George Hulse and Jimmy Thomson on The First ANZACs

We chat to co-writers George Hulse and Jimmy Thomson on their book The First ANZACs, the true stories of the unsung heroes of WW1.

 A&U: What inspired you to focus on the sappers—the combat engineers—of World War I?

JT: I have co-written three books about Sappers (two set in Vietnam and one in Afghanistan) with Sandy MacGregor.  It was at a lunch at Sandy’s home that George told me about his self-published book First In, Last Out and related some of the stories we would later use in The First Anzacs. It was an obvious topic for an expanded history.

GH: As an ex-Australian combat engineer, I was drawn to research the history of my Corps – The Royal Australian Engineers. I was initially dismayed at the paucity of information about my forebears of WWI. So, I drilled down into after action reports, intelligence reports, visited the Research Centre at The Australian War Memorial in Canberra and began to uncover some very fascinating and hugely inspiring accounts of the Sappers of WWI. Then the 60 Minutes interview of Catherine Job about the first boots ashore at ANZAC Cove being those of the Army engineers, and not the infantry, sent shockwaves through my team at the 1^st Field Squadron Association, of which I was the President.

We began a four-year research programme to claim a Meritorious Unit Citation for the 1^st Field Company/Squadron and that is an ongoing project. I am invited each year to deliver a presentation on RAE military history to the current-day 1^st Field Squadron based at Robertson Barracks at Palmerston in the NT. This inspired me to write a book entitled First In – Last Out: The Australian Combat Engineers of WWI. This book caught the eye of a real author, Jimmy Thomson, and he convinced me and Allen & Unwin to greatly expand it and tell the full story of Australia’s Army engineers of WWI. That was the genesis of The First ANZACs.

A&U: Why do you think their role was largely overlooked by official histories for so long?

JT: Sappers have always considered themselves different from other infantry-based military.  A bit smarter and more capable, if you like. There has long been a tendency to underplay their exploits, to keep them in their box.

GH: There was a long-held conception in Australia of the “digger”. This was generally an infantry soldier who bore the brunt of hand-to-hand combat. Other Corps such as the engineers, were coalesced into that conception so that the combat engineers were melded into the overall vision of the “digger”. This was reinforced by such eminent war reporters as Bean and Murdoch who had very little to say about the sappers. Consequently, the engineers were seen as an infantry soldier “kinda-sorta”, and not much credence given to their role as combat multipliers when things became difficult during an attack through enemy obstacles or a withdrawal where the infantry needed to establish a ‘clean break’ with the enemy. The engineers did that by emplacing obstacles and demolition of infrastructure that would delay the enemy’s ability to maintain contact with our guys, but nobody noticed. Consequently, it was difficult to discern where the sappers were useful in the records of contemporary official historians.

A&U: How did you go about researching the experiences of these men, given that their stories were largely omitted from official histories?

JT: George did all the initial heavy lifting and had worked with Catherine Job who found the proof that sappers had been among the very first soldiers to land at Gallipoli. It’s fair to say that who was first is less important than the fact that the official histories said they weren’t there at all. After that, we discovered the digitised diaries of WWI veterans in the NSW State library and focussed on the records of the sappers.

A&U: Sappers often had to build, dig, or demolish under extreme danger. Which feats of courage or ingenuity surprised you the most?

JT: My favourite story is the theft of the Amiens Gun, which demonstrated their combination of skills, ingenuity and courage – and then the fact that the infantry tried to take credit for their achievements, as usual.

GH: The feats of courage which impressed me most were mainly under the ground. In both the Gallipoli campaign and the 7 July 1917 mines along Messines Ridge (see Hill 60), the sappers were using initiative and on-the-job experience to rapidly learn about the dangers and advantages of waging a war under the ground. They had no idea what they were doing initially, but by trial and error (sometimes fatal error) they adapted to the uniquely high adrenaline life of a burrowing rat trying to close with and kill the enemy’s burrowing rat. The diggers above ground had artillery support and the ability to manoeuvre around enemy strongpoints. The sapper under the ground could not manoeuvre anywhere and there was no artillery support to dampen the ardour of the enemy when they clashed in a dark, damp, restrictive and airless environment. Just one-on-one combat when both sides came upon each other deep under the ground.

A&U: Sappers often had to rely on each other to survive under fire. What does their teamwork reveal about life in the trenches and tunnels?

JT: This is not unique to sappers – but they are expected to go in first before any other troops can even venture forward and it is their otherness that seems to bind them together.

GH: Teamwork is the catchcry of the sapper. There are few one-man jobs for the engineers. This meant that when the situation was dire and an individual might be killed at any moment, the job still had to be done and so the sappers relied heavily on their mates sticking-to-the-knitting and being there when it all looked like coming undone. This is more than camaraderie. This is a brotherhood of trust and reliance on the team to get through a job regardless of clear and present danger. This was more than just in the tunnels and trenches. Engineers ran the railways, ports and road systems which were heavily targeted by enemy bombardments. The job and the team were paramount, self-survival was a luxury.

A&U: Were there any sappers whose stories you felt especially compelled to bring to the forefront, and why?

JT: ‘Anzac Jack’ Moore’s story is especially poignant as he clearly was suffering PTSD (before that condition was even recognised) and took his own life after he returned to New Zealand.

GH: The story that particularly appealed to me was the one where, on 8 August 1918 at Harbonnieres in France, three sappers (Lieutenant George Burrows MC, Sapper Les Strahan and Sapper John Palmer) ran out into no-man’s-land under fire, and literally stole an enormous 280mm railway gun from under the noses of the German Army. The rest of the 8^th Field Company then ran the whole rig inland by removing the railway track from the back of the train to the front of it, repeat, repeat, repeat, with numerous issues, until the gun was hopelessly out of reach of any German counterattack to get it back.

It was an act of extreme daring, courage and determination by the sappers. But their efforts were not recognised at the time by the broader community and there was a comic opera event where a sign on the side of the gun was repainted from “Captured by 8^th Field Company AE’, to “Captured by the 31^st Battalion AIF” to finally, “Captured by the 4^th Army”. And so, the Australian Army engineer was written out of the battle – yet again.

A&U: How did the work of the sappers influence the outcomes of major battles, like at Gallipoli or on the Western Front?

JT: The greatest achievement in Gallipoli was probably facilitating the withdrawal with minimum casualties. On the Western Front, the mining operations were massive tactical and strategic advances.

GH: At Gallipoli and The Western Front, the sappers provided very quick ‘jump off trenches’ and strong points for the protection of our diggers. The Germans destroyed roads, bridges and other useful infrastructure and it was mainly the engineer that rebuilt or repurposed the detritus left by the enemy so that our diggers could keep the machine of war active. The sappers also provided the services and logistics for the Allied resupply system. These involved trains, ports, quarries, forestry, bridges, buildings and fortifications. These combined into a system that afforded our troops, protection, mobility, medical support and rest areas. The engineers were responsible for the production of countless timber ‘duckwalk’ footways and for expedient timber roads. Without this support the movement of troops, artillery, tanks and other arms would have been both challenging and costly in human life and suffering.

A&U: If readers take one key lesson or feeling from this book, what would you hope it is?

JT: Most people, even keen military history readers, don’t even know what a sapper is.  I’d like more people to appreciate that sappers embodied so many quintessentially Australian qualities – courage, ingenuity and an indomitable larrikin spirit.

GH: The one key ‘take home message’ from this book is that the Army is a complex synergy of lots of different soldiers – not just the “Digger”. Each group has an essential role to play and should be recognised in their own right. WWI was a classic example of how a group of heroes was written out from their rightful place in Australian military history. We should never allow this to happen again going forward.

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The First ANZACs

by George Hulse and Jimmy Thomson

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