Zero Hour (21 page)

REMEMBERING

The Diggers were haunted by memories. Some of the men lay awake night after night, thinking over things they should have done, or things they shouldn't have. Again, in their minds, they saw mates killed and maimed and listened to wounded comrades calling to them in agony from no-man's-land. They relived the sight of helpless prisoners being lined up and shot, men curling up to die or having their heads battered in with rifle butts. They remembered picking up pieces of human beings and putting them in sandbags, or burning corpses close to trenches to get rid of the smell.

Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence Blyth had enlisted after one of his brothers wrote from Egypt telling him that every man would be needed. That brother died one month before the end of the war. Another brother

came back, having lost an arm, and he had this claustrophobia. He couldn't stay in a confined place or anything like that. He couldn't go into the lift, he couldn't go in the car. He couldn't do anything like that and he couldn't get any relief, so what did he do? He met up with his old cobbers and he went on the drink. He got drink, it carried him through. It helped him through.

There was little understanding of, or support for, shell-shock victims, who were generally considered to be lazy or faking their symptoms to get a war pension. When money ran out, especially during the Great Depression of the 1930s, veterans, some limbless, sang for a living on the streets, or begged with signs hung around their necks listing the battles they'd fought in. One Australian veteran wrote a song that became popular with others who'd experienced the war. It ended: ‘Civvie life's a bleedin' failure, I was happy yesterday.' Some sought out the company of other veterans; some drank to dull the memories; others buried themselves in their families and work and never spoke about the war again.

But the pain was too much for some, and they ended their lives. Brigadier General ‘Pompey' Elliott, the Australian commander who had helped recapture Villers-Bretonneux and had wept at the sight of his men after the Battle of Fromelles, committed suicide in 1931.

Queenslander Private Douglas Grant struggled to fit in on his return. He was one of 400 to 500 Indigenous Australians who'd served in the Great War, even though, at the time, they were not classed as Australian citizens and volunteering was no easy feat—government regulations meant Aborigines had to seek permission to leave the country. He'd tried to enlist twice before being accepted, was captured at Bullecourt in 1917 and spent the rest of the war as a POW. Fellow prisoners put him in charge of handing out the relief parcels because, according to a German, he was honest, had a quick mind, and ‘was so aggressively Australian'. But if he or other Aboriginal soldiers hoped their sacrifice would earn them greater respect and equality back home, they were disappointed. Grant experienced continued racism and exclusion, and, after trying to participate in ex-servicemen's organisations, he became frustrated and disillusioned and turned to drink.

NEVER FORGET

In Belgium and France, the locals faced another harsh winter, living in ruins or shacks made from war scrap. Their fields were strewn with barbed wire and pockmarked with craters filled with stagnant, gas-poisoned water. There were many dead bodies, and unexploded shells that killed and maimed many of those who painstakingly returned the land to farming. Even today, shells ploughed up during the ‘iron harvest' are left at the side of the road for collection. Remains of bodies, too, are still found.

Large memorials were erected—the memorial at Menin Gate, Ypres, records the names of 54,900 of the ‘missing', while the Thiepval Memorial is inscribed with the names of 72,000 soldiers who have no known grave, mainly those killed between July and November 1916. The buried were dug up and moved to large cemeteries. Australian families were given the opportunity to write an inscription for their loved one's headstone. They ranged from ‘I gave my son, he gave his life for Australia and Empire' and ‘It is men, of my age and single, who are expected to do their duty' to ‘Beloved only son' and ‘Rest here in peace, your parents' hearts are broken, mum and dad'. The New Zealand headstones, like the British, gave the soldier's name and battalion, or, if unknown, simply the words ‘A soldier of the Great War. Known unto God.'

The French and Belgian people promised to remember the Australians and New Zealanders who'd died on their soil. They erected plaques and renamed streets in Villers-Bretonneux with names like Melbourne Street, and streets in Le Quesnoy with names like Aotearoa Avenue and Place de All Blacks. School classrooms in Villers-Bretonneux still display signs with the words ‘Never forget Australia.'

A NEW BEGINNING

The terms of the armistice were harsh. The Ottoman Empire was broken up, and France and Britain gained control of oil-rich countries like Iraq. The continuing wars and conflicts in the Middle East can be linked back to the splitting up of the Ottoman Empire after the war to end all wars.

Germany was forced to pay reparations to the Allies for the cost of their war effort and the ongoing expenses of their veterans and war widows. It was also occupied; vast quantities of war materials were given to the victors; and the naval blockade that had starved the German people continued. For many ordinary Germans, life after the war remained a daily struggle against hunger and poverty.

Many soldiers and politicians believed that Germany was treated too harshly—the British prime minister commented that the treaty was ‘all a great pity. We shall have to do the same thing all over again in 25 years.' The Germans felt they were being unfairly punished and humiliated. As they struggled to pay back the heavy reparations to the British and French, a German veteran of the Great War who had been at Fromelles on 19 July 1916 rose to power on a wave of bitterness and nationalism. The Germans, under Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party, would once more march against the Russians, through the old Ottoman Empire and France, all the way to the coast that they had been unable to reach in the Great War. When Britain, France, New Zealand and Australia declared war on Germany again, on 3 September 1939, veterans of the Great War had no illusions about what the next generation of young men would face. Ormond Burton, a veteran-turned-pacifist, was jailed for speaking out against the Second World War as transports sailed again to Egypt in January 1940.

TIMELINE

GLOSSARY

5.9s
: 5.9-inch (150-millimetre) German shells fired high in the air from a short gun called a field howitzer.

AIF
: Australian Imperial Force—a voluntary army established to fight in the Great War.

Allies
: an alliance of nations joined together for a common cause, used here to refer to the alliance between countries including: Britain, France, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, the United States and Italy.

Artillery
: transportable, mounted guns that fire shells across long distances.

Billet
: a private building used as living quarters for soldiers.

Breastworks
: a temporary wall made from filled sandbags or wood, used to provide cover and defence.

Cavalry
: a highly mobile branch of the army that attacks on horseback.

Concussion (shock) wave
: a wave of air, usually from an explosion, that is so forceful it can kill.

Conscription
: compulsory enrolment in the armed forces.

Court-martialled
: tried by a military court.

Duckboards
: a wooden boardwalk laid over muddy ground.

Fire steps
: steps or ledges cut into the inside of a trench wall to allow defenders to look out or fire.

Flank
: the left or right end of an army line.

Fly-blown
: crawling with maggots.

Kaiser
: a German title meaning emperor.

Loopholes
: a small hole through a sandbag wall or pillbox, often made of metal tubing, which allows troops to observe or shoot in safety.

NZEF: New Zealand Expeditionary Force—a voluntary army established to fight in the Great War.

Pacifist
: a person who is opposed to war or violence.

Parapet
: a wall of sandbags at the top of a trench, used to give protection.

Puttee
: a long strip of cloth wound around the leg from ankle to knee, over clothing and boots, to give protection and support.

Ramparts
: a type of defensive wall.