The apogee of the Australian infantry’s development on the Western Front came in 1918, after its amalgamation as a five division corps under Sir John Monash. In an Australian dress rehearsal for its part the coming Battle of Amiens in August, the Australians conducted a limited offensive at the Battle of Hamel on 4 July 1918. Thereafter, the Australian Corps maintained a level of battlefield effectiveness that was in keeping with the entire fielded British Expeditionary Force (BEF). By this point in the conflict, the longest serving Australian troops had been on the Western Front for about twenty months. British enabled, using British technology and tactics, the Australian infantryman individually and collectively had undergone the same learning process as the entire British Army. Australian troops were engulfed in the ‘industrialised-scale’ combat of the Somme campaign during 1916. These events precipitated the learning process. The year 1917 was a crucible in which newly introduced training, tactics and technology were refined and endorsed. Australians took part in the ill-conceived use of armour at Bullecourt during the Battle of Arras in 1917, and in the burgeoning use of bite-and-hold tactics at Messines in June 1917.

Within months of the arrival of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in France, a War Office Directive – No. 1968 of 15 October 1916 – directed that all troops enlisting in the Army undertake a fourteen-week standardised course of basic recruit training. This directive included all Dominion troops training in their own camps in the United Kingdom; and by early 1917, the British syllabus was incorporated as the core curriculum for training in the AIF’s depots in the United Kingdom. During the Great War, there was commonality in equipment, tactics and procedures among all British Empire infantry formations on the Western Front. Recruit training was the foundation of BEF infantry battlefield effectiveness, and the AIF recruit training process in England was entirely British. Standardisation underwrote the British Expeditionary Force’s (BEF) level of battlefield effectiveness during the second half of the Great War. This chapter details the significant physical and administrative resources allocated to establishing Australian recruit training schools on the Salisbury Plain between 1916 and 1918, and it emphasises that individual basic training in Wiltshire was elemental to the development of Australian infantry on the Western Front.

Bleak winter weather at the beginning of 1917 on the Western Front was a depressing omen for the New Year. During 1917, Tsar Nicholas abdicated. Late in the year, Russia withdrew from the conflict. In an attempt to starve Britain out of the conflict, Germany announced its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare in February, and America reversed its foreign policy and declared war against the Central powers in April. In 1917, French general Nivelle’s offensives along the Aisne River south of the Somme resulted in thousands of casualties for little gain. As a result, in late May and June after two and a half years war, mutiny swept through the French Army’s ranks. In Britain at the beginning of 1917, Welshman David Lloyd George was a new Prime Minister for a new year, and in Australia another Welshman, William Morris Hughes, had been recently re-elected as Prime Minister. Lloyd George came to openly criticise Haig during 1917; he was just as damning about the battles of attrition occurring in France. The year commenced with the experiences of the Somme and Verdun being codified into new training pamphlets and also brought the promise of further British offensives. For the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) these occurred initially at Arras and, later, further north in the Flanders near the Ypres Salient.

Newly trained and returning Australian soldiers undertook a reinforcement process after their arrival on the Continent in accordance with the British Army schooling system in France that trained troops in operating modern weapon systems. Contrary to popular belief, these schools and their associated processes and training pamphlets provided a robust and valuable education to Empire soldiers in preparing them for the rigours of combat. The training methodology was British Expeditionary Force (BEF) wide, and the development of Australian infantry can only be viewed in this context. The schooling system must be studied holistically as there was a disparate dissemination of doctrinal and training standards among the different British armies to which Australian infantry were allocated in 1917. An overview of the 1917 campaigns in which Australian infantry were involved provides further context. These campaigns show how army commanders had a very real influence on the application of the latest tactics and doctrine among their formations on the Western Front. Despite discrepancies, the overarching theme remains that the education methodology employed by the BEF comprised specificity in training and habituation and was a concept as old as the armies of Alexander the Great.

Leadership was central to the development of Australian infantry on the Western Front. Even Haig, who most often has the blame for the conduct of the war laid at his feet, realised the importance of leadership and training. There was an absolute ‘need for the training of battalion commanders’, he wrote in February 1918, ’who in their turn must train their company and platoon commanders. This is really a platoon commanders’ war’ Nevertheless, popular history today reviles British generals of the Great War as callous and negligent. The background for such perceptions is decades old and lies in the prose of a generation of war poets who wrote prolifically in the aftermath of the conflict. An infantry officer in 1917, Owen was diagnosed as suffering from shell shock and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland where he wrote extensively. The difficulties faced by British commanders on the Western Front were significant and numerous. After 1916, the British high command was required to regenerate an army, grow a competent officer corps and develop and disseminate the doctrine necessary to win the war. Australian leadership shaped these events in the development of Australian infantry on the Western Front.

By the last year of the Great War, Australian infantry on the Western Front had developed to a highly capable and professional standard. The Anzac legend cannot account for this evolution; effectiveness was hard earned through the rigours of systematic training, and in a specialist schooling system common across the entire British Force. The corollary is clear. Australian infantry progressed because of their ties to the British Empire. Indeed, by the time that Australians arrived on the Western Front, monumental developments in small arms and quick firing weapons were precipitating a complete rewrite of the tactical methods employed by small infantry units in the BEF. Because of this, by 1918, effectiveness equated to standardised training, operational experience and technical mastery. The Anzac myth pays little credence to such matters – even less to the dull aspects of logistics and fire support, most of which was supplied to the Australian infantry by Britain. In concert with the wider force, by 1918, Australian infantry had developed to a point where they were well trained, technically savvy and battle hardened.

This chapter will focus on the platoon-level weapons systems utilised by Australian infantry on the Western Front from 1916–18. The introduction and use of these weapons occurred in concert with organisational and training developments that were concurrently occurring throughout the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). The weapon systems were in every sense the platoon-level tools of the trade during the Great War. Developments in their tactical application evolved significantly after the Somme campaign of 1916. In particular, the British and Imperial platoon weapons systems of 1916–18 comprised the rifle, bayonet, light machine-gun (LMG), grenade and grenade launcher. All of these weapons were used by the Australian infantry platoon and its subordinate elements, the section, in the last two years of the Great War. This chapter will focus on the technical detail associated with each system, and in particular the schooling systems in which Australian infantrymen learnt to operate and maintain their various weapons. This chapter will not discuss high-end weapons systems or combined arms operations – tanks, aircraft, artillery and the like – other than in the wider context of the development of infantry tactics.

By the end of 1914, a newly formed Australian Imperial Force (AIF) had accepted and deployed more than 20,000 Australian volunteers overseas to train and prepare for combat. The majority of them were sent to Egypt to train, thousands of miles and a hemisphere away. In the following four years, a further 290,000 followed. Most of these soldiers served as infantrymen – the great majority of them on the Western Front – and by the end of the conflict, they had earned a reputation as a highly effective and professional component of the wider British Army. This book examines the substance of this reputation. In particular, it examines the development of Australian infantry on the Western Front from 1916 to 1918 as a way of determining if this reputation is justified. This is where, in 1918, for perhaps the only time in the nation’s history, Australian infantry engaged the main enemy in a decisive theatre and defeated it.

The Great War of 1914¬–18 is often perceived in Britain and the former Dominions as bloody, stupid, ignorant, and unsophisticated in its conduct. Bloody it undoubtedly was. Over 900,000 British and Empire troops were killed, and nearly two million were wounded. Almost no family in the United Kingdom – nor the numerous Dominions for that matter – was left untouched. The British Empire fought in Africa, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and as far away as German New Guinea. Yet, it was in Europe, in the great crucible of the Western Front, that the largest portion of British Empire casualties fell. The experience of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) on the Western Front from 1916 to 1918 was inherent to the British Army’s experience. Australian infantrymen who arrived from the Mediterranean in 1916 went on to serve in almost every major British campaign on the Western Front until early October 1918. In those two years, the British Army underwent a learning process that resulted in a highly effective and disciplined force by the end of the war. The cost was high. By the November 1918 Armistice, tens of thousands of Empire troops were buried or remained unaccounted for in the shattered Picardy and Flanders landscapes.

Australian infantrymen were rigorously prepared for operations on the Western Front, and this is the basis of the notable successes of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) during the war. It is relevant to note that the popular history of Australian infantry in the Great War does not include commissioned officers. As it goes, there are significant differences between the modern memory of Australian Great War infantrymen and the reality of their contributions and experiences. One is based in myth, the other a practical training and reinforcement process. The myth had its heritage in the Anzac legend, though the training regimen was equally important to service in the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). Both have contributed to a generally positive and enduring legacy. There were significant differences in the training received by those troops who enlisted in 1914 in comparison with the rigour of training undertaken by those who enlisted from 1916 to 1918. The factual history debunks the ‘super human’ qualities that Australian popular history sometimes bestows on its Great War infantrymen. Such matters are important; it is perhaps the body of men who served on the Western Front – and their battlefield record – that are the foundation for the Anzac legend. Indeed, the extraordinary deeds of the 1st AIF contrasted with the very ordinariness of the Australian troops themselves.

A history of Shakespeare in wartime could not be complete without including an object representing the only built memorial in London for Shakespeare’s Tercentenary of 1916, the Shakespeare Hut for servicemen on leave in London. However, material traces of this extraordinary building are extremely scarce. Focusing for the first time on the material and paradigmatic significance of one surviving object from this building and a sister document, this essay examines a paper programme that epitomizes the multilayered significance of women’s Shakespearean performance in wartime. This programme presents an evening of Shakespearean speeches, scenes, and songs, performed by diverse practitioners from theatre superstar Ellen Terry to a troupe of teenaged girls from Miss Italia Conte’s school. Terry kept a copy of this piece of ephemera for the rest of her life. The programme’s flimsy physical form (a small, folded piece of thin paper) reveals how necessary wartime austerity contrasts starkly with the cornucopia of star talent and entertainments presented within, reminding us of the ephemeral and uniquely transient nature both of wartime performance and of the specific fragility and rarity of material traces of women’s wartime Shakespeare production.

This story from the Korean War goes to the heart of the unique bond between Australian and New Zealand soldiers, one cemented in mutual respect, expressed by a fierce rivalry and a steadfastness to stand shoulder-to-shoulder against any foe, perceived or real. The old coat of arms for New Zealand carried the motto ‘Onward’ (also the motto of the 1 New Zealand Expeditionary Force during the First World War and of the 1 Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment today). It is a motto of modest intent somewhat in keeping with the retiring, nocturnal and flightless kiwi emblazoned on the sleeves of members of the New Zealand Army.

Chapter 6 examines how veterans responded to Vietnamese war memory at four key sites: the War Remnants Museum, Hỏa Lò Prison Museum, Sơn Mỹ Memorial and Museum, and Long Tân. When veterans returned to Việt Nam, they discovered that the Vietnamese narrative of the “American War” rendered them perpetrators of atrocities or, at best, passive victims of imperialist warmongering nations. While some returnees embraced Vietnamese war memory, others rejected or challenged it, and many struggled with the tensions and contradictions between different versions of the war. Across national and ideological lines, veterans displayed a selective acceptance of Vietnamese war memory, isolating elements that corroborated their memories of war and rejecting the legitimacy of others. This chapter also considers varied response to the Vietnamese erasure of veterans’ wartime allies and concludes by examining how Australian returnees increasingly approached the site of Long Tân through the Australian tradition of “Anzac” pilgrimage.

In the space of thirty years the circumstances of Australian nationhood changed irrevocably. The country’s strategic dependence on Britain drew it into two wars that originated in European rivalry and together exhausted European supremacy. The first strained the political stability of the combatants and cut the flows of trade and investment that sustained their prosperity. The second destroyed their empires, leaving the continent in thrall to the two superpowers to its east and west. Britain, victorious in both wars, was perhaps the most diminished by their cumulative effects and its fading imperial certainties created doubt and division in Australia. Only as the second war spread to the Pacific, and Australia found itself isolated and in danger of invasion, came a belated recognition of the need to reconstruct the nation for changed circumstances.

On 25 April 1915, when John Simpson Kirkpatrick set foot on the Gallipoli peninsula as part of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), it is unlikely that he had an inkling of the frequency with which his story would be told, retold and mistold to generations of Australians. Nor is it likely he had any idea of the extent to which that story would grow, distort and become part of Australia’s national creation myth. The idea that the Australian nation was ‘born on the shores of Gallipoli’ through the sacrifice, endurance, initiative, resourcefulness, mateship and larrikinism of the Anzacs codified the First World War as a moment of national significance in the formation of an Australian identity. Kirkpatrick’s story is entirely enmeshed in this myth-making; as ‘Australia’s most famous stretcher-bearer’, he has come to embody both the ‘Anzac spirit’ and the work of the Australian Army Medical Corps (AAMC) in the First World War.1