The Great War: The year that made us
In 1918, Australian soldiers substantially helped change the course of history.
It was the year of victory. The final year of the First World War was also the one in which Australia had its greatest influence on international affairs. It was the war that changed us, and 1918 was the year that made us.
Australia sustained more than 60,000 battle casualties, including more than 12,000 dead. Twenty-nine Australians were awarded the Victoria Cross.
Emerging from the bloody quagmire of Passchendaele of late 1917, in which 35 Australians had been killed for every metre of ground taken, the Germans took it all back in March 1918—dangerously close to Amiens and its vital rail infrastructure.
After desperate AIF fighting at Dernancourt in late March, Villers-Bretonneux had to be held at all costs. As boyish British soldiers fell back late on April 24, German artillery rained down. With buildings burning, Sergeant Walter Downing of the 57th Battalion described “sinister light ... men muttered, ‘It’s Anzac Day’ ... there was nothing to do but go straight forward and die hard”.
And die hard they did. Their blood was up.
Baying like hell-hounds, they counter-attacked with bayonets and grenades backed by machine-guns, oblivious to their losses. One German officer wrote: “The Australians were magnificent. Nothing seemed to stop them.”
And nothing did throughout 1918.
When John Monash was promoted to Lieutenant General and command of the Australian Corps on June 1, a series of stunning victories ensued: Hamel, Amiens, Péronne, Mont St Quentin, Hargicourt and Montbrehain. Some were close-run.
Finally a war-winning combination—a corps commander of genius employing combined arms with infantry, tanks, artillery and aircraft.
After Amiens in August, claimed as a British victory but in truth delivered by the Australians and Canadians, Field Marshal Douglas Haig met Monash and his divisional commanders. Brigadier General Thomas Blamey reported Haig, tears rolling down his cheeks saying, “You do not know what the Australians and Canadians have done for the British Empire in these days.”
We did know what we had done. We co-inflicted on the Germans what their senior commander General Ludendorff described as “the black day” of the German army; we substantially helped change the course of history.
At Hamel, and again in breaking the Hindenburg Line, we fought alongside the Americans together under the command of an Australian general. A bond forged in bloody sacrifice within which our two nations still live.
The guns finally fell silent with the Armistice on November 11.
Having been with the Australians at the front since Gallipoli as official war correspondent, Charles Bean chose not to celebrate. Instead, he drove to Fromelles, where in July 1916 he had witnessed the costly aftermath of Australia’s worst day ever—5533 Australian casualties, almost 2000 of them dead.
In silence he walked the battlefield, to reflect and be with the men who had dreamt of this day they would never see, but for which they had given their lives:
We found the old no man’s land simply full of our dead ... The skulls and bones and torn uniforms were lying about everywhere.
He later wrote: It is over ... we are free to be happy again ... Sixty thousand Australians bought us this happiness with their lives.
We emerged victorious, joyous yet inconsolably mourning our dead. We were a deeply wounded and divided people, polarised around conscription, religion, politics, veterans and “shirkers”, living with another 60,000 who would die within a decade of returning to Australia.
Monash’s leadership of the Australian Corps to its stunning victories in 1918 laid the foundation for a no less significant civilian legacy. We remained true to our young, brittle democracy. It was possibly our greatest achievement.
Monash was the most widely respected Australian. In his leadership of everything from the Melbourne Anzac Day parade to Rotary, he was the pillar of the democracy for which so much had been given.
His words repudiating an overthrow of the government during the Great Depression speak truth to our future:
The only hope for Australia is the ballot box, and an educated electorate.
It still is. We are Australians.
Brendan Nelson is Director of the Australian War Memorial.
