The Promise: How two Diggers created an Anzac legend and a Legacy for the ages
It’s an Aussie legend dating back to World War I, being celebrated across the nation today. But this is the real story of an act amidst sheer horror that spawned “The Promise”.
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The much-loved organisation and its traditions were built on a storied episode that has gone down amongst the most enduring Anzac legends: an incident known simply as “The Promise”.
In the story, an unnamed Digger in the shrapnel-lashed trenches of the Western Front pledges to a dying mate that he will look after the man’s wife and kids - encapsulating the Legacy way of returned veterans helping those less fortunate.
But the best legends are built on truth: real events and real people.
And as the charity that upholds The Promise every day, Legacy, marks its centenary, it is time to reveal the true story of those men and that event: an account of bravery and mateship that resonates far beyond that Somme battlefield to this very day, capturing some of the most relatable elements of the Anzac spirit.
At its centre are three men, all from the 16th Battalion, which was thrown into the desperate fighting around the devastated French village of Pozieres, as part of the British army’s infamous Somme offensive in July-August 1916.
Pozieres, Australia’s first major engagement on the Western Front – following a smaller, but nightmarish, action at Fromelles just weeks earlier – is notorious among war historians. On a small piece of ground churned into a hellscape by one of the worst artillery barrages of the war, in just six weeks 6800 Australians were killed and another 16,200 wounded or captured; among 1,100,000 casualties in total across British and Dominions, French and German forces there.
Among our three men, all South Australians, was the capable 22-year-old Sergeant Leslie John Hallifax, a “stalwart young man” according to a contemporary report, who had been earmarked for promotion to officer.
When he signed up in 1915, the former telegraph company clerk left behind his mother, two older sisters, brothers and a sweetheart, Dorothy; he would loyally send them upbeat postcards and, in Dorothy’s case, part of his pay. His father had disappeared from the picture when Leslie was young.
Serving alongside him in the battalion’s D Company was the much older Private Frederick William Muller. “He … weighed 160lbs (73kg) and had a medium complexion, blue eyes and dark hair,” according to a contemporary description. The son of Swiss-German immigrants, who had anglicised his name and was commonly known as Fred, the 37-year-old gardener was unmarried.
Their platoon commander was the dashing Lieutenant Robert Smith Somerville – a contemporary of Hallifax at Adelaide High School. It was his job, in the early hours of August 10, 1916, to help lead newly-arrived D Company against a German trench where, in an attack the previous night, scores of British soldiers had been killed.
“Just prior to the charge being made, this officer, with the utmost disregard for personal danger, sat on the parapet smoking his pipe and encouraging the men for the dash forward,” read a post-battle citation – an extraordinary act of courage in an area where snipers, machine guns and shellfire made any exposure above ground potentially deadly.
During the attack, Somerville’s captain was hit, leaving the young lieutenant in command of the entire company. “By his example and personal courage (Somerville) was largely instrumental in maintaining a section of the trench which was subjected to the heaviest artillery fire experienced during the time the battalion occupied the front line,” continued the citation.
The company hung on to the ground they gained for almost three days before being relieved, holding off enemy infantry counter-attacks with their rifles and Lewis machineguns.
Swarms of infantry were bad enough; but the real horror at Pozieres was the devastating artillery barrages. Survivors’ descriptions of German gunfire are terrifying to read.
“It was the AIF’s first major experience of industrial warfare, where they were feeling the full brunt of shelling and machinegun fire,” says Australian War Memorial historian Meghan Adams. She adds that for many of the Australians at Pozieres, who had been taken on as reinforcements post-Gallipoli, it was their first experience of battle. “It’s a real baptism of fire.”
And on the afternoon of August 12, as the men of the 16th began retreating to safety, the enemy opened up.
Around 4pm, shortly before the withdrawal was completed, Hallifax was in a support trench dug-out, just next to what is today a country lane, when a shell landed nearby.
“He was killed by a piece of high explosive shell which penetrated high in the forehead, death thus being instantaneous,” one eyewitness reported. Another recalled seeing his body “in a peaceful sleeping position”.
Despite the horror unfolding around them and the near-impossibility of burials in shellfire that would uncover bodies as fast as they were interred, Muller refused to simply abandon Hallifax. In a later recollection attributed to an officer – traditionally identified as Daniel Sidney Aarons, but who, according to researcher David Burridge, was most likely Somerville – Muller came to him and said, “Sergeant Hallifax has been killed, sir, we are going to bury him, would you care to come along.”
As Muller, a Methodist, said a brief prayer over the body, the officer recounted, “In those few minutes it seemed, and I am certain it was so, there was complete silence; not a gun or shell explosion was heard, as if God was giving the soul of Hallifax a peaceful journey to his eternal home.”
It was at that moment, The Promise was made.
“Replacing his tin hat, and taking his spade, Muller began to cover the body of Hallifax, and with tears running down his cheeks said: ‘Never worry, my friend, I’ll look after your family.’”
Decades on, that account was cited by Aarons, who in later years was decorated for gallantry, promoted, awarded the OBE, knighted and became president of Sydney Legacy – and The Promise was immortalised in the charity’s foundation story.
“In those words lie the fundamentals of Legacy – ‘don’t worry, our friends, we will look after your widows and children’,” he said.
“Muller’s simple act must have been enacted on many occasions in other fields of the war, but what I have recorded I took part in, so I feel that in it I saw the roots of Legacy planted; and in the passing of time it grew into a strong, virile tree with widespread branches covered in evergreen leaves, under which countless thousands have found shade from storm and tempest and want.”
There was nothing “official” about Muller’s tearful act, and it will have been echoed by other soldiers before and since, on battlefields across the globe. Indeed, descendants of Muller and Hallifax contacted by News Corp had no idea of their forefathers’ place in Anzac lore.
But it is what Legacy Australia’s devoted staff and volunteers also call the “Muller Passage” that lies at the heart of their ongoing mission to help the families of veterans who have lost their lives or health in service.
It was at Pozieres – about 800m across the fields from the very spot Hallifax fell – that Legacy launched its Centenary Torch Relay earlier this year on April 23.
The ongoing event, presented by Defence Health, saw flaming torches taken by relay teams to focal points on the Western Front; to London, where the flame was received by King Charles ahead of an extraordinary parade through the packed pre-Coronation streets; and then home to Australia, for a journey of several months, which will end in October in Melbourne, where the first Legacy club came into being in 1923.
Around 60,000 Australians were killed in the Great War and more than 150,000 were wounded, many dying not long after as a result of their injuries. As the survivors began to return home, some took on the duty of supporting their fallen comrades’ widows and children, later becoming known as Legatees as Legacy clubs spread across the country.
There are now 44 clubs in Australia and one in London, currently supporting 40,000 individuals and families, with help from more than 3400 volunteer Legatees.
Impressive though the numbers are by themselves, behind the statistics lie real people with real stories – like Hallifax, Muller and Somerville.
That their now legendary encounter took place at Pozieres has added poignancy: as AWM historian Adams explains, its devastating aftermath whipped across Australia as thousands of families in what was then a much smaller and intensely anxious population were informed that a loved one was among the 23,000 killed, wounded, captured or simply lost without explanation.
Others would learn later that although their man had survived and come home, he had been traumatised within. One such example was Martin O’Meara, from Muller’s and Hallifax’s unit. He earned the Victoria Cross at Pozieres, showing a total disregard for danger as he repeatedly rescued wounded men from No-Man’s Land – but after returning to Australia he broke down and spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital. .
“That has a real impact on Australian society,” Adams says. “That is one of the things that has made Poizeres endure as something that is still important to us today, because a lot of Australians have someone in their family tree who fought at Pozieres. I know I do.
“I think the scale of loss experienced in Australia at that time has actually been passed down through the generations. A lot of people remember their ancestors who fought there and know the story of what happened there. Even 100 years removed, it is still deeply personal to Australians.”
One of those is Hallifax’s descendant John Cashmore, of Bermagui in NSW, who will be making a pilgrimage to the very spot his great-uncle fell this week.
Two days after Hallifax died, his talent was recognised: his promotion to Second Lieutenant came through. In 1923 – the year Legacy was founded – his beloved, Dorothy Correll, dedicated a memorial to him in St George’s Church, Goodwood, SA. Four months after that she married a decorated officer from the same battalion: Port Adelaide footballer and Gallipoli veteran, Douglas Crisp.
Hallifax’s remains were eventually recovered in 1929 by war graves investigators, after an initial case of misidentification, and laid to rest a few kilometres from where he fell at Serre Cemetery.
Muller survived being shot in the face and severe trench foot; he was promoted to corporal before returning home where he married in 1920 and had children, resuming work as a gardener and happily espousing his love of horses until his death in 1957.
Somerville ended the war as a captain, was awarded the Military Cross for his actions at Pozieres, and later the Distinguished Service Order. He died in 1963 in Adelaide.
Together, their legacy is the story that gives Australia the day, the time and the location where the flame that would become the Legacy Promise was first ignited – and the identities of the ordinary, yet extraordinary, Australians who gave it lasting life, in a place of death.
The new information was welcomed by Eric Easterbrook OAM, Legacy Australia’s chairman and a Vietnam veteran who spent 42 years working with Defence, in and out of uniform.
“I find it very emotional, especially in recalling my own promise of commitment to Legacy,” he said. “Knowing more about these men makes The Promise more pertinent.”
Noting that many “hundreds or even thousands” of other soldiers will have made similar vows over the years, he added: “Those promises have moved on through other conflicts and we are fortunate today to be able to carry that on.”
Originally published as The Promise: How two Diggers created an Anzac legend and a Legacy for the ages
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