It has often been said that as Australians we have a predilection for remembering and even celebrating our failures. The ABC does a lot of remembering at these times. This year there have been a couple of segments covering an event that may eventually take over from ANZAC in our consciousness, an event that occurred 90 years ago on the third ANZAC Day.
I speak, of course, of the Australian counter-attack that took the French town of Villers-Bretonneux. This year for the first time there will be a dawn service on the actual day.
The Australian flags are hung, toy kangaroos are crammed in shop windows and now all the small French town of Villers-Bretonneux is waiting for is Anzac Day.
Up to 6,000 Australians are expected to descend on the rural town on Friday for a dawn service commemorating the 90th anniversary of its liberation by Anzac [actually Australian, I think] troops on April 25, 1918.
The rural town, in the heart of the Somme region north of Paris, holds annual memorial services for the diggers - but this year is the first time it will host a dawn service on Anzac Day itself, instead of the nearest Saturday to April 25.
Historian Ross McMullin tells the story (transcript to appear in due course).
The Germans had mounted a vigorous attack, forcing the Brits back 40 miles and taking Villers-Bretonneux, thus opening the way to Amiens and thence to Paris. Pompey Elliott, the commander of the Australian 15th Brigade, who McMullin describes as the most famous fighting general in Australian military history, knew that the Germans would kick the Brits out, that he would be called upon to save the day and accordingly devised a pincer movement to encircle the Germans.
There was a delay, during which the Brits made some futile attempts at counter-attack. Elliott was given the nod with the help of the Australian 13th Brigade, which marched 8 miles to join the fray. By this time it was dark, which complicated the issue, but at midnight the Australians struck. McMullin says that this ended the dangerous thrust, turning the war with the Australians contibuting further by spearheading the subsequent offensive.
Another account suggests that the Australians were helped by the Brits having worn them out, which seems to me stating the bleeding obvious. McMullin says that at that time Australians were influencing the destiny of the world more than they ever have before or since.
This assessment is supported by Jonathan King in his Perspective talk on Wednesday. He tells us that Australia’s effort on the Western Front was five times larger than Gallipoli in terms of men who served and died (250,000 served, 50,000 died) and lasted four times as long. Furthermore, in the statistics of war the Australians were outstandingly successful.
Although representing only five per cent of Allied forces by 1918 Monash proudly calculated the AIF captured approximately 25 percent of all enemy territory, prisoners, arms and ammunition captured by Allied forces. These Diggers even `blooded the Yanks’ leading Americans into their first major battle in warfare at Hamel on 4 July 1918 - the date carefully selected by Monash to inspire the newly arrived US troops. This Monash-designed text-book victory provided a blueprint for the rest of the war. It was for Australia a real coming of age based not on bravery and sacrifice as at Gallipoli but on skilled and successful fighting under intelligent Australian command.
Yes, intelligent Australian command rather than canon fodder for futile and foolish British ventures.
The French have remembered, their site featuring the stylised kangaroo made from the letters VB.
McMullin tells of Australian soldiers distributing nonchalant reassurance to distressed Frenchwomen who had fled their homes:
No more retreat, Madam. Many Australians here.
Australians accompanying French civilians back into Villers-Bretonneux.
French children tending Australian war graves.
The Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux contains the names of over 10,000 Australians who died in France and who have no known grave.
The Cobbers Memorial statue was erected at Fromelles to commemorate a battle there in 1916.
Note: If anyone not Australian is reading this, VB stands for Victoria Bitter, which, I understand, is the biggest beer brand in our fair land. The 13th brigade was a Victorian unit while the 15th was Western Australian, led by a Queenslander.
Thanks Brian - I was aware that there was some interesting history about regarding the Australians’ performance at Villers-Brettoneux, but it’s great to get a sense of what the story was.
German defeat in WWI was one of the pivotal events of the 20th century.
Villers-Bretonneux was the pivotal battle of the Western Front.
I wish Australians knew much more about that engagement than Gallipoli.
Just one correction. The Battle at Villers-Bretonneux ended the Lys Offensive. this was the northernmost of Ludendorff’s three major (1918) Spring Offensives. this offensive was directed at the Channel Ports. It aimed to trap the British Army in a pocket and to destroy their supply lines.
Paris was perhaps the ultimate destination, but not the immediate one for this offensive.
Merci, Brian, Mark et Katz. A fascinating story.
Thanks, Katz. I’m no historian and I’m grateful if there’s only one mistake.
I thought if I’d gone 68 years without knowing the story I’d better share it with others.
the ABC had another segment on AM about it. Annie Brassart put it this way:
The Germans didn’t give up easily. Of the 5000 Australians in the battle 1200 died.
Wasn’t it the historian Erich Hobsbawm who said it might have been better for the subsequent history of the world if the Germans had won WW1?
We’ll never know.
Folks, more discussion on Lateline just now with a historian (I didn’t catch his name) of the Villers-Brettoneux battle. No doubt the video and transcript will be up in due course.
The sculpture is wonderful - seems to me a quintessential expression of the idealised ANZAC tradition that I grew up with.
It provides a powerful contrast to some of the undercurrents of recent nationalism, whose bizarre notions of aggressively victorious victimhood I find deeply unsettling.
Its not just the memorial’s expression of camaraderie and devotion - or the echoes of The Pieta - but also it’s evocation of the ideal of being there to freely provide a helping hand wherever it is needed, without any sense of sacrifice or obligation, and without needing to be asked for.
In my Utopia, that idea of being partners in adversity would be at the heart of what it is to be Australian, for it allows us to express our humanity without regard to sectarian or nationalistic divides.
I’m more than a tad staggered by the sudden “discovery” of Australians’ role in Villers-Bretonneux & the town’s 90 year celebration of its liberation by Australian soldiers, especially the childen’s roles. In the 40s & 50s (probably after that; I remember B&W TV coverage), the bugle calls and annual Anzac / Liberation Day service were broadcast/ mentioned on children’s radio shows (and in schools), inc ABC Argonauts. Always included in those post-WW II Anzac Day services & commentary on the marches were Mennin Gate & Messines Ridge VB and the charge of Oz’s “10,000 Horsemen” in Palestine … Greece, Crete, The Desert … Milne Bay …
Perhaps because so many of us had lost relatives in WW I, most of them on the Western Front; so many of our grandparent’ generation (most of whom had served on the Western Front) were still alive, we remembered the totality of ANZAC service, and Gallipoli’s memories came trumatised by its British planners incompetence (esp Churchill’s) & many of the same planners’ worse incompetence in Malaya/ Singapore (esp Churchill’s) - giving Changi, Burma Railway, Bunka Island massacre, New Guinea etc a bitter edge.
Or perhaps, when war’s memories were still raw; when my father (like so many involved in the war, too traumatised by, or bound by secrecy about their roles) never spoke of the war; when Anzac Day disinterred memories of dead relatives, and our uncles’ horrors of Desert & Jungle warfare, our Tobruk Rat neighbour’s nightmares, the nurse neighbour’s memories of “girls” she who were knew massacred by the Japanese, and the terrible deaths and injuries of “boys” she nursed; the schoolmates whose fathers had not returned, and the physical abuse suffered by those whose fathers had returned “shell-shocked”, drunks, normal for most of the year, but violent in the lead up to Anzac & Remembrance Day; when, in Brisbane, a radio announcer had escaped Singapore on the Krait (sp?), grief was too overwhelming & traumatic for public show, and we had better ways of dealing with wars we remembered (no matter how vaguely), than to beat Anzac Day & other memorial days (& there seem to be more every year now), Gallopoli and Kokoda up the way they have been in the last decade & a half.
Perhaps because, in the 35 years since Whitlam brought home the troops from Vietnam, our rather small wars have been fought by professionals. Until recently, Australians grew up among veterans & victims of wars in which our defence forces had a small professional core, and the rest were Citizen Militia, either volunteers or Draftees. When war’s horrors spread deep into a nation’s civilian core, perhaps we remember differently.
BWT: Before 25/04/09, will someone (?Kev07) PLEASE teach any broadcaster who has to mention Villers-Bretonneux to PRONOUNCE IT CORRECTLY. At least the SBS almost pulled it off, only to relapse on the last mention. Make a recording of the name, as pronounced by the townspeople, and load it on their iPods!
Excellent point Dee Cee!
One of the legitimate claims for pride was that the 1st and 2nd AIF were overwhelmingly volunteer forces composed of part-time, citizen soldiers in an armed force that paid little heed to the trappings of traditional military hierarchy. It’s difficult to imagine today just how unusual such an armed force was in 1915. The British officer class, for example, refused to believe that Australians would be capable of military feats of arms. This force was deeply subversive of all British officers held dear in terms of military culture. It was still more shocking to the Prussian military caste, and almost incomprehensible to Tsarist Russians.
However, since Vietnam, our wars have been fought not by citizen-soldiers, but more and more by “special forces” whose names and faces the citizens and taxpayers of this country are forbidden to know.
Now, this arrangement may be efficient, but it is a huge step away from who and what the original ANZACs were. Yet, the ANZAC myth is stretched to cover these secret warriors as well.
Thanks for the comment, Dee Cee. It’s comments like yours that make blogging the brilliant medium it can be.
I had a long conversation with a friend in Erlangen, who I’ve only seen once since we went to school and university in the 1960s. He spoke from the perspective of one who lives in the country that lost both world wars, lost about 25% of its territory on each occasion and lost huge numbers of people both military and civilian with upheaval and destruction beyond imagination.
Ditto thanks TFA for your comment too. The statue caught my eye and I threw it in at the end, although it was not strictly related to Villers-Bretonneux.
Yet still some silly pollie or spruiker will put their head up and talk about worthwhile sacrifice for the fatherland.
On the follies of the Brits and Churchill there was another segment on Perspective last Tuesday where we are told of Churchill committing us to Greece which had kicked out the Italians and were about to be run over by the Germans. Our military leaders new the case was futile, but still we went. To add insult to injury it is now apparent that Churchill was quite willing to abandon us there as expendable. That didn’t happen, but the intent was there.
I think we can admire the courage, resolution, resourcefulness and human values under extreme pressure of our fighting troops without in any way glorifying war or clouding our judgement about the meaning (or lack of it) of the events.
I understand that at Fromelles we lost 5,500 in one day, the biggest loss ever of Australia troops.
I’ve just added this note to the post.
Concerning 5, Mark the Lateline segment is a visual repeat of the Friday AM segment I linked to, only less.
Geraldine Doogue interviewed Ross McMullin again on Saturday Extra. Mc Mullin authored a biography of Pompey Elliott in 2002, now re-issued. Elliott was a general who would not ask the troops to go where he had not gone. He was battle hardened and probably scarred having been inter alia at the landing at Gallipoli, at Lone Pine, later at Fromelles and much more. He had issues with his superiors, a difficult life after the war which ended apparently by his own hand in 1931. An outline is given in the Australian Dictionary of Biography entry.
In the following segment on Saturday Extra film critic Julie Rigg responded to Doogue’s comment about Australians always celebrating failure. Rigg said it’s not only Australians. During the Falklands war she was touring South America. She said that counrty after country celebrated defeats and losses in wars we have mostly never heard of. One country lost a third of its population in such a war.
Rigg said it was through a human desire to seek meaning.
Did anyone compare KRudd’s Anzac Day speech (which never mentioned New Zealand) or indeed all comments in this thread, with that at the Aukland War Memorial from the NZ Defence Minister?
I’ve put more NZ quotes in my “Nuvur Furgut New Zealund ANZACs” post if anyone else is interested in the cross-ditch differences in the meaning of Anzac Day. Shame on us.
“They died to keep Turkey British”!
A war for democracy? What about democracy for India and Ireland in 1914?
Brian and everyone:
Excellent post.
The Feral Abacus [6]:
That is an apt and poignant memorial.
Not quite off-topic but outside the War Memorial and Museum in Seoul, South Korea, is a statue of two brothers, one from the North, one from the South, who found each other on the battlefield.
Let’s not have any more equestrian statues of failed generals nor any more 3-dimensional re-election ads for incompetent presidents/prime-ministers/time-servers.
Dave, I had intended to list all last week’s Perspective segments seriatim because they all dealt with ANZAC. The first of them dealt with NZ and Australia as in ANZAC and defence force cooperation etc. It included this:
there was a story about this in the TV news tonight. Apparently the sculptor who has dual citizenship made the Kiwi soldier a little taller than the Australian.
On Friday we heard about the Irish, their involvement at Gallipoli and their very different reaction to British blunders.
Looking for information on the Bunka Island massacre, if you can assist, Much appreciated
Geoff, Do you mean Bangka Island?