The Holy Trinity of Anzac Literature

For anyone interested in doing research into the Australian involvement in the Great War, weather they are academics or enthusiasts, then there are three books which will be at the top of your list. This is not to say that there aren’t plenty of other books of importance, but these three books, outside C.E.W. Bean’s The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918, which goes without saying, is the preeminent work on the war. The three books in question though, are so important to any knowledge of the Great War as it applies to Australia that any bibliography which lacks their inclusion is simply not good enough. Researchers must have read these works and understood them. All that is needed now, is to say what they are.

The first book is The Anzac Book, which was written by a large number of Australian service men, and well as some others, but it was edited by Charles E.W. Bean, and published in 1916. Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean (18 November, 1879 – 30 August, 1968), was an Australian Great War correspondent and historian. He was born in Bathurst, N.S.W. His importance for Australian history is critical, and while he didn’t write The Anzac Book, he did make some poetry contributions, as well as being the primary editor.

He encouraged contributors by offering prizes for the best submission within each category. A true patriot in deed, Bean made sure that all the profits from the book’s sale would be used for the benefit of the Army Corps. Over 150 submission were received by Bean and the book’s editors, but not all were included in the final publication.

The importance of Bean’s book cannot be truly appreciated without some knowledge of the 1st AIF, however, as far as research goes, the book gives tremendous insight into the mind of the Anzac. Throughout its pages, any discerning researcher will see what conditions were like for those serving at Gallipoli. With regards to Gallipoli, it is the first book one should look at, and it may also yield background understanding for the future campaigns in the Sinai and the Western Front.

Bean was clearly a methodical writer, as you just couldn’t do what he did without having a system. The Anzac Book and C.E.W. Bean are, in essence, two literary institutions for Australian history, and Australia wouldn’t be the same without them. Bean’s idea for an Australian National War Memorial was something that has proven beyond valuable. The national shrine of all those who paid the ultimate price for a country they loved. But it is Bean’s great literary contribution that we must salute, and at the forefront of that contribution is The Anzac Book. A book that no Australian Great War researcher can do without.

In the editor’s note, Bean writes: “This book of Anzac was produced in the lines at Anzac on Gallipoli in the closing weeks of 1915. Practically every word in it was written and every line drawn beneath the shelter of a waterproof sheet or of a roof of sandbag – either in the trenches or, at most, well within the range of the oldest Turkish rifle, and under daily visitations from the smallest Turkish field-piece. Day and night, during the whole process of its composition, the crack of the Mauser bullets overhead never ceased. At least one good soldier that we know of, who was preparing a contribution for these pages, met his death while the work was still unfinished.”

The second book is The Anzacs by Patsy Adam-Smith, published in 1978. Patricia Jean Adam-Smith, AO, OBE (31 May 1924 – 20 September 2001) was an Australian author, historian and servicewoman. She was born in Nowingi, Victoria. She wrote on a large number of subjects, including history, folklore and the preservation of national traditions, as well as a two-part autobiography. But her greatest contribution to Australian literature would have to be The Anzacs.

She read over 8000 diaries and letters to write this important book, and enjoyed the great resources at her immediate disposal. Soldiers sought her out to tell her why they joined up, what they saw, and how they felt about the war. The book gave these old soldiers a voice to tell their stories, but, because of the way these men speak, the book has a character not found in other books of this type. Adam-Smith’s writing and editing is quite brilliant and erudite. Her knowledge, because of her back ground is par none, and she structured the book so that it is simple to follow and place.

Adam-Smith is an important Australian writer, and when it comes to the Australian Great War experience, there may be none better. She writes in an accessible way, in a language which is understandable. But she tells the real stories, from real men who fought in the war. Her contribution is such that no serious researcher can do without her in the bibliography.

In her preface, Adam-Smith writes: “It is time to strip the film from honour-dimmed eyes and face the uncomfortable, terrible facts as well as the emotion-stirring flutter of pennants and silvery cries of trumpets and beating of drums. War is hell. But in our attempt to denigrate it, to outlaw it, we must remember not to castigate the victims of war – and every man who fights is a victim. We must remember that the hand that holds the weapon is not he who plans or benefits from the battle.”

Those words remind me of Cleve Potter’s unnamed poem:

Struggling mortals past Hell’s portals

Plunged in lurid flame,

Torn and bleeding, Hell’s fires feeding

With carnage; blight and shame.

Not theirs, O God, the shame who fight

But theirs who caused this awful blight.

The third book is The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War by Bill Gammage. William Leonard "Bill" Gammage AM, FASSA (born 1942) is an Australian academic historian, Adjunct Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University. He was born in Orange, New South Wales. He was on the faculty of the University of Papua New Guinea and the University of Adelaide. He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences and deputy chair of the National Museum of Australia.

Gammage’s book, The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War, is based on his PhD thesis written while at the Australian National University. It was first published in 1974. In researching his book, Gammage corresponded with 272 Great War veterans, and consulted the personal records of another 728, mostly at the Australian War Memorial. His work in this book is simply phenomenal, and probably constitutes a first choice reference for any serious researcher.

Bill Gammage is singularly important as an historian, and the book is most certainly the primary choice for research. Its importance, when it comes to Australian Great War literature, must be ranked as the preeminent work, and any bibliography missing it cannot be taken seriously.

In the front section, entitled ‘Sources and Conventions’, Gammage’s writes: “This is not a military history of the First AIF. It is a study based on the diaries and letters of roughly 1000 Australians who fought as front line AIF soldiers in the Great War, and it attempts to show with what assumptions and expectations they volunteered to fight, in what ways their outlook was amended by their war service, and what new attitudes they evolved and brought back to their country after the war. Perhaps also, what happened to these soldiers throws light on how Australians passed from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, on how the days of Empire gave way to the tradition of Anzac, and on how men came to be as they are in Australia.”

All three books, Bean’s The Anzac Book, Adam-Smith’s The Anzacs, and Gammage’s The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War, have something very important in common. It is something the average history book fails to achieve, but all three of these books share it. It all comes back to the way Bean wrote the official history, where he focussed more on the men than the strategy. The general narratives of these three important books is motivated by the men who were in the war fighting at the front line, as opposed to the tactics and strategies of the generals who dined over discussions in the back lines.

Bean, Adam-Smith and Gammage, are three names that must appear in the bibliographies of serious research, and their books, The Anzac Book, The Anzacs, and The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War, are three books which cannot be ignored. Within Australian Great War literature, there is a great deal of good books and writers, and one is compelled to consider them as important. Writers such as Les Carlyon, Kit Denton, Jill Hamilton, Jonathan King, Mark Dapin, John Hamilton, Rolland Perry, Carl Harrison-Ford, Susanna De Vries, Stephen Dando-Collins, Peter Rees, Raden Dunbar, Patrick Lindsay, Paul Daley and a plethora of others, should be considered when researching, depending on your subject, but the first three will always by Bean, Adam-Smith and Gammage.

We may well do to remember that these three people were passionate about Australian history, and without them, that history would look very different.