‘At such a moment as this the assurances of support that we have received from the Empire are a source of profound encouragement to us…
‘Now may God bless you all. May He defend the right. It is the evil things that we shall be fighting against—brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution—and against them I am certain that the right will prevail.’
Bloody hell! What was all but immediately apparent was that the Wallaby tour was off, and the war was on. At a team meeting called immediately after the announcement, some members expressed a desire to join up with the British forces and get stuck into the Germans right away, but after discussion they reconsidered. They had left Australia as a team and would return in the same manner, only then would blokes go their own ways.
While they waited for their return passage to Australia they set themselves to work. To keep themselves busy, Stan Bisset and ten of his strongest teammates began building for the delighted hotel proprietor a wall of solid sandbags around the windows facing the waters of the English Channel, from which any German fire would come. As he worked, Stan’s mind raced as he considered his future.
Within hours of Neville Chamberlain’s announcement to Britain, the stentorian tones of Robert Menzies went out across Australia, and his words were reported in the gratified English press.
‘Fellow Australians,’ the new Australian prime minister said, ‘it is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that in consequence of a persistence by Germany, and her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her and that as a result Australia is also at war.’
Of course Australia was also at war. Britain was at war, therefore Australia, her loyal dominion, was at war. Australia was in fact so loyal to Britain that under Prime Minister Menzies’s guidance, Australia’s navy was effectively placed under the control of the British Navy and sent to northern climes, while much of the Royal Australian Air Force was also sent to Europe to fight the good fight for the King and the Empire. It would not be long before two entire divisions of the Australian Army, which were then and there being quickly raised for overseas duties, were also put essentially at the service of British interests.
Against it all, only very few voices were raised, though one of particular significance was the Leader of the Opposition, John Curtin. Before the war, he had made many speeches in Federal Parliament to the effect that Australia should not be sending forces to Europe for an Imperial war, and that remained his view now (even if in the exigencies of the moment the expression of these views had to be somewhat milder, compared with earlier declarations of Labor policy). In Curtin’s view, Australian forces should be devoted to defending
Australian
soil.
As to Stan Bisset, he was now in two minds. He felt certain that he wanted to serve in some fashion, but was simply not sure in what form. On the way back to Australia the
Strathmore
zig-zagged through the ocean for much of the journey to avoid possible submarine attacks. All the while the Wallabies discussed what they were going to do, and they were never so emotional as in the first flush of dawn when the ship pushed through Port Phillip Heads. The Wallabies had been up chatting and carousing all night and now, as the lights of Melbourne appeared ahead in the distance, the realisation struck that with the winds of war likely to push them in thirty different directions, this was undoubtedly the last time they would all be together.
And then Stan Bisset started singing ‘Danny Boy’ in that deep bass baritone that could just send a bolt right through you:
Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side
The summer’s gone, and all the flowers are dying
’Tis you, ’tis you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow
Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow
’Tis I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow
Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.
And if you come, when all the flowers are dying
And I am dead, as dead I well may be
You’ll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an ‘Ave’ there for me…
It was the kind of melancholy, beautiful song that captured so perfectly the way they all felt, and when Stan sang it, he sang it for them… and by the time he’d finished, it wasn’t just Stan who was crying but most of the Wallabies with him. Fare thee well, good chum. Keep your head down, and yourself in touch with me. Strong handshakes, rough embraces and then they really were all scattered.
While the Wallabies had been on the water, Prime Minister Robert Menzies had made the key appointment for the age. The General Officer Commanding of the Australian Army, soon to be known as the Second Australian Imperial Force, was to be a man by the name of Major General Sir Thomas Blamey. As Menzies would later write, in explaining his reasons for the appointment, none of Blamey’s rivals for the post ‘nearly matched him in the power of command— a faculty hard to define but impossible to mistake when you meet it.’
6
Blamey had a distinguished war record, but he also had recent experience in commanding and administering a large body of men with the Victoria Police Force, albeit in controversial circumstances.
Blamey had taken over as police commissioner on 1 September 1925, after a military career that included such impressive credentials as having made that legend of landing on the shores of Gallipoli with the First Australian Imperial Force at dawn on 25 April 1915, and rising to be Chief of Staff of the First Australian Division in France a year later. But only shortly after assuming his new civil post in Victoria, police raided a a notable ‘house of ill-repute’ in Fitzroy and a particular gentleman was caught ‘on the job’, as it were. The police were about to take the rather short, stocky, moustachioed gentleman into custody when he produced a police badge, told them he was a detective, and bally-hooed his way free.
The badge was embossed with the number eighty, and when the policemen got back to the station they discovered that Badge 80 had been issued to none other than… the new police commissioner, Thomas Blamey. He survived this debacle by resolutely insisting that someone had stolen the badge and done the dirty on both the girl and his good self, in a different way, before he could raise the alarm. In this post, Blamey had nevertheless proved to be an extremely capable administrator. It was said of the oft-abrasive officer that his main failing was a lack of empathy and common feeling with the men beneath him.
After yet another scandal in which he committed perjury at a Royal Commission,
Sir
Thomas Blamey, shortly after being knighted, had finally stood down from his position as Commissioner of Victorian Police in 1936, and gradually worked his way back to his base career as an officer with the Australian Army.
Despite Blamey’s controversial reputation, perhaps another factor in Menzies’s appointment of Blamey was that he had a great deal of experience with the English, with whom he had done substantial military training, and Menzies knew that it was they, after all, who would be once again running the show. Menzies pushed the appointment through, the whole thing being formalised while Blamey was out one weekend wandering through the Dandenong Ranges looking for a particular type of wild orchid that he had long coveted for his collection.
It would be some time before the military man would again have the time to pursue this passion, as the task ahead of him was a mammoth one. In the time since the Great War Australia’s state of military preparedness had sunk to such an abysmal level that not only was its army a mere rump of a few thousand men, but it possessed not a single tank, no machine guns to speak of and very little in the way of modern artillery or even radio equipment. In fact, the country had precious few resources other than an emerging band of citizens who had already expressed their willingness to fight for King and country. But to process, accommodate, train and send them into battle, the government would have to open recruiting offices, build barracks, order and manufacture weaponry, make uniforms, produce rations, the lot.
Blamey set to with a will, beginning by making the strategic appointment of Colonel Sydney Rowell, a fellow Gallipoli veteran, who was known as a superb manager of men and who had a strong feel for military tactics. Regarding his professionalism highly, Blamey made him his chief of staff and the two began to build an Australian army around them, almost literally from the ground up.
All across the nation then, the courses of lives began to alter slightly and then change direction entirely as the call to arms, the call to fight for Australia, took hold…
The Japanese would act quickly, they would all be regulars, fully trained and equipped for the operations, and fanatics who like dying in battle, whilst our troops would consist mainly of civilians, hastily thrown together on mobilisation, with very little training, short of artillery and possibly of gun ammunition.
General Vernon Sturdee, predicting in 1933 that Japan would pose the major threat to Australian security
7
Our country is firmly determined to set up a Greater East Asian order by eliminating those who continue their resistance against us and by collaborating with those who make common cause with us…
Prince Fumimaro Konoye, Prime Minister of Japan, 1941
8
And that’d be about bloody right. There was the world going to hell in a handcart, and here he was selling bloody sheets, furnishings, and women’s undies! Somehow, Joe Dawson just knew it didn’t fit. A keen reader of Melbourne’s
Sun News-Pictorial
newspaper, which he bought every day up at the corner store, Joe’d been following very closely the shenanigans in Europe, and was aware just what kind of carnage Hitler and his stormtroopers were causing. Some blokes acted as if nothing at all was going on, and tried to ignore it, but Joe never could. One day, while running an errand into the city for the Footscray store he was working in, he passed by the recruitment centre at Melbourne Town Hall. It was an instant decision: selling more women’s undies or going off to war. War won.
The only problem was that because he looked, and was, so young—he was still only seventeen years old—the recruiting officer said he would have to get one of his parents to sign a form giving him permission. So he tried his mum first.
‘Mum, I’m going to join the army and I just need you to sign this form.’
‘See your father…’
That was his mum’s way—end of story—but as it happened, Joe never got time to ask his father, for as soon as he found out, he came and saw Joe.
‘
No!
Not on your bloody Nelly. When you’re a legal adult you can do what you damn well please, but until then, no!’
His dad wasn’t the kind of bloke you could argue with—especially since his menswear shop had gone bust during the Depression and he’d had to work in the building trade since—so Joe festered for a while, until just a few nights later he was passing by the Footscray drill hall where the 32nd Militia Battalion Footscray Regiment was going through its stuff. There was a bloke outside who gave him the drum.
‘Look,’ he said to Joe, ‘what you do is join the militia, get to know a bit about the army, and then transfer to the AIF. They won’t worry about your age then. You can join the militia at eighteen years without any parents’ signature.’
On the spot, Joe went in and told a warrant officer he wanted to join up.
‘When were you born?’ the officer asked.
The question hung there for a moment, while Joe looked at his options and realised there was only one. He told a white lie…
‘The third of January, 1921,’ he said, instantly making himself a year older. Done. After a medical established that he was healthy, he was told to report the following Saturday to the drill hall, where he would be issued with all his kit. It left him with only one minor problem…
That Saturday, after taking proud possession of his service jacket, breeches, long puttees, tan boots, felt hat, .303 rifle, bayonet, water bottle, ammunition pouches and pack—and having done his first training session—Joe decided he would just have to front his mum and dad, dressed in full regalia, and take it from there. So he did.
Predictably, his dad hit the roof.
‘We’ll see about this!’ he roared and then launched into a long tirade about how no son of his was going to defy him, and the only way he could have joined was to lie about his age and once he told the authorities Joe’s true age they’d kick him out again and…
And just then, the redoubtable Auntie Nell, who lived next door and had heard all the noise—like half the neighbourhood—popped her head in the door. Informed of the situation, she shot Joe’s dad down as surely as if he were a Zeppelin air balloon and she a hardrising bullet.