Pompey Elliott at War

Ross McMullin is an historian and biographer who has written extensively about Australia’s involvement in World War I. Dr McMullin’s biographies include the award-winning Pompey Elliott and Will Dyson: Australia’s radical genius. His most recent publication is a new work – Pompey Elliott at War – In His Own Words. To talk about this remarkable Australian general and the unique way he recorded Australia’s contribution to the Great War, Ross McMullin addressed The Sydney Institute on Tuesday 24 October 2017.

POMPEY ELLIOTT AT WAR

ROSS MCMULLIN

This new book Pompey Elliott At War: In His Own Words is different from my previous biography of Pompey. That book was a life-and-times story covering his whole life, but this new book is not a biography, it’s not life and times, and it’s not his whole life. The focus is on this celebrated Australian’s experience of World War I, in his own words. I’m not aware of another book quite like this new one, for two main reasons — the way I’ve gone about it, and the way Pompey expressed himself.

The way I’ve gone about it is to go beyond Pompey’s rich letters and diaries. I’ve assembled his words from wherever I could find them — not just his personal letters and diaries, but also his battle reports, orders, recommendations for awards, military correspondence, official formation diaries, and any other source that illuminated what he wrote and said. I then selected excerpts from these various sources and arranged them in a sequence that becomes a narrative. It’s Pompey at war in his own words.

And what remarkable words they are. I can still remember how stunned I was when I first read Pompey Elliott’s remarkable letters and diaries almost 40 years ago. They were so arrestingly candid and vivid that they bowled me over. The aim of this book is to enable others to have a similar experience.

First, though, who was this extraordinary character Pompey Elliott?

Harold Elliott, universally known as Pompey, was Australia’s most famous fighting general in World War I. A charismatic, controversial and highly successful commander, he was exceptional in intellect, genuineness and resolve. An accomplished tactician and astonishingly brave, he was renowned for never sending anyone anywhere he was not prepared to go himself. A fierce disciplinarian with an explosive temper, he was exuberant, wholehearted and utterly dedicated. Pompey identified himself with the formations he commanded and the men he led. He formed a strong bond with them and cared deeply about what happened to them.

Elliott commanded the 7th Battalion at Gallipoli, where he was wounded at the landing. At Lone Pine, under his vigorous front-line leadership, four of his men were awarded the VC. He led the 15th Brigade at the Western Front, where he was prominent in notable battles such as Fromelles, Polygon Wood and Villers–Bretonneux together with numerous other engagements, incidents and controversies. No Australian general was more revered by those he led or more famous outside his own command.

It was not just the achievements, awards and accolades that made Elliott special, though there were plenty of each. His fame had as much to do with his character and personality — with the style of his leadership as much as its results. Pompey’s tempestuousness generated a host of anecdotes that amused his men and disconcerted his superiors. He was frank and forthright in speech and correspondence, not one for pretence or artifice. He and his wife Kate arranged a mutual no-secrets pact for their wartime correspondence, and he certainly adhered to that agreement.

Pompey’s emotions are starkly evident in his wartime letters. He not only wrote frankly about what happened to him and the men he was commanding; he was also frank about what he felt about what happened to him and the men he was commanding.

Then there is the style of Pompey’s words. He wrote rapidly and fluently with fertile imagery, a flair for simile, and an engaging turn of phrase. In 1918, when he proclaimed an order that the next officer caught looting would be summarily and publicly hanged, and looting ceased as a result, Pompey (who was a solicitor in civilian life) concluded that none “seemed inclined to make of themselves a test case”. After his machine-gunners broke up a German attack, “the survivors of the [enemy] column concluded that they had urgent business elsewhere”. Unimpressed by German tactics in 1918, he observed that “the whole military ability of the Teutonic race has advanced no plan beyond … the instinct of an infant grasshopper”. He sent an officer to a vital Lone Pine position with a memorable farewell: “Goodbye Symons, I don’t expect to see you again, but we must not lose that post!” (What Lieutenant Symons then did at that critical post was so outstanding that he was awarded the VC.) Pompey would roar at incompetent officers: “Call yourself a soldier, … you’re not even a wart on a soldier’s arse!” And he would reassure his wife Kate that he had stopped swearing: “I would pass for a Sunday School teacher anywhere at present”.

His letters and diaries are lively and absorbing not only because of his turn of phrase, but also because he was so outspoken — especially in controversy, and Pompey was often in controversy. Newly promoted to command a brigade, he was appalled by the calibre of the battalion commanders his superiors had given him: “do you desire an efficient brigade or will any old thing do?” Unwise British dispositions in a vital sector “forbade us to hope that any intelligent military action could reasonably be expected from any of them from the corps commander down”. He declared after the stunningly successful counter-attack at Villers-Bretonneux that he “had to fight everybody to get permission to do it, and when it was done they were all breaking their necks to get or share the credit”. Moreover, he nailed General Birdwood as being “full of a pretended affability that he imagines deceives us”; when this mask disappeared during an argument, Elliott described how Birdwood “commenced to chatter and jibber … like a demented monkey” and then flounced out with a retinue of commanders “like a cock wren and his harem”.

Pompey yearned to stay connected to his wife and kids. Maintaining a loving relationship with a spouse you don’t see for five years is no easy matter, especially when you spend much of that time distracted by danger and the acute awareness that you’re responsible for the lives of thousands. Pompey certainly tried his utmost. “Nearly half of our wedded life we will have been separated soon, dear”, he wrote in January 1918. “It is very sad what we have missed of each other.”

And Pompey’s correspondence to his young children was extraordinary. Surely no general in any combatant nation in this war managed to turn the conflict into a kind of bedtime story in the way that he regularly did in his letters to his children.

At the end of 1916 he wrote to his four-year-old son Neil, describing Western Front developments including the unveiling of the latest military novelty, the tank, and referring to himself as “Dida”, which his young children called him:

 Since I wrote to you before we got a lot of big waggons like traction engines and put guns in them and ran them ‘bumpety bump’ up against the old Kaiser’s wall and knocked a great big hole in it and caught thousands and thousands of the Kaiser’s naughty soldier men and we killed a lot of them and more we put in jail so they couldn’t be naughty any more, but then it started to rain and rain and snow and hail and the ground got all boggy and the waggons got stuck in the mud and the old Kaiser has such heaps and heaps of soldiers that he sent up a lot more and thinned them out where the wall wasn’t broken and started to build up another big wall to stop us going any further… It is very, very cold here and the Jack Frost here is not a nice little Jack Frost who just pinches your fingers so you can run to a fire to warm them, but a great big bitey Jack Frost and he pinches the toes and fingers of some of Dida’s poor soldiers so terribly that he pinches them right off. Isn’t that terrible … And the naughty old Kaiser burnt down every little house all round here and Dida’s soldiers have to sleep out in the mud or dig holes in the ground like rabbits to sleep in. And all the trees are blown to pieces by the big guns, and there is no wood to make fires and Dida’s soldiers have to make fires of coal, and the waggons are all stuck in the mud so Dida’s soldiers have to carry it through all the mud, and everything they eat and wear has to be carried too. And Dida’s soldiers get so dreadfully tired they can hardly work or walk at all. Isn’t that old Kaiser a naughty old man to cause all this trouble. Now goodbye dear little laddie. Give dear old Mum a kiss and tell her Dida’s coming home soon and that you will grow up soon and you won’t let any old Kaiser come near her. (Letter to Neil, 27.12.1916)

Pompey’s favourite wartime anecdote concerned an incident that occurred when his battalion, on the march near Cairo, passed a hawker’s male donkey that was taking a conspicuous interest in a nearby female of the species:

Some of the boys began to laugh at the performance, which [annoyed the hawker], who suddenly left his seat and, rushing towards the donkey, seized him by one of his ears and twisted it severely, with the result that the donkey lost all interest in the object of his affections. At the head of the leading company of the regiment marched the company commander, a fine, well-built, handsome young officer, carrying himself with a swing. [Just behind him] marched the leading platoon sergeant. Scarcely had the incident of the donkey ended when a [carriage] drove by containing two handsome but well-painted ladies, one of whom bowed and smiled at the captain, who saluted. Instantly came a voice from the [ranks]: “Twist his ear, sergeant.” (Reminiscences in radio talk c. 1928)

There’s humour in the book too.

Pompey led his battalion into action at the Gallipoli landing. He was profoundly affected by the ordeal of his Essendon boys in his unit’s first boat. He never forgot it, writing about it years later with lyrical intensity:

As they approached the shore a machine gun opened, the bullets singing by. Soon they got the range — men crumpled up where they sat, riddled through and through. The boat sides were pierced, the water squirted in, but the boat still swept on unswerving from her course, the rowers with their backs to the fire never missing a stroke — albeit they felt each one in imagination in the small of the back — till they fell back dead and another snatched the oar from their dying grasp. A little red-headed laddie named McArthur, scarcely more than eighteen, was shot through the femoral artery and the blood spurted from his thigh as the water squirted into the boat … A sergeant attempted to bind it up. “It’s no use, Sergeant,” he cried, “I’m done,” Yet he rowed on until he swooned from loss of blood, and a comrade took his place … The water gained in the boat and flowed around them, its blue turning a ghastly red with the blood of the wounded and dying. Still the hellish hail of fire continued, it did not cease when the boat grounded but swept over them still, piercing the writhing bodies through and through … Oh those leaden minutes of agony, how slowly, how dreadfully they passed by. (Letter to editor, British-Australasian n.d. [May 1918])

Pompey was wounded himself at the landing, and took weeks to recover. After his return his battalion was directed to occupy the front line at Steele’s Post:

[The Turks] got up two heavy howitzers … and for the past week our trenches have been a hell upon earth. The trenches were not trenches any more but mere gaping holes in the earth … Men were blown to pieces by shells or crushed to death by the masses of earth blown down upon them, but Katie the boys are wonderful. They stick it out and the call for picks and shovels or stretcher bearers never fails to be answered though often another shell sends these willing workers into eternity …

I am proud of them all Katie, but oh my heart is breaking to see them, my hair is nearly quite grey with the worry and grief of it all to see them dying so. We are like men under sentence of death, for every day takes its toll of us. We have lost nearly 200 men since I last wrote [to] you … I am in excellent bodily health but I am broken hearted at the loss of my brave boys … This is an awful war. (Letter to Kate 12.7.1915)

Next month Pompey and his men were involved in the ferocious fighting at Lone Pine. Four of his men were awarded the VC for what they did there. Pompey told a lawyer friend what it was like to be at Lone Pine:

The weather was hot and the flies pestilential. When anyone speaks to you of the glory of war, picture to yourself a narrow line of trenches two and sometimes three deep with bodies (and think too of your best friends, for that is what these boys become by long association with you) mangled and torn beyond description by the bombs, and bloated and blackened by decay and crawling with maggots. Live amongst this for days … This is war and such is glory — whatever the novelists may say.” (Letter to J.A. Richardson 25.1.1916)

In 1916 Pompey was devastated by the disaster of Fromelles and also the appalling Somme winter conditions, but I haven’t time today to include his words about them. Early in 1917 the Germans carried out a strategic retreat to their heavily fortified Hindenburg Line. Two advanced guards were formed to harass the retreat in the AIF’s sector, and Elliott was chosen to lead one of them. His formation proceeded to advance successfully across open country — such an uplifting contrast to the depressing boggy trenches they had left behind them. Pompey’s morale was similarly transformed:

My word Katie, my boys have been making a name for themselves. They far outreached the British and even the [other] Australians, and for three whole days we were absolutely forbidden to advance one step further to allow the others to catch up on each side of us … Even the Army commander, [General] Gough, … actually came along yesterday to see us, and several days before he sent his staff [officer] to take notes of my methods of attack, which were simply paralysing the old Boche. (Letter to Kate 28.3.1917)

The battle of Polygon Wood was intended to be a combined attack involving Australian and British formations on 26 September 1917, but the Germans had other ideas:

The Germans knew we were going to attack soon, so they thought to disarrange our plans by attacking us, and after a fearful bombardment attacked at dawn of the 25th and then came on in thousands. My boys of the 58th [Battalion] were in the front line and despite dreadful casualties … stood firm, but the British battalion [alongside] could not stand, and they broke and ran. (Letter to Kate 2.10.1917)

This caused immense difficulties for Pompey and his brigade, and while he was directing this complex battle he was notified that his brother George had been fatally wounded:

They brought the news to me when I was tied to my office directing the fight, and I could not go to him though they said he was dying. I hope never to have such an experience again. The effort to concentrate my thoughts on the task of defeating the enemy as the messages came through revealing each move and the changing phases of the battle to me seemed as time went on to turn me into stone, and half the time I was like a man sleepwalking. (Letter to George Henderson 18.10.1917)

Moreover, during the battle Pompey also received alarming news about his solicitor’s practice back in Melbourne:

Oh Katie, … as if my other troubles were not enough, [I was] told … that Mr Roberts … has been speculating and lost his money and has been making me liable through the partnership for thousands of pounds of his debts. About £5000 altogether … Try not to worry, darling. It is a bitter blow to me … I think I could have the villain put in jail, but it would only cause a scandal and probably ruin the business without releasing me from debt in the slightest.” (Letter to Kate 2.10.1917)

Despite these shocks, Pompey’s dynamic leadership, which included a famous front-line visit that sorted out the confusion and revived the attacking impetus, paved the way for an outstanding victory at Polygon Wood, as the men he led secured his brigade’s objectives and those of the British alongside as well:

We have had a wonderful battle and a wonderful victory. My boys have simply covered themselves with glory … Many, many have fallen but we have in this fight stamped our fame on a higher pinnacle than ever. General Plumer says my boys saved the whole British army. (Letter to Kate 2.10.1917)

Pompey proceeded to compile a typically frank and forthright battle report about Polygon Wood, but found it suppressed by his British corps commander:

It showed some of the British troops up and some of their generals too, and Birdwood ordered all the copies  … of it destroyed. It was a pity, as I had taken great pains to get the truth of it, but you see it is necessary that disasters should be concealed and hushed up. It does not pay to tell the truth, as I know to my cost. (Letter to Kate 7.1.1918)

At the end of 1917 Pompey was feeling very melancholy:

Here it’s the last day of this sad old year 1917. I think it has held more of sadness and disappointment than any other year of my life. I am particularly in the blues today. It is bitterly cold and there is nearly a couple of feet of snow on the ground. There have been no home letters for more than a month … Having no news, I don’t know what position my business is in with Roberts, and it is very worrying … It is very sad not getting any letters … I am big heap lonely for you.”   (Letter to Kate 31.12.1917)

The Germans launched a massive onslaught on 21 March 1918. The British were driven back no less than 40 miles, and there was widespread concern that the war might be lost. Pompey sensed this was the climax of the war, and all his drive and verve returned as the Australians were rushed to the rescue. Australians were influencing the destiny of the world in 1918 more than any other year, and Pompey and his brigade were front and centre in these dramatic events.

The AIF have hitherto accomplished nothing to be compared in importance with the work they have in hand just now.”  (Letter to Kate 17.4.1918)

I was never so proud of being an Australian as I am today … The gallant bearing and joyous spirit of the men at the prospect of a fight thrills you through and through. You simply cannot despair or be downhearted — whatever the odds against you — when you feel their spirits rising the more the danger seems to threaten. It is glorious indeed to be with them.” (Letter to Kate 18.4.1918)

During the crisis his brigade was directed to occupy the village of Hedauville:

[However] the whole village and chateau was crammed full of [British] officers and men … who had no idea what they were going to do or where their units were and seemed to be making no effort whatever to find out.” (Diary 29.3.1918)

Elliott went to the chateau and spoke to the staff officer who was evidently in charge:

The latter, who was still in a very undressed state, [said] he had no orders whatever about leaving and until he did so he could not move. He stated that there were ‘plenty of other buildings’ in the village for me to take as headquarters without turning them out. I said I had no desire whatever to turn them out, but pointed out that my orders … were to occupy the village of Hedauville … and unless his details moved there would not be any accommodation for my men, [many of whom] had travelled all the previous day and then marched all night … By this officer not being ready to move out, these men were forced to halt in the fields sodden with rain falling at the time and wait his convenience. Not wishing to appear the least unreasonable, I told him … that I would try to get a building for headquarters and leave the men outside until midday whilst he was getting orders … I found a ruined schoolhouse with all the windows shattered by shell fire and with the yard defiled by human excrement … I remained here wet through until about midday.”  (Letter to General Hobbs 25.5.1918)

Pompey then returned to the chateau and asked for the staff officer:

He told me that his division had moved, and until he got orders from them as to where he was to go he could not move. I asked him where his division was. He did not know. I asked had he sent [anyone] out to find where it was — No. I then saw that the blighter had no intention to move, that they were very comfortable there and didn’t want to move, and would take mighty fine care they didn’t get orders. So I told him right there and then a few things I had found out about his division and its fighting and running powers, and wound up by informing him that unless he and his officers and men were clear of the village by two o’clock I would send in an escort of my own men and march them out by force as prisoners. He got a nasty shock and was out of the village by the time fixed. He then had the [hide] to complain to his division of the way I had treated him. In reply I let off some more steam and asked that a court of inquiry should [investigate] the conduct of the British officers and men in the village who had looted the whole place including the chateau. That startled them a bit, and the matter was dropped like a hot spud. (Letter to Kate 18.4.1918)

Soon afterwards the Germans attacked and captured the tactically vital town of Villers-Bretonneux from the British. Pompey and his brigade were nearby, and he was itching to launch a counterattack:

I submitted the plan for recapture of a town. I was told not to bother as the British corps concerned were doing it themselves and it was out of my area … [So] for 14 hours we delayed whilst the Bosche strengthened his position. [Eventually] I was solemnly handed over to the British corps concerned [together] with another Australian brigade — no means of communication with each other was provided — by this time it was pitch dark and raining, and we were launched and our meeting place fixed within the enemy’s lines — and we were left to find each other. Everyone expected the whole thing to fail, but something desperate had to be done to restore the situation. In point of fact it was not nearly as desperate as it looked, for I had taken advantage of those 14 hours delay to have all my officers and some of the men thoroughly reconnoitre the ground actually during the fight, for the moment the [German] attack started I assumed that the British corps would be defeated. (Letter to Emily Edwards 30.4.1918)

This counterattack proved a stunning success, and was even described as the finest exploit of the war. Soon afterwards three Australian divisional commands became vacant; Pompey felt he had strong claims to be promoted, but he was overlooked. He was bitterly aggrieved, and had an argument with Birdwood’s senior staff officer, General White:

[White] said General Birdwood would not promote me. I asked why, and pointed to my services — the Bapaume advance, which is now lectured on as a classic example of advanced guard; on the Bullecourt show, on the Polygon Wood show and lastly on this Villers-Bretonneux stunt, which is supposed to be the finest thing the Anzacs have ever done in the war, and some say the finest thing done in the war at all. And Lone Pine too. He admitted all that, and said they had no general braver or more capable in the AIF, but I suffered from lack of control of judgment. Pressed to say what he meant, he could only say that I break out like a volcano if things don’t go just as I want them. He mentioned about the row I had with Birdwood in Egypt; also the row in Egypt when they wouldn’t give my men water and I threatened to march them back into town. Then at Fromelles, when the British didn’t advance and my men got cut to pieces, I kicked up a row and got a general sacked and caused a lot of unpleasantness. Then at Polygon Wood, when my big report exposed the Tommies regiments, who bolted and left my 58th boys to fight alone; the same almost at Bullecourt, the same down here. Then the row I had with a young staff officer who kept all my brigade out in the rain until it suited him to get up about 10am in the morning after we had marched all night. Then when we got down here I found British officers stealing champagne wholesale, and I arrested them and threatened to shoot them if it did not stop, for I could not stop my men stealing wine if the officers would persist. That seems to have led to a row …

Now would you believe it possible that they are now dragging all this up to show I am not fit for a higher job. It is amazing and incredible. I should have thought that taking this in conjunction with my fighting powers, which he admits are not approachable, it would have proved that I was the very man for the job. But there you are … Katie, I have done only my duty as my men will testify for always. (Letter to Kate 24.5.1918)