The Undisciplined Aussies

[elle72]

Hi there,

I recently read the following article about the 'undisciplined' nature of Australian soldiers. This is such a typical example of the larrikin spirit that I couldn't help laughing out loud as I read it.

A lot of my time is spent reading information that frankly is enough to keep me lying awake at night - but there is real joy in reading about the antics of the diggers as they made light of their situation in the face of misery and adversity.

Does anyone else have similar examples of the carefree attitude of the Aussie troops that they can share?

Unlike their British colleagues, common Australian soldiers were not treated like ignorant donkeys, but like individuals who will function better in a team when they know their collective aim. To the Australian troops it seemed that the British Army was obsessed by discipline. They would never stand for it.

An example of the clashes between the two conceptions is what happened at the camp in Strazeele (Belgium), where the Australians were encamped on the other side of the road from the 10th Royal Fusiliers. The Tommies were simultaneously shocked and impressed by the Aussies' casual attitude to war - or at least to the Army. It could hardly be right for Aussie privates to address their commanding officer as 'Jack', but the Fusiliers heard them do so with their own ears.

For their part, the Australian 'Diggers' as they were often called, were equally disapproving of certain rites observed by the Fusiliers. As private C. Miles of the 10th Btn. Royal Fusiliers recalled:

"The Colonel decided that he would have a full dress parade of the guard mounting. Well, the Aussies looked over at us amazed. The band was playing, we were all smartened up, spit and polish, on parade, and that happened every morning. We marched up and down, up and down.

The Aussies couldn't get over it, and when we were off duty we naturally used to talk to them, go over and have a smoke with them, or meet them when we were hanging about the road or having a stroll. They kept asking us: 'Do you like this sort of thing? All these parades, do you want to do it?' Of course we said, 'No, of course we don't. We're supposed to be on rest, and all the time we've got goes to posh up and turn out on parade.' So they looked at us a bit strangely and said, 'OK, cobbers, we'll soon alter that for you'.

The Australians didn't approve of it because they never polished or did anything. They had a band, but their brass instruments were all filthy. Still, they knew how to play them.

The next evening, our Sergeant-Major was taking the parade. Sergeant-Major Rowbotham, a nice man, but a stickler for discipline. He was just getting ready to bawl us all out when the Australians started with their band. They marched up and down the road outside the field, playing any old thing. There was no tune you could recognise, they were just blowing as loud as they could on their instruments. It sounded like a million cat-calls.

And poor old Sergeant Rowbotham, he couldn't make his voice heard. It was an absolute fiasco. They never tried to mount another parade, because they could see the Aussies watching us from across the road, just ready to step in and sabotage the whole thing. So they decided that parades for mounting the guards should be washed out, and after that they just posted the guards in the ordinary way as if we were in the line."

Cheers, Elle

[Fedelmar]

We had better not loose sight of the fact that a fair percentage of the AIF were from the UK!!!

[Pete1052]

Aussie Ricochet, you should cite the source of the anecdote.

[elle72]

Sorry Pete, the example is from the website http://www.greatwar.nl/

'Trouble with undisciplined Aussies' article

[Staffsyeoman]

Bit like the 'purely fictional' example in the Australian TV mini-series "ANZACS".

Two Diggers at leisure in the rear, one of whom is - inevitably - Paul Hogan, the other, forget his name but he was in "The Lighthorsemen" are shambling, hands in pockets, down a street. British Staff Officer (well, an Australian actor doing the worst stereotype 'posh Brit' accent he can think of; think inverse Dick Van Dyke) passes. No reaction...

"You there, you Australians... don't you SALUTE when you pass an officer?!"

"Well, yeah, we did... but we're trying to give it up"

[Fedelmar]

Well ... he might have been an 'aussie pom' and gone back home to enlist ... many of them did you know

Bright Blessings

Sandra

[elle72]

Actually there is a hilarious account of Aussies doing bayonet training in the book Somme Mud by EPF Lynch which cracks me up no end.....I'll see if I can find when I get home.

[michaeldr]

Does anyone else have similar examples of the carefree attitude of the Aussie troops that they can share?

One of my favourites is the first anniversary of the Anzac landing, 25th April 1916, as told by Edgar John Rule in his book 'Jacka's Mob'

"Anzac Day - the second Day, but the first to be celebrated - was spent in the (Suez) Canal, boating and swimming. It was enjoyed by everybody but General Cox, our divisional commander. The old man was furious because someone had entered his tent, and purloined his supply of whisky. A very stiff set of orders was issued to be read out to us the next day. I don't know if the band was more humorous than it intended to be when, as usual, it marched around our camp at reveille in every conceivable state of undress, playing the march 'Hold your hand out, naughty boy.'"

[Moonraker]

Chapter XXIII, "The Training of Australian Officers", (pp169-74) in H A R May, Memoires of the Artists’ Rifles (Howlett & Son, London 1929), describes a course set up by May (a British officer) at Tidworth in 1916. An Australian staff officer advised him: "Let them see you really want to help them; don’t have too many restrictions; be very strict but very just; don’t give them too much ‘Sergeant-Major’; and above all, make them comfortable and give them plenty of tea." May’s course trained more than 5,000 Australians during the war. He noted that they were much addicted to betting, even on which foot he would place first on the platform when giving his daily lecture; once he jumped with both feet onto the platform and asked ‘which wins?’. The Australians were very interested in the course on "military etiquette", which pointed out that high spirits were acceptable at concerts or in their own quarters, but not so much in theatres and public spaces.

The Duke of Connaught (third son of Queen Victoria) visited the Australian Training Depot at Perham Down on a Friday afternoon – not a good time because Friday afternoons were when spit-and-polish parades were held. The troops paraded only after a lot of persuasion from their officers, among rumours that they would "count out" the Duke. When he appeared, they called out "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, out you Tommy Woodbine b*st*rd," then immediately down-counted "10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, you’re in. You’re a bonza [Australian slang for first-rate]. You’re one of us." (Imperial War Museum: 80/43/1)

(I tried to render "b*st*rd" in full, but as this a highly-moral website it originally came out as *******.)

Moonraker

[elle72]

Found another one on www.diggerhistory.info

Mena Camp Egypt, 1915

Sentry: Halt, who goes there?

Voice: Demak Patel, 614, Corporal Ceylon Rifles

Sentry: Pass friend

Sentry: Halt, who goes there?

Voice: Johnson, Otago Mounted Rifles, New Zealand Expeditionary Force

Sentry: Pass friend

Sentry: Halt, who goes there?

Voice: What the F*** has it got to do with you?

Sentry: Pass, Australian

[auchonvillerssomme]

Also from that site the quote, 'In 1918 an average of 9 per 1,000 Australian soldiers in Europe resided in prison'.

Pesky blighters bet they were all innocent and stitched up, all obvioulsy high spirits and victimless crimes.

The romantacising of the Australian soldier goes on....and on ....and on.

[elle72]

Course they were all innocent and stitched up! Dont let the fact that half of us are descended from convicts convince you otherwise

You call it romanticising the Australian soldier, I call it celebrating the larrikin spirit.

[Fedelmar]

Us shielas and blokes know a fair dinkum cobber ... we can spot them at a thousand yards ... wouldn't be ridgy didge if we couldn't!

:lol:

[elle72]

True right mate, and the next time there's a shindig out the back of woop woop it'll be great to catch up with ya I reckon

[Fedelmar]

We better get to and get a GWF shindig happening so we call have a chinwag over a billy and share a ripper yarn or two!!!

Mind you ... I am about in woop woop being 50 clicks south of Freo n all ... need a cut lunch and water bag to get there !!!

Bright Blessings

Sandra

[ShirlD]

Does Darlington = Woop woop?

All meet in a pub in Freo ? (then some serious research in the museum )

I like the sound of this

Cheers

Shirley

ps. hello Aussie Ricochet, the sandgropers are slowly becoming a force to be reckoned with

[Bob Doneley]

Mind you ... I am about in woop woop being 50 clicks south of Freo n all ... need a cut lunch and water bag to get there !!!

Bright Blessings

Sandra

Now, now Sandra - if you're going to use Aussie slang, you need to make sure it is in fact Australian:

From Wikipedia: Klick

Klick (sometimes spelled click, which may also mean one minute of arc when adjusting the sighting system on a weapon such as a rifle) is a common military term meaning kilometer when referring to distance or kilometers per hour (km/h) when referring to speed. Its use became popular among soldiers in Vietnam during the 1960s, although veterans of the war recall its usage as early as the 1950s.

The term is of unknown origin. It is most likely an example of condensed pronunciation or contraction of the term kilometer, although other theories exist.

The term is also used by civilians, often in reference to highway distances and speeds.

It's American slang, adopted by Australians...

Bob

[green_acorn]

OK, fifty K's south of freo, allowing for traffic and speed limits today would mean one to two tinnies distance. Back in my time in the territory it would mean about a mouthful, a burp and a drag on the B&H.

[Fedelmar]

Nope Bob ... was a term me ole man used after WW2 ... n he never went any further than Darwin!

[Bob Doneley]

I agree with auchonvillerssomme: we need to make sure that the romanticism attached to the Australian soldier is not exaggerated - it takes away from what these men really were. Average Australians, doing a hard, dirty and dangerous job many miles from home. I can do no better than quote from Bean's Official History, in fact from the last chapter of Vol VI , the last chapter that he wrote himself in the Official History.

"And then during four years in which nearly the whole world was so tested, the people in Australia looked on from afar at three hundred thousand of their own nation struggling amongst millions from the strongest and most progressive peoples of Europe and America. They saw their own men - those who had dwelt in the same street or been daily travellers in the same railway trains-flash across the world’s consciousness like a shooting star. In the first straight rush up the Anzac hills in the dark, in the easy figures first seen on the ridges against the dawn sky, in the working parties stacking stores on the shelled beach without the turning of a head, in the stretcher-bearers walking, pipes in mouths, down a bulletswept slope to a comrade’s call, unconsciously setting a tradition that may work for centuries-in things seen daily from that first morning until the struggle ended, onlookers had recognised in these men qualities always vital to the human race. Australians watched the name of their country rise high in the esteem of the world’s oldest and greatest nations. Every Australian bears that name proudly abroad to-day ; and by the daily doings, great and small, which these pages have narrated, the Australian nation came to know itself."

and

"What these men did nothing can alter now. The good and the bad, the greatness and smallness of their story will stand. Whatever of glory it contains nothing now can lessen. It rises, as it will always rise, above the mists of ages, a monument to great-hearted men ; and, for their nation, a possession for ever."

Don't overlook 'the smallness' of their story when we look at 'the greatness'. Don't exaggerate the Australian humour - the Poms have a sense of humour as well, you know. But remember that what they did, whether they were Australians, Brits, Kiwis, Yanks - their deeds remain 'for their nation, a possession for ever.'

[elle72]

I'll have to agree to disagree on this one......if some of these blokes could get a laugh or two out of their situation in the face of death and destruction than why shouldn't we have a laugh about it now - a good joke and a funny prank is still a good joke and a funny prank 90 years later.

If anyone is romanticising the Australian soldier its Bean himself .....

"What these men did nothing can alter now. The good and the bad, the greatness and smallness of their story will stand. Whatever of glory it contains nothing now can lessen. It rises, as it will always rise, above the mists of ages, a monument to great-hearted men ; and, for their nation, a possession for ever."

Thanks to a pretty average public school education where I learnt more about Ancient Egypt than I did about Australian history, the war is actually pretty new to me.....the one thing I have learnt in researching the men who enlisted from the small country town where i grew up is that these are the uncles and grandfathers and relatives of the men that I grew up with.....with the same sense of humour, the same attitude to authority, the same larrikin spirit I am talking about.....

I think that should be celebrated - or perhaps celebrated is the wrong word - enjoyed might be better - before we all starting sinking into a vast vat of caffe latte and mochachinos and getting fake tans.

On the British side of things...of course they have a sense of humour....Monty Python and the Holy Grail proves that Being an aussie, I naturally tend to be interested in the AIF but if there are examples of British humour in the war than I would love to read about it.

I wonder infact if there are any books on war 'humour' because in my mind, it seems as if alot of the larrikinism was actually a coping mechanism against the horrors of what they were dealing with on a daily basis.

[Fedelmar]

Some of the stories in Kia Ora Coo-ee are hilarious ... well worth the read.

Cheerio here I go on my way!

Sandra

[Bob Doneley]

Elle,

What I'm trying to say - and obviously not very well - is that too often a picture is painted of the men of the 1st AIF as 'wild colonial boys', lacking discipline and always ready with a quip or two. While that image may have fitted a few men all of the time, or a lot of men some of the time, it is not a true representation of the men of the AIF. I can't imagine too many AIF commanding officers letting their men call them by their first name, nor could I see RSM's standing by & letting it happen.

Undisciplined troops would not have gone up Mont St Quentin twice on 1st September 1918, and then cleared beyond the crest the next day. They would not have gone through the wire at Bullecourt in April, and then again in May, 1917. Broodseinde Ridge, Menin Road, Polygon Wood - these were the work of professional, highly disciplined soldiers, skilled at their trade.

Diggers, when out of the line, let their hair down - but not to the extent that popular mythology would have you believe. Read Chapter One of Vol VI of Bean's history for an account of a rifle company out of the line. (http://www.awm.gov.au/cms_images/histories/7/chapters/01.pdf)

I'm delighted that you have started on your journey to discover the 1st AIF. They were men, and I met a few, who I hold in the greatest awe. But you must consciously separate the real digger from the mythical digger!

Bob

[charlesmessenger]

Amongst the papers of Sir Henry Rawlinson, the Fourth Army commander and under whom the Australians fought during much of 1918, is a postcard with a photograph of a group of ten Aussies. It was postmarked 14 May and posted at St Ouer (Somme) and is addressed to ther Assistant Provost Marshal Havre, a certain Capt Fitzpatrick. Written in pencil is the following message:

Sir

With all due respect we send you this PC as a suvenir [sic] trusting that you will keep it as a mark of esteem from those who know you well. At the same time trusting that Nous Jamais Regardez encore [we never see you again].

Au revoir

Nous

All were absentees who had escaped from detention. While they were 'bad hats' you cannot but admire their cheek!

Charles M

[montbrehain]

I have spent a bit of time over the years walking around Fovant , Sutton Veny and all the other places that are or were connected with the AIF during the war. One day I was speaking with an old bloke in Warminster and I told him of my interest. He went on to tell me a bit of a tale that stuck in my mind.

It seems that a Digger was out for a bit of a walk , just wandering across the fields. He saw a man on a horse approaching , The horse stopped and the rider ( a very well dressed middle aged man ) said "what are you doing on this land "? The soldier said what has it go do with you ? The rider answered that he was the lord of the manor and that the land was his. What makes it your land asked the soldier ? The lord answered that over the centuries his ancestors had fought for this land. The digger thought for a minute........... and said "tell you what , Ill fight you for it ! " The lord just snorted with disgust and road off "MO"