by Brian Membrey
Hostilities in the Great War ceased at 11 a.m. London time on Monday, 11 November, 1918, with the Armistice formally signed at 5.00 a.m. that morning.
Although this is the hour (adjusted for time zone) celebrated ever since by a minute’s silence, rumours of a German surrender had circulated for two or three weeks beforehand and hostilities had virtually ceased nearly a week before the official Armistice.
Around 10 p.m. on the preceding Thursday, a German envoy approached a French post near Le Haudry, and after their bona fides were confined, they were taken under military escort to a chateau some four hours distant where the French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch and the First Sea Lord of the British Admiralty, Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss were in conference.
Foch handed the Allies’ armistice terms to the Germans at 9 o’clock on the Friday morning, but it was noted that a response would not be forthcoming before Sunday night at the earliest owing to delays in the German courier bearing the despatch sent by the German envoys to their headquarters.
Melbourne newspapers had been trumpeting the collapse of the German war efforts for several days, the rumours causing such concern that the commandant of the 3rd Military District which included all of Victoria on the preceding Thursday evening exercised his authority under the War Precautions Act and ordered all hotels to remain closed on the Friday and Saturday (there was a small reprieve with hotels later allowed to trade between 4 p.m. and the new 6 p.m. closing time on the Saturday).
There were, of course, no Sunday newspapers in Melbourne, and morning dailies on the Monday continued to be filled with rumours that Germany was about to capitulate.
What is rather surprising is that there was no immediate celebration of the cessation of hostilities organised by the Shire of Heidelberg, instead festivities were left to organizing committees in Ivanhoe, Fairfield and Alphington and to the local churches who conducted a combined Thanksgiving Service.
The major celebration was held until November 23 when a parade of returned soldiers – some wounded, many others on the Special Leave granted to men who had serve four years – marched to cheering crowds from Fairfield to the Heidelberg Shire Hall,
Bringing Them Home
Plans to bring Australian troops home began as early as April, 1918 with the formation of a Repatriation Department, but in something of a communication breakdown, the Commander-In-Chief of the A.I.F. in London, General Birdwood still had no directives as to the return of men as late as October when the end of the war was imminent.
There were a total of 167,000 servicemen overseas when the last gun was fired – 87,000 in the field in France and Belgium, 63,000 in the United Kingdom, many of whom were either in hospitals od convalescing and others still undergoing training, and another 17,000 in Egypt, Syria and other theatres of war.
There was massive pressure on shipping and railways – the United States, Canada and South Africa all wanted men returned as well as Australia and New Zealand, thousands of Belgian refugees in Britain had to be repatriated, as did tens of thousands of temporary workers from Asian and African countries.
Australia was particularly fortunate that the Prime Minister “Billy” Hughes was in London at the time and his support allowed a steady stream of shipping to be allocated for the return of the A.I.F.
Obviously it was preferable to keep men who had sailed and fought together as a group, but the practicality of this was limited given there were certain classes of servicemen that were morally entitled to preferential treatment.
Authorities had considered the problem for some time and a plan was devised to split each battalion, regiment or battery in half with one group to contain as many of those considered entitled to early return as possible – in general terms, these were :-
Married soldiers, the order determined by the number of children (just how this was determined is a mystery, it was not part of the enlistment or attestation schedule), the length of their service and their guarantee of employment on arrival,
Single men with a long period of service and a guarantee of employment on return,
Other single men depending upon their period of service and occupation.
Although they were not included in the “official” priority list, those that had been held as prisoners of war were also given preference – the exchange of prisoners was completed by the Red Cross within two weeks of the Armistice and most men that had been held in Germany appear to have been well on their way home by Christmas.
The problems of returning the men perhaps left the Defence Department with a potential legal problem that one suspects would be tested to the limit in today’s climate of litigation – by signing the Enlistment Application and Attestation, men were committed to the A.I.F. from that date “until the end of the War, and a further period of four months thereafter unless sooner lawfully discharged, dismissed or removed therefrom”.
Technically, this must have meant that the Department of Defence’s “contract” with the men ended on 11 March, 1919 – there are no published figures available (other than one report that suggests 38,000 to 40,000 where expected to embark in April AFTER the deadline), but a glance at the newspapers during 1919 would suggest that there as many local men than not that arrived back in Melbourne after this date.
This raises the question of what the legal situation would have been in the case, say, a serviceman still in England had refused to obey orders or simply decided to take off on his own. (There was always the possibility of a dishonourable discharge and a subsequent loss of the accumulated deferred pay, but even this would probably be open to challenge if the offence was committed outside the four month extension.
For some men, it provided an opportunity to re-equip themselves for civilian life when the authorities announced a scheme for university education “for men in a position to avail themselves of the training” and there was a short-lived plan for qualified tradesmen to work briefly in England to re-hone their skills, but with Britain itself having to accommodate millions of returning servicemen, neither proved successful.
The exception perhaps in the case of nurses whose services were, of course, in complete demand; several of around 30 traced from the northern suburbs of Melbourne worked in English hospitals beyond the scheduled date of return with some attending formal courses at London’s Polytechnic before embarking on the voyage home.
While awaiting transport, some men took the opportunity to travel around Britain and France, for many that possibly had never been outside of Victoria, the chance to “see the world” was the reason for enlisting in first place.
Other Australians – broadly estimated as “a few hundred” – continued fighting with British forces against Bolshevik forces in Russia and some Light Horse units helped suppress an Egyptian national uprising in 1919, but the overriding concern was the influenza pandemic that swept through Europe between mid-1918 and 1919, killing an estimated 15 million people.
Initial estimates were that it might take up to 18 months to return all the Australian troops; with Hughes’ influence and superb organisation, the vast majority of men embarked within eight months and most of those remaining in England did so by their own choice.
Some 176 voyages brought the bulk of the troops home, 137 vessels involved. While Australia had established a small commercial fleet during the war years, few of the ships were suitable for carrying a high number of passengers and most were charted from English companies. The last of the main transports conveying Australian troops home was the Port Napier, which left England on the 23rd of December, 1919.
Spanish Influenza
Men kept in confined quarters aboard ship were particularly vulnerable and as well as the risk of infection on the voyage home, many servicemen also endured the frustration of their transport ships being quarantined on their arrival in Australia.
Two sailings in particular were especially tragic.
HMAT Barambah sailed from Melbourne for England on 31 August 1918 with 780 with 600 cases of influenza reported before the vessel reached Southampton, resulting in the deaths of eleven servicemen at sea and another six ashore, several in the Military Hospital in Sierra Leone where the ship sought temporary refuge, others after arrival in England after the Barambah finally docked. One of the ship’s officers and five of the crew also succumbed to the disease.
HMAT Boonah was the last Australian troopship to sail for the Western Front, leaving Fremantle on 29 October, 1918 with 918 servicemen on board, She arrived in Durban on 14 November and was recalled to Australia.
On the return voyage, the Boonah made contact with another vessel reporting a increasing number of cases of pneumonia influenza on board. By the time the ship reached Fremantle, the number was over 300 and Commonwealth immigration authorities initially refused to allow the servicemen to disembark until those known to be affected were transferred to a quarantine station at Woodman’s Point with an emergency staff boosted by 20 volunteer nurses.
The situation developed into both a medical and political nightmare; immigration officials continued to refuse to allow unaffected soldiers to disembark and tensions mounted to the point that the Returned Servicemen’s Association threatened to storm the ship to return what it termed “the prisoners” to shore.
The Boonah was eventually allowed to continued its journey some nine days later with another 17 cases detected before she reached Adelaide – in total, 27 servicemen and four nurses died at the Woodman’s Point, later casualties from the voyage are unclear.
Perhaps ironically, HMAT Boonah was one of the captured German vessel, originally known as s.s. Melbourne. The vessel was seized in Sydney just after the outbreak of war and converted to a troopship.
Heidelberg Soldier’s Certificates
There were numerous Honour Boards and other memorials erected around the district at churches and schools, many of them presented by Major E. T. Apps of Fitzroy, a long-serving member of the Victorian Military Forces and one of a well-known family of undertakers that extended as far as a branch at Heidelberg and who is listed as donating around 70 Honour Boards to smaller communities.
The Shire Council was well-placed to combine the means of encouraging men to enlist and serve with a personal touch with staff and councillors intimately aware of the impact of the war on people in their community. Often the volunteer himself or his family was known to council members or in some cases was a family member.
With the encouragement of the State Recruiting Committee, the Shire decided in the autumn of 1917 to issue along with many other municipalities “Soldier’s Certificates”, an illuminated address on cardboard acknowledging the man’s willingness to serve for King and Country.
Many of these were designed by Cecil Smith, a graphic artist employed by the Melbourne printer, D. W. Paterson and Co., the company boasting after the war that they had supplied certificates to over 150 cities and shires in Victoria and New South Wales, but the Heidelberg design (although unknown) appears to have been unique, Council minutes in February, 1918 noting a request from Lismore Council in New South Wales to use the local layout. The wording of the Heidelberg certificate was later given by the News as :-
“In Freedom’s Cause – Shire of Heidelberg – The President, councillors and ratepayers hereby place on record their thanks and appreciation for the conduct of —-, who served his King and country in the great war. In witness thereof the corporate seal of the municipality is attached in the presence of —- ,President (date)”
It was estimated at the time that the Certificates were first proposed that 85 percent of the eligible men within the Shire had enlisted, this boosted to 90 percent by the time that the Certificates started to be issued in late 1917 to those who had returned to Australia either wounded or suffering from disease.
The first distribution came just before Christmas, 1917 when around 65 returned servicemen were presented with certificates at the Fairfield Hall by the Rev. J. Worboys, president of the local branch of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Welfare League.
Disbandment of the A.I.F.
The Australian Imperial Force was officially decommissioned on 31 March, 1921 and deaths resulting from war service beyond that date are not recorded on the Australian War Memorial’s Honour Roll.
The first official casualty of the War was William George Vincent Williams of Beavers Road, Northcote who was killed in action when part of a raiding party from H.M.A.S Una that disembarked near Rabaul, on the island of New Britain in what is now Papua New Guinea on 11 September, 1914 on a mission to destroy a German radio station operating some five miles inland.
The last was Corporal Leslie Clark Price, who died on 12 April, 1921 at No. 4 Australian General Hospital, Randwick, from tuberculosis.
The Forgotten Toll
Many servicemen that died during the influenza epidemic of 1919 or from tuberculosis were not regarded as casualties of the war despite many of them contracting symptoms while in service.
One estimation from the respected historian, Jonathan King in his volume “The Western Front” suggests that between their demobilisation and 1930, around 60,000 returned servicemen died from various causes.
The Ministry for Repatriation endeavoured in the 1933 Census to ascertain the total number of members of the A.I.F. who had served and were still living to determine the comparative age at death of the ex-soldier compared those who had not served.
No detailed results of the comparison remain, but the official history of Australia’s involvement in the Great War suggest the difference in ages between the two groups at death was between 7 and 8 years, or if classified by age group, the relative death rate of the ex-serviceman was around 13% higher.
A similar study in New Zealand over the years 1935 to 1940 suggested an average age difference of 5.8 years.
At first glance, this may suggest that the differences in age suggested by the local Census in 1933 was a little overstated, but perhaps the key here is that the New Zealand study was conducted over a somewhat later period where one would expect the margins to be less.
Warringal Cemetery, Heidelberg
Few local residents will probably be aware of the fact, but Warringal Cemetery is classified as an official military burial site by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
Commission records list seventeen First World War servicemen that were interred in the Warringal (or Heidelberg) Cemetery.
With just two exceptions of men who died in camp, all died in 1919 or later and after returning from the Western Front – the lateness of many of the deaths coincided with the continuing operation of the Military Ward at the Austin Hospital post-war to assist with the repatriation of wounded or ill soldiers.
Subsequent research reveals however that there were around another ten servicemen interred in Warringal who died after discharge, again most of them at the Austin who have never been acknowledged on the Australian War Memorial Honour Roll or by the War Graves Commission despite dying from war-related illnesses and their families receiving the Memorial Plaque and Scroll issued to descendants of those that died in the conflict, their demise coming after their discharge from the A.I.F. and apparently unknown to the Defence Department.
There are also twelve casualties of the Second World War listed by the War Graves Commission as being buried in Warringal.
“Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics”
It is impossible some 100 years later to place a precise figure of on the number “from Heidelberg” that served during the conflict – extensive research from 2012 through to 2014 has identified around 1,300 men that volunteered – but “from Heidelberg” is qualified by including those who were born in the district or educated locally, but whom may have lived elsewhere for several years before enlisting. The figures also includes others than lived outside of the Shire, but nominated their next of kin in Heidelberg – the address of the next of kin was in fact that given by the Defence Department when publishing Casualty Lists and did not necessarily reflect the soldier’s own location.
Using the same criteria, around 280 deaths on, or due to war service have been identified – roughly 21.5 percent and slightly little higher that the overall average.
This story was published in “Fine Spirit and Pluck: World War One Stories from Banyule, Nillumbik and Whittlesea” as “On the Armistice” published by Yarra Plenty Regional Library, August 2016
