreadful wounds was revealed. His left lung was shattered and the remnants collapsed. His heart had moved and was visible through the gunshot wound in his left chest. His right elbow was smashed and the four shrapnel wounds in his back had partially paralysed the spine.
He was operated on incessantly, sometimes daily, and sometimes without anaesthetic because his condition was too precarious for the doctors to render him unconscious. During one of these operations a four inches (ten centimetres) section of his ribs was removed. The pus in the chest cavity, ‘which sometimes amounted to as much as a kidney-dish full’ had to be drained twice daily, involving an incredibly painful procedure of rolling him on his side. During the course of his treatment, Lording developed tetanus; needed to be force fed; and had the blood of others injected into his veins.
The medical authorities got him back alive to Blighty, where he had to be cut up again to remove pieces of six of his ribs from his opened chest. Recovery from this procedure required rubber tubes to be inserted into his chest and left there for many weeks to drain the area. They were also used to pump in glycerine—‘like a blanky Murrumbidgee irrigation farm’. Lording kept his extracted ribs in a bottle by his bed and insisted that the nurses dusted it every day.
He was shipped home to Sydney, Australia where he endured more operations at the soldiers’ hospital in Randwick and was discharged with a morphine habit. He later entered Prince Alfred Hospital for yet more operations, survived them and managed to overcome his addiction. He studied to become an accountant but had to return to hospital in 1932 for another series of operations. For weeks he resisted death and finally won the battle, recovering sufficiently to return to everyday life and gain his professional qualification.
Despite his health, or lack of it, Lording married in 1922 and fathered three children. This relationship eventually ended in divorce and Lording married again in 1943. But the following year, at last overcome by the enormity of his suffering, Lording was admitted to Sydney’s Callan Park Mental Hospital where he died on 1 October. His experience has been accurately described as ‘an epic of human suffering’ and the medical historian of the Australian forces, A. G. Butler, wrote that Lording deserved ‘a special place (if anyone does) among the immortals of the A.I.F’.
For his gallant service and decades of suffering Lording was given no special military awards, simply a minimal invalid pension and the campaign medals that all soldiers were entitled to receive.
As well as physically supporting soldiers at the front through their involvement in making munitions, providing transport and, of course, making uniforms, women working on the home front found ways to provide a little unofficial moral support. This story dates from World War II and suggests that army equipment and clothing were in short supply. It might even be true.
Many of the old Diggers will recollect the discovery in their greatcoat pockets of nice little notes from work-girls, whose nimble fingers had stitched the cloth of the garment. Some of these notes were answered, meetings were arranged and romance brightened the lives of soldier lad and lassie.
Which leads up to the fact that a member of the AIF at Redbank (Q) [Queensland] was issued with a greatcoat which contained such a slip of paper in one of the pockets. But the new digger didn’t write to the girl. The coat was a hangover from the last war, the note bearing the date, 1917.
In response to Japanese air strikes on Darwin and other northern Australian towns from early 1942, a unique force was raised to protect Australia’s northern boundaries. The North Australia Observer Unit (sometimes titled ‘Observation Unit’, but in either case NAOU) was a 550-strong group of mounted observers who patrolled Australia’s immense northern border in search of enemy activity. Known sometimes as ‘Curtin’s Cowboys’ after John Curtin, the then-prime minister, they referred to themselves as ‘the Nackeroos’, a title that well described their rough and ready nature.
Operating in small groups, mostly on horseback, they lived off the land. The Aboriginal members, whose knowledge of the harsh country was unequalled, played a vital role. The Nackeroos established food and ammunition dumps across their patrol territory in preparation for the eventuality of a Japanese invasion, in which case they were expected to operate behind enemy lines as a guerilla resistance unit. The unit’s commanding officer was the noted anthropologist W. E. H. Bill Stanner, whose knowledge of the region made him the inevitable choice for the position. The intelligence gathered by the NAOU went by radio to the larger Northern Territory Force, known as ‘Norforce’.
One of their members, Des Harrison, recollected that the unit had over one thousand horses, donkeys and mules. Sometimes these had to be overlanded across the Top End. During one wet season, five Nackeroos drove eighty horses 700 kilometres across the Northern Territory and Western Australia. They lost four horses to crocodiles but arrived at their destination with the other seventy-six in reasonable condition. Some of the unit’s patrols extended for 800 kilometres and lasted for two months, seeking evidence of enemy infiltration, finding downed airmen and also conducting bush rescues when required. Harrison made a point of recognising the astonishing bush skills of the Aboriginal members of the unit. Their ability to track and to find food and water saved patrols from perishing on more than one occasion.
The Nackeroos were quietly disbanded at the war’s end and their story is relatively little known. One of the few tangible remnants of their existence is a memorial dedicated to Norforce in Timber Creek, in the Northern Territory. Unveiled in 1999, the memorial is in the form of a boulder on which is mounted a brass plaque reading: ‘Australia Remembers. Norforce Ever Vigilant 1945–1995. They guarded Timber Creek, and the NW coast, from 1942 onwards in the War against Japan. Lest We Forget’.
There were a total of ninety-seven confirmed Japanese air raids on Australian targets between February 1942 and September 1943, including Broome (three times) Derby, Exmouth Gulf, Wyndham, Port Hedland and Onslow in Western Australia; Darwin, Drysdale, Katherine, Milingimbi and Port Patterson in the Northern Territory; and Townsville, Mossman and Horn Island in Queensland. The Nackeroos may not have been the only response to the bombing of the north. There have long been rumours that another, similar force known colloquially as ‘the black guard’ was established specifically to mount subversive resistance operations in the event of a Japanese invasion. These rumours probably relate to other home-front units formed with largely indigenous members.
The Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion was tasked with the defence of the Torres Strait region. In 1941 the Northern Territory Special Reconnaissance Unit was established under the command of yet another anthropologist, Donald Thomson. The unit consisted of Torres Strait Islanders, Aborigines, South Sea Islanders and a few white members. Like the Nackeroos, they used bush skills to move around and live off the land, ready to conduct a guerilla resistance against any Japanese incursion. The unit patrolled the coastline and engaged in missions into Japanese-occupied Dutch New Guinea. Other indigenous units were formed and it is thought that eventually almost every able-bodied male Torres Strait Islander was in uniform. According to the Australian War Memorial’s account of these activities: ‘In proportion to population, no community in Australia contributed more to the war effort in World War II than the Islanders of the Torres Strait’.
After the fall of Singapore in February 1942, Australia turned towards America for strategic support in the Pacific war. Australia rapidly became an extended American base, with hundreds of thousands of US servicemen and women ‘invading’ Australia until the end of the war in 1945. To prepare the American visitors for their Australian sojourn, the Americans issued a booklet titled Instructions for American Servicemen in Australia 1942. It contained information about the customs, attitudes, manners, likes and dislikes of Australians, as seen from an American perspective.
The book acknowledged that Australians had ‘through courage and ingenuity made a living and built a great nation out of a harsh, empty land. They built great cities, organized a progressive democracy and established a sound economic system, for all of which they’re justly proud’. The booklet went on to profile ‘The People “Down Under”’.
And they’re proud too of their British heritage and to be a member of the British Commonwealth—but they still like to run their own business and they take great pride in their independence. They resent being called a colony and think of themselves as a great nation on their own hook, which they are. And it’s natural that they should find themselves drawn closer and closer to Americans because of the many things we have in common. They look at the swift development that has made the United States a great power in a few generations, and compare our growth with theirs. Nearly 40 years ago, an Australian statesman said of the United States: ‘What we are, you were. What you are we will some day be.’ And just a short time ago Australian War Minister Francis Forde said: ‘We feel that our fate and that of America are indissolubly linked. We know that our destinies go hand in hand and that we rise and fall together. And we are proud and confident in that association.’
You’ll find the Australians an outdoors kind of people, breezy and very democratic. They haven’t much respect for stuffed shirts, their own or anyone else’s. They’re a generation closer to their pioneer ancestors than we are to ours, so it’s natural that they should have a lively sense of independence and ‘rugged individualism’. But they have, too, a strong sense of cooperation. The worst thing an Australian can say about anyone is: ‘He let his cobbers (pals) down.’ A man can be a ‘dag’ (a cutup) or ‘rough as bags’ (a tough guy), but if he sticks with the mob, he’s all right.
If an Australian ever says to you that you are ‘game as Ned Kelly’, you should feel honored. It’s one of the best things he can say about you. It means that you have the sort of guts he admires, and that there’s something about you that reminds him of Ned Kelly. Kelly was a bushranger (a backwoods highwayman) and not a very good citizen, but he had a lot of courage that makes Australians talk about him as we used to talk about Jesse James or Billy the Kid.
Of course, the best thing any Australian can say about you is that you’re a ‘bloody fine barstud’.
You’ll find that the Digger is a rapid, sharp and unsparing kidder, able to hold his own with Americans or anyone else. He doesn’t miss a chance to spar back and forth and he enjoys it all the more if the competition is tough.
Another thing, the Digger is instantaneously sociable. Riding on the same train with American troops, a mob of Aussies are likely to descend on the Yanks, investigate their equipment, ask every kind of personal question, find out if there’s any liquor to be had, and within 5 minutes be showing pictures of their girls and families.
One Aussie, a successful kid cartoonist, who got himself transferred to an American unit for a week, could have run for mayor and been elected after 2 days in camp. He knew the first name and history of every man and officer and had drawn portraits of some of the officers.
Being simple, direct and tough, especially if he comes from ‘Outback’, the Digger is often confused and non-plussed by the ‘manners’ of Americans in mixed company or even in camp. To him those many ‘bloody thank you’s and pleases’ Americans use are a bit sissified. But, on the other side of the fence, if you ask an Australian for an address in a city you happen to be, he won’t just tell you. He’ll walk eight blocks or more to show you.
There’s one thing about Americans that delights him. That is our mixed ancestry. A taxi driver told an American correspondent about three soldiers he hauled about one night: ‘One was Italian, one was Jewish, and the other told me he was half Scottish and half soda,’ said the hacker, roaring with laughter.
There’s one thing you’ll run into—Australians know as little about our country as we do theirs. To them all Americans soldiers are ‘Yanks’—and always will be.
Australians, like Americans again, live pretty much in the present and the future, and pay little mind to the past.
If they are still in effect, you might get annoyed at the ‘blue laws’ which make Australian cities pretty dull places on Sundays. For all their breeziness, the Australians don’t go in for a lot of drinking or woo-pitching in public, especially on Sundays. So maybe the bars, the movies, and the dance halls won’t be open on Sundays, but there are a lot of places in America where that’s true too.
There’s no use beefing about it—it’s their country.
IT’S THE SAME LANGUAGE TOO. We all speak the same language— the British, the Australians, and us—our versions of it. Probably the only difficulty you’ll run into here is the habit Australians have of pronouncing ‘a’ as ‘i’—for instance, ‘the trine is lite today’. Some people say it sounds like the way London Cockneys talk, but good Australians resent that—and it isn’t true anyway.
Thanks to our movies, the average Australian has some knowledge of our slang, but it’ll take you a while to get on to theirs. To them a ‘right guy’ is a ‘fair dinkum’; a hard worker is a ‘grafter’ and ‘to feel crook’ means to feel lousy; while ‘beaut’, means swell. Australian slang is so colorful, and confusing, that a whole chapter is devoted to it at the end of this book.
Also, the Australian has few equals in the world at swearing except maybe the famous American mule skinner in World War 1. The commonest swear words are bastard (pronounced ‘barstud’), ‘bugger’, and ‘bloody’, and the Australians have a genius for using the latter nearly every other word. The story is told of an old-timer who was asked when he had come to the continent. He replied ‘I came in nineteen-bloody-eight.’
The book observed that Australians were keen on community singing and provided the lyrics of ‘Waltzing Matilda’, ‘A standard favorite all over the country’. It went on to describe what Australians liked to eat and drink.
THE AUSTRALIANS EAT AND DRINK TOO. Australians are great meat eaters—they eat many times as much beef, mutton and lamb as we do—a lot more flour, butter, and tea. But they don’t go in for green vegetables and salads and fruit as much as Americans. Some of the best fruits in the world are grown along the tropical coast of Queensland, but the Australian, nevertheless, is strictly a ‘meat and potatoes guy.’
There are a couple of libelous stories going around about Australian food. Housewives ‘down under’ are supposed to make coffee with a pinch of salt and a dash of mustard, but that’s probably just another Axis propaganda story. The other one is that ‘outback’, as the Australian call the dry country, when you order your dinner of beef or lamb and two vegetables, the vegetables you get are fried potatoes and roasted potatoes. That probably isn’t true either. You may think it’s a gag, but you will get kangaroo steak or kangaroo tail soup in the ‘outback’, especially if you go hunting yourself. They’re supposed to be tasty.
Meat pies are the Australian version of the hot dog, and in Melbourne, the substitute for a hamburger is a ‘dim sim’, chopped meat rolled in cabbage leaves which you order ‘to take out’ in Chinese restaurants. But because of the demand, hot dog and hamburger stands are springing up in large numbers. So you’ll probably see signs like this when you get around the country a bit: ‘500 yards ahead. Digger Danny’s Toasted Dachshunds.’ But you won’t find drug stores selling sodas or banana splits.
Drinking in Australia is usually confined to hotel bars during the few hours they’re allowed to open—they close at 6 pm in most places. The main drink is beer, stronger than ours and not as cold. Hard liquor is fairly expensive and much less commonly drunk than in America. They also make some good light wines.
But the national drink is still tea, which you will find is a good drink when you get used to it. Along the roads you’ll see ‘hot water’ signs displayed—Australian motorists take along their own tea and for a few pence, from the roadside stands, they can get hot water and a small tin can (billy can) in which they brew their tea. But since the war began, there isn’t any motoring.
The guidebook also accurately identified the Australian love of sport and a flutter.
As an outdoor people, the Australians go in for a wide variety of active sports—surf, bathing, cricket, rugby, football, golf and tennis. The national game is cricket and the periodic ‘test matches’ with England are like our World Series. Cricket isn’t a very lively game to watch, but it’s difficult to play well. Not much cricket is being played nowadays.
The Australians have another national game called Australian Rules Football, which is rough, tough, and exciting. There are a lot of rules—the referee carries a rule book the size of an ordinary Webster’s Dictionary. Unlike cricket, which is a polite game, Australian Rules Football creates a desire on the part of the crowd to tear someone apart, usually the referee—some parks have runways covered over, so the referee can escape more or less intact, after the game is over. The crowd is apt to yell ‘Wake up melon head’ or some such pleasantry at the umpire, but they don’t think it good sportsmanship to heckle the teams. Australian soldiers play it at every chance. In one camp the boys used Bren gun carriers to clear a field to play on and that afternoon 500 out of an outfit of 700 got into the game.
Yes, and the Australians play baseball too. We think we have a monopoly on the game, but the first American units found out differently after being walloped by Australian teams. Before the Americans arrived not many Australians turned out to watch a baseball game—it was primarily a way for cricketers to keep in shape during the off-season. Now crowds of 10,000 turn out to see Australian and American service teams play—and they’re getting into the sport of our national game by yelling ‘Slay the bloke’ when the umpire pulls a boner.
If you’re good at sports you’ll probably be more popular in Australia than by being good at anything else. One of the National heroes is Don Bradman, a stockbroker from Adelaide, who was the nation’s greatest cricket player—he rates more lines in the Australian Who’s Who than the Prime Minister.
A good many Australian sports champions are familiar names on American sports pages. Bob Fitzimmons, who won the heavyweight title from Jim Corbett, was Australian-born. And American tennis fans have seen the great Australian teams in action—with men like Jack Crawford, Vivian McGrath, Adrian Quist and John Bromwich, who took the Davis Cup from us in 1939, just before the outbreak of the war. The Aussies also won the cup from us just before the last war, in 1914.
And in golf, there is the famous trick shot expert, Joe Kirkwood, who is a familiar figure in American professional tournaments.
Probably more people in Australia play some sport or other than do in America. There are a lot of good tennis courts and golf courses, in some cases provided by the municipal authorities, which are inexpensive to play on.
But above all the Australians are the No. 1 racing fans in the world. Most cities and towns of any size have race tracks and some like Perth have trotting tracks which used to be lighted up for night racing before the ‘brown out’ (the Australian version of the black out). The big event of the year is the running of the Melbourne Cup, established in 1861, 14 years before our Kentucky Derby. It’s a legal holiday in Melbourne the day the race is run. There’s one main difference between Australian racing and ours. Their horses run clockwise.
THE GAMBLING FEVER. As one newspaper correspondent says, the Americans and Australians are ‘two of the gamblingest people on the face of the earth’. It’s been said of the Australians that if a couple of them in a bar haven’t anything else to bet on, they’ll lay odds on which two flies will rise first from the bar, or which raindrop will get to the bottom of the window first. If an American happened to be there, he’d probably be making book.
The favorite, but illegal, game among the Diggers is ‘Two-Up’ which is a very simple version of an old American pastime, matching coins—that is, it’s the favorite game after the one of putting a buck or two on a horse’s nose. The Australians wouldn’t approve of the Chinese who said he didn’t want to bet on a horse race, because he already knew one horse could run faster than another.
Finally, the digger was described:
YOUR OPPOSITE NUMBER, THE AUSSIE. You’ll have a good deal to do with the Australian people, probably, but you’ll sleep, eat, and fight alongside of your opposite number, the Aussie.
American newspapers and magazines have been full of stories about the Aussies—in Greece, in Crete, in Libya, at Singapore, and in the Burma jungles. All Americans who’ve had anything to do with them say they’re among the friendliest guys in the world—and fine physical specimens of fighting men.
So far in this war the Australians have been in all the hot spots—wherever the going has been tough. And they have the reputation for staying in there and pitching with anything they can get their hands on—and if there isn’t anything else they use their hands. During the early days of the threatened Jap invasion of their continent, Australian pilots fought off armored Jap bombers with the only planes they had—often just trainers.
The Aussies don’t fight out of a textbook. They’re resourceful, inventive soldiers, with plenty of initiative. Americans and British have the idea that they are an undisciplined bunch—they aren’t much on saluting or parading and they often do call their C.O. by his first name—but when the fighting begins, there isn’t any lack of discipline or leadership, either.
Officers most often come up from the ranks, and they are a young group. The average age of Australian generals today is less than 50 years—about the same as our own. The greatest Australian general in the last war was a civil engineer by trade, and one of Wavell’s best desert generals was Sir Iven Mackay who was a school teacher and who put soldiering under ‘recreation’ in his biography in the Australian Who’s Who.
The story is typical of the attitude the Anzac has toward the business of fighting. During some tough going on the El Alamein sector in Egypt, recently, a group of Australians volunteered to knock out a dangerous machine gun nest, manned by members of Rommel’s Afrika Korps. As they were dashing in, one Aussie yelled to another: ‘Cripes, Bill, I tell you if the (censored) food in this outfit doesn’t get any better, I’m bloody well going to quit.’
Australians are immensely proud of the record their men made in the last war—any country would be proud of it. You’ll see memorials to the dead of World War 1 all through Australia and they’re honored greatly by all the people.
Was there a ‘Brisbane Line’ or not? Controversy about the existence of a line that would be defended to the death in the event of a Japanese invasion has persisted since World War II. Even the reality of the Japanese threat to Australia has been questioned by some historians. But whether the Japanese really did intend to conquer and occupy the Australian mainland or not, there was a strong belief in 1942 that this was likely. ‘He’s coming south’ screamed official posters and advertisements of the period, and Prime Minister John Curtin’s government (which had been elected in 1941) was so alarmed by the fall of Singapore and its implications that Curtin made his famous speech in which Australia turned away from Britain as its primary ally and looked towards the United States.
What was the ‘Brisbane Line’—if there was one at all? It was an imaginary line drawn from Brisbane to Perth that represented the final line of defence against any Japanese invasion. Everything north of this line would be sacrificed to the invaders. These were dramatic days for Australia. In February 1942 Singapore had fallen to the Japanese who were rapidly advancing southwards. Darwin and many other northern cities were bombed, including Broome, Wyndham and Townsville. The Americans were forced to flee the Philippines and establish a Pacific base in Australia.
After an Australian press briefing from the American General Douglas MacArthur in mid-March, 1943, the Brisbane Line was reported in Brisbane’s Courier-Mail newspaper, causing considerable public consternation. The issue was, of course, highly political and Curtin was forced to establish a Royal Commission to determine the truth or otherwise of claims that the conservative Menzies government had concocted the Brisbane Line policy when it was in power from 1939 to 1941. This accusation was strongly denied and the Royal Commission could find no evidence of it existing.
Having coined the term ‘Brisbane Line’ and set the controversy in motion, MacArthur subsequently distanced himself from the idea. But in his reminiscences he claimed that, at one point, the Australian military authorities did have a plan to defend the country along a line stretching southwards from Brisbane to Adelaide, consigning the country’s western third to the possibility of foreign occupation along with the entire Top End. Whatever the truth of the Brisbane Line policy, it was eventually determined that the best way to defend Australia from the Japanese was to oppose them before they arrived, a decision that led to the fighting in New Guinea and the creation of a new Anzac icon, the Kokoda Track.
Controversy about the Brisbane Line is still never far away in contemporary Australia. There are strong opinions held by proponents and opponents of its existence. Some point to the remains of tank traps and other defences in the Tenterfield area of New South Wales and elsewhere as tangible evidence of the plan. Others point out that such fortifications are, of themselves, insufficient evidence. The Brisbane Line has become entwined with the larger issue of a potential Japanese invasion with stories about special ‘invasion currency’ being printed by the Japanese and maps in Japanese featuring southward-pointing arrows. These are in fact spoofs, and while the ‘invasion money’ existed, it was for use in Britain’s Pacific territories, not in Australia.
One way to understand the Brisbane Line controversy is to see it as a projection of justifiable wartime anxieties reflecting some traditional regional rivalries and cleavages. The north of Australia, or the ‘Top End’, has always had a strong sense of its own identity and an occasionally well-founded distrust of politicians and almost everything else in the ‘soft south’. Similarly, the possibility of the Brisbane Line extending only to Adelaide reflects the traditional psychological and cultural distance between the east and west of the country, only magnified by the dividing immensity of the Nullarbor Plain. Like modern ‘urban myths’, such beliefs trade on often unspoken social fears and hidden conflicts and, true or not, are often found believable by large numbers of people.
Just before and during World War II, Miss Grace Luckman kept a journal. It was only a cheap notebook that opened out to a bit less than an A4 page, its pages ruled for keeping basic accounts. In the notebook, Grace, a country girl, jotted down her thoughts and feelings and pasted in many clippings taken from the newspapers of the time. Most of these clippings are poems, some of her own homilies, ‘Thoughts for the Week’, and other uplifting creations, together with items on romantic love, including ‘My heart pants for you’ in pictogram form.
The family was fully involved in the war. Private E. Luckman was in camp with the 11th Battalion, and Signaller H. Luckman was in the Signal School Base with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in the Middle East. Grace also recorded the birthdays of friends and family, including ‘Ernie’ who had turned eighteen the year before the war began. His address at C Coy, 2/2 Infantry Battalion, is carefully pencilled into the last page. Many other entries relate directly to the war and how it appeared to those at home.
Scribbled on one page of the notebook are two homespun verses concerning the devastating loss of HMAS Sydney in November 1941 and the fundraising undertaken by the community for the families of the lost sailors.
Here’s to the Sydney brave and true,
Here’s to the men who manned her too.
Ever in our thoughts they’ll be,
This gallant ship and her company.
Day by day they sailed the sea
To keep beloved Australia free.
So listen to the Lord Mayor’s pleas,
Enclose a stamp for the new Sydney.
‘In Praise of Tanks’ celebrated the victories of tanks in New Guinea and the Middle East.
Cast not in beauty’s mould your feature,
Born of man’s inhuman brain;
Yet we have learned your worth—you monstrous
Product of a world insane . . .
The poem went on to praise the tanks for the defeats of Rommel and the Japanese.
Some items manage to combine both Miss Luckman’s romantic interests and the war, as in this poem about the ‘lovelorn blokes at Darwin’ who are ‘a sitting shot for me’.
Put me somewhere near to Darwin
Where there’s romance in the air,
Where a score of eager suitors
Answer every maiden’s prayer.
For the wedding bells are calling,
And there’s still a chance for me,
On a balmy night in Darwin
Where the moon is on the sea . . .
One of the many newspaper clippings carefully pasted into the notebook also concerned Darwin and the visiting Americans.
Life in the lonely desert country around Darwin was summed up by an American soldier on leave at Melbourne.
‘It’s this way, buddy. When you’re there a few weeks you find yourself talking to yourself. After that you find yourself talking to the lizards. After another couple of weeks you find the lizards talking to you. Then you find yourself listening.’
Other entries reflect nostalgia for ‘old England’ and the need for Australia to answer the call and act in her protection, sentiments that also featured in World War I. Like many Australians, Miss Luckman had family in Britain. She kept her journal after the war and in a brief note about it written forty years later, she still signed herself ‘Miss Grace Luckman’.