hailed by the defence minister. . . See www.navy.gov.au/hmas-australia-i.
to execute his father’s will. . . When probate was granted on 11 October 1913, Robert gave his occupation as ‘tailor’ and his address as ‘West View, Hadleigh’ – West View was a two-storey dormitory with its own library, which had been built in 1912.
He sailed on 2 January 1914. . . See passenger list for SS Otranto in TNA: Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890–1960 (BT 27).
She sailed out to the Atlantic. . . See Sydney Evening News and Perth Daily News, 3 February 1914.
Nattie had lodgings. . . For Nattie’s address in Australia, see RAN record of service, NAA: A6770, Coombes NG. He gave his next of kin as his cousin Robert Macy, the son of his aunt Mary, who had moved to Newcastle, NSW, a few years earlier.
He found work. . . See 13th Battalion embarkation roll, AWM: 8/23/30/1.
CHAPTER 17: SUCH A HELL OF A NOISE
When war broke out. . . See Peter Pedersen, The Anzacs: Gallipoli to the Western Front (2007).
About a quarter. . . See Peter Hart, Gallipoli (2011).
Robert trained in a series of camps. . . Account of training camps from Thomas A. White, The Fighting Thirteenth: The History of the 13th Battalion AIF (1924); Arthur Graham Butler, Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services, 1914–1918, Volume I – Gallipoli, Palestine and New Guinea (2nd edition, 1938); Winsome McDowell Paul, Blessed with a Cheerful Nature: a Reading of the Letters of Lieutenant George Stanley McDowell MC, 13th Battalion AIF 1914–1917 (2005); and diary of Charles Francis Laseron, ML: MSS 1133, at Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.
Robert was assigned to the 13th Battalion. . . For his service with the 13th Battalion, from September 1914 to December 1915, see 13th Battalion embarkation roll (AWM: 8/23/30/1) at Australian War Memorial in Canberra (awm.gov.au) and his AIF record (NAA: B2455, Coombes RA) at National Archives of Australia in Canberra (naa.gov.au).
Robert was one of about twenty-eight men selected. . . A picture of the band was published in Sunday Times, Sydney, 29 November 1914.
the band marched through Melbourne. . . See diary of Byron Hobson, AWM: 2DRL/0694.
During the six-week voyage. . . Account of life on board from diaries of the 13th Battalion soldiers William Frederick Shirtley (AWM: 2DRL/0792), Byron Hobson (AWM: 2DRL/0694), Charles Francis Laseron (ML: MSS 1133) and Eric Susman (ML: CY4933 1–98). See also Barrier Miner, 5 February 1915, and Bea Brewster and Marie Kau (eds), Diary of Bandsman H. E. Krutli, D Company, 14th Battalion, 4th Infantry Brigade Australian Imperial Forces (AIF): September 1914 to April 1916 (2009). Krutli played with the 14th Battalion band, which travelled on the same transport as the 13th.
The 13th trained hard. . . Account of 13th in Egypt from diaries of Laseron, Shirtley, Susman and Hobson (see above), 13th Infantry Battalion war diaries November 1914–December 1915 (AWM: 4, 23/30/1–14) and White, The Fighting Thirteenth.
‘The Terror’. . . See photographs by Joseph Cecil Thompson at www.flickr.com/photos/eethompson.
the same penny fiction. . . A few commentators connected the spirit of the dreadfuls to the practice of war. ‘Do not grow indignant when you see an errand boy with his eyes glued to a penny dreadful!’ cautioned the Aberdeen Evening Express on 23 May 1917. ‘We have seen in the heroism of our battlefield the result of the love of courage and adventure it engenders and keeps alive.’ In the Century Magazine of November 1916, St John G. Ervine described the armed insurrection in Dublin in Easter 1916 as an accident that grew out of romantic fantasies: ‘It was as if boys, letting their imaginations feed too fat on penny dreadfuls, had forgotten that they were only pretending to be wild Indians attacking Buffalo Bill, and had suddenly scalped a companion or halved his skull with a tomahawk.’
At the start of a night march. . . Described by the 13th Battalion bandmaster, Percy ‘Richo’ Copp, Reveille, 1 May 1940.
their battalion’s stretcher-bearers. . . Account of training from George M. Dupuy, The Stretcher Bearer (1915).
On 11 April, recalled Sergeant Charles Laseron. . . Account of trip to Gallipoli mainly from Laseron’s diary (see above), and his article in the Sunday Times, Sydney, on 11 July 1915. In the newspaper version, he softened the punchline of the song about Major Ellis, replacing ‘May God strike him dead’ with ‘Something strike him red’. Details also drawn from White, The Fighting Thirteenth; diaries of Susman, Hobson and Shirtley (see above); Copp’s reminiscences in Reveille, 1 May 1940; and recollections of Lt W. H. Mankey in Sunday Times, Perth, 11 June 1916.
Gallipoli. . . Account of Gallipoli campaign chiefly from Charles Bean, The Story of Anzac, Vols I & II (11th edition, 1941); Pedersen, The Anzacs; Hart, Gallipoli; Butler, Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services, 1914–1918, Vol. I. Details of 13th Battalion at Gallipoli from White, The Fighting Thirteenth; the battalion’s war diaries November 1914–December 1915 (AWM: 4, 23/30/1–14); Thomas Ray Crooks’s war diary, 11 February 1915 to 24 May 1918 (ML: MSS 838); and diaries of Laseron, Hobson, Shirtley (see above).
The bearers were kept busy. . . See Butler, Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services, 1914–1918, Vol. I; Emily Mayhew, Wounded: From Battlefield to Blighty, 1914–18 (2013); Mark Johnston, Stretcher-Bearers: Saving Australians from Gallipoli to Kokoda (2015); Joseph Lievesley Beeston, Five Months at Anzac: a Narrative of Personal Experiences of the Officer Commanding the 4th Field Ambulance, Australian Imperial Force (1916); and war diary of Frederick Wray, chaplain to 4th Brigade, AWM: PR00247.
‘The stretcher-bearers are great. . .’ From letter to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald by Harold G. Massey, cited in P. Cochrane, Simpson and the Donkey: the Making of a Legend (1992).
Private Ray Lingard. . . Letter printed in Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, 16 July 1915.
James Dow. . . See transcript of Dow’s letter at ddoughty.com. According to his AIF record (NAA: B2455, Dow, JG), Dow was invalided home with neurasthenia in April 1916. According to Ben Shephard’s A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century (2000), the troops most vulnerable to shell shock in the First World War were those who were obliged to endure enemy assaults without being able to retaliate.
‘It was just hell pure and simple. . .’ George McClintock, quoted in Pedersen, The Anzacs.
‘Some of these are very ghastly. . .’ Quoted in Pedersen, The Anzacs.
‘We have been fighting now. . .’ Quoted in Hart, Gallipoli.
‘There is not a front line. . .’ In a letter to Sorrell’s parents in Lithgow, reproduced in Sydney Morning Herald, 29 June 1915.
‘Grenades like showers of peas. . .’ Quoted in Hart, Gallipoli.
Robert had escaped serious injury. . . He had been blown up twice on Gallipoli and also sustained a gunshot wound, according to the information he gave on being discharged – see repatriation case file NAA: C138/ R30557.
Robert’s fellow bearer James Dow. . . See ddoughty.com.
About 10,000 AIF soldiers. . . See Butler, Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services, 1914–1918, Vol. I.
Nattie was also serving. . . Some 850 Royal Navy men were serving with the Royal Australian Navy at the outbreak of the war, comprising about a fifth of the RAN. Nattie’s war career is detailed in NAA: A6770, Coombes NG. For the fortunes of the Australia see Arthur Wilberforce Jose, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918 Volume IX: The Royal Australian Navy, 1914–1918 (9th edition, 1941) and Fazio, The Battlecruiser HMAS Australia.
‘The perspiration dripped. . .’ See Richmond River Herald, 4 January 1916.
rabbit-skin coats. . . See Graphic, 9 June 1916.
transferred to one of the sanitary sections. . . Robert was assigned to the 3rd Sanitary Section in February and transferred to the 4th Sanitary Section when the 4th Division was created in March. For his service with the 4th Sanitary Section, from March to October 1916, see NAA: B2455, Coombes RA; the 4th Sanitary Section war
diaries (AWM: 4 26/79); and Butler, Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services, 1914–1918, Vol. II – The Western Front (1941).
building box-latrines. . . Charles Bean, The Story of Anzac, Vol. III: the Australian Imperial Force in France, 1916.
the first anniversary of the Gallipoli landings. . . See McDowell Paul, Blessed with a Cheerful Nature.
recommended for a Military Medal. . . See www.awm.gov.au/people/rolls/R1583110.
incidence of shellshock. . . 236 cases were diagnosed in the 4th Division in 1916, compared to three in the 3rd Division, according to Butler’s Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services, 1914–1918, Vol. II; the author points out that this may have been in part because the 4th’s Medical Officer was more inclined to diagnose the condition.
Sergeant Rodgers. . . See Frank Rodgers’s record (regimental number 47019) in TNA: British Army WW1 Service Records, 1914–20 and his medal card at TNA: WO 372/17/65366. The record indicates that Frank’s life after the war was rockier. In 1929 he was remanded at Marylebone police court on a charge of larceny and receiving. He died in Lambeth in 1965.
45th Battalion. . . For Robert’s service with the 45th Battalion, from October 1916 to October 1918, see NAA: B2455, Coombes RA; the 45th Battalion diaries (AWM: 4 23/62); Butler, Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services, 1914–1918, Vol. II; and J. E. Lee, The Chronicle of the 45th Battalion, AIF (1927).
the ‘London Gazette’ announced. . . On 27 October 1916. See www.awm.gov.au/people/rolls/R1542612.
‘It was too bad! ’. . . Cairns Post, 28 April 1919.
Robert proved an effective bandmaster. . . According to the reminiscences of Henry Herbert Neaves of the 45th Battalion (AWM: 2DRL/0752), Robert ‘proceeded to lick the bandsmen into shape’. In his history of the 45th Battalion, J. E. Lee reported, ‘The men soon became very proud of their band whose influence in assisting to maintain the morale of the unit in the strenuous months ahead was invaluable.’
William Alabaster. . . See NAA: B2455, Alabaster W, and letters from Alabaster to his family, AWM: 1DRL/0016.
The AIF no longer used its musicians. . . In ‘The Stretcher-Bearer Tradition’, an essay in As You Were: A Cavalcade of Events With the Australian Services From 1788–1947 (1947), Charles Bean explained, ‘Until the First Battle of the Somme many battalions had used their bandsmen as stretcher-bearers. After that battle this system generally was abandoned. For one thing, after such battles the band was too badly needed for cheering up the troops! A battle like Pozières sometimes made a clean sweep of the regimental bearers. Also, on its side, the work of the bearers was too important to be left to unselected men; they were now specially selected for their physique and guts.’
marching out to meet the troops. . . In a diary entry of 26 February 1917, Thomas Ray Crooks records, ‘Our Band came up from “Dernancourt” this afternoon and gave the Bn some music, cheered the boys up a little’ (ML: MSS 838).
it struck camp once every five days. . . See Lee, The Chronicle of the 45th Battalion, AIF.
the band sometimes led the way. . . In diary entries of 27 February 1917, for example, Thomas Crooks and James Vincent of the 45th record that the band led the battalion from Mametz to Bècourt (Crooks diary, ML: MSS 838, and Vincent diary, AWM: PR90/025).
The mechanisms in the men’s rifles. . . See E. P. F. Lynch, Somme Mud: The Experiences of an Infantryman in France, 1916–1919, a fictionalised memoir by a 45th Battalion soldier, composed in the 1920s, edited by Will Davies and published in 2006.
On the coldest nights. . . See G. D. Mitchell, Backs to the Wall: A Larrikin on the Western Front (1937).
Christmas Day 1916. . . See war reminiscences of H. H. Neaves, AWM: 2DRL/0752.
‘We live in a world of Somme mud. . .’ From Lynch, Somme Mud.
Herring recommended him for the Military Medal. . . See www.awm.gov.au/people/rolls/R1594096. The award was announced in the London Gazette, 16 August 1917 – see www.awm.gov.au/people/rolls/R1520876.
‘We’re a pretty casual sort of army. . .’ From Lynch, Somme Mud.
Robert and his friend Bill Alabaster. . . Robert told Red Cross staff that he had spent a leave with Alabaster and knew his people in Forest Gate (Red Cross wounded and missing roll, AWM: 1DRL/0428).
A photographer took a series of pictures. . . The photographs were taken at Meteren on 6 March 1918. See AWM: E01790 and E01791.
On 5 April he was hit by a shell. . . See Red Cross wounded and missing roll, AWM: 1DRL/0428.
the Grand Theatre. . . They performed at the Grand Theatre du Havre on 15 and 16 August 1918. See AWM: PUBS002/004/001/001/015.
granted special leave. . . See NAA: C137/ R30557.
He and the other soldiers were greeted. . . See Sydney Morning Herald, 30 December 1918.
Of the 32,000 men. . . See Anthony MacDougall, ANZACs: Australians At War (1991).
EPILOGUE: ANOTHER BOY
‘the air was electrical’. . . See Morrison, Tales of Mean Streets. ‘Several large and successful movements had quickened a spirit of restlessness in the neighbourhood,’ he writes, ‘and no master was sure of his men.’
‘a stirring and an agitation. . .’ From Masterman, The Heart of Empire.
it has remained a very rare crime. . . See C. M. Green, ‘Matricide by Sons’, Medicine, Science and the Law, 21 (1981); and Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States (1998).
281–2Adolescent boys who kill their mothers. . . See Kathleen M. Heide and Autumn Frei, ‘Matricide: a Critique of the Literature’ in Trauma, Violence, & Abuse II (2010); Kathleen M. Heide, Understanding Parricide: When Sons and Daughters Kill Parents (2012); B. F. Corder, B. C. Ball, T. M. Haizlip, R. Rollins and R. Beaumont, ‘Adolescent Parricide: A Comparison with Other Adolescent Murder’, American Journal of Psychiatry, 133 (1976); K. M. Heide, Why Kids Kill Parents: Child Abuse and Adolescent Homicide (1992); D. J. Scherl and J. E. Mack, ‘A Study of Adolescent Matricide’, Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychology, 5 (1966); D. H. Russell, ‘A Study of Juvenile Murderers of Family Members’, International Journal of Offender Therapy & Comparative Criminology, 28 (1984); Frederic Wertham, Dark Legend: a Study in Murder (1941); E. Tanay, ‘Adolescents who Kill Parents: Reactive parricide’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 7 (1973).
Psychiatrists have suggested. . . See Wertham, Dark Legend, Green, ‘Matricide by Sons’, Scherl and Mack, ‘A Study of Adolescent Matricide’.
in myth and literature. . . See Gilbert Murray, Hamlet and Orestes (1914); M. Kanzer, ‘Dostoevsky’s Matricidal Impulses’, Psychoanalytic Review, 35 (1948); Green, ‘Matricide by Sons’; Wertham, Dark Legend and ‘The Matricidal Impulse: Critique of Freud’s Interpretation of Hamlet’, Journal of Criminal Psychopathology, 2 (1941); Aeschylus, Oresteia (circa 458 BC); Robert Bloch, Psycho (1959); Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (1861); William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (circa 1600).
a psychiatrist. . . Carine Minne, consultant psychiatrist in forensic psychotherapy at Broadmoor Hospital, Berkshire, and the Portman Clinic, London.
a photograph of his gravestone. . . On austcemindex.com.
Henry Alexander Mulville. . . Account of his life from a handwritten memoir by Harry Mulville and from conversations and emails with his youngest daughter and her husband.
a hand-cranked punt. . . Charles Mulville paid £135 a year for the right to run the Tyndale ferry – see Lismore Northern Star, 18 January 1918. Harry said that he took £15 a month in fares.
Sydney Mail. . . 29 June 1927.
Smith’s marriage was dissolved. . . The dissolution of his marriage to Pearl May Smith (née Garland) was announced in the Sydney Morning Herald, 15 January 1930. Entry on Harold William Smith, Pearl May Smith and Victor Rose (co-respondent) in the Matrimonial Causes files at the New South Wales State Library in Sydney (8/3110, 482.1928 and 8/3110, 1543.1928). ‘I would not go back to Smith again,’ Pearl told the official who served d
ivorce papers on her. For his marriage to Bertha, see Grafton Daily Examiner, 10 May 1930.
a well-known and well-to-do family. . . See obituaries of his father and mother, William and Elizabeth Smith of Wollongbar House, in Lismore Northern Star, 25 April 1923 and 13 May 1925.
declared bankrupt in 1898. . . See Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, 19 February 1898.
he had served for only five months. . . He was a part-time trooper with the New South Wales Lancers from 1900, and volunteered for the AIF in November 1915. See NAA: B2455, Smith W. See also Jean Bou, Light Horse: a History of Australia’s Mounted Arm (2009).
convicted of assaulting a man. . . See Lismore Northern Star, 11 March 1899.
Robert had settled in Nana Glen. . . He appears in New South Wales electoral registers as a farmer in Glenreagh and Nana Glen from 1920 to 1949. For the experience of soldiers in the aftermath of the Great War, see Stephen Garton, The Cost of War: Australians Return (1996).
the dense web of the bush. . . For history of the flora and fauna of the Orara Valley see Orara River Rehabilitation Project, Landholders Booklet, published by Coffs Harbour City Council in 2012.
The region around the Orara. . . For history of the area, see Mary and Clarrie Brewer, Looking Back: Nana Glen, 1879–1979 (1979), Annette Green and Margaret Franklin, A History of Nana Glen Primary School, 1892–1992 (1992), Elizabeth Webb, Glenreagh: a Town of Promise (1998), John Vader, Red Gold: the Tree that Built a Nation (2002), Nan Cowling (ed.), Coffs Harbour Time Capsule Book: 1847–2011 (2011).
The cans were collected. . . Account of the Orara to Grafton cream truck run in Sydney Morning Herald, 29 March 1932. For dairy industry, see Terry Kass, Regional History of the North Coast (1989).
Nana Glen public school. . . Harry enrolled at the school in September 1928, according to the Nana Glen Public School Register 1928–1981 at the Coff’s Harbour District Family History Society.
Cundy was injured. . . Grafton Daily Examiner, 30 July 1930.
Harry was seriously injured. . . See Grafton Daily Examiner, 21 June 1930, and Sydney Morning Herald, 23 June 1930. None of the family is identified in these reports.