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Authors: Peter Fitzsimons
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another go and relive the glory days of charging across the veldt. Others are mere striplings, who do not want to miss out on the fun. A few are family men with steady jobs, who nevertheless feel it is their patriotic duty to sign up. Between them all, the river of men flowing to the recruitment depots soon turns into a flood.
It is with a great deal of pride that Governor-General Munro Ferguson cables London:
THERE IS INDESCRIBABLE ENTHUSIASM AND ENTIRE UNANIMITY THROUGHOUT AUSTRALIA IN SUPPORT OF ALL THAT TENDS TO PROVIDE FOR THE SECURITY OF EMPIRE AT WAR. 38
The streets of Melbourne abound with the sound of many proud voices singing âRule, Britannia!â:
Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!
Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.
And yet, among the cognoscenti, there really is a fear of what might come. One thought is from the well-known journalist for The Sydney Morning Herald , the Bathurst-born but Blighty-bred Oxford graduate Charles Bean. In the wee hours of the following morning, walking home down Sydneyâs Macquarie Street, the tall and finely featured, bespectacled redhead pauses for an instant, his attention suddenly caught by the formation of the clouds in the moonlight: âPiled high in the four quarters of the dark sky above, [they] seemed to him like the pillared structure of the worldâs civilisation, of which some shock had broken the keystones. The wide gap overhead seemed to show where one great pillar after another had crashed as the mutual support had failed; and, as the sky peered through, the last masses seemed to sway above the abyss. The stable world of the nineteenth century was coming down in chaos: security was gone.â 39
Ah, but for the moment such fears really do remain only in the tiny minority, as recruits continue to flood into the enrolment centres and sign up, most particularly when the papers print the happy news:
His Majestyâs Government gratefully accepts the offer of your Ministers to send a force of 20,000 men to this country. 40
Organisation of the troops now proceeds at pace. Beyond the main body of Australian infantry, there will also be at least a 2200-strong brigade of the Light Horse â highly prestigious mounted soldiers just like the ones who had performed so admirably in South Africa during the Boer War â together with Field Artillery, a probable complement of Army Service Corps and Army Medical Corps. The details are still being worked out, most particularly by Major-General William Throsby Bridges, who has been charged with organising and taking the expeditionary force to England.
It is an astute choice. The 53-year-old had been born in Scotland, educated in England and sent to the Royal Military College of Canada before coming to Australia. He had served the British Army with distinction in the Boer War, and in 1909 had become the Australian Armyâs first Chief of the General Staff. The rigidity in him courses up from his British bootstraps, runs through his ramrod-straight backbone and into his collar before coming to an uneasy halt on an upper lip so stiff that it is the perfect resting spot for his immaculately trimmed moustaches. As the first Commandant of the Royal Military College at Duntroon in June 1911, it is he who has set the tone for the rising officer class of the Australian Army, he who has trained many of them.
From the beginning, Bridges is heavily assisted in the execution of his task by his highly competent Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-Colonel Cyril Brudenell White, a man so intelligent and organised that no sooner had the war burst upon them than he had taken from his desk drawer mobilisation plans for a hypothetical expeditionary force he had previously drawn up.
Together, the vision of Bridges and Brudenell White is that, while the force they create will be at the service of the British Empire, it is not to be mere support troops from different states, to be sent piecemeal into British Army
It is with a great deal of pride that Governor-General Munro Ferguson cables London:
THERE IS INDESCRIBABLE ENTHUSIASM AND ENTIRE UNANIMITY THROUGHOUT AUSTRALIA IN SUPPORT OF ALL THAT TENDS TO PROVIDE FOR THE SECURITY OF EMPIRE AT WAR. 38
The streets of Melbourne abound with the sound of many proud voices singing âRule, Britannia!â:
Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!
Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.
And yet, among the cognoscenti, there really is a fear of what might come. One thought is from the well-known journalist for The Sydney Morning Herald , the Bathurst-born but Blighty-bred Oxford graduate Charles Bean. In the wee hours of the following morning, walking home down Sydneyâs Macquarie Street, the tall and finely featured, bespectacled redhead pauses for an instant, his attention suddenly caught by the formation of the clouds in the moonlight: âPiled high in the four quarters of the dark sky above, [they] seemed to him like the pillared structure of the worldâs civilisation, of which some shock had broken the keystones. The wide gap overhead seemed to show where one great pillar after another had crashed as the mutual support had failed; and, as the sky peered through, the last masses seemed to sway above the abyss. The stable world of the nineteenth century was coming down in chaos: security was gone.â 39
Ah, but for the moment such fears really do remain only in the tiny minority, as recruits continue to flood into the enrolment centres and sign up, most particularly when the papers print the happy news:
His Majestyâs Government gratefully accepts the offer of your Ministers to send a force of 20,000 men to this country. 40
Organisation of the troops now proceeds at pace. Beyond the main body of Australian infantry, there will also be at least a 2200-strong brigade of the Light Horse â highly prestigious mounted soldiers just like the ones who had performed so admirably in South Africa during the Boer War â together with Field Artillery, a probable complement of Army Service Corps and Army Medical Corps. The details are still being worked out, most particularly by Major-General William Throsby Bridges, who has been charged with organising and taking the expeditionary force to England.
It is an astute choice. The 53-year-old had been born in Scotland, educated in England and sent to the Royal Military College of Canada before coming to Australia. He had served the British Army with distinction in the Boer War, and in 1909 had become the Australian Armyâs first Chief of the General Staff. The rigidity in him courses up from his British bootstraps, runs through his ramrod-straight backbone and into his collar before coming to an uneasy halt on an upper lip so stiff that it is the perfect resting spot for his immaculately trimmed moustaches. As the first Commandant of the Royal Military College at Duntroon in June 1911, it is he who has set the tone for the rising officer class of the Australian Army, he who has trained many of them.
From the beginning, Bridges is heavily assisted in the execution of his task by his highly competent Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-Colonel Cyril Brudenell White, a man so intelligent and organised that no sooner had the war burst upon them than he had taken from his desk drawer mobilisation plans for a hypothetical expeditionary force he had previously drawn up.
Together, the vision of Bridges and Brudenell White is that, while the force they create will be at the service of the British Empire, it is not to be mere support troops from different states, to be sent piecemeal into British Army
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