Nathan Wise | The Lost Labour Force: Working-Class Approaches to Military Service During the Great War | Labour History, 93

The Lost Labour Force: Working-Class Approaches to Military Service During the Great War

Nathan Wise^*

Of the 330 000 Australian men who embarked with the Australian Imperial Force during the Great War, over two-thirds were from Australia's working classes. Amongst these were many men who approached military service as a job of work; they enlisted for employment, for the pay, or for the benefits they believed they would receive upon discharge. Yet the traditional approach towards 'histories of the military' has largely passed by the daily work of these men in favour of combat related studies, whilst on the other hand labour historians have had a distaste for studies of the military in general. This article seeks to bring attention to the importance of labour history approaches to the military by focusing upon these working-class attitudes towards military service in the Australian Imperial Force during the Great War as a job of work.

On a cold winter's day in January 1917, Thomas Goodwin, a 37-year-old farrier, filled out his regular daily diary entry with a typical complaint about the nature of the work he was asked to undertake,

26/1/17

I was working at 5A.M. with my shoeing smiths, putting frost coggs [sic] in shoes ready for the march. This is drivers [sic] work not mine. I have quite enough to do to keep the horses shod. Anyhow we got most of them done.¹

Goodwin was well accustomed to waking up early for work, to doing other people's work, and to working long hours in difficult conditions. He often complained about the endless demands of his superiors, the laziness of other workers, and the long hours he had to work. But in spite of these complaints, Goodwin seemed to enjoy his work; he loved his horses, took his job seriously and felt a sense of pride in a job well done. Waking up early to shoe a group of horses before others would be awake gave Goodwin a sense of accomplishment and a feeling of superiority over the other 'slackers'. Goodwin's entries may seem typical of a farrier working with a group of horses in Sydney, Melbourne, or Brisbane, though to many it may be surprising to learn that at the time of writing Thomas Goodwin was serving in France with the 1st Field Artillery Brigade of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). Goodwin's entry reflects his broader attitude, and that of many other working-class men, of approaching military service as a job of work.

Goodwin wrote this entry over nine decades ago, yet in the writing of 'histories of the military' this approach towards military service as a job of work has been scarcely recognised.² This article forms part of a broader body of research on these working-class experiences in the Australian Imperial Force during the Great War that seeks to rectify this loss. The primary reason for focusing on the working classes is to highlight the hitherto unrecognised or ignored approaches towards military service and wartime experiences of a specific cohort of men. As such, many of the themes in this article may have broached class and gender lines. Additionally, whilst there is no claim that these attitudes were unique to the experiences of working-class men, there is certainly some value to this focus given the limited recognition that these 'attitudes towards work' have received in the historical literature to date.

These issues will be addressed by first exploring the manner in which the lives of working-class men within the military have been recorded within the historical literature. Then, through the examination of working-class men's diaries, recorded during their experiences with the AIF during the Great War, this article will attempt to highlight some critical themes in the lives of these men that have been overlooked by labour historians.

The lives of men like Goodwin, within the military, may already be familiar. The experiences of individuals serving with the AIF have been explored for over 90 years, and Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean, the official historian, focused particular attention upon the lives of the men who served as a tribute to all Australian soldiers.³ Yet in this vast body of historical literature on the Great War there is a significant gap. Traditional approaches towards the Great War have tended to focus upon the combat-based aspects of soldier's experiences. By contrast, the traditional approaches towards 'labour history' have sidestepped issues related to the military, looking instead at the impact of war on Australian culture and society.⁴ Raelene Frances recently noted that historians often shy away from what they see as the 'militarisation of Australian history', and suggested that instead of abandoning these issues to other approaches, labour historians need to continue to engage with them.⁵ Bruce Scates' review article 'The Price of War: Labour Historians Confront Military History' addressed a similar theme and argued that labour historians are aware of the impact of the Great War on Australian society and have led the new 'war and society' genre of military history.⁶ However, this awareness has yet to translate into detailed systematic evaluations of the labour force in the military. As a result, men's understandings of military service as a job of work have been largely ignored, and their descriptions of work within the military passed over in favour of combat related entries.

'Histories of the Military'

The outlook of soldiers, such as Thomas Goodwin, towards military service as a job of work has only been noted in passing by the historical literature. Graham Seal argued that

The digger is not ... a professional soldier. He is a temporary bearer of arms and uneasy wearer of uniforms. He is 'an ordinary bloke' doing a job of work for a reasonable day's pay. That this work was in the interests of the Empire to which Australia belonged was a commonplace of the time.⁷

Bill Gammage similarly identified the soldier's identification of service with work when he argued that new recruits felt that they should be able to 'leave camp after work'.⁸ But to date, labour historians have been hesitant in crossing the line to examine the 'world of war' from a social and cultural perspective. A vast gap appears in labour history from 1914 to 1918 when over 400 000 men left home to 'work' in the military. Military service, as work, has simply not been examined in depth from a labour history standpoint.

The new 'war and society' genre of historical writing has sparked a range of new approaches towards histories of the military. In particular, Scates argues that the 'war and society' genre is identified by a 'culturalist' approach to 'histories of the military', or more specifically, of people in the military.⁹ Primarily this new genre highlights the fact that 'histories of the military' need not necessarily be histories of combat, of bombardments, or of great battles. Rather, they can reveal so much more about 'war' and 'society' through understanding individual and group experiences, how attitudes changed, and how soldiers adjusted to suit the circumstances of war. The new approaches incorporated within this genre can adopt this 'culturalist' outlook to understand how soldiers, as people of different social and cultural backgrounds, related to each other, how they worked together, how they spent their leisure time, and how they lived life in the environment of war.

Alistair Thomson's Anzac Memories provides numerous examples of the effect of these different approaches on the lives of Australian men who enlisted.¹⁰ With a particular focus upon three Great War veterans, Percy Bird, Bill Langham, and Fred Farrall, Thomson demonstrates how difficult these lives became after the war as they had to deal not only with their own memory of experiences, but with wider cultural understandings, forms of commemoration, and imposed identities relating to the war. In their post-war lives these three men struggled to live with the image as presented by the Anzac legend and the digger myth.¹¹ Fred Farrell in particular turned away from his experiences in the AIF for many years following his discharge.¹² The illusions that were propagated about the war, coupled with the forms of commemoration in the post-war era, did not sit well with Fred Farrell's memories and post-war identity. These men each had different social backgrounds, they each enlisted for different reasons, they each subsequently had different reactions to war and a different experience of war, and in the post-war world, they each continued to fight their own battles with themselves in attempting to understand what part the years from 1914 to 1918 played in their greater lives. As easy as it may be to separate 'war' from 'society', and to write separate histories for each, when historians put these two worlds together and attempt to understand the lives of Great War soldiers, such different histories, with different approaches, only present further difficulties.¹³

The trend within the traditional military history genre to pursue achievement or victory based styles of research with a focus on battles and campaigns has resulted in scarce consideration for the 'non-combat' time of soldiers, including their many hours of work.¹⁴ Dale Blair, for example, argues that because the tendency is for the military history genre to 'examine Australian soldiers mainly in the general context of the achievements of the Australian Imperial Force, there has been little examination of the attitudes and behaviour within the smaller unit formations'.¹⁵ J.G. Fuller also argued in Troop Morale and Popular Culture in the British and Dominion Armies that

Historical analyses of the British and Dominion soldiers' experience of the Great War have concentrated attention overwhelmingly on the world of the trenches. Little attention has been paid to the roughly three-fifths of the infantryman's service overseas spent in the rear of these lines.¹⁶

Soldiers did not simply 'switch on' during battle, and 'switch off' afterwards. 'Histories of the military', as Fuller argues, need to consider time spent in combat, and time spent not in combat; time spent in the trenches, and time spent out of the trenches.

A Missed Opportunity

Eric Leed argued that the Great War

mobilized all the cultural resources of meaning available to Europeans in the first decades of the twentieth century. It allows us to see what those resources were, not as an abstract system of thought but as something which rendered experience coherent and meaningful.¹⁷

In particular, the war provoked participants to write about issues that they would generally not consider putting down on paper. The archives of the State Library of Victoria, the State Library of New South Wales and the Australian War Memorial together hold thousands of letters and diaries written by people who were affected by war,¹⁸ a very large portion of these being working-class people. This material must be treated with the same caution that any written records are approached with. Letters and diaries, though presenting a personal opinion, were often written to be read aloud to friends and families, or to be kept as a permanent record of one's experiences in the military. At the same time men often forgot that they were writing to, or for, other people, and these diaries provide deep insight into their daily lives. As Dale Blair argues, 'whilst soldier's diaries and letters may not be the most reliable source for operational studies, they do provide a revealing insight into the hearts and minds of soldiers and of the environment in which they lived'.¹⁹ What Leed identifies as the 'mobilisation of cultural resources of meaning' enabled these individuals to write about their fears, their feelings, and their thoughts of home; sometimes thinly veiling their true emotions, but at other times openly revealing a depth of emotions that would generally be difficult to find to such an extent in peacetime writing.

These social and cultural history approaches to histories of the military seek to identify differences amongst the AIF. Instead of grouping all experiences under the banner headings of 'Anzac' or 'digger' these approaches question how the experiences of men in the AIF were different. Reading into the Anzac legend that forms so much of this area of historical literature, one would believe that as soon as these men enlisted, put on a uniform, and became soldiers, their pre-war differences were forgotten or ignored. But by no means were these social differences insignificant – Catholic and Protestant,²⁰ working class and middle class, regional and metropolitan. John McQuilton, for example, noted Michael McKernan's argument that 'the war in rural Australia was a different war'; rural Australians had different motivations for enlisting, and as a result, the war for these men who served may have had a different impact on their lives.²¹ Similar differences can be seen along class lines, middle-class men were more easily promoted to the officer class, whilst working-class men tended to occupy the rank and file.²² Whilst the homogenous image of the AIF suits the 'combat based' style of historical inquiry, it does not assist in understanding experiences of war as part of a 'life experience'.

Hector Brewer provides an ideal example of what has been missed by focusing on the battlefield. Brewer's diaries, available in the Mitchell Library of the State Library of New South Wales, reveal his approach towards military service as a job of work. Overlooked by the traditional style of war writing and ignored by labour historians, Brewer, a groom from Petersham before enlisting in the AIF, provides regular entries that combine the typically recognised 'experiences with combat' with the rarely identified 'experiences with work'. Through these entries, historians can understand the nature of this work, its duration, its difficulty, who he worked with, who ordered him to perform the work, and how he felt about the work. All were thoughts and feelings that he expressed with a casual sense of regularity that the following entries reveal,

6/5/15	We were lined up to dig a trench or road to bring the guns up to their positions.
7/5/15	Our platoon on fatigue digging trenches + filling up holes. One of our comrades W. Bates killed by shrapnel + several chaps wounded whilst on fatigue. We have more casualties out of the firing line than in it.
8/5/15	Today we left the fire trench for a rest about 6PM having done 24 hours on watch. Had to haul up an 18 Pounder gun. It was hard work.
9/5/15	So far we have had plenty of hard work + little or no rest right from the word go...On guard all night
10/5/15	Came off duty this morning about 5 AM...Our platoon resting today. Fifteen of our plat. ordered to go out + make a road for guns. I missed that job.²³

When read individually these entries simply reveal the list of tasks that an individual was set by the military. Yet the revealing factor comes in viewing the long-term trends and patterns of writing where these men regularly reported on the 'job of work' as a term of employment.²⁴ Regular, repetitive, daily entries consistently reported on the nature of daily work. Thoughts of 'fatigue digging trenches', '24 hours on watch', 'plenty of hard work', and 'little or no rest' regularly occupied Brewer's mind. The distinction between 'work' as a task, and 'work' as a term of employment can easily be seen in these continuing mentalities.

Almost every day, without fail, the rank and file of the AIF were ordered to undertake some form of work. Trenches always needed digging or repairing, supplies were constantly needed up the lines, and when there was no available work, men would simply be sent on a long route march or provided with exercise drills to keep their bodies active, and the minds occupied. Working-class men regularly reported on this work and their diaries contain a wealth of information about the nature of work undertaken by the men of the AIF and of their attitudes towards this work. Thomas Goodwin once again provides an ideal example. Goodwin took his job as a farrier with the 1st Field Artillery Brigade seriously and found a sense of pride in his work. From far behind the lines Goodwin believed he was playing a vital role in supporting the war effort, providing invaluable support for the military both in caring for the horses and in providing artillery support, as the following entry indicates,

16/9/15

Some men in the Battery were drunk and away from Battery. A most disgusting state of affairs, considering that we are supposed to back up the infantry in the trenches, and hundreds of lives depending upon our shooting.²⁵

The sense of duty within Goodwin's tone is clear, 'hundreds of lives' depended upon the successful completion of the tasks he was set by officers. Within this mindset Goodwin saw himself as the masculine superior of the drunks who abandoned their post, and subsequently, their mates. In Goodwin's mind, the ideal man soberly confronted the task at hand when comrades needed help somewhere up the line; the drunk who abandoned his work, and thus his mates, was an inferior male. He scorned the poor work ethic of others whilst maintaining a dedication to his own work that appears unsurpassed amongst the diaries of working-class men. On one occasion he noted, 'We have in the 2^nd Battery some absolute wasters, men that are worth about 2/- per week, real rotters. Their only worry is how to get out of fatigue work'.²⁶ Similar entries to this appear throughout Goodwin's diary, spanning across the four years of his service career. Throughout all he maintains his approach towards service as a job, as a term of employment, as something to take pride from and to work hard at.

Whilst Goodwin personally found pride in a job well done and in working hard to help comrades, other working-class men of the AIF displayed a sense of masculine pride in avoiding work and subverting the authority of their officers.²⁷ Thus, John Bruce typically wrote of 'dodging work', not paying attention during lessons, and poking fun at officers, as the following entry written from behind the lines in France demonstrates,

14/10/17

Stuck our gas-masks + tin-hats on + marched to a Gas-area for instruction. Sat in a dug-out with tear-gas in it. All round in a row like a lot of crows, and sang (?) 'If you were the Only Girl in the World' with our masks on. Lovely!²⁸

The laconic and larrikin characteristics displayed by Bruce in a humorous manner matched some of the typical attributes of the archetypal Australian male during this period. Whilst Bruce may not have filled the mould of the 'ideal soldier' he nonetheless found an alternative way to assert his masculine identity.²⁹

Military Service as a Job of Work

Goodwin and Bruce's entries reveal several important differences in working-class men's motivations for enlistment. Whilst Goodwin approached military service as a job of work he also clearly felt a sense of duty and responsibility to the broader body of the AIF. Bruce on the other hand was generally content to let other men do the work for him. Clearly the different expectations of individuals led to different reactions to military service.³⁰ On a broader level, an individual enlisting to serve his 'King and Country' may have been more willing to suffer hardships and the demands of officers to fulfil a sense of national duty than a worker who was merely asking for a 'fair days pay for a fair days work'. Graham Seal argues that, amid all the rhetoric of service and duty, the Australian soldier was being paid to do a job, and he had 'a fierce lust to accomplish the job he had been set'.³¹ For working-class men such as Bruce, to be in the service of another man may have suggested subservience, submission, and the loss of freedom. To be doing a job under the orders of another man may have suggested only a temporary subservience, an agreement of sorts in exchange for payment, where both parties supposedly profit. At the same time the different tasks and positions within the AIF brought different degrees of masculine status: the batmen who served and the officer in the supply corps ranked low on the scale of men;³² by contrast the private who struggled under bombardments to dig away at a trench wall was always the superior male. Thus whilst Goodwin may have been content to follow orders, his confrontation with difficult tasks reasserted his masculine superiority over the 'wasters' who avoided work:

4/7/16

Some hard work in front of us. Myself and shoeing smith, working hard, getting all the horses new shod, almost finished.

16/12/16

Spent 2 hours putting a set of shoes on one of our original horses, fell down three times. Three men on the job, one holding, one propping him up, and the other nailing the shoe on. The horses are that sore, all over, that to pick up their feet causes them pain. Absolutely the worst job that I ever had. And to think that I am trying to battle through with it, God, the people in Australia don't know what we are putting up with.³³

For men such as Thomas Goodwin, a job well done was a matter of pride, and the masculine confrontation with 'the task' was something that was admired and respected.³⁴

The idea that hard work was masculine, and that a job well done was a matter of pride for the worker, had origins well before the Great War.³⁵ Manual labour in particular demonstrated manhood through its physically demanding nature; it used up men's strength and tired their bodies. Robert Connell argues that this destruction of the body, the wearing down of muscles, was 'proof of the toughness of the work and the worker, [and] can be a method of demonstrating masculinity'.³⁶ Working-class men carried similar sentiments with them when they enlisted into the AIF from civil society.³⁷ The nature of their work in the AIF wore them down and tested their limits of strength and endurance. Upon being relieved from Pozieres after a brutal bombardment Francis Addy wrote:

26/7/16

I wonder if our Mobile job is finished for a time at this portion of Line? Going over the top is alright but it is brutish to have to stop in a dug-in position for days after + get the soul-case belted out of you while you can do nothing in return. It's funny now to hear the fellows trying to give an impression of the way they felt while they had to sit still, take it all, + do nothing in return...But we all hung on + saw it through + that means that someone else hasn't got to go + do it for us.³⁸

The solemn pride in Addy's tone, particularly the last line, is in having done the dirty work himself, and without assistance. By contrast with this, the work of the batmen, the staff officer, or the quartermaster in the supply corps was seen as relatively light and easy.³⁹

Working-class men not only had to contend with the demands of work within the military, they also had to rationalise with having lived through the ghastly experiences of war, of the nerve shattering experience of an artillery bombardment, and the mind-numbing terror in going 'over the top'. Civil minds were simply not prepared for these horrors, their cultural upbringing had not taught them the language to explain the reality.⁴⁰ Failing to understand their situation, some committed suicide; others, such as John Hartley Meads, struggled to comprehend the situation in sensible terms, explaining, 'I cannot write anything about what I have seen or what happened its [sic] all too terrible'.⁴¹ Similarly Marshall Burrows wrote home after one stint in the front lines, 'God knows I cant [sic] describe it to anybody'.⁴² Words could not describe Burrows' experience; others felt the need to sanitise letters home to present a less frightening image of the war.⁴³

Understanding the work of the men of the AIF is all the more important because of its horrible nature and the long-term effects it had on individuals.⁴⁴ Working-class men worked throughout artillery bombardments, their nerves shattered and their bodies broken. Seemingly simple jobs such as collecting water could be fraught with danger, as John Booth explained, 'I got my eight gallons of water, and started back and when halfway the chap in front of me was shot in the leg; we eventually getting to our destination without further mishap'.⁴⁵ Other jobs by their very nature disturbed those working at them. Cecil Monk wrote on one occasion of 'burying the dead through the day, + on gas duty at night'.⁴⁶ Similarly Thomas Goodwin described seeing wounded men:

Some with legs off some with arms off, others with trench feet, and some doubled up, almost unable to walk, standing in mud and slush up to their hips, suffering untold agonies. In the Bty [Battery], particularly the wagon line men, we are having a hard fight. Last night at 10 o'clock we were turned out to draw-ammunition from a dump. Wet through all the time we have been here. This is hell upon earth.⁴⁷

Goodwin portrays a disturbing scene, yet he was a worker, much like any other working around the world at the time. He saw drawing 'ammunition from a dump' as all part of his job. At the end of the war Goodwin would take this experiences and these memories and attempt to reintegrate back into a civil society.

Even when the work was not ghastly, it was exhausting. Long hours digging trenches on the Gallipoli Peninsula exhausted men, water was scarce and had to be collected from wells down near the beach or in the gullies, and then carried under shrapnel and sniper fire up to the lines. To add to this, poor sanitary conditions brought flies, and the flies brought diseases.⁴⁸ Ion Idriess described the frustrations that 'new hands' had to contend with whilst working in the lines:

These flies are awful! It is comical seeing the new men trying to stick it out. Each old hand is given a new hand as a mate, to 'break in'. They are going to have a rough breaking in. I can hear one chap vomiting from the smell away down the trench already. They stick desperately to their firing-possies, trying to peer out through the periscopes and so keep their attention away from the crawly things about them. My little fair-skinned mate shivers every time a maggot falls on him.⁴⁹

The disgust with flies was not without reason. Fly borne diseases such as dysentery weakened men's bodies and made it difficult stand up, let alone work. During June and July more men were evacuated from Gallipoli because of illnesses than because of wounds.⁵⁰

The Great War experience stands out as distinct, completely different from all other memories, and for this reason historians have traditionally taken a distinct, completely different approach. Eric Leed explains that 'Few, if any, veterans considered their war experience even comparable to their lives before or after the war. Many spoke of having inhabited two distinct worlds, of having seemed two distinct persons'.⁵¹ The great difficulty for historians is in understanding the part that this 'different world' played in the lives of these men as a whole. The challenge is to understand the missing years of these working-class men as they went off to war, to understand their experiences, their thoughts and feelings, their beliefs and identities, and the continuation of their pre-war workplace cultures into the 'different world' of the military.

Skill and Experience in the Australian Imperial Force

The links between pre-war and wartime attitudes towards work were often strengthened by the continuity of the nature of work. Men not only carried over their attitudes towards civilian work into the world of the military, they also carried over their pre-war skills and experiences into a type of work that at times strongly reflected civilian work in pre-war Australia. Thus, as previously established, Thomas Goodwin, a farrier before the war, continued his work as a farrier within the AIF. In similar circumstances William Burrell's previous work experience as a railway signalman was put to into practice within the AIF when he was transferred to work in a railway yard.

Burrell spent the first two years of his military service much like any other soldier. As an infantryman he became accustomed to the repetitive demands of manual labour and his diary regularly reported the fatigues required of the rank and file:

18/4/16	fell in + went to trenches in parties of six: we were on engineers fatigue + were demolishing a small bridge + filling in under a parapet: Lock + I were working + a sniper got our position + sent four shots before we made ourselves scarce.
19/4/16	off on fatigue to the trenches but found on arrival that we were too early for the engineers + had to cool our heels in rain for an hour [.] we were improving the support trench during the day
20/4/16	in the trenches: patchy day raining on + off + cold: plenty of work + little shuteye: they [sic] dugouts were dripping from the roof + very wet. I worked my knut [sic] + got a dozen dry sand bags.⁵²

In September 1917 Burrell was wounded and when fit for work again he was transferred to a railway yard where the nature of his work changed. Instead of filling sandbags and repairing trenches he was working in a relatively safe area where conditions were much to his liking. The work was regular and given his pre-war work experience as a signalman he found it relatively easy. After several weeks in his new job Burrell described a typical day, 'poked about the yard + done a bit in the box: not a bad place here + civilian comfort in comparison to the infantry'.⁵³ Similar entries over the next few months explained this 'civilian comfort' and his satisfaction with the work,

3/3/18	packed up and went to Misery [town in France]: phones on at noon so I had to open up + start working: Gill came along in afternoon: when we get fixed up properly it ought to be a decent job ...
29/4/18	told off for duty as turntable attendand [sic]: 8 hour shift + not too bad of a job ...
20/9/18	twelve months ago today since I was hit so I am now a dinkum neutral: am in far more pleasing position now than I was then + this will do me for the duration.⁵⁴

Burrell's work in the signal boxes and around the yard in Misery was very similar to the nature of his work in New South Wales. In this area of the Somme the war seemed a far away place. Whereas at one stage he had written about the horrors of the front lines and of being 'In Hell',⁵⁵ in Misery he wrote about the easy nature of work, of being able to wander around the area freely, and of being comfortable with the work he was ordered to perform.⁵⁶

This continuity of work provided a sense of 'civilian comfort' and familiarity with the work demanded of men within the military. At the same time, the skills developed in these occupations before the war gave skilled workers a greater understanding of their tasks, and thus a stronger voice when it came to bargaining with officers and determining the manner in which they would approach the task. Thus, Thomas Goodwin heavily criticised the French for the poor treatment of their horses whilst he praised the Indians, who, he argued, looked after their animals the best out of the allies.⁵⁷ In a similar fashion he criticised the materials the military gave him to work with, 'The shoes supplied are all machine made, some passable others awful; at the best of times machine shoes are no good ... The tools supplied are of inferior make, consisting of 4 kits each containing nailing on hammer, 1 pair of pinchers, 1 rasp 1 Drawing knife 1 Searcher 1 rag stone 1 Pritchel, 1 apron, 1 pair of hoof cutters, all carried in leather valise'.⁵⁸ Other, more inexperienced men may have accepted this material as part of the work, but experienced and skilled farriers such as Goodwin recognised how the work should be performed and regularly pointed out military shortfalls in private within their diaries, and in person by complaining directly to their superiors, as the following entries by Goodwin reveal,

28/10/15	The Vet Officer and Farrier of the 6th Battery are at logger heads. Had a real good row. The Vet threatened to get him reduced. All started over shoeing.
1/11/15	Terrific row between Vet and Farrier Sgt. The Farrier reported him to H.Q. and his O.C. It is almost impossible for him to carry on. 5 men and 47 horses. The Vet officer expected him to move the wagon line and shoe horses at the same time.

The issue of 'shoeing', the core skill of the farrier, was at the centre of these debates. Whilst the veterinary officer had a duty to ensure his men were following orders, the farrier sergeant felt a duty to protect his skills and his personal approach towards the work.

Attitudes towards military service as a job of work were strengthened in cases where individuals were allocated to jobs where they were identified as having 'skills' and 'experience'. Far from being naïve or adventurous young recruits eager to see the world, working-class men in these positions had a practical knowledge of their work that often surpassed that of their superiors. The links with civilian work, as Burrell's entry demonstrates, provided a sense of continuity and 'comfort', whilst also providing some room to point out problems and dictate the conditions that they would work under.

Resisting the Military Regimen

As the above entries demonstrate, investigating the working lives of these individuals within the military also provides further insight into the patterns of resistance that were carried over from civil society to form part of the reputation of the 'digger'. More than just mutinies, the protests, strikes, and complaints against officers expressed by working-class men of the rank and file reveal pre-war attitudes towards industrial action as a means of solving workplace disputes.⁵⁹ This resistance is also evident in the diaries and letters of working-class men, and in the trench and troopship newspapers created by the men who served. Australian working-class men were not simply 'poorly trained' and 'poorly disciplined';⁶⁰ they dearly held onto working-class values of mateship, irreverence, and egalitarianism. These values, part of the core working-class culture throughout the 1890s, 1900s, and 1910s, subsequently formed a central feature of the working-class male's approach towards military service.⁶¹

These attitudes were aptly demonstrated during the protests at Liverpool-Casula on 14 February 1916, known invariably as the 'Battle of Sydney' and the 'Liverpool-Casula Riot'.⁶² The actions of soldiers on this day were first and foremost a protest and a strike against what they saw as unfair changes to their work routine. When soldiers from the Liverpool and Casula military camps marched down George Street in Sydney they proudly carried a placard proclaiming 'STRIKE: WE WON'T DRILL 40 1/2 HOURS'.⁶³ Similarly when the Evening News reported on a 'RIOT AT LIVERPOOL' the protesting soldiers attacked the building and demanded an apology,⁶⁴ with Acting Sergeant-Major Sydney E. Tanner insisting 'We want an apology for the poster. It was not a riot, it was only a strike'.⁶⁵ At first glance the comments of Elliott and Burrell against their striking comrades appear to reveal a new sense of loyalty to the 'colours' and to 'Australia's name', reflecting what some labour historians have understood as the surrendering of 'class loyalties' to greater 'national loyalties'.⁶⁶

Resistance against officers and protests against the military regimen were also commonplace at the front. The high crime and incarceration rate of the AIF provides the most obvious evidence of this. In March 1918, nine out of every 1000 Australian soldiers were in prisons, compared to one out of every 1000 British soldiers, and 1.6 out of every 1000 Canadian, New Zealand, and South African soldiers. They were 'crimed' on charges of 'absence, drunkenness, insubordination, neglect, riotous and disgraceful conduct, disobedience, striking or using violence to superiors, cowardice in the face of the enemy, self-inflicted wounds, desertion and mutiny' and of course 'conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline', which in the minds of officers, could mean just about anything.⁶⁷ Within the minds of the rank and file at the time, all of these could potentially considered 'resistance' to the military regiment, from 'self inflicted wounds' in order to escape a battle, through to 'drunkenness' as a protest against the strict and regimented military lifestyle.

These experiences of resistance are evident throughout working-class men's diaries. Ernest Murray, a mechanic from Surry Hills, penned the following entry from Gallipoli, 'Was up before our O.C. this morning on a charge of disobeying orders'.⁶⁸ At a training camp in England James Green described in his diary, 'Went on strike cause insufficient tucker + extra half hour's drill'.⁶⁹ And whilst at training camp in Australia, John Bruce wrote 'Crowd very annoyed at new orders. 1 night off in five + 1 week-end in four. The whole crowd lined up + marched out. When the guard turned out, they all jumped the fence. Mine self among them'.⁷⁰ Diaries by other men report similar experiences. Military law was bent when feasible, and ignored whenever possible. But through these actions and their attitudes working-class men actively shaped their working environment, much as they had done in civil society.⁷¹ Their actions were occasionally successful, and prudent officers listened to the demands of their men before matters got out of hand.

Green and Bruce's cases were both actions strongly reflecting the nature of industrial action in civilian society. Groups of workers, dissatisfied with new working conditions, dropped their tools, ceased work, and went on 'strike'. Yet in much of the existing literature on the Great War these actions are either seen as mutinies, or are ignored because they do not appear to contribute to an understanding of the war. The focus upon combat and battles in the literature has left these events uncovered in the diaries of those who served.

C. E.W Bean's fostering of the Anzac legend within the Official Histories saw the AIF as egalitarian and classless.⁷² All men were supposedly treated equally under the banner of Anzac, with officers and the rank and file sharing friendly relations. Dale Blair's Dinkum Diggers convincingly argues otherwise,⁷³ and the diaries of working-class men strongly suggest that class had a lot to do with relations between officers and the rank and file. Officers demanded work from the rank and file, they demanded respect and subservience, they dictated their working hours and the nature of their work, and at the end of the day they provided men with their pay.

As a result of these similarities with civilian work, many working-class men approached their officers as though they were employers, some giving them the title 'Mister' or even a nickname.⁷⁴ Thomas Goodwin titled one officer 'one round Hogan',⁷⁵ perhaps because he had a tendency to run and hide before the enemy could fire a second shot. Goodwin also wrote of his unit naming another officer 'Colonel Headcollars, on account of always finding fault with head gear'.⁷⁶ John Bruce was also particularly fond of nicknames, providing titles such as 'Humpty-Dumpty, the dopey staff-officer',⁷⁷ 'Chin-Strap',⁷⁸ '"Nuisance" Basil-Brown',⁷⁹ and 'Colonel Dog's Body Stevenson'.⁸⁰ When officers demanded too much, working-class men resisted, much like they would resist an overly demanding employer. The Australians were workers first, and soldiers second.

This working background also needs to be understood in analysing the experiences of soldiers during the Great War. It is often argued that this image of the Australian soldier as an Anzac united the men in a common identity. In Anzac to Amiens, Bean also argued that, 'The absence of social distinction encouraged the initiative which was the outstanding quality of Australian troops'.⁸¹ This 'absence of social distinction' largely characterised the writing of Australian Great War history until in 1974 Bill Gammage's re-wrote Australia's history of the Great War from the soldier's perspective with The Broken Years. Gammage suggested the possibility of different experiences of war based upon an individual's social background through identifying the different occupational and religious groups in the AIF.⁸² Similarly J.N.I. Dawes and L.L. Robson's Citizen To Soldier examined the different social background of soldiers,⁸³ with consideration given to pre-war occupation, age, and residency. However, neither book reached any conclusions as to how this background affected the experience of war for different groups.

Conclusion

In order to understand what happened to the hitherto 'lost' members of the working classes between 1914 and 1918, labour historians will need to look at the world of the military, and the world of war. They will need to re-examine how men such as Hector Brewer, a groom, approached military service as a job of work, how Thomas Goodwin, a farrier, took pride in his work, how Cecil Monk, a farmhand, portrayed the ghastly nature of this work, why James Green, a labourer, resisted this work, and why Fred Farrell, a farmhand, had trouble finding civilian work when the guns ceased, the war ended, and the uniform was removed.⁸⁴ The common working-class approach towards military service as a job of work reveals much about the broader working lives of those who served. Within these wartime diaries historians can understand the masculine pressures within the workplace, how workers relate to each other and to their officers, and how through industrial activity and resistance to orders these workers actively changed the nature of their working environment. Whilst this article has touched on several of these themes there is still much to be explored.

The tendency of historians to treat men in the armed forces as 'soldiers', rather than as 'men doing a job' has significantly influenced the nature of historical studies, the approach they take, and the questions that are asked. These have largely been clouded by attempts to portray the soldier as a soldier with all its preconceptions, and not as a human being in a military uniform. By examining their working experiences at war, historians can see through this clouding of uniform, rank, and number, discover the attitudes and behaviours which made these men 'human beings', and not just soldiers, and in the process uncover new areas of investigation. To do as Fuller has done, and remove combat as the sole focus in examinations of soldiers at war, is one of the objectives of this approach. For as Fuller argues, 'From all points of view, it is clear that the soldiers' experience cannot be understood without a knowledge of time behind the lines as well as time in the trenches'.⁸⁵ Indeed it may be argued that the soldiers' experience cannot be understood without knowledge of their life before the war, as well as during.

Asking questions about the working lives of these men within the military from 1914 to 1918 unites military, social, cultural, and labour history and provides constancy between the worlds of war and peace. Because they followed on from each other in terms of time, they should also do so in the writing of history, and in the approaches taken. Soldiers had a pre-war and a post-war working life that the Great War interrupted. More than just an interruption though, the Great War acted as a watershed not only in these men's lives, but also in the history of Australian society. If we are to truly understand its significance, we need to place the lives of these soldiers within their broader historical context and not treat these people so differently.

Nathan Wise is an Associate Lecturer in the School of History and Philosophy at the University of New South Wales. He recently submitted his doctoral thesis on workplace cultures in the Australian Imperial Force during World War I. He is the author of 'Fighting a Different Enemy' to be published in the Humour and Social Protest supplement of the International Review of Social History, November 2007.
<n.wise@unsw.edu.au>

Endnotes

^* The author wishes to acknowledge a research grant from the Australian Army History Unit and the Milt Luger Fellowship from the State Library of New South Wales. I would like to thank the two anonymous Labour History referees and I am also grateful to Bradon Ellem for his helpful comments.

^1. Thomas Goodwin, No. 161, Farrier, Stanmore, ML MSS 1598, diary entries as dated. Manuscripts Section, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales (hereafter ML).

^2. The term 'histories of the military' and the 'history of the military' is hereafter used to describe the historical literature on the Great War in an attempt to describe both the traditional 'military history' genre and the new 'war and society' approaches towards the military.

^3. Bean dedicated his work to the 'men and officers of the Australian Forces'. See C.E.W. Bean, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918. Volume I: The Story of Anzac: the first phase, 11^th edition, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1941, p. xxx.

^4. Bruce Scates, 'The Price of War: Labour Historians Confront Military History', Labour History, no. 84, May 2003, p. 134.

^5. Rae Frances, 'President's Column', Labour History, no. 91, November 2006, p. viii.

^6. Scates, 'The Price of War', p. 134. Joan Beaumont also examines this new direction in J. Beaumont, 'The State of Australian History of War', Australian Historical Studies, vol. 34, no. 121, 2003.

^7. Graham Seal, Inventing Anzac: The Digger and National Mythology, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, 2004, p. 3.

^8. Bill Gammage, The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War, Penguin Books, Ringwood, 1987, p. 32.

^9. Scates, 'The Price of War'.

^10. Alistair Thomson, Anzac Memories: Living with the Legend, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1994.

^11.Ibid., pp. 205–216.

^12.Ibid., pp. 211–212.

^13. Thomson provides a brief examination of the post-war working lives of these three men in ibid. pp. 205–216.

^14. Dale Blair, Dinkum Diggers: An Australian Battalion at War, Melbourne University Press, Carlton South, 2001, p. 8.

^15.Ibid. p. 8.

^16. J.G. Fuller, Troop Morale and Popular Culture in the British and Dominion Armies 1914–1918, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1990, p. 6.

^17. Eric J. Leed, No Man's Land: Combat & Identity in World War I, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979, p. x.

^18. For a review of this material see Anne-Marie Condé, 'Capturing the Records of War: Collecting at the Mitchell Library and the Australian War Memorial', Australian Historical Studies, no. 125, 2005.

^19. Blair, Dinkum Diggers, p. 9.

^20. For religious differences see for example Michael Hogan, The Sectarian Strand, Penguin Books, Ringwood, 1987. For class differences see for example R.W. Connell, and T.H. Irving, Class Structure in Australian History: Documents, Narrative and Argument, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1980. And for residential differences see for example Suzanne Welborn, Bush Heroes, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, North Fremantle, 2002, see in particular chapter three 'The Great Adventure', pp. 65–80.

^21. John McQuilton, Rural Australia and the Great War: From Tarrawingee to Tangambalanga, Melbourne University Press, Carlton South, 2001, p. 2. See also pp. 36–37 and pp. 174–181.

^22. Blair, Dinkum Diggers, pp. 23–26.

^23. Hector Brewer, No. 820, Groom, Petersham, ML MSS 1300, diary entries as dated.

^24. See for example Nathan Wise, '"Same old dope. Dodging work": The Working Class in the Military 1914–1918', The Hummer: Publication of the Sydney Branch, Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, vol. 4, no. 5, Summer 2005–2006, pp. 1–9.

^25. Thomas Goodwin, No. 161, Farrier, Stanmore, ML MSS 1598, diary entry dated 16/9/15.

^26.Ibid. diary entry dated 7/9/15.

^27. Nathan Wise, 'Fighting a Different Enemy: Social Protests Against Authority in the Australian Imperial Force During the First World War', International Review of Social History, forthcoming November 2007.

^28. John Bruce, No. 34710, Telephonist, Paddington, PR87/115, diary entry dated 14 October 1917. The question mark was in the original, perhaps to denote the poor quality of the singing.

^29. Wise, 'Fighting a Different Enemy'.

^30. For an example of the link between middle-class expectations and experiences see Nathan Wise, Playing Soldiers, BA Hons thesis, University of Wollongong, 2003.

^31. Seal, Inventing Anzac, p. 82.

^32. See for example Wise, Playing Soldiers, pp. 67–67.

^33. Thomas Goodwin, No. 161, Farrier, Stanmore, ML MSS 1598, diary entries as dated.

^34. P. Willis, 'Shop floor culture, masculinity and the wage form', in J. Clarke, C. Critcher, and R. Johnson (eds.), Working-Class Culture: Studies in History and Theory, Hutchinson, London, 1979, p. 196.

^35. Charles Fox and Marilyn Lake, Australians at Work: Commentaries and Sources, McPhee Gribble, Ringwood, 1990, p. 22, and R.W. Connell, Masculinities, Allen and Unwin, St. Leonards, 1995, pp. 32–33.

^36. Connell, Masculinities, p. 36.

^37. For an international perspective see Leed, No Man's Land, p. 93.

^38. Francis Vincent Addy, No. 2553, Iron Turner, Surry Hills, ML MSS 1607, diary entry dated 26/7/16.

^39. See for example Wise, Playing Soldiers, pp. 67–67.

^40. Kate Blackmore 'Soldier Settlement in New Zealand after World War I' in Judith Smart and T. Woods (eds), An Anzac Muster: War and Society in Australia and New Zealand 1914–18 and 1939–45 : Selected papers, Monash Publications in History, Clayton, 1992, p. 104.

^41. John Hartley Meads, No. 3985, Jackaroo, Bingara, AWM PR03005, diary entry dated 1/8/16.

^42. Marshall Burrows, No.753, Train Driver, Enmore, AWM 2DRL/0303, letter dated 8/12/16.

^43. Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, Oxford University Press, New York, 1975, pp. 169–170.

^44. For analyses of the post-war years of returned soldiers see Stephen Garton, The Cost of War: Australians Return, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1996, Marilyn Lake, The Limits of Hope: Soldier Settlement in Victoria, 1915–38, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1987, Bobbie Oliver, War and Peace in Western Australia: The Social and Political Impact of the Great War, 1914–1926, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, 1995.

^45. John Booth, No. 164, Shipwright, Balmain, ML MSS 1496, summary of diary entries, written on Feb 24, 1917 from No.3 Southern General Hospital in Oxford, England, p. 6.

^46. Cecil George Monk, No. 3153, Farmhand, Newtown, ML MSS 2884, diary entry dated 26/9/17.

^47. Thomas Goodwin, No. 161, Farrier, Stanmore, ML MSS 1598, diary entry dated 8/11/16.

^48. A. G. Butler argues that the intestinal diseases that afflicted the forces during May, June, and July were 'predominantly fly-borne'. A.G. Butler, The Australian Army Medical Services in the War of 1914–1918, Volume I, Australian War Memorial, Melbourne, 1938, p. 228.

^49. Ion Idriess, The Desert Column: Leaves from the Diary of an Australian Trooper in Gallipoli, Sinai, and Palestine, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1951, diary entry dated -/9/15, p. 41.

^50. See 'The rate per cent on weekly average strength of men evacuated from Anzac for sickness and wounds' in Butler, The Australian Army Medical Services, p. 347.

^51. Leed, No Man's Land, p. 2.

^52. William Henry Burrell, No.3461, ML MSS 1375, Railway Signalman, Camperdown, ML MSS 1375, diary entries as dated

^53.Ibid., diary entry dated 22/2/18.

^54.Ibid., diary entries as dated.

^55.Ibid., diary entry dated 26/7/16 to 1/8/16 (collective entry).

^56. See for example ibid., diary entries dated 3/3/18, 29/4/18 and 20/9/18.

^57. Thomas Goodwin, No. 161, Farrier, Stanmore, ML MSS 1598, diary entry dated 27/7/15.

^58.Ibid., diary entry dated 3/2/16.

^59. Janet Watson argued that similar sentiments were also expressed at times within the British army. See Janet Watson, Fighting Different Wars: Experience, Memory, and the First World War in Britain, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004, p. 5.

^60. British Chief's of Staff quickly blamed the poor Australian training and poor leadership on the high crime rate. For example, Sir Douglas Haig blamed the commander of the Australian Corps, Sir William Birdwood, for the Australian disciplinary problems. Fuller, Troop Morale and Popular Culture, p. 169.

^61. This is not to say that the AIF was egalitarian, quite the contrary. The men of the AIF followed the strict hierarchical structure established by the military's rank organisation. See for example Blair, Dinkum Diggers, pp. 18–19.

^62. See for example Rowan Cahill, 'The Battle of Sydney', Overland. 169, (Summer 2002), pp. 50–54 and Michael C. Darby, The Liverpool-Sydney Riot of 1916, BA Hons. thesis, University of Western Sydney, Macarthur, 1997.

^63. Blair, Dinkum Diggers, plate facing p. 119 and Darby, The Liverpool-Sydney Riot of 1916, p. 48.

^64. Darby, The Liverpool-Sydney Riot of 1916, p. 52

^65. George Butler Guy in Court-Martial of Acting Staff Sergeant-Major Sydney E. Tanner, AA A471/1 File 1444, p14. Cited from Darby, The Liverpool-Sydney Riot of 1916, p. 52.

^66. David J. Silbey, Their Graves Like Beds: The British Working Class and Enthusiasm for War, 1914–1916, PhD thesis, Duke University, North Carolina, 1999, p. 40.

^67. J. Williams, Discipline On Active Service: The 1^st Brigade, First AIF, 1914–1919, LittB thesis, Department of History, Australian National University, 1982, p. 8.

^68. Ernest Murray, No. 151, Mechanic, Surry Hills, ML MSS 2892, diary entry dated 1/11/15.

^69. James Green, No 2658, Labourer, Darlinghurst, ML MSS 1838, diary entry dated 29/8/17.

^70. John Bruce, No. 34710, Telephonist, Paddington, PR87/115, diary entry dated 1/3/17.

^71. See for example the experiences of Victorian bootmakers in Raelene Frances, The Politics of Work: Gender and Labour in Victoria, 1880–1939, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1993, p. 54.

^72. See for example Blair, Dinkum Diggers, p. 3.

^73.Ibid., see 'Class is everything', in particular pp. 19–24.

^74.Ibid., p. 54.

^75. Thomas Goodwin, No. 161, Farrier, Stanmore, ML MSS 1598, diary entry dated 29/2/17.

^76.Ibid., diary entry dated 9/7/17.

^77. John Bruce, No. 34710, Telephonist, Paddington, PR87/115, diary entry dated 23/2/17.

^78.Ibid., diary entry dated 10/5/17.

^79.Ibid., diary entry dated 15/2/18.

^80.Ibid., diary entry dated 7/5/18.

^81. C.E.W. Bean, Anzac to Amiens: A Shorter History of the Australian Fighting Services in the First World War, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1946, p. 547.

^82. Gammage, The Broken Years, see for example p. 310 for his comparison of the social background of men in the AIF.

^83. J.N.I. Dawes, and L.L. Robson, Citizen to Soldier: Australia before the Great War, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1977.

^84. Thomson, Anzac Memories, p. 166.

^85. Fuller, Troop Morale and Popular Culture, p. 176.

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