Not because of what he did - most wouldn’t have a clue about what he was charged with - but because it was seen as the Brits executing one of ours. We have an aversion to that, and that has grown with events that came later, especially in World War I. Rightly or wrongly, it’s all part of the myth.
The Forge of Weyland
- Thread starter Astrodragon
- Start date
Not because of what he did - most wouldn’t have a clue about what he was charged with - but because it was seen as the Brits executing one of ours. We have an aversion to that, and that has grown with events that came later, especially in World War I. Rightly or wrongly, it’s all part of the myth.
The last sentence of this is an example of why I particularly like your research and writing. Many wouldn’t know but it was the Fall of France - and Britain being left to fight alone - that spurred enlistment in Australia, as one example. If that doesn’t happen, then you’re not going to get as large a 2nd Australian Imperial Force. Historically, as you know, three of its four infantry divisions were sent as I Australian Corps to the Middle East / North Africa. Now it may not make a big impact, one division less or so, but the fact you’ve made this point shows you’re aware that butterflies can flutter in all sorts of directions, and I like that.
My grandfather was in France from February 1915 and won the Military medal in 1917, his brother was in the Australian Army service corps as a farrier. I don't dismiss Australia's military record but I don't think it needs overstating either. I would not be around if it wasn't for a couple of drunk Aussie getting into a brawl and stabbing each other in Bugis Street in Singapore that had to my parents being introduced as the sewed them up in BMH Singapore. What happened in Egypt impacted on the relations with Egypt during the desert campaign in the 2nd world war.
Warning
On your family history, so what? And talking about overstating things, which is fine with me, your last sentence is very much that. Your comment was shit, which is a short way of saying poorly considered, at the very least. But, yes, we can beg to differ. I just think that arguing more Australians should have died in World War I, not through enemy action mind you, but by being put up against a wall by their own side and shot for charges that often ignored what we now know today as trauma is just a touch, well, again, shit.
So a Canadian Indepedent Corps of two mechanised infantry divisions and one armoured division with attendant logistics, signals and engineering units? RCAF providing CAP, recce and ground support.
The one area where tanks might overlap with radios is the No.19 T/R set from Pye Ltd in Cambridge.
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Well, Canada, of course, eventually had a field army in Europe, with two corps, having three infantry divisions, two armoured divisions, and two independent armoured brigades. First Canadian Army was formed in April '42, and before then, from December '40, you had an unnumbered Canadian Corps. The problem we have is only the 1st Canadian Infantry Division was sent to the UK before the Battle for France. It wasn't even fully equipped and trained when the campaign began. The 2nd Canadian Infantry Division wasn't sent to the UK until the latter half of '40. The 3rd Canadian Infantry Division wasn't authorised until a week after the battle began (that is, with the Germans really having already won), and didn't arrive in the UK until the latter half of '41. The 4th and 5th Canadian Armoured Divisions were both raised in '41. So, yeah, where's the driver for the Canadian Army to be made larger faster?
The Australian's were volunteers, so unlike the conscripts of the other nations they didn't have to be there. But once they had signed up they should have been subject to the full rigour of military discipline. they deserted more, were awol more and didn't perform any better than the New Zealanders or Canadians both of whose troops were also from far away. I would say given recent reports in the media its probably true that Australian soldiers are probably still ill disciplined compared to other first world nations. All because Australia got sad that a murderer was shot in 120 years ago. If you wish to go for the ad hominem attack that's up to you but not really in the spirit of educated discussion, if you can prove that shooting mutineers and deserters adversely impacted on British morale, I would love to hear it. After all Frederick the great once said a soldier should fear his officers more than the enemy. The British executed a small number of deserters compare to the numbers sentenced to death and they were not all suffering shell shock, some were just deserters.
Honestly, this is just bullshit. You go from bad to worse. Going on recent media reports? So you haven't bothered to read the Brereton Report for yourself? No, they don't have any more of a discipline problem than other First World nations. Nations with similar military commitments to Australia have had similar incidents and so forth. Don't talk to me about an educated discussion. You're not offering anything educated here. Just arguing more Australians should have been put against a wall and shot. Utterly childish.
Errr Harry Morant was shot only 40 years before WW2 and only some 15 years before WWI. Both were within living memory at the time. As much as you dismiss the events, the Australians at the time would have known about them and what would have happened if they had been subjected to British Army discipline...
In the British and Commonwealth armies the military legal system specified that if a courts martial handed down a death sentence it went up through every level of Command, with each superior giving their own comments and recommendations. The C-in-C (French and then Haig) would then decide whether to execute or commute. Australia has the same system, but required additional permission from the Australian Governor-General. This was never given, in spite of entreaties from both Haig and Monash.
However, in other Commonwealth nations (including Britain), around about 90 percent of all death sentences were commuted. The idea of Military Law at the time (and to some extent still) was primarily to maintain discipline, with providing justice as only a secondary objective.
for reference from
anzac-22nd-battalion.com
that gives you a wastage rate due to being awol or in prison of 12 men per 1000 compared to 1.5 to 2 per 1000. Australia didn't just not execute deserters it generally was more lenient towards military crime in general.
As for breaker Morant most people would likely not have cared, Australia didn't shoot its soldiers because of the conscription debate which failed twice and it had more to do with domestic politics than military necessity. As for the Breton report, it is rather more damning as it deals with the elite of Australia's army, who the report finds were credibly responsible for 39 deaths of non combatants.
Discipline within the AIF on the Western Front
A case study investigating the discipline record of the Australian soldiers during the First World War combining published literature with the service records of the 5th Reinforcements 22nd Battali…
anzac-22nd-battalion.com
that gives you a wastage rate due to being awol or in prison of 12 men per 1000 compared to 1.5 to 2 per 1000. Australia didn't just not execute deserters it generally was more lenient towards military crime in general.
As for breaker Morant most people would likely not have cared, Australia didn't shoot its soldiers because of the conscription debate which failed twice and it had more to do with domestic politics than military necessity. As for the Breton report, it is rather more damning as it deals with the elite of Australia's army, who the report finds were credibly responsible for 39 deaths of non combatants.
Jan 1940
18th December
The RAF launch a daylight raid against German shipping in the Schillig Roads, losing 12 out of the 24 bombers taking part. This was the culmination of a series of RAF daylight raids which had cost an increasing number of aircraft. The losses in daylight having grown too severe, the RAF decides to switch to night raids to reduce casualties, even though this will result in a loss of accuracy of their bombing.
4th January 1940
1st Armoured Division receives the last of its units from Britain, and is formally operational. In reality the division needs more training as a divisional unit - there is only so much that can be done on paper - and also more work is needed with the French divisions in Seventh Army. They are also still short of some of their equipment, although this is expected to be rectified over the next couple of months.The 1st Armoured Brigade has already been training with the 1st Light Mechanised division, and now the full division is available this will continue. Both units have found the joint exercises valuable, and the hope is that by the Spring this will result in a more integrated and better trained mobile reserve. The requirement for a training area for the British armoured units has taken time to sort out. The final arrangement is for 1st Armoured and 1st Light Mechanised to use a common training area, both as indivisual units and while training together. General Lindsay wants the three motorised infantry divisions to practice both working with and dealing with armour, but this will be postponed until the tank units have reached sufficient proficiency, which is seen as the priority. In the meantime, 5th Division will have to train against dummy tanks. Lindsay is unhappy with this arrangement, but the training areas are run by the French.
One thing he did get the French to agree to was a contingent of tanks allocated for training that would remain on the training area, rather than constantly move tanks back and forth from their bases. This helps preserve the mechanical life of the tanks, rather than wearing them out in moving and training. There will be occasional large exercises where they will take units of tanks to the area, as much to practice the movement itself as to allow a larger exercise. In the event of a German attack, the tanks used in training will form a reserve along with the usual reserve tanks.
5th January, 1940
The first Territorial division - the 48th (South Midland) Division arrives in France. It is temporarily attached to I Corps. The intention is to form three Corps using the infantry divisions, once further units arrive.
10th January 1940
Hitler informs his commanders that the attack in the west will begin on the 17th January. On this same day a German light aircraft makes a forced landing at Malines in Belgium, near the German border. On board is Major Hellmuth Reinberger of the 22nd Airborne, on his way from Loddenheide to Cologne with the operational orders for Fall Gelb tucked in his briefcase.
Although one of the two officers on board tried to burn orders which he was carrying, these were retrieved while much of them was still readable. They consisted of instructions to units subordinated to No. 2 Air Fleet about the offensive which the German Western Army was to carry out across Belgium from the Moselle to the North Sea. The German plans were revealed to the Belgians, who passed them on to the French and Dutch governments, alerting them to the German intentions. Other Allied intelligence pointed to an early attack, and France at once placed its armies in a state of alert. Billotte’s Army Group One, moving through fearful conditions of snow and ice, closed up to the Belgian frontier, having been advised by the Belgian High Command that the necessary authority would be given for Allied forces to enter Belgian territory. This order, however, was immediately countermanded to King Leopold, who dismissed his Chief of Staff, and so the French had no alternative but to pull back once more.
After the alerte was cancelled comparative quiet again descended on the western front, though it was known that German forces were moving there in increasing numbers and sorties by their reconnaissance planes grew in strength and frequency.
15th January 1940, Lulworth Cove, England
The final acceptance trials of the new HV 6pdr gun concluded with the use of them on a demonstration Sabre and Cutlass tank on the firing range. Everyone was pleased with the results of the trials; the 6pdr looked to be an excellent anti-tank weapon, and the newly designed HE round had performed as hoped. While still not the equal in a close support role of the 18pd round, it was a lot better than that in the HV3pdr gun. A suggestion that they do the same modification to the 3pdr HE round was rejected as not being worth it, as it was expected the 6pdr would be fitting new tanks from the middle of the year, and the infantry use of the HV3pdr didn't include the HE rounds anyway.
It was hoped the new gun would come off the production line in the summer. There were still delays with the design of the carriage for the infantry version the RA were going to be provided with, so the early production would go to the tank manufacturers. This would allow more HV3pdrs to be supplied to the infantry until the 6pdr was available.
The RTC were well pleased with the armour penetration of the new gun, expecting it would allow them to cope with later and better-armoured versions of the current German tanks. A better HE round - a smoke version was also under development, although it was having problems - would allow them to reduce the number of CS tanks in their mixed formations, leaving more of them available for supporting the infantry. The RA were also pleased - once the new carriage was ready, they would be taking over the guns in the divisions, as was only right. While they had reluctantly agreed to let the infantry handle the light 2pdr, guns were their domain.
16th January 1940
Hitler orders the postponement of his attack in the west until the Spring. Likely reasons for this are the compromise of 'Fall Gelb' and increasing criticism from some commanders that the plan was too predictable. Led by Gerd von Rundstedt, they proposed instead that the main blow should come through the wooded Ardennes region in southern Belgium as the allies would not expect this
The RAF launch a daylight raid against German shipping in the Schillig Roads, losing 12 out of the 24 bombers taking part. This was the culmination of a series of RAF daylight raids which had cost an increasing number of aircraft. The losses in daylight having grown too severe, the RAF decides to switch to night raids to reduce casualties, even though this will result in a loss of accuracy of their bombing.
4th January 1940
1st Armoured Division receives the last of its units from Britain, and is formally operational. In reality the division needs more training as a divisional unit - there is only so much that can be done on paper - and also more work is needed with the French divisions in Seventh Army. They are also still short of some of their equipment, although this is expected to be rectified over the next couple of months.The 1st Armoured Brigade has already been training with the 1st Light Mechanised division, and now the full division is available this will continue. Both units have found the joint exercises valuable, and the hope is that by the Spring this will result in a more integrated and better trained mobile reserve. The requirement for a training area for the British armoured units has taken time to sort out. The final arrangement is for 1st Armoured and 1st Light Mechanised to use a common training area, both as indivisual units and while training together. General Lindsay wants the three motorised infantry divisions to practice both working with and dealing with armour, but this will be postponed until the tank units have reached sufficient proficiency, which is seen as the priority. In the meantime, 5th Division will have to train against dummy tanks. Lindsay is unhappy with this arrangement, but the training areas are run by the French.
One thing he did get the French to agree to was a contingent of tanks allocated for training that would remain on the training area, rather than constantly move tanks back and forth from their bases. This helps preserve the mechanical life of the tanks, rather than wearing them out in moving and training. There will be occasional large exercises where they will take units of tanks to the area, as much to practice the movement itself as to allow a larger exercise. In the event of a German attack, the tanks used in training will form a reserve along with the usual reserve tanks.
5th January, 1940
The first Territorial division - the 48th (South Midland) Division arrives in France. It is temporarily attached to I Corps. The intention is to form three Corps using the infantry divisions, once further units arrive.
10th January 1940
Hitler informs his commanders that the attack in the west will begin on the 17th January. On this same day a German light aircraft makes a forced landing at Malines in Belgium, near the German border. On board is Major Hellmuth Reinberger of the 22nd Airborne, on his way from Loddenheide to Cologne with the operational orders for Fall Gelb tucked in his briefcase.
Although one of the two officers on board tried to burn orders which he was carrying, these were retrieved while much of them was still readable. They consisted of instructions to units subordinated to No. 2 Air Fleet about the offensive which the German Western Army was to carry out across Belgium from the Moselle to the North Sea. The German plans were revealed to the Belgians, who passed them on to the French and Dutch governments, alerting them to the German intentions. Other Allied intelligence pointed to an early attack, and France at once placed its armies in a state of alert. Billotte’s Army Group One, moving through fearful conditions of snow and ice, closed up to the Belgian frontier, having been advised by the Belgian High Command that the necessary authority would be given for Allied forces to enter Belgian territory. This order, however, was immediately countermanded to King Leopold, who dismissed his Chief of Staff, and so the French had no alternative but to pull back once more.
After the alerte was cancelled comparative quiet again descended on the western front, though it was known that German forces were moving there in increasing numbers and sorties by their reconnaissance planes grew in strength and frequency.
15th January 1940, Lulworth Cove, England
The final acceptance trials of the new HV 6pdr gun concluded with the use of them on a demonstration Sabre and Cutlass tank on the firing range. Everyone was pleased with the results of the trials; the 6pdr looked to be an excellent anti-tank weapon, and the newly designed HE round had performed as hoped. While still not the equal in a close support role of the 18pd round, it was a lot better than that in the HV3pdr gun. A suggestion that they do the same modification to the 3pdr HE round was rejected as not being worth it, as it was expected the 6pdr would be fitting new tanks from the middle of the year, and the infantry use of the HV3pdr didn't include the HE rounds anyway.
It was hoped the new gun would come off the production line in the summer. There were still delays with the design of the carriage for the infantry version the RA were going to be provided with, so the early production would go to the tank manufacturers. This would allow more HV3pdrs to be supplied to the infantry until the 6pdr was available.
The RTC were well pleased with the armour penetration of the new gun, expecting it would allow them to cope with later and better-armoured versions of the current German tanks. A better HE round - a smoke version was also under development, although it was having problems - would allow them to reduce the number of CS tanks in their mixed formations, leaving more of them available for supporting the infantry. The RA were also pleased - once the new carriage was ready, they would be taking over the guns in the divisions, as was only right. While they had reluctantly agreed to let the infantry handle the light 2pdr, guns were their domain.
16th January 1940
Hitler orders the postponement of his attack in the west until the Spring. Likely reasons for this are the compromise of 'Fall Gelb' and increasing criticism from some commanders that the plan was too predictable. Led by Gerd von Rundstedt, they proposed instead that the main blow should come through the wooded Ardennes region in southern Belgium as the allies would not expect this
So putting aside the ad hominem attacks again, can you put any evidence that I am wrong. I don't want to derail this thread which we are doing perhaps we can have a seperate one "Australia executed deserters in ww1" what impact on the war effort.
for reference from
Discipline within the AIF on the Western Front
A case study investigating the discipline record of the Australian soldiers during the First World War combining published literature with the service records of the 5th Reinforcements 22nd Battali…
that gives you a wastage rate due to being awol or in prison of 12 men per 1000 compared to 1.5 to 2 per 1000. Australia didn't just not execute deserters it generally was more lenient towards military crime in general.
As for breaker Morant most people would likely not have cared, Australia didn't shoot its soldiers because of the conscription debate which failed twice and it had more to do with domestic politics than military necessity. As for the Breton report, it is rather more damning as it deals with the elite of Australia's army, who the report finds were credibly responsible for 39 deaths of non combatants.
Again, so what? Are there really not enough dead Australians buried in France for you? Really? Do you know how many died at Fromelles in one day? As a proportion of those who went over there, are you aware how many didn't come home? And I don't believe for a second you knew anything about the Brereton Report until I just mentioned it. Did you even read the link you posted? Because it paints a much different picture than just that graphic and I do feel this quote at the end is a rather appropriate response to your mutterings:
“Very much and very stupid comment has been made upon the discipline of the Australian soldier. That was because the very conception and purpose of discipline have been misunderstood. It is, after all, only a means to an end, and that end is the power to secure coordinated action among a large number of individuals for the achievement of a definite purpose. It does not mean lip service, nor obsequious homage to superiors, nor servile observance of forms and customs, nor a suppression of individuality… the Australian Army is a proof that individualism is the best and not the worst foundation upon which to build up collective discipline”.
I did read, it I have also read a number of biographies of Monash. I could hardly not have heard about there Bereton report as I was indirectly referencing it. I will bring up another area where the ill discipline of Australia's soldiers impact on service availability, venerial disease where they suffered a rate of roughly twice that of the British Army. that also reduced the soldiers who could be in the front line. As for the number of dead Australians my point is that if Australia's army had had better discipline they would have been more effective, they would have responded more effectively to counter attacks. they would have had men in the trenches not in the cells or hospital. Albert Jacka never got the bar to his VC as his failure to stand his troops to meant that a German counter attack had to be beaten off with great losses, that's the sort of discipline I am talking about, not just shooting deserters.
Thou Shalt Not Kill Dr. Peter A. Pedersen The Australian had a reputation as the most undisciplined soldier in the British Expeditionary Force. One hundred and twenty-one Australians were sentenced to death, the majority for desertion, during the war. None were executed because Australian military law all but forbade capital punishment. Moreover, domestic antipathy to the death penalty in the AIF was etched in stone and governments attempting to introduce conscription could not afford to challenge it. Those attempts failed anyway. The Australian soldier remained a volunteer free from the threat of extreme sanction. His country would have it no other way. When the Australian colonies federated on 1 January 1901, they ceded responsibility for defence to the new Commonwealth Government. In 1903, it brought the various colonial military forces under a single binding piece of legislation, the Australian Defence Act, which enshrined the principle of a defence force comprised of volunteers who could not be compelled to serve outside Australia or its territories. Section 98 of the Act governed the use of capital punishment. It relied heavily on the relevant provisions in the colonial defence legislation of New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania, which reflected concerns that local forces should remain under local control. The execution by British authorities of two Australian officers, Morant and Handcock, for the killing of Boer prisoners in South Africa was a lesser influence because the case aroused little public controversy in Australia at the time. Under Section 98, only mutiny, desertion to the enemy and certain forms of treachery were punishable by death and the sentence had to be confirmed by the Australian Governor-General rather than a commander in the field. The small number of capital offences prescribed under Section 98 is striking compared to the range of offences punishable by death in the British Army. And unlike the Canadian, South African and New Zealand governments, which agreed to their soldiers being tried and punished under the British Army Act, the Australian government insisted on the primacy of Section 98 when its troops served under British command. Like voluntarism, a more lenient disciplinary code seemed appropriate for a culture considered, not without reason, as independent, resourceful and freer from class distinction than most. Its soldiers had never in their lives known any restraint that was not self-imposed. But even by this standard, discipline in the Australian Imperial Force had all but collapsed within a month of its arrival in Egypt in November 1914. Under pressure from his British superiors, Maj-Gen. Bridges, the commander of the 1st Australian Division, ordered the return of 131 persistent offenders to Australia for discharge, together with 24 venereal cases. An official despatch explaining to the Australian public why the men were being sent home fulfilled the exemplary function of the punishment. In the absence of the death penalty, it remained the most dreaded instrument of discipline among Australian soldiers. Unlike Egypt, Anzac was conducive to the maintenance of discipline. As the bridgehead was barely one mile square, it did not have a ‘rear’ where alcohol and women were available to tempt potential deserters. Nevertheless, on 9 July an Australian court-martial sentenced a soldier to death for falling asleep on sentry to demonstrate the gravity of the offence and ensure a heavy prison sentence was awarded in lieu of a punishment that was bound to be commuted. Two more death sentences were passed on Australians at Gallipoli. On the Western Front, the AIF lacked the independence granted by the isolation of its enclave at Anzac. It fought directly alongside British and other Dominion troops who were liable to the death penalty. The difficulty of having soldiers in the same army subject to different laws arose almost immediately after the AIF arrived in France in March 1916. When an Australian soldier was sentenced to death in April and another in May, the commander of 1 ANZAC, Lt-Gen. Birdwood, recommended that the Australian Government should be asked to waive Section 98, thereby putting its troops on the same footing as the rest of the British Army. Haig forwarded the request to the War Office with his endorsement. On 9 July, London asked the Commonwealth to place Australian overseas troops under the British Army Act forthwith. As it was considering the introduction of conscription to remedy declining voluntary enlistment, the government delayed its answer. Over the next two months the four Australian divisions in France suffered 28,000 casualties, precipitating the government’s decision on conscription. It called for a referendum at the end of October. Though the campaign split the nation, all Australians opposed the infliction of the death penalty on men who had volunteered to fight in a distant land in a cause not particularly their own. Even a hint that the revocation of Section 98 might be considered would have left conscription with no chance. Its defeat in the referendum all but precluded any measure that would discourage voluntary recruiting, making change even more remote. The British request concerning Section 98 remained in abeyance. But it would not go away. The effects of the 1916 battles went beyond the huge losses, which were eventually made good. They were forever seared in the minds of the survivors. For men whose nerve had gone, the concept of duty as a noble and over-riding ideal faded, weakening as a deterrent the supreme punishment instituted by Bridges for indiscipline, return to Australia in disgrace. Whereas eleven Australians deserted in the three months before the battles, courts-martial convicted 288 men for it by the end of 1916. Sixteen Australians received death sentences between July and November. With the onset of the harshest winter in forty years, they were joined by fourteen more in December, the highest monthly total of the war. These figures were a reminder that the jurisdictional question regarding capital punishment for Australian soldiers was still unanswered. On 11 December Birdwood revisited it, venturing to Gen. Rawlinson, of whose Fourth Army I ANZAC was part, that the Australians’ discipline would likely suffer when they realised that a regulation binding other soldiers in the British Army did not apply to them. Rawlinson needed no convincing. Three Australian deserters had been sentenced to death in the Fourth Army so far that month and 130 of its 182 absence cases were Australian. He told Haig that he would not be responsible for the discipline of the Australians unless the law was immediately altered. Haig strongly supported him. On 3 February, the War Council stressed that the change was essential. The Australian Government finally responded, seven months after the matter was first raised. The British concerns did not diminish the existing arguments against acquiescence. Provoking public antipathy to the death penalty would adversely affect voluntary recruiting and reignite the passions generated by the conscription campaign at a time when it had held office less than a month. The answer was no. When the matter resurfaced after the twin battles of Bullecourt in April-May 1917, some Australian commanders joined the British chorus. In the disastrous first battle, the 4th Division suffered the heaviest proportionate losses of an Australian formation in a single action. When it was warned for the attack on the Messines-Wytschaete Ridge in June, after only one month’s rest, desertions from it became acute. Its commanders urged upon Birdwood the amendment of Section 98 so that it could be applied to a few cases. The commander of the 3rd Division, Maj-Gen Monash, similarly approached Birdwood shortly afterward. Monash had no doubt that the increase in serious crime, especially ‘desertion and the avoidance of battle duties’, was due to the absence of any real deterrent. But the carrying into effect of even one death sentence would cause potential deserters to hesitate, thereby stiffening discipline. Consequently, the Australian government should be urged strongly to withdraw its prohibition on the death penalty. If it rejected this demand, an unequivocal statement that convicted deserters whose sentences were commuted to penal servitude would serve the full term of their punishment, irrespective of any armistice, should be sought. Birdwood answered Monash as he had the others. Everything that could be done had already been done, not just by himself but by Haig, the Army Council and the Secretary of State for the Colonies, who between them had urged the Australian government ‘much more strongly than he’. But it had told all of them in ‘definite terms’ that the matter would not be reopened. Meanwhile Lt-Gen Godley, the commander of II ANZAC recommended asking the government outright to allow the second of Monash’s options. Penal sentences imposed by courts-martial should be served in full even if the war ended in the meantime. That compromise did not satisfy Haig. Worried about the deterioration of discipline in the AIF and the effect of the Australian example on the BEF, he visited I ANZAC on 29 July to ask what could be done. Maj-Gen White, its Australian Chief of Staff, re-iterated that the Australian Government would never agree to the shooting of deserters. Unwilling or unable to accept what White had spelt out so clearly, Haig continued to press for the full and urgent application of the British Army Act to Australian troops. Perhaps realising that full application would make them liable to the death penalty for a range of offences, he promised the most sparing use - in cases ‘where desertion was most deliberate and an example badly needed’. Birdwood knew that the Australian response would be the same as before but he had to support his chief. He suggested to Senator Pearce, the Australian Defence Minister, that the death penalty should be imposed solely for desertion, and then only if conscription were introduced. Even this dilution was too much. On 20 September Pearce replied that the impact on flagging enlistment would be ‘disastrous’, so much so that the request could not have come at a more inopportune time. The Australian Government’s decision to leave Section 98 in place came as the Australians joined Haig’s Third Ypres offensive. The effect on discipline was the same as in previous campaigns. Ten Australians were sentenced to death in August, the month before it began. 53 men left the 2nd Division as it went into the line. Courts-martial for absence and desertion peaked in October and sixteen death sentences were passed in September and October, the two months of Australian involvement. On 5 November, in a step reminiscent of Bridges’ measure three years earlier and based on the same exemplary principle, Birdwood asked Pearce to approve the publication in all Australian newspapers and in AIF orders of deserters’ names, towns of enlistment and sentences. Two days later a second conscription referendum was announced for December. Recruiting in the second half of 1917 had fallen far short of the numbers needed to replace the 38,000 casualties of Third Ypres and cover future wastage. The anti-conscriptionists were not swayed. In a campaign that was more bitter than the first, they increased their majority. The voluntary system remained intact but from now on it was unable remotely to meet the AIF’s needs. Desertions and imprisonments depleted its ranks further, leaving Pearce little choice but to agree to Birdwood’s proposal. It came into effect in January 1918. The government also flirted with the addition of murder to the crimes covered by Section 98 but it withdrew the amendment at the Armistice. At the same time, AIF attitudes to shell shock softened. In December 1917, Birdwood formally acknowledged that some breakdowns were very different to cases of deliberate desertion to avoid action. He directed that ‘the medical aspect of the case should be carefully gone into before the man is charged with desertion’. The following May Monash, Birdwood’s successor as commander of the Australian Corps, ordered the withdrawal from the line of long-service men suffering from ‘nerves’. Many were sent to support units. In July, the commander of the 5th Division, Maj-Gen. Hobbs, interviewed seven men convicted of desertion. Finding some of them to be nervous wrecks, ‘more to be pitied than blamed’, he suspended the sentences and instructed commanding officers not merely to read the court records of men found guilty but to see the men themselves. Though long in coming, this enlightened attitude towards a major cause of desertion helps explain why only two Australians received death sentences in 1918. Ironically, a number of Australian soldiers could legitimately have been executed that year. By September, their corps had lost almost 50,000 men in six months’ continuous fighting. As recruiting in Australia was down to a trickle, these casualties could not be replaced, reducing some battalions to fewer than 100 men. Eight were disbanded to feed the rest. The order was a shattering blow for the men concerned and they refused to obey it. In what was considered a ‘strike’ rather than a mutiny at the time, they elected their own leaders, maintained ‘especially strict discipline’ and asked to go into the next battle, the assault on the Hindenburg Line, in their old units. The other battalions sympathised with them, creating a dilemma for Monash. He decreed that the battalions could remain but they would not receive reinforcements. After the battle, the Australian Corps’ last, the battalions disbanded voluntarily. Another incident could not be disguised as ‘industrial action’. On 21 September, 119 men of the 1st Battalion stood fast when they were ordered back into the line shortly after their relief, protesting that they were being called upon to make good British failures as well as having to fight on their own front. ‘Fatigue mutiny’ or not, these men had committed an offence unequivocally punishable by death under Section 98 for the first time in the war. Aware of the outcry at home that its enforcement would provoke, Monash again took the broader view. All but one of the 119 were convicted of desertion rather than mutiny and sentenced to up to ten years imprisonment on Dartmoor. The Australian commanders were essentially orthodox disciplinarians. To them desertion was more than a slander against military virtue for the AIF could ill afford to lose men to non-battle causes when it relied on an increasingly fragile voluntary system to replenish its ranks. So they regarded as necessary the death penalty to deter it. Some of them even dismissed the sensitive and considered way Monash and Hobbs dealt with desertion due to nervous exhaustion in 1918 as ‘merely likely to store up future trouble’. The collective Australian opinion that the hardened deserter saw a long prison sentence as merely a safer alternative to the trenches was advanced by Field-Marshals Allenby and Plumer when they publicly opposed the abolition of the death penalty in the British Army after the war. For his part, the Australian soldier was not sympathetic to deserters. The men of the 1st Battalion who attacked on 21 September never forgave their comrades who did not. But condemning them to death was something else again. The reading out to Australians on parade of reports on executions evoked only a sullen sympathy and a fierce pride that their own people had refused this instrument to its rulers. The strength of popular feeling ranged against capital punishment in the AIF made Section 98 impregnable. So there were no Australian ‘examples’. The AIF remained a volunteer army that possessed alone among the armies ‘the privilege of facing death without a death penalty’. Dr. Peter A. Pedersen A graduate of the Royal Military College Duntroon and the Australian Command and Staff College, Dr Peter Pedersen commanded 5th/7th Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment after a secondment to the Australian Prime Minister's Office as a political/strategic analyst. His many publications include books on General Sir John Monash and the Gallipoli Campaign. Dr Pedersen guided the then Prime Ministers Hawke and Thatcher around the Gallipoli Peninsula during the 75th Anniversary Commemoration in 1990 and has led battlefield tours throughout the world. |
You didn't. You went looking for some evidence to back up your claim and what's funny is how much the article you posted actually destroys your argument. Consider the passage before the quote from Monash:
"Looser discipline was considered by many of their superior officers as an acceptable ‘price’ when put beside their performance on the battlefield. Australians and New Zealanders were known as among the most fearsome and willing troops of the Allied forces. Overt discipline was therefore, and probably uniquely, less of a necessity for the Australians than soldiers from other countries as the senior command trusted that the character of the officers and men charged with carrying out the orders would see it through. By the end of the war Field Marshal Douglas Haig conceded that Australian battle discipline had held up during the war despite the poor discipline away from the front. "
Oops. Credibility gone. Tell your story walking.
So you concede "the poor discipline away from the front." my whole point has been that had the discipline been stricter Australia's performance would have been better due to reduced wastage. After all the New Zealanders shot deserters, and they "were known as among the most fearsome and willing troops of the Allied forces". You won't convince me that Australia didn't need better discipline and I clearly won't convince you.