ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

Source: Project Gutenberg

Published in 1918, Over There with the Australians is a World War I memoir of a scout, an Intelligence Officer, in the Fifteenth Australian Infantry.  Captain R. Hugh Knyvett was one of the ‘lucky’ ones: he trained in Egypt and survived the campaigns in Gallipoli and the Western Front.  The book was published in America  as a rallying cry for Americans to join the fight – but it is now well out of print: I downloaded the book from Project Gutenberg.

It begins with a bit of doggerel from a newspaper, not great poetry to be sure, but heartfelt, and that’s the tone of the work.  Knyvett begins by explaining that he writes about the scouts not because they’re more heroic, but simply because he knows about them.  He has nothing but admiration for the other men who sacrificed so much in that awful, pointless war. His story is

an attempt to show the true nature of the Australian soldier, and sent out with the hope that they will remind some … of the contribution made by the freemen who live across the ocean of peace from you to “make the world safe for democracy.” (Introduction)

In this introduction he is at pains to remember two mates in particular:

Ray Wilson was an artistic fellow with not much in common with the other men, but they became firm friends from the shared experience of coming under fire. Knyvett says simply that he went ‘mad for a while when his body was found’ and warns his readers not to make simplistic judgements about the emotions such tragedy arouses: ‘Don’t talk of ‘not hating’  to a man whose friend has been foully murdered! What if he had been yours?’ (Introduction)

Dan Macarthy was a rough-and-tumble and somewhat light-fingered fellow.  He’d had a haphazard education which was so often the fate of kids living in the Outback, but his amazing memory for detail was invaluable in his work as a scout.

There are parts of the book that affront a modern sensibility.  Knyvett begins by justifying British colonialism in New Guinea.  The war meant that German New Guinea became a British possession and Knyvett is at pains to assert that the ‘natives’ were better off – because of the British philosophy that it was the ‘White Man’s Burden’ to civilise them whereas the Germans merely exploited them.   This section of the book is best skimmed over. (Chapter 1)

Source: Project Gutenberg

It’s when Knyvett begins the story proper that it becomes fascinating.  I did not know, for example, that when the Australian Government could not find the funds to transport the hundreds of men wanting to enlist from the outback, they simply picked up their swags and walked to the nearest recruitment centre hundreds of miles away.

Some of these were real characters.  Old Tom Coghlan lived so far from human habitation that his only conversations took place with jam tins.  21 year old  Bill Squires had never seen a parson and when asked if he knew Jesus Christ asked “What kind of horse does he ride?”  (Chapter 3) However, these ‘snowball marchers’ soon impressed: they formed themselves into regiments, they were mobbed en route, and the authorities soon made some of them officers.

Knyvett lauds their democratic impulses:

These Australians have had no master in their lives but the pitiless drought; they respect not Kings, but they love a real man who knows not fear and is kind to a horse. Masefield said of them in “Gallipoli”: “They were in the pink of condition and gave a damn for no one!” (Chapter 3)

But he’s not consistent about this: he resents being ordered about by his social inferiors:

It is not often realized what a purgatory the educated, independent man who enlists as a private has to go through before his spirit is tamed sufficiently to stand bossing, without resentment, by men socially and educationally inferior. (Chapter 4)

Things were chaotic in the camps, but Knyvett writes about it with good humour, and is scornful of subsequent improvements labelling it

 ‘a nursery for the recruits who have volunteered three years late and need the enticement of feather beds to induce them to leave mother.’ (Chapter 4)

There follows the tedious embarkation and sea voyage, made bearable with impromptu concerts, and a brief interlude in Colombo.  They finally arrived in the training camps at Suez where the story becomes less edifying.  The novelty of being in an exotic city soon wore off and they became very fed up indeed.   Heliopolis was better, and it was here that Knyvett discovered his missing brother in the hospital .  But forced marches and digging practice trenches in the desert was no fun, except when they stumbled upon an old city and raided the tombs for ancient artefacts.  It is interesting to see that Knyvett is not the least bit embarrassed about these thefts…

Australian soldiers were also involved in a riot in Cairo that rendered the Australian government liable for damages.  Knyvett will brook no criticism from ‘stay-at-homes’ – he claims that it was justifiable because of the corruption and filth of the city, and their belief that the Egyptians were on the Turkish side.

 This vile spot made the clean lads from the wind-swept plains and scented bush of Australia absolutely sick. The Australian is a practical idealist, and for him to see dirt is to want to remove it.  (Chapter 6)

When the story shifts to Gallipoli it becomes a tale familiar to most Australians, and Knyvett writes that he will not recount it himself because ‘John Masefield has written the only book that need be read’.  He  reminds his readers that despite the well-deserved reputation of the Australians,  there were also English, Scotch, and Irish, French Colonial, Gurkha and Sikh troops who played an equally heroic part (Chapter 12) but what he really wants to do in this book is to laud the Australian character:

These young Australians were eager to prove their country’s worth as a breeder of men. Australians have been very sensitive to the criticism of Old World visitors—that we were a pleasure-loving people, who only thought of sport—that in our country no one took life seriously, and even the making of money was secondary to football, and that we would all rather win a hundred pounds on a horse-race than make a thousand by personal exertion. Practically every book written on Australia by an Englishman or an American has said the same thing, that we were a lovable, easy-going race, but did not work very hard, and in a serious crisis would be found wanting.

(I think he would be very surprised to learn that modern readers can see the irony of this when in the previous chapter he has just trashed the Australian reputation with his tales of Aussie Boys Own Adventure ‘escapades’ in the Middle East.)

It is interesting to read about the gallant ships at Gallipoli.  Knyvett is contemptuous about the German u-boats (submarines); skulking about unseen below the surface is not an honourable way of fighting in his opinion.   And of course it was ships under fire that evacuated the remnants of the Gallipoli force; there was bravery everywhere.

From Gallipoli Knyvett is sent via Suez to the Western Front, leaving behind mates who had fallen and others reorganised into different battalions.  They were made most welcome by the French, and this friendship persists to the present day.

Our hearts had warmed to France, before we knew the lovable French people themselves, because she had borne the brunt in the first years of the war, and her soil had been ravaged, and her women so unspeakably maltreated. And it seemed that the French people took especial interest in us Australians who had come twelve thousand miles to join in this fight in defense of the world’s liberty.

This war has done more to make known to each other the people of the world than any other event in history. Many of the French people had hardly heard of Australia, but hereafter they will never forget the name of the land whence came those stalwart boys who marched singing through their country; who went to war with laughter, and when out of the trenches were ever ready to give a hand with the crops. (Chapter 18)

The details of the Western Front and the Somme are less well-known, but Knyvett’s account brings to mind many of the images of trench-warfare I have seen.

One of the most self-forgetful actions ever performed was by Sergeant Ross. We found a man on the German barbed wire, who was so badly wounded that when we tried to pick him up, one by the shoulders and the other by the feet, it almost seemed that we would pull him apart. The blood was gushing from his mouth, where he had bitten through lips and tongue, so that he might not jeopardize, by groaning, the chances of some other man who was less badly wounded than he. He begged us to put him out of his misery, but we were determined we would get him his chance, though we did not expect him to live. But the sergeant threw himself down on the ground and made of his body a human sledge. Some others joined us, and we put the wounded man on his back and dragged them thus across two hundred yards of No Man’s Land, through the broken barbed wire and shell-torn ground, where every few inches there was a piece of jagged shell, and in and out of the shell-holes. So anxious were we to get to safety that we did not notice the condition of the man underneath until we got into our trenches; then it was hard to see which was the worst wounded of the two. The sergeant had his hands, face, and body torn to ribbons, and we had never guessed it, for never once did he ask us to “go slow” or “wait a bit.” Such is the stuff that men are made of. (Chapter 19)

He writes with compassion about the civilian victims as well:

The war was to them like a catastrophe in another world, and Australians did not travel farther to fight than in their imagination did the sons of this village when they went to the trenches less than a hundred miles away. I discovered one day how deep the knife of war had cut when I spoke to a grandmother and daughter working a large farm, as with dumb, uncomprehending pain in their eyes they showed me the picture of son-in-law and husband who would never return. Rights of peoples and the things for which nations strive had no meaning to these two, but from out the dark had come a hand and dragged from them the fulness of life, leaving only its empty shell.

It is this kind of writing that makes Knyvett’s book a classic despite its  flaws.

©Lisa Hill

Author: Capt. R. Hugh Knyvett
Title: Over There with the Australians
Publisher: Charles Scribner & Sons 1918/Project Gutenberg eBook #17206 2005
Source: Project Gutenberg.