ANZAC ON THER WETERN FRONT - SECOND ATTEMPT TO POST

[David Filsell]

Anzac on the Western Front: The Personal Reflections of an Australian Infantryman from 1916 to 1918,

For some reason my earlier attempt to post a review seems to have beaten by the the system. I think it is one of the best personal memoirs I have read for a very long time. So another try.

Any shelf of personal Great War offers the reader a stack of curate’s eggs – the good, the bad and those no longer quite fresh enough to deserve cooking. Although many of the more recent reprints fall firmly in this category, I have no hesitation in placing H R Williams account of his wartime very near the top of the pile, for Williams’ book is special.

He was a highly perceptive, frequently wry, observer of war, its effects, of climate, of geography, of officers and men, and of the events which he and his comrades experienced and combated during the Great War. His writing, based on a wartime diary, is equally effective; of constant interest, frequently engrossing. He wrote of what he saw, felt and witnessed with clarity and in effective English, free of rhetoric or any desire to create ‘literature’ through in his prose. His pride in Australian soldiery is high, but not blind. Consequently this reprint of An Anzac on the Western Front is not simply important, but the republication of an account in the front rank of Great War soldiers’ stories

First published in Sydney in 1933 -as The Gallant Company: An Australian Soldier’s Story of 1915-1918 - has not, as far as I discover been published before in Britain. This new Pen and Sword edition, edited sympathetically by Martin Mace and John Graham, leaves the original text unaltered but adds a few new notes, explanations, and some updating of terminology.

From his experiences, and those of his close comrades, in Egypt - Williams having joined-up too late for the Dardanelles - the book details service in France and Flanders from Fromelles, and the later Somme battles to the German retreat and the 1918 offensive and on to Amiens, Péronne and his final wounding in action. During that time he rose from the ranks and gained what is clearly a deserved, and not unusual, commission from the ranks in an egalitarian army untrammelled by British class consciousness.

Of his service, regretting that the First World War did not end war for humanity, Williams concluded.,“...the young men of this fair land who are proud to be Australians must ignore the doctrines preached today, and learn rather the lessons which the A.I.F. taught. They will find these lessons teach a noble spirit of self-sacrifice and the of the duty to our country.”

Coming in 1933, the statement both summed up the author’s attitude to his war and his nation. It also offered a lesson which Australians again took to heart between 1939 and 1945. An Anzac on the Western Front is an excellent memoir of a proud Aussie and his ‘mates’ at war. Regrettably the editors allow one huge omission; biographical details of the author’s post war career. I so much wanted to know more of Williams the man and his post war career.

[Dolphin]

David

You've brought back some memories, as I read The Gallant Company nearly fifty years ago, while in High School. I remember trying to tell some of my mates that it was well worth reading, but in those days hardly anybody was interested in the Great War, so my suggestions fell on deaf ears. When the school disposed of its copy, I managed to grab it, and it's now up in the attic somewhere.

Gareth

[David Filsell]

Gareth.

Go find it - it will be as good as you remembered.

[frev]

Hi David

Thanks for bringing this book to my attention - I'll be ordering a copy post haste! (As I've never had the chance to read the original.)

Just having a quick look through his service record, I note that he married overseas during the war - so as I'll be adding him to my Married O/S Database, which means I'll be looking into his life in a little more detail. I'll let you know what I find.

Cheers, Frev

PS: Gareth - shame on you for hiding good books away in the attic - bring it down & give it an airing

[David B]

Apparently there was some glitch yesterday about inability to post. See about this website section. Will keep that book in mind.

[Dolphin]

PS: Gareth - shame on you for hiding good books away in the attic - bring it down & give it an airing

Frev

If only there was room! There are hundreds of books and journals downstairs available for ready access, and lots more of the same in the attic, plus the less popular (but too good to throw out, as they might be needed one day) in plastic boxes under the house.

Gareth

[leighc]

Just ordered my copy. Thanks David

[frev]

Frev

If only there was room! There are hundreds of books and journals downstairs available for ready access, and lots more of the same in the attic, plus the less popular (but too good to throw out, as they might be needed one day) in plastic boxes under the house.

Gareth

Room! I can relate to that. However, as I don't have an attic or an 'under the house' (concrete slab & flat roof) - I tend to just spread my collection from room to room to room........

[David Filsell]

Thanks for comments. I rarely go overboard about a book, but I found this raher special. I would welcome other's opinions in due course.

The book problem gets ever worse. Not a brag but my Great War collection now fills about 130 feet of shelves. The there's aviation, war between the states, aviation, and SOE in an other room.(plus all the novels, crime fictioon and other good and bad stuff) A cull is essential - but which and when.

Is there a society I can join for help?l

[frev]

David - I don't think you need help to cull your collection - you just need the name of a good builder....to add an extension to your house!

And just to add to your excellent review - a review from the past (from another brilliant author):

The Sydney Morning Herald, Sat 14 Oct 1933 (p.11):

A GREAT WAR BOOK

“The Gallant Company”

(By F.M. CUTLACK)

Among the war reminiscences of Australian soldiers high place is deserved by “The Gallant Company,” by H.R. Williams, formerly a company officer in the 56^th Battalion, A.I.F.

It is basically the soldier’s life as the author lived it in his company, but the title seems to have been chosen, and very happily, for a wider meaning, for the author’s observations range far outside the company life. General Hobbs writes in a foreword that it is “the best soldier’s story I have yet read in Australia,” it “is so general and lifelike in fidelity to his scenes that it would illustrate any Australian infantryman’s story in whatever unit he served in France, his memories of life behind the lines, and in England, as well as of experiences in action.” Mr Williams writes with a zest which makes those fast-receding days live again, and behind his keen observer’s eye he shows a highly chivalrous mind.

His story begins in late 1915, with the training of the men for the new Australian divisions in Egypt. He misses none of the humour, or the hardships, of the embryo Australian soldier deposited at the opening of his grand adventure in that cynical land. Its chief military incident, of course, was the famous desert march from Tel-el-Kebir to Ferry’s Post. But the training period serves to introduce familiar figures of the later story. Thereafter the real action of the book begins in France, and continues to the Armistice. The battle scenes are simply yet most vividly done – the blunder of Fromelles, and horrors of the Somme mud in the winter of 1916-17, the splendidly clear-cut account of the fight for Louverval and Doignies during the German retreat in early 1917, the triumphant advance in the battle of Amiens, and – perhaps, best of all – the assault of Peronne through the storm of fire under Mont St Quentin in September, 1918. The chapter on the great march of the Allied troops through Paris on the French national day in July, 1916, is graphically written. But nothing is better in the book than the account of leave spent in “Blighty,” and every Australian soldier will read it with joyous gratitude to the author.

CHARACTER SKETCHES

Individual characters stand out real and full of life again. Fanning, the company commander, who made them all soldiers, “stood about 5ft 10in. and was of very active build; his tunic of the best cloth, buff riding breeches, puttees rolled in the cross, hair as black as midnight, clean shaven, white teeth, head with the poise of a gamecock, large blue eyes, and heavy black eyebrows. He wore his hat turned down, and set at a rakish angle. When the war has become almost forgotten in the mist of passing years, the memory will still be vividly with me of this striking personality and great leader of men…. I imagined him to have been in some other life a pirate chief.” The account of Fanning’s last hours, mortally wounded near Flers, is a fine picture of a man who knew how to die. There is the sunset picture of the train moving out of Moascar carrying the battalion to embarkation for France: “Peter Duncan stood up on the end of the truck and bade a soldier’s farewell to Egypt. It was in rhyme, voluble, and expressive, and caused much amusement to a small group of Tommy officers standing on the platform.” Or there is “Big Bert,” a huge man, happily met again on leave in London on Anzac Day, delighting a crowded underground train, while he hung from a strap, and “aired his opinions upon Lloyd George, the conduct of the war, and the weakness of the English beer, in a voice that could be heard all over the carriage.” And what soldier will not remember the train journey in France again, returning from leave:

That night, in a railway carriage minus one door and many lights, with not a window that could be closed, we crawled away towards the front at that troop-train pace which a snail, affected with stringhalt, would laugh at. We fished out from our packs those candle-ends without which no soldier in France ever moved, blocked one of the open windows with the back of a seat, and there, while the candle grease coursed down the sides of the carriage and the snow beat in, we sat and dozed fitfully with collars turned up to our ears and hands in pockets.

The sketch of the company headquarters in the front line below Wytschaete is haunting. The major was “a tall gaunt man, always in the fidget as though he had ants in his boots.” The cook, a full-blooded Australian aboriginal, was “fat as a parish priest.”

He was not exactly an oil-painting of what the army cooking schools aspired to turn out. He usually looked as though he had spent the morning up the flue of the chimney. Nature made him black, but the wet wood of his fire had smoked him to a hue that would be very fashionable on the hobs of Hades. His eyes were red rimmed; an army cardigan jacket and his shirt had withdrawn several inches up his body away from his trousers, exposing a roll of dark flesh. His breeches hung low and there were spacious rooms to let in the backside. Puttees had been discarded. From his belt hung a large issue knife that contained almost every useful article except a mouth organ and a toothpick. He somehow did not give the impression that he was on very good terms with a wash. Still he could produce a decent meal.

A FAMOUS ARMY

The account of the 14^th Brigade’s attack on Peronne under murderous fire is a perfect description of a modern infantry attack against heavy opposition. Still, even under such conditions the time-honoured officer-tradition of the British army persist and while “the bullets beat an incessant drumming upon the railway metal” of the embankment behind which the author’s company was lying for a spell before the final rush, “our company commander, Lieutenant Bull, stood up on the embankment, his back towards the objective, and with machine gun bullets striking fire from the ballast at his feet, called on his company to make ready to move.” Such as these are deathless sketches of individual conduct not esteemed heroism at all, but only gallantry born of the battalion’s esprit de corps. The pages of this story are full of such intimate things. There is music premonitory, of triumph in the description of the full weight of the Australian divisions moving up in the early morning mist behind the first assaulting lines at Villers Bretonneux on the August 8, 1918, Ludendorff’s “black day.” But it was a day of full sun – like “the sun of Austerlitz,” says Williams, as he thrills to the rising of it over the heads of these magnificent columns of tens of thousands of Australian infantry.

The reader would not be without this picture of the night before battle:

As night came on the troops ate their meal, and then in all the little dugouts honeycombing the banks (of the Somme) like bird nests, candle lights appeared, and the men about them lifted up their voices in song. The way in which they passed the hours before an attack always intrigued me. From the battle of Hastings, 1066, to August 7, 1918, this old world had seen many changes. But one thing time, environment, civilisation, or climactic condition has evidently not altered, and that is the manner in which men of the Anglo-Saxon race pass the hours before battle. History relates that the army of Harold, the last of the Saxon Kings, spent the hours of darkness in drinking and singing. To-night in a river bank in France and near enough to the old Normandy, was gathered an army of descendants of the race that gave battle to the Normans nearly nine centuries ago, awaiting battle in the same fashion. Drinking they were not, for water was the only liquid refreshment to be had, but certainly singing as though a battle meant anything but death and wounds.

A “gallant company” indeed! This review is but the veriest taste of the feast of memory in Mr Williams’s pages. He pays a noble tribute to the devoted service of British women in the war, as he saw them in Blighty and in France. And he makes some arresting comments at the close in analysis of the factors that served in place of long military tradition to make fine soldiers of the Australians.

[David Filsell]

Thanks for that, contemporary reviews of books are always fascinating. I am in full accord with the reviwer's opinions. I just wish their was space in the Stand To! reviews which I write to indulge in more than 500 words or so!