Game to the Last

GAME TO THE LAST: The 11th Australian Infantry Battalion at Gallipoli

James Hurst

Published by Oxford University Press, 2005

When can their glory fade?

O the wild charge they made!

All the world wondered.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The 11th Battalion was raised in August 1914, as part of the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Division, First AIF.  Two companies of the battalion landed with the first wave on ANZAC Day, and the battalion as a unit was not sent from the peninsula for a rest until 17 November, after almost seven months in the confined ANZAC beachhead.  In early October, still more than six weeks before that moment of relief, there were only 69 men serving with the 11th who had landed with the battalion, and had never left the peninsula.  Almost three and a half years after the landing at ANZAC, the 11th Battalion was withdrawn from the trenches in France in September 1918, and did not return to action before the war ended.

James Hurst’s book follows the development of a thousand men from a collection of newly enlisted civilian soldiers into the enthusiastic but inexperienced unit that landed on the first ANZAC Day, to the exhausted group of survivors who left Gallipoli in mid-November 1915.  Many of those withdrawn in November were not originals, but from the 1000 or more reinforcements who had been sent to the battalion by that time.  He covers the battalion’s contribution to the Gallipoli campaign in detail, and provides sufficient context to enable the reader to understand its place in the broader campaign.  One chapter follows the battalion’s experiences after Gallipoli, and the fates of some of its members.

 Following the reorganisation of the beachhead after it had stabilised, the 3rd Brigade was posted along Bolton’s Ridge, south of Lone Pine.  Apart from the abortive raid on Gaba Tepe in early May, this remained their location.  Hurst covers in great detail the operations along Bolton’s Ridge, including the heavy fighting to capture and develop what became known as Leane’s Trench.  He also describes day-to day life in the trenches at ANZAC, with its ongoing trickle of casualties.

Along the way, we meet names that later became familiar, not just to the Australian population during the First World War, but in some cases to later generations.  Many members of the 11th Battalion had been born in Britain, and enlisted to support their homeland (and, perhaps, to get a trip there).  Not in the battalion, although he was part of the 3rd Brigade, was John Simpson Kirkpatrick, one of the British-born, who is mentioned only in passing in this book, but to the current generation is probably the best-known Australian soldier of the World War I era.  Another name familiar today is Bert Facey, member of the battalion and author of A Fortunate Life, who had two brothers killed at ANZAC, one with the 11th Battalion, the other with the 10th Light Horse.

Others were ‘characters’ in their era, but are no longer remembered.  Number 232, William Raymond ‘Combo’ Smith, veteran of the Boer War, was a permanent discipline problem (his fines during the war may have exceeded his pay), but was always there when the battalion was in the line.  He claimed to have been the ‘senior Private of the AIF’ by the war’s end.  Another battalion member, Tom Shaw, was an early enlistee with regimental number 4, and also a veteran of the Boer War.  He volunteered again for service, aged 68, when the Second World War began.  His offer was declined, but he joined the Volunteer Defence Corps!

Some went on to distinguished military careers.  Tom Louch enlisted in 1914, landed on Gallipoli as a corporal, and finished the war as a major. In 1939 he raised the 2/11th Battalion of the Second AIF, and commanded it until he was wounded in Greece in April 1941.  Another member who features regularly in Hurst’s narrative is Ray Leane, an original company commander.  He was later to command the 48th Battalion, known in that era as the ‘Joan of Arc Battalion’ (said to be made of all Leanes, because of his propensity for gathering his relatives into the unit), and the 12th Brigade.  Famous at the time, it is doubtful if his name would be recognised by many today.

Some battalion members died in sad circumstances.  Aubrey Darnell, an original officer and John Archibald, number 157 until commissioned on Gallipoli, were both killed by a random aerial bomb while leaving the trenches after the battalion’s last day at the front in September 1918.  Less than a month after returning home in 1919, Wally Graham, winner of the MC, died after falling from scaffolding in Kalgoorlie.  This work, and other books sponsored by the Army History Unit, perform a valuable service in reminding today’s generation of the achievements of their predecessors and perpetuating their memory.

Hurst quotes Kitchener’s assessment, before the landing, that the Australians would be good enough if nothing more than a cruise in the Sea of Marmara was contemplated.  Perhaps Kitchener was animated by concern about the discipline of the Australians.  If so, Hurst shows that their discipline was more than adequate.  Indeed, based on his descriptions of some of the engagements, it could be argued that the troops were too disciplined, being willing to attempt to implement orders that were little more than invitations to pointless suicide.  It could also be argued that, later in the war, when they were more experienced, such orders would have been ignored, and replaced by substitutes more likely to produce a useful outcome.

There is, perhaps, an answer to the question posed in the extract from Tennyson’s poem The Charge of the Light Brigade, quoted at the beginning of this review.  That answer is in C.E.W. Bean’s concluding words in Volume VI of his epic history of the First AIF:

What these men did nothing can alter now.  The good and the bad, the greatness and smallness of their story will stand.  Whatever of glory it contains nothing can now lessen.  It rises, as it will always rise, above the mists of ages, a monument to great-hearted men; and for their nation, a possession for ever.

Let us always treasure that possession.

JOHN DONOVAN