Bean's Gallipoli: The Diaries of Australia's Official War Correspondent

Bean’s

GALLIPOLI

Chas Bean standing in a communication trench on Gallipoli, 26 July 1915. Photo taken by his fellow war correspondent, Peter Schuler. AWM NEG. NO. PS1580

Bean’s

GALLIPOLI

The diaries of Australia’s official war correspondent

EDITED AND ANNOTATED BY

KEVIN FEWSTER

3RD EDITION

First edition 1983

Second edition 1990

Third edition 2007

This paperback first published 2009

Copyright © diary extracts, Mrs C.E.W. Bean 1983

All other text, Kevin Fewster 2007

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photo-copying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational insti tution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

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National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Bean, C. E. W. (Charles Edwin Woodrow), 1879-1968.

Bean’s Gallipoli : the diaries of Australia’s official war correspondent/edited, Kevin Fewster.

3rd ed.

Bibliography.

Includes index.

ISBN 978 1 74175 733 0 (pbk.).

Bean, C. E. W. (Charles Edwin Woodrow), 1879-1968 - Diaries.

Australia. Army. Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.

New Zealand. Army. Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.

World War, 1914-1918 - Campaigns - Turkey - Gallipoli Peninsula.

World War, 1914-1918 - Personal narratives, Australian.

940.426092

Maps by Ian Faulkner

Set in 12/14 pt Spectrum by Bookhouse, Sydney

Printed in China by Everbest Printing Co., Ltd

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Foreword Major-General Steve Gower (Director, AWM)

Acknowledgements

List of abbreviations

Introduction

1 ‘Good luck to you boys’ 21 October–3 December 1914

2 A hot time in Cairo 1 January–11 April 1915

3 This night is too good to miss 12–25 April 1915

4 On Turkish soil 25 April–5 May 1915

5 As brave as most of them 6–16 May 1915

6 The dead were very thick indeed 17–24 May 1915

7 These little half-hearted shows 26 May–23 June 1915

8 Like lemonade without the tingle 24 June–31 July 1915

9 ‘I’ve been hit, Baz’ 6 August–10 September 1915

10 Sticking to the truth 11 September–2 November 1915

11 The Silent Battle 7 November–11 December 1915

12 No one can foretell the ending 14–31 December 1915

Epilogue

Biographical notes

Notes

Bibliography and further reading

Index

Foreword

Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean occupies a towering position when one speaks of Gallipoli and the origins of the Anzac legend. And it was Bean’s idea that a special edifice, the Australian War Memorial, be established in the nation’s capital to honour and commemorate those who served in the great endeavour of the First World War. Given that, it was most appropriate a new building there was named in his honour.

To view his 25 Gallipoli diaries is to sense a strong physical connection with a seminal event in Australian history, something arguably more important than Federation, which took place 14 years before. Certainly Prime Minister Billy Hughes thought this when he asserted that ‘Australia was born on the shores of Gallipoli’.

Bean never claimed his diaries were an absolute or definitive account, but they are without a doubt illuminating key sources. Before he went ashore he was very aware of the magnitude and significance of what he was about to witness. Presciently, he was equally mindful of the coming waste—‘boys who began life on the Murray, or in a backyard in Wagga or Bourke or Surry Hills will be left lying in Turkey’.

After going ashore on Day One, he experienced life in the trenches; spent time in the outposts close to the enemy; witnessed the carnage in May near Krithia, where his display of bravery was recognised by a mention-in-dispatches; was wounded in the August offensives; and was evacuated just before the end, when he wrote wistfully ‘in a way I was really fond of the place’.

It has been said that Bean took with him the popular British middle class ideas about war, sacrifice, racism and imperialism. Perhaps, but he had earlier expressed in his writing an admiration for a set of values rooted in the traditions and ways of the Australian bush, where people were inured to a life of hardship and setbacks, and were reliant on each other. He was not alone in perceiving an Australian identity expressed in such values. Writers such as Lawson, Paterson and Rudd, and artists including Lambert, Dyson and Leist, had at times expressed similar notions.

At Gallipoli, Bean was soon to make the observation that the ‘pastoral independent life of Australia, if it makes rather wild men, makes superb soldiers’. He did not deviate from this view; much later in Volume VI of the Official History, he was to say that ‘the diggers’ unspoken, unbreakable creed was the miner’s and the bushman’s stand by your mate’.

The essential Bean as an observer, investigator, analyst and recorder emerges in these edited diaries. As a cricket enthusiast, I am pleased Bean’s cricket analogies have been left in. Bean loved his cricket, although he was more a student of the game than a skilled exponent. Of the sound of sniper fire, he observes that ‘one could scarcely believe that this crack, crack was not at the nets at Clifton or Rushcutter Bay’. And near Cape Helles, where Bean distinguished himself by recovering a wounded man under fire, he saw the wounded Colonel McNicoll waving his men on like ‘a bowler bowling lobs’.

It is unfortunate that Bean was wounded when recording the abortive operations of Monash’s 4th Brigade in August. We can only speculate how he would have described the futile and appalling operations at the Nek, and the ferocious and bloody fighting at Lone Pine.

I commend this book to those who wish to learn more, not only about Bean as a war correspondent, but also about what occurred in that failed campaign called Gallipoli. I congratulate Kevin Fewster on producing such a handsome volume. I believe the scholarly and modest Charles Bean would approve.

Steve Gower AO, Director

Australian War Memorial, Canberra

Acknowledgements

While I never had the pleasure of meeting Charles Bean, I was fortunate enough to meet his widow, Effie Bean, and his life-long friend and advisor, Angus McLachlan. This book was made possible through their support and encouragement.

I am indebted to my colleague, Major-General Steve Gower, Director of the Australian War Memorial, and his Council for agreeing to support this publication. I am especially delighted that Steve accepted my invitation to write the foreword for my book. My work augmenting the diary extracts and selecting new images to accompany the text was greatly assisted by the wonderfully professional staff at the AWM. In particular I wish to acknowledge Pat Sabine, Mal Booth and the unsurpassed knowledge and constant good humour of their indefatigable staff members, Ian Smith and Andrew Jack, who shared with me a special sense of satisfaction through nutting out fine points of detail about Bean’s work on the Peninsula.

Except where otherwise acknowledged, all photographs were taken by C.E.W. Bean and are reproduced by kind permission of the Australian War Memorial.

I also wish to thank the President of Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, Dr Nicholas Pappas, for actively encouraging me to undertake this project. A historian of note in his own right, Nick knows better than most the challenges and rewards of juggling one’s own research with the demands of everyday work.

The World Wide Web may have revolutionised aspects of historical research, but any author still needs the assistance of those special people who can answer the seemingly unresolvable points. In such matters I received great assistance from Allison Oosterman in New Zealand, Michael Piggott, Captain Matt Stevens (ADC to Land Commander, Australian Army), Dr Chris Roberts, Matthew Connell and Karen Johnson.

I have been privileged to produce this book with what I believe is Australia’s foremost military history publisher, Allen & Unwin. I remain indebted to the late John Iremonger who first encouraged my interest in Chas Bean’s Gallipoli diaries. It has been very satisfying to continue this relationship with other fine staff in the office, Ian Bowring and Angela Handley, and the editor, Anne Reilly. Their inputs have made the book all the richer.

My understanding of the Gallipoli campaign and Turkey has been immeasurably enhanced over the years by the insights of my two great friends, Vecihi and Hatice Basarin. At the same time, I must also acknowledge the comments of Henrietta and Brendan which reminded me that, even in Australia, not everyone is a Gallipoli expert. Finally, I owe my greatest debt to Carol for encouraging me every step along the way. It was wonderful to stand in the Shrapnel Valley cemetery on a chilly early June morning and together watch the sun rise up over what was once the front line.

List of abbreviations

Introduction

More than 50,000 Australian troops saw action on the Gallipoli Peninsula between April and December 1915. At least 7594 (and perhaps as many as 8709 depending on which authority one accepts) were killed in action and now lie buried under Turkish soil. One man, a civilian, probably observed more of their deeds than did any soldier, and viewed them at least as highly as did any general. The troops held him in the highest regard. As the official press correspondent with the Australian Imperial Force, Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean landed at Gallipoli on that first, fateful morning of 25 April. Bean had started a diary on the day he sailed from Melbourne with the first contingent of Australian and New Zealand troops, off to fight for Britain, Australia and the Empire against Germany. He kept the diary in Egypt and throughout the long months at Anzac Cove. By the time he left the Peninsula (only a day before the last troops were evacuated) his diary had grown into a most comprehensive personal account of the campaign—an intimate record of the bravery, stupidity and camaraderie which have given Gallipoli a special place in the history of warfare.

Bean almost missed the chance to accompany the Australian troops. When it became clear in early August 1914 that war would soon start, Australia notified England that it was prepared to send a military contingent to assist the ‘mother country’. Bean immediately wrote to the Commonwealth Minister for Defence asking that he might be permitted to accompany the troops to England as a newspaper ‘eyewitness’ reporter. The Minister replied that Bean’s application would be considered if the opportunity arose to send a press correspondent. That same day, 13 August,¹ a cable was received stating that the British Army Council would permit each Dominion to have one correspondent accompany its expeditionary force. For reasons known only to himself, the Minister disregarded this instruction and invited the two major Australian newspaper consortiums, the Sydney Morning Herald/Melbourne Argus group, and the Melbourne Age and Sydney Daily Telegraph, each to nominate a representative. They selected ‘Banjo’ Paterson and Phillip (generally known as Peter) Schuler (the son of the editor of the Age) respectively.

In the meantime, however, the Liberal Party had been ousted from office at a Federal general election. The incoming Minister for Defence, Labor’s George Pearce, decided it would be more equitable to adopt the original scheme and appoint one pressman to represent the entire Australian press. He asked the Australian Journalists’ Association to nominate a suitable person. The association organised a ballot of its members which Bean, an employee at the Sydney Morning Herald, won narrowly from Keith Murdoch, the Melbourne representative of the Sydney Sun. Although he had had no previous experience as a war correspondent, Bean’s extensive journalistic experience in Australia and overseas suggested he would prove a most suitable choice.

Bean had grown up in a strongly imperial environment. Born on 18 November 1879 at Bathurst, New South Wales, he was the eldest of Edwin and Lucy Bean’s three sons. Edwin Bean had been born in India, educated in England, and resident six years in Australia as headmaster of All Saints’ College, Bathurst. Lucy (née Butler), the daughter of a Tasmanian solicitor, had grown up in Hobart. In 1889 ill health forced Edwin to resign his post and return to Europe where, after two years spent mainly at Oxford and Brussels, he became headmaster of Brentwood School, Essex. Brussels is situated near the famous battlefield of Waterloo. Charles’ father was intensely interested in the campaign and, according to Bean’s biographer Dudley McCarthy, Edwin visited the battlefield often, invariably accompanied by his young sons. They stayed at a hotel that had been established by a veteran of the 1815 battle and, although the old soldier was now dead, the small museum he had set up in the hotel still remained. In his old age, Charles recalled these excursions:

We used to pick up imagined relics in the fields around the farms of Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte—probably bits of farm harness—to make our own museums. Later in London I was deeply impressed by the Nelson relics and the plan-model of Waterloo in the Royal United Service Institute in Whitehall.²

Young Charles attended Brentwood until 1894 when he entered his father’s old school, Clifton College. Charles was very happy there. Nicknamed ‘The Run ’Un’ for his Australian accent, he recalled, as his fondest schoolday memories, acquiring ‘a real interest in literature, & in the classics’ and playing cricket. He was, as historian Ken Inglis has put it, ‘a schoolboy in love with England and Empire’.³

In 1898 Charles won a scholarship to Hertford College, Oxford, where he read classics, graduating in 1902 with second-class honours. He took up law and was called to the Bar in 1903. The following year he returned to Australia and taught for a brief time at Sydney Grammar School before being admitted to the New South Wales Bar. For a time he supplemented his income by writing articles for the Sydney Evening News. During the next three years, while travelling around New South Wales as an associate to a circuit court judge, he kept notes of his impressions of returning to his native land. The Sydney Morning Herald published these in a series of eight articles in 1907. Bean now decided to forsake the law in favour of journalism. In January 1908 he joined the Sydney Morning Herald as a junior reporter. His natural talent as a reporter was immediately apparent, even to a hard-headed old sub-editor who later recalled:

Charles (left) with his younger brother, Jack, at Brentwood Grammar School, Essex, c. 1892. Jack became a doctor and served at Gallipoli. AWM NEG. NO. A05393

Five years ago, the writer … was sub-editing the Sydney Morning Herald. One night, a wad of copy, written in an unfamiliar hand, was laid on his table. It concerned a deputation from the shire of Gumtree Flat, or some such district, asking the Minister of Works for a bridge over Dingo Creek. The copy itself was as unfamiliar as the writing … It was written so that the street-bred resident of Surry Hills knew precisely the significance and the value of the proposed bridge. It violated all the traditions of the Sydney Morning Herald and most of those of the old-time journalism. It put the case with such incandescent clearness that the position could not be misunderstood, and put it in half the space which tradition would have occupied. The sub-editor turned back to the first slip and saw the writer’s name. This was the very first job of practical journalism which the same man had attempted; and it was a model for three-quarters of the newspaper men who could look back to 10 or 15 years creditable experience. Probably for the first time in the history of newspaper work a reporter had his maiden copy sent to the printer without a mark of the blue pencil on it. That reporter was C.E.W. Bean …⁴

Eighteen months later the editor chose Bean to be the paper’s special correspondent on HMS Powerful during the Australian visit of the United States’ Great White Fleet. The following year he explored outback New South Wales for a series of articles on the wool industry. Both assignments impressed on him the opportunities facing his young nation and the fine, resourceful people it was producing in these outback areas. He developed these articles into three books: With the Flagship in the South, On the Wool Track and The Dreadnought of the Darling.

In 1910 Bean went to England as the London correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald. In a letter to his parents informing them of his exciting new post, Bean confided it was ‘the very work which I could have prayed for with a return to this sunny land at the end of it and perhaps a war correspondentship, if there is one, in between—I can’t imagine anything so happy.’⁵ As predicted, he returned to sunny Sydney early in 1913. His parents subsequently left England for Hobart in December 1913. Charles was now leader-writing for the Herald. When the war broke out he undertook a ‘War Notes’ column. He, like almost everyone else, thought it would not be too long before Britain and her allies defeated the Germans. A few days after his appointment as official correspondent, he wrote to his mother that he expected to be away ‘12 months or so’ with the expeditionary force.⁶ This confidence was reflected in his decision to pack French and German dictionaries and a Rhine guidebook in his luggage. As a boy he had spent considerable time in Germany with his parents and had a reasonable knowledge of the German language.

A special niche was carved for him in the expeditionary force. He would remain a civilian but could wear a close copy (minus badges) of an officer’s uniform and would be regarded as an honorary captain in the mess. The army undertook to supply him with a batman, a horse and rations. His £600 salary (set at that of a major) plus a field allowance of ten shillings per day were to be met by a levy on those newspapers that used his articles. Initially papers were charged for each article they took, but later were charged a fixed annual subscription arranged on a sliding scale according to the city in which they were published.

Great things were hoped for from the Australian troops … and their press correspondent. As the force prepared to sail one newspaper wrote:

No journalist in Australia, or, one may venture to say, elsewhere, has a more picturesque and graphic style in describing scenes of peace, and the spirit animating his fine book, ‘Flagships Three’,… is sufficient assurance that he will be equally at home in writing of war.⁷

Bean was now a 34-year-old bachelor. His press correspondent’s licence described him as 5 feet 11½ inches (1.8 metres) tall, of slight build, with red hair, blue eyes and glasses. The troops soon dubbed him ‘Captain Carrot’.

Bean was one of three press correspondents to witness the landings on 25 April. Their presence was in direct contrast to the strict embargo prohibiting journalists from the Western Front. Lord Kitchener, British Secretary for War, was highly suspicious of the press and flatly refused to allow correspondents to be attached to the armies in France. General Sir Ian Hamilton, Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, did not share these suspicions and, unlike most of his peers, consciously strove to foster amiable relations with the press. Bean and the representative from the London dailies, Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, watched the Anzac operations while the other English correspondent, Lester Lawrence, followed events at Cape Helles. Ashmead-Bartlett was an immensely experienced war correspondent; he had been covering wars around the globe for over a decade, including several short stints in France at the beginning of the current war. Lawrence, on the other hand, although an experienced journalist (most notably as Reuters’ Berlin correspondent) was, like Bean, embarking on his first assignment as a war correspondent.

From the outset, Bean established a work routine totally unlike that of either of his English counterparts. They spent most of these early days aboard the warships, watching the battles from a safe distance and relying heavily on the reports from GHQ and interviews with the evacuated wounded. Bean, on the other hand, went ashore at the first opportunity. One result of this was that he tended to view the campaign more from the standpoint of the frontline soldier than from the somewhat detached perspective common among staff officers. It is revealing of Bean’s approach that he is rarely mentioned in the diaries of other Gallipoli correspondents and fails to appear at all in the published diary of Sir Ian Hamilton. Moreover, it might not be coincidence that of the twelve journalists who reported on the campaign, only Bean was wounded at all seriously.

Several factors account for his singular approach. First, and probably most important, he worked on Gallipoli in the manner he knew best. Bean was an acute observer of people; people fascinated him. This is not to say he was ‘a man’s man’. He once said of himself, ‘I am too self conscious to mix well with the great mass of men.’⁸ But he was a perceptive watcher, possessing an uncanny knack of understanding and empathising with those around him. He moved around Anzac Cove observing and talking with men much as he had roved across New South Wales collecting information for his articles. The characteristics he perceived in the soldiers tallied with what had so impressed him in earlier years with the men of the outback. This could only have further encouraged him to stick by his methodology. Encouragement came also from a somewhat unlikely source, Major-General William Bridges, the Commander of the 1st Australian Division. Bean later wrote of Bridges:

he treated me throughout as one of his staff except in this, that he gave me no orders & left me free to write & do what I pleased … I obtained a chance such as no journalist in this war, or probably any other, has had of going absolutely where he liked, in the line (or indeed in front of the line, if I had wanted) without any restriction so long as I was with our own troops.⁹

Another factor which may have played an important role in forming his routine was the imposition of an embargo on his writing in the first phase of the campaign. It was planned for the first convoy to sail to England, but during the voyage the ships were re-routed to Egypt. Bean’s press licence gave him authorisation only for the voyage to England. Therefore, when the force landed in Egypt, he had to seek a new licence. This problem was still unresolved when the troops set off for the Dardanelles. Bean was granted permission to accompany the force only on condition that he refrain from despatching any articles until the licence question had been settled by the authorities in London. Consequently, Bean went ashore knowing that he would not be sending any stories for some days. There was little point in his writing copy which would be outdated once authorisation was finally granted. As a result, while Bartlett and Lawrence (both of whom were authorised from the outset) battled to outscoop each other, Bean had to make do with watching rather than writing. This must have been infuriatingly frustrating for a journalist observing the greatest single event in the history of his nation; yet it gave him the opportunity of gaining a familiarity with the pattern of events which no other correspondent approached. By the time he received authority to publish, his habit of getting close to the action was well-established, a practice that might never have evolved had he been empowered to send copy from the first day of landing.

Bean’s method on Gallipoli also reflected his perception of the function of the war correspondent in modern war. While he held strongly that the correspondent should be briefed as fully as possible on events at the front, he did not agree with those who contended that it was the journalist’s place to question authority or criticise strategy. Bean firmly maintained that his rightful role was to report, not criticise. Nor did he see it as his place to sensationalise his copy or ‘scoop’ his fellow correspondents on any story. He kept to these principles throughout the war. Accordingly, he advised his assistant in December 1917 that the duty of the Australian official correspondent:

is to give Australia a knowledge of what the men and officers of the force are doing, and what is really happening in the war as far as they are concerned in it consistently [sic] with (1) not giving information to the enemy (2) not needlessly distressing their families at home.

The rule of the censorship also forbids criticism.¹⁰

His desire to report the daily lives of the men rather than rely heavily on official communiqués from GHQ placed heavy demands on Bean’s time. It required that he visit the frontline whenever possible, as well as liaise with HQ, and write regular articles and cables for the morning and evening papers. In addition, he had set himself the mission of keeping a diary.

Before leaving Australia Bean had discussed with the government the possibility of his writing an official history of Australia’s part in the war. The idea remained with him throughout the long years of the war. He kept the diary as ‘a detailed note of what I saw, heard and thought’¹¹ in the hope that it might one day form the basis for his history and, with this end in mind, he had packed ‘a plentiful supply of notebooks’¹² in his luggage. He was not to know that over the next four-and-a-quarter years his diary and notes would fill 296 such books. His dated diaries number about 120.¹³

The diary was usually written up at night, often from shorthand notes jotted down in the line during the day in what he termed his ‘field books’. Many entries were written either in poor light or darkness and were consequently most untidy. In such cases he would later transcribe them into small notebooks or school exercise books; some were written in pen, others pencil. ‘Often, especially at Gallipoli,’ he reflected years later, ‘I sat at my diary during most of the night because that was the time of least interruption. Sometimes daylight found me still at it—occasionally, by some strange process of mental effort, falling asleep at each full stop and then waking to write each successive sentence.’¹⁴ Like practically every diarist, Bean occasionally neglected his diary for a period (December 1914, for example) when the business of everyday life simply got in the way.

When transcribing, he frequently added fresh comments, reflections, sketches and maps. The original diaries also include annotations made years after the war when he reread his records while writing his histories. So while the diaries generally give a day-by-day account of events, they occasionally also contain his more considered judgements. This is particularly so for the periods 25 April–3 May and 6–7 August. The first period reflects the intense activity of the first week after landing, during which his writing was restricted to notes that were written up as a narrative some months later. His routine was disrupted in August when he was incapacitated for four days at the beginning of the great Allied offensive and consequently had to reconstruct events some days later when he was again able to get about the lines.

His prodigious output was made possible only by the considerable assistance given to him by his batman, young Arthur Bazley. The two