Farewell, Dear People: Biographies of Gifted Australians who Died in the Great War

Dr Ross McMullin is a senior History fellow at the  University of Melbourne and the author (most recently) of Farewell, Dear People: Biographies of Australia’s Lost Generation. He is also the author of the award winning Pompey Elliott. Farewell Dear People tells the stories of ten outstanding young Australians who gave their lives in battle during the First World War. Talented and with many achievements behind them, their potential was lost to the nation’s future generations – but they did not die in vain. To speak of their contribution to Australian history, Ross McMullin addressed The Sydney Institute on Tuesday 30  October 2012.

FAREWELL, DEAR PEOPLE: BIOGRAPHIES OF AUSTRALIA’S LOST GENERATION

ROSS McMULLIN

The essence of my book Farewell, Dear People stems from the way Australians have thought about the devastating impact of World War I. At the start of the war, in 1914, our national population was less than five million. The effect of 60,000 dead and all the maimed was catastrophic. It is hardly surprising, then, that evaluation of the consequences of World War I for Australia over the ensuing decades has tended to focus on the collective impact of all those casualties. This is, after all, appropriately democratic, and consistent with our egalitarian traditions.

That there must have been exceptionally talented individuals among the 60,000 dead has been implicitly understood.

But do we know today who they were? No, we don’t. Do we know their stories, what made them special? No, we don’t. If you asked informed readers in England about Britain’s lost generation of World War I, a significant proportion would say: yes, you mean Rupert Brooke, and Raymond Asquith, and so on. But do we know our equivalents here, our Rupert Brookes? No, we don’t.

The aim of the book is to remedy this substantial deficiency in the national story. The book covers ten Australians of rare potential who died during the war. They had outstanding pre-war achievements, or outstanding character, or both. They came from a variety of backgrounds — geographically as well as socially, some affluent and some decidedly not — and they distinguished themselves in a range of spheres. For each of these remarkable Australians I’ve written an extended biography so that the reader will know them well, will appreciate why they were special, and will understand why their premature deaths were a profound loss for Australia as well as for their families and communities.

Geoff McCrae

Geoff McCrae was a budding architect and a product of Melbourne’s best-known creative dynasty. He combined his family’s flair for writing and drawing with an endearing personality and a strong sense of right and wrong. He hated war, and he yearned to be home with his family and his girlfriend. But as long as this ghastly war continued, he felt that his duty was to play his part in it. And his was no small part — he was a battalion commander at an unusually young age.

Women adored him. Attractive women were attracted to Geoff, but he only had eyes for one by August 1914. Her name was Maude, and during the war he missed her terribly. He wrote about her with the most poignant longing. Take, for example, this sentence he just dashed off in his diary: “I feel very weary but do not sleep, and long for the touch of a vanished hand”.

The title of the book, Farewell, Dear People, comes from the remarkable final letter that McCrae wrote home to his family on 19 July 1916. The battle of Fromelles, which began later that day, remains the worst 24 hours in Australia’s entire history — 5,533 Australian casualties in one night. What McCrae wrote in the quick letter he dashed off to his family was this:

Today I lead my Battalion in an assault on the German lines, and I pray to God I may come through alright and bring honour to our name. If not, I will at least have laid down my life for you and my country, which is the greatest privilege one can ask for. Farewell, dear people, the hour approacheth.

Geoff was the youngest of six in his family. His father, George, was a noted poet who also wrote prose and liked sketching. Geoff and George were particularly close. Geoff’s older brother Hugh, a well-known poet, artist and cartoonist who moved to Sydney while Geoff was still young and didn’t see much of Geoff afterwards, carried with him for years an image of tall George and small Geoff happily together with their fingers intertwined.

George was 83 when Geoff died. His full life of personal and intellectual fulfillment contrasted with the abbreviated span of his youngest son. But in 1916 George still had another decade and more of alert life ahead of him. He devoted much of it to commemorating Geoff.

This obsessive devotion reflected the intensity of the father’s never-ending grief. It was as if he could in some way maintain the connection of those intertwined fingers by turning Geoff’s bedroom into a perpetual shrine, by cherishing his medals and mementos, by installing a memorial window, by compiling commemorative verse, by seeking his personal effects, by sketching his faraway grave, by locating the cemetery site, by pursuing posthumous awards, and by spending hours and hours transcribing Geoff’s wartime diary and letters — even re-sketching the accompanying drawings.

Clunes Mathison

Clunes Mathison was an internationally acclaimed medical researcher. He was a marvel, the Florey or Macfarlane Burnet or Gus Nossal that Australia missed out on, because he was fatally wounded in the first weeks at Gallipoli while serving as a battalion doctor. Mathison was born and educated in Victoria, and he received the most glowing accolades from medical scientists of the highest international renown.

The director of the Lister Institute in London remarked that “No man I have ever known possesses the genius for research so highly as Mathison”. Another esteemed British professor wrote after Mathison’s death that “for the science of medicine throughout the world, the loss is irreparable”. The (London) Times History of the War lamented Mathison’s death as the loss of “a life which had been judged infinitely precious”.

Mathison was a revered personality as well as a renowned researcher. Someone who knew him well put it this way:

Of Dr Mathison as a scientist, let others speak. I speak of him as a friend, and as a friend he was wonderful … He never flagged: the variety of his interests was remarkable. I have been with him on all sorts of occasions — … yarning, cricketing, camping, canoeing, fishing, ski-running — and it was always the same: whether it was a question of scientific knowledge, or of academic diplomacy, or the value of a book or a picture or a piece of music, or the fastening of a ski-binding, it was always “Ask Mathie” … His cheery, chubby figure was welcome everywhere; he knew every Professor and every policeman in London, and was equally at home hobnobbing with either.

Mathison’s parents were both schoolteachers, and widely admired. They had six children, but Clunes was the only one to reach the age of 10. As well, his father died painfully at home of illness when Clunes was 12. He clearly experienced a great deal of death and suffering in his family during his childhood. Considering that he had such wide-ranging interests across the humanities as well as the sciences, the conclusion seems inescapable that the sickness and sadness around him as he grew up influenced his decision to pursue a career as a researcher of medical science. Essentially, what he felt driven to do was to make scientific discoveries that would help sick people get better.

Australia was deprived of this unique precious genius in a deplorable way. He died while the 2nd Australian Brigade was temporarily transferred to Helles, where they came under the command of a singularly inept British commander, General Hunter-Weston. What Hunter-Weston directed these Victorians to do on 8 May 1915 was to charge towards Krithia for three miles along an exposed spur in broad daylight against the same Turkish machine-guns and riflemen who had halted a series of similar attacks before any of them had progressed one-sixth of that distance.

The Victorians charged with the utmost gallantry. Onlookers likened it to the legendary Charge of the Light Brigade. But casualties were inevitably severe. Mathison tended the many wounded with exceptional bravery and selflessness. Mathie made it known that “wherever I am wanted, just tell me, and I will try to go”. The historian of Mathison’s unit recorded that when it became known that a Turkish bullet had found Mathison, the news depressed the whole battalion.

In 1953, almost 40 years after Mathison’s death, Macfarlane Burnet described him as an Australian equivalent of Rupert Brooke.

Robert Bage

Robert Bage was a talented engineer and a senior colleague of Mawson’s who performed outstandingly at Antarctica, but he’s another who’s long forgotten.

Mawson’s expeditioners happened to base themselves at the windiest place on the planet. John Hunter, a scientist from Sydney who did not know Bage before their time together at Antarctica, quickly developed a very high regard for Bage, as his diary attests:

Bob Bage … is the best liked man on the expedition and personally I think he is the best man we have. He is an untiring worker, stopping up all hours of the night, even to early in the morning. … He is ever ready to help anybody. Personally he is a fine fellow and of jovial spirit and smiling countenance. … [T]here is no one that I have met that I have greater respect for than Bob: in fact he is an ideal fellow and I hope our friendship will long continue.

After they had endured months of ferocious blizzards cooped up in their hut, Mawson placed Bage in charge of a daunting sledging expedition. Bage and his two colleagues (Frank Hurley was one) ventured more than 300 miles south across rough terrain where no-one had been before, despite encountering the most violent hurricanes.

Along the way they made regular geographical, meteorological and magnetic measurements, because they were exploring for scientific research; they were in fact not far from the South Pole, but this was not a superficial exercise of getting to some target just for the shallow glory of being the first to plonk a flag there. It was an exceedingly dangerous expedition, and Bage and his comrades only just managed to survive their harrowing return journey. But their remarkable feat was little known at the time, and it’s unknown now.

All the sledging expeditions returned to the hut that was the home base of Mawson’s men within a couple of days of Mawson’s deadline, except one — the three-man party led by Mawson himself. The ship that was to take all the expeditioners back to Australia, the Aurora, had arrived with its irascible captain, J.K. Davis. He was known as Gloomy Davis, but his concern about delay was understandable, as ships had limited seasonal scope to manoeuvre in these icy waters.

Several days later, with Davis increasingly tense and still no sign of Mawson, six expeditioners, including Bage, were selected to stay on for another winter in case Mawson’s party belatedly turned up. Eventually Davis decided he couldn’t wait any more, and the Aurora departed, only for Mawson to materialise later that very day in an emaciated state with the harrowing news that the two comrades with him had died.

As if this wasn’t dramatic enough, when they managed to send a wireless message to the Aurora asking for it to return, which it did — with great reluctance from Davis — the sea was too wild for Mawson, Bage and the others to be collected. They were waiting on the shore knowing that Davis would be increasingly agitated about this further delay. In the end he decided he could linger no longer, and the Aurora departed again.

So the hopes of Bage and his shore-based companions were shattered. They had to endure another year of isolation and limited amenities and apocalyptic weather before they could be collected.

A sinister surprise further drained morale — one of them went mad. Bage became wary of even conversing in the hut, as this troubled colleague would bizarrely misinterpret even the most innocuous remarks.

When the Aurora reappeared on 13 December 1913, the jubilation ashore was understandably intense. Bage and his companions really were going home this time. Their arrival in Australia was a celebrated event. Bage, to his surprise, found himself in demand as a speaker. Only a year later, though, he was killed in the first fortnight at Gallipoli.

What happened was this. Bage was the deputy leader of one of the original companies of engineers. He landed with his company on the original Anzac Day. During the chaos of the first few days ashore Bage and his men did the kind of things that engineers did — they widened roads, strengthened trenches, constructed loopholes, excavated emplacements for the artillery, and so on. Bage spent the morning of 7 May surveying. The young men with him paused for some lunch.

Bage strolled to the adjacent AIF position, perhaps intent on getting something to eat there himself. As it happened, the commander of the AIF’s 1st Division, Major-General Bridges, was there. Bridges had been appraising the tactical options in the local area, and he had just come to a decision about what he wanted. When Bage materialised along the trench, Bridges said, “Here’s the man!”

Bage was startled. He wasn’t used to being addressed in such fashion by a major-general. But then he found out why he was the man, and he became seriously perturbed. Bridges had decided that he wanted the infantry to occupy a forward post, and he wanted a reliable engineer — which of course exactly described Bage, and it was why he had said “Here’s the man!” — to mark out the position beforehand, so that the infantry would know exactly where Bridges wanted them to dig in.

This would involve Bage venturing out 150 yards in front of the then Anzac position, and banging in some marker pegs in view of the Turks, and Bridges wanted this done ASAP. Bage respectfully pointed out that this would be a very risky undertaking, and the best chance of carrying it out effectively would be to do it at night. But Bridges was adamant. He wanted it done that afternoon — that is, in broad daylight and in full view of the Turks.

Bage was a loyal officer. He knew that an order was an order. Bage was also a highly capable and insightful officer. He was well aware that his prospects of surviving such a venture were slim. He resigned himself to his probable fate, and arranged for the dispersal of his belongings.

Bage did his utmost to carry out the task. He was hammering in a marker peg where Bridges wanted when he was killed by a fusillade of fire from umpteen Turkish riflemen and at least five machine-guns.

Australians have tended to be critical of incompetent British generals whose ineptitude led to the deaths of regrettably many Australians — understandably critical, in the case of commanders like General Haking, who was culpable for the death of Geoff McCrae and thousands of others at Fromelles in the worst 24 hours in Australian history, and also General Hunter-Weston, who was culpable for the similarly atrocious decision to throw the 2nd Australian Brigade at preposterously short notice into the notorious charge towards Krithia, the action which led to the death of the irreplaceable Clunes Mathison.

But what happened to Bob Bage at Gallipoli on 7 May 1915, when his life was cavalierly imperilled by General Bridges and he predictably died, confirms that inept decisions by generals that led to the deaths of Australians with the most outstanding potential for future greatness were made by Australian commanders as well as by British ones.

Tom Elliott

Tom Elliott was an exceptionally talented soldier from a working-class background in Sydney. He was part of the second intake at Duntroon, which entered the college in 1912 after a series of competitive exams; there were more than a hundred applicants from around Australia, and Tom ended up with the highest marks.

At Duntroon Tom distinguished himself in both the tuition and the training, and excelled at sport as well. He was a purposeful and effective forward in the acclaimed Duntroon rugby team that remained undefeated for years, and he won a coveted award at the college athletics meeting for the best all-round competitor.

In 1916 Tom was an officer in the 60th Battalion, which was part of Pompey Elliott’s 15th Brigade. Pompey knew Tom for only four months, but in that time formed the view that Tom was the finest natural soldier he had ever met, and an officer of immense potential who would be crucial to Australia’s future. When Pompey concluded — correctly — that the proposed attack at Fromelles would prove a disaster, he tried to persuade his superiors to cancel it; when this attempt did not succeed, he tried to keep Tom out of the battle because he was so precious to Australia’s future. But Tom ended up participating at Fromelles, and he was killed.

Three of Tom’s younger brothers enlisted, one at the age of 15. All of these three soldiers were wounded, and one of them died, also in 1919.

A big focus of the book is the dual impact of the loss of these special Australians I’ve written about — that they were a big loss to Australia as well as to their families — and this is certainly the case with Tom Elliott.

The upshot within his family was catastrophic. His mother, Mary, could not accept Tom’s death. The mixed messages that she received were influential. First she was told that he’d been wounded, then that he was missing, and later that he’d been killed. She kept pressing the authorities for clarification: “it is an awful thing to leave a mother in dought (sic)”, “the suspense is dreadfull”, she told them. She resorted to alcohol to help her cope, and then began to have delusions about Tom. Eventually she was placed in an asylum for the insane. She died there of Spanish Flu in mid-1919.

Three of Tom’s younger brothers enlisted, one at the age of 15. All of these three soldiers were wounded, and one of them died, also in 1919.

Edward Larkin

Edward Larkin was like Tom Elliott in having a Sydney working-class background, a connection to rugby and exceptional potential, and he too should be much better known today than he is.

He played rugby for Australia in 1903, and later became the key figure in the rise to prominence of the breakaway code of Rugby League, which became the leading winter sport in Sydney and beyond while Larkin was running it.

In 1913 Ted Larkin pulled off an upset at the New South Wales state election by winning the seat of Willoughby as the Labor candidate, and he proceeded to make a highly impressive start in parliament. Before long political pundits were predicting a big future for Larkin, and some were even seeing him already as a future premier.

But then the Great War began. Larkin enlisted in the first rush, and he died in the first rush on the original Anzac Day. He left a grieving widow and two little boys.

Larkin was particularly devoted to his family and not particularly devoted to the military. He had attained prominence and success through determination and toil. Bigger and better things were not far away. All this Larkin relinquished, reluctantly, with no illusions, because he conceived it as his duty, by virtue of his prominence, to set an example for footballers and other sportsmen to follow.

Larkin is commemorated in a plaque on the wall of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly. It was unveiled at a moving ceremony in November 1915.

George Challis

George Challis was a brilliant Australian Rules footballer who was recruited from Tasmania by Carlton. Challis played four splendid seasons with the Blues before he went away to war and became another very special Australian to be killed at Fromelles.

My biography of Challis covers his upbringing and education at Cleveland and then Launceston; how he came to be recruited by Carlton; how he became a revered star for the Blues; how the way the game was played at that time differed from today; how the fierce rivalries between Carlton and Collingwood, and between Carlton and Essendon, which are so alive and well today, were initiated in the era just before World War I; and how Challis’s death was lamented by Tasmanians and Carltonians for decades afterwards.

Challis’s most dazzling performance in his first VFL season, 1912, was against Carlton’s bitter rivals from Essendon. The big crowd was captivated by his pace and grace. The typical Carlton supporter of that era was described as barracking with “a voice like that of a man who has swallowed the claw of his crayfish in the boozers’ express at midnight”. The Carlton fans were ecstatic on that memorable day, when a reporter wrote this about Challis:

He played like a champion against Essendon, pulled himself out of tight corners, swung the ball into position, measuring his kicks almost to the inch. He was superb, and if there was a cup for the best player on the ground, Challis would have won the chalice.

“Almost to the inch” — there’s the confirmation, for those of us who enjoy Denis Cometti’s AFL commentary, that 100 years ago they were talking about the pre-metric equivalent of “centimetre perfect”.

Carew Reynell

Carew Reynell was a South Australian winemaker. I was keen to have a spread of backgrounds in the 10 biographies — Challis was from Tasmania; Tom Elliott spent his important Duntroon years in Canberra; Larkin, like Tom Elliott, was from Sydney; Bage, Mathison and McCrae were Victorians; I’ll be talking about Western Australians very soon; and Carew Reynell was from South Australia. He began managing his family’s winery at Reynella when he was only about 19, and used the latest scientific techniques to good effect.

Carew was a visionary vigneron, and a highly successful one; he was a widely admired community leader as well. He was renowned as a horse-rider of exceptional dash and fearlessness. Carew became commander of a light horse regiment in the AIF, and was killed leading it into action at Gallipoli. He left a widow and a little boy and girl.

Wilfred Harper

Wilfred Harper was a popular and successful farmer from a prominent Western Australian family. Most Australians today know something about him, even though they don’t know that they know it.

The explanation for that peculiar statement involves a journey back to the 1970s, when there was a talented Australian who yearned to create a special, gripping story about Gallipoli. He had been grappling with this project for years. He had read Charles Bean’s Official History. He had visited Anzac Cove. He had traversed the trenches. He had tossed around plenty of ideas, various angles, numerous drafts. But none had proved ultimately satisfying; none was compelling enough for what he was trying to do.

And then one day he happened to read Charles Bean’s History again, and in particular a sentence about someone “who was last seen running forward like a schoolboy in a foot-race, with all the speed he could compass”. The potential of that sentence jumped out at him. It suddenly occurred to him that here was the way to shape his story. The talented Australian who had an exhilarating breakthrough when he read that sentence was Peter Weir, who went on to make his celebrated film Gallipoli.

Peter Weir’s name is well known. But the man he had read about, the lighthorseman “who was last seen running forward like a schoolboy in a foot-race”, is hardly known at all. He was Wilfred Harper.

No previous biography of Wilfred Harper has ever been written (as with all of the ten in Farewell, Dear People). A small number of experts are aware that the Bean sentence about Wilfred was the inspiration for Peter Weir’s film, but few even of them know anything about Wilfred other than that sentence about how he died.

I should emphasise that the character in the film, Archy Hamilton, is not Wilfred. Gallipoli is a feature film, not a documentary. It is true that Wilfred and Archy were both from Western Australia, both had a farming background, both were in the 10th Light Horse, and both died in the charge at the Nek, and in the same way.

However, there were important differences. Archy’s younger than Wilfred. Also, Archy was a reinforcement who arrived at Gallipoli just before the August offensive, whereas Wilfred was a 10th Light Horse original who had been at Gallipoli since May. As well, Archy was a top-class sprinter, whereas Wilfred’s interests and talents lay more in cricket and football than in athletics. So Archy in theGallipoli film is not Wilfred Harper, although the manner of Wilfred’s death was indeed the inspiration for the film.

Gresley Harper

Gresley Harper, Wilfred’s brother, was a barrister with a vivid personality. He was with Wilfred in the 10th Light Horse, and died like Wilfred in the charge at the Nek. Gres had a brilliant career ahead of him in the law and/or politics. Amiable and convivial, he had heaps of friends, and amused them with his quick wit and rapier repartee.

It’s of course not possible to reel off a series of examples in a talk like this due to the time constraints. But one brief sentence can perhaps provide a flavour. When Gresley’s troopship, on its way to Egypt, stopped briefly at Colombo, and Gres knew that mention of this in letters home was banned under the censorship that officers enforced by checking the men’s letters, he referred to it in his next letter to his mother in this way: “Where we landed is of course a profound secret which you are not considered a fit person to hold”.

Gres was instrumental in one of the most remarkable incidents of the whole Gallipoli campaign. It happened in May, when he was among a party of lighthorsemen who were directed to capture a crater from the Turks at Quinn’s Post. They charged the crater, and succeeded in capturing it, with the Turks who’d been occupying it either killed or driven out of it, with one exception — a Turk who was wounded in the skirmish and couldn’t get away.

But Gres and his comrades soon realised that they themselves were trapped. The enemy front line was nearby, and the Turks kept shooting at the crater and lobbing bombs into it. The Australians had no bombs, and the Turks had plenty. Moreover, it was an oppressively hot day, and the lighthorsemen had limited water. They had a tense, gruelling ordeal for hours, perpetually on edge and on alert in case a bomb landed in the crater and they had to throw it back before it exploded. Those with cricket experience, who included Gres, proved very handy at this.

Even in these dire circumstances, Gres Harper’s humanitarian instincts prevailed. He befriended the wounded Turk who was stuck in the crater with them. Gres fixed up his wound for him, and gave him some of the Anzac rations. The upshot was a startling development.

Eventually a group of Turks charged the crater to regain it, and the Australian lighthorsemen including Gres had to scramble back to their front line. When one of them slipped, and fell back into the crater, three bold Turks rushed forward and captured him. The wounded Turk who was Gres Harper’s friend, a bystander up to this point, then made an astonishing intervention. He picked up a discarded rifle, shot two of these Turkish captors — his own countrymen — and grappled with the third, enabling the vulnerable Australian to escape (and ensuring his own death of course, as other Turks saw what had happened). Pretty soon the astounding story of the Turk who swapped sides swept through the AIF and reached even the inner circle of King George in England.

Phipps Turnbull

Phipps Turnbull was another member of the 10th Light Horse who had exceptional promise, and he too died in the charge at the Nek. After a brilliant scholastic and sporting career, he was awarded a Rhodes scholarship, and became the fourth Rhodes scholar from W.A. He proceeded to Oxford University, and emerged with an outstanding degree. In his year, 60 candidates attained final honours in jurisprudence, but only three of them were awarded first-class honours: Turnbull was among the three — an exceptional accomplishment.

Phipps combined widely admired character and personality with academic attainments of the highest distinction. A shining future for Phipps Turnbull in the law and/or politics was a certainty.

I found that the Harper brothers and Phipps Turnbull knew each other and had a quite a bit in common. So I decided to combine the stories of the three of them into a single chapter, which covers not only these three interwoven biographies but also a collective account of how the charge at the Nek devastated Western Australia.

In conclusion

In conclusion, some general remarks, very briefly. During the years I was researching and writing this book I was asked, as historians — indeed, all writers — often are, what project I was working on. When I explained what this book was about, I was struck by the reaction. The idea of the book seemed to strike a strongly favourable response, much more so than I’ve experienced with any of my previous books when I was asked that question and answered it.

Naturally I hope that the execution of the task has lived up to the potential of the idea. Retrieving these forgotten lives has been an exacting research challenge. I think they’re strong stories, but I’m hopelessly biased so what I think about that doesn’t matter. What does matter to me is this: now that these men and their stories have been retrieved, they should not be forgotten again.