HMAS Parramatta (author's collection)

The Australian War Memorial faces unique challenges presented by the modern age to its collection development for recent conflicts, including Iraq and Afghanistan. With email, phones and internet communicative tools largely replacing traditional keepsakes such as diaries and letters, this has made identifying and retaining objects of the ADF experience in modern conflict rather difficult. Furthermore, given that the number of ADF personnel serving overseas is far less than those who saw service in such conflicts as the World Wars, this also limits the amount of material representing recent conflicts and therefore what will shape the Memorial’s collections in the future.

One attempt to address this issue involved a representative from the Memorial being sent, in late 2008 to accompany Australian forces in Iraq. Mal Booth, former Head of the Memorial’s Research Centre, was fortunate enough spend time with Australian forces in Iraq and was able to identify and target items which would be of interest to the Memorial. Some of this material was identified on the industrious HMAS Parramatta, which was at that time conducting its second tour of the Gulf as part of Operation CATALYST. Mal travelled with the ship on his journey and found that the vessel and its crew provided extensive opportunities for proactive collecting.

In September 2009, the Memorial returned to HMAS Parramatta in order to gather further material…

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The Memorial’s Research Centre holds over 900 First World War German Official and Regimental Histories in its Published Collection. These extensive holdings of rare German language histories are mainly due to the foresight and enthusiasm of Capt. J. J. Herbertson who was instrumental in the collection of these titles over the period 1922-1937.

A view of some of the 900 plus German histories held in the stacks.

A selection of German Regimental histories from the Published Collection.

Official record series AWM47 provides the best context for Herbertson’s work in its series description. AWM47, 1914-18 war information obtained from Germany for the Australian Official War Historian is a small series of mostly German records, which Herbertson was employed to locate and translate:

“At the suggestion of the Director of the War Memorial (Major J L Treloar) and the Official Historian (C E W Bean) arrangements were made in January 1923, by the Prime Minister’s Department through the High Commissioner’s Office in London, to engage Captain J J W Herbertson to collect certain information from German sources. This was required to complete the war records in the Australian War Memorial Library.

In 1916-17, Herbertson had been an intelligence officer attached to 1st Anzac Corps. In the 1920’s he was Political Officer for the British Department of the Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission at Coblenz. Herbertson acknowledges the willing assistance of the German authorities, especially Herr Archivrat Stenger of the Reichsarchives in Potsdam”.

Official Record AWM47 Series Description

A selection of Regimental Histories held in the Published Collection.

“also responsible for arranging the acquisition of a number of German publications for the War Memorial Library”.

This is why the Research Centre is lucky enough to hold such a large and almost complete collection of First World War German language Official and Regimental Histories.

The histories which include German official histories and German, Bavarian, Prussian and Saxon unit histories can be located on our books database using the following subject searches:

World War, 1914-1918 – Regimental histories – Germany.; (870 books)
Unit histories, German.; (957 books)
Official histories, German.; (43 books)

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On the 19^th November 1941, Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney II was lost, with all hands, off the coast of Western Australia after engaging with the German raider HSK Kormoran. The discovery in March 2008 of the final resting place of the Sydney and the Kormoran attracted much attention. Understandably, there has been much discussion over the circumstances surrounding the loss of the Sydney; however the story of the Kormoran’s Commander, Theodor Anton Detmers, and that of his crew, continued long after the battle. Almost a week after the sinking of the Kormoran, Detmers was picked up in a lifeboat along with other crewmen. Brought to Australia as a prisoner of war, he and several of his countrymen were detained in Dhurringile Prison Camp, Victoria. It was not long before the Commander and his countrymen had formulated a plan to escape their fortress using a hand-drawn map of Australia’s east coast, now held by the Australian War Memorial.

Group portrait of German Officer prisoners of war (POWs) interned at Dhurringile. Detmers is in the front row, third from left. 030185_05

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The Research Centre holds a fascinating and unusual collection of 68 aerial photographs of Gallipoli in 1915. The majority of the collection consists of 48 numbered aerial photographs taken over Anzac and South Suvla by the British Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) in October and November 1915 at a time when aerial photography was very much in its infancy and highly experimental.

Much of the early aerial photography at Gallipoli was conducted by Flight Lieutenant C. H. Butler of No. 3, RNAS. From April to June in 1915, when he was badly wounded, Butler would personally take over 700 photographs of fortifications and gun positions before the landing at Gallipoli.

At the war’s end It was soon discovered by the Memorial that these aerial photos were not suitable ‘for permanent record purposes’. In the field, early issue of the photographs was more important than permanency and many of the prints were insufficiently washed and liable to fade, so it was arranged for permanent prints to be prepared (AWM16 5). Despite being ‘Treated for Permanency’ by the Memorial in the 1930s, as suggested by the Royal Photographic Society, these Gallipoli aerial photographs have since faded and yellowed to the point where the images were virtually unusable.

With the help of our multimedia section, a project was undertaken to photographically restore these images to their former glory.

Often when old prints have faded they will become a yellow or brown colour. By using a blue filter and an increased exposure to make a new negative for each image we were able to restore contrast and density levels.

Even when very little detail is seen by the naked eye in the original print, a blue filter (Kodak Wratten filter number 47B) can pick up much of the unseen information. The blue filter works by reducing the yellow content, and teamed with increased exposure the original detail (before fading) is able to be restored and seen in the new negative and print. It can then be further enhanced using Photoshop if required.

This process reminds us of the importance of proven traditional photographic techniques, especially because a lot of what we are working with is quite old and sometimes unstable.

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Phoebe Chapple (1879-1967) Image courtesy of the State Library of South Australia. B 25677/34

Phoebe Chapple was always going to be someone special. She grew up in a family of high achievers. Apart from her father, Frederic Chapple, who was headmaster at Prince Alfred College Adelaide, five of her seven siblings held university degrees: Alfred a lecturer in engineering at St John’s University Cambridge; Ernest, another Cambridge graduate at Jesus University and president of the Fresher Debating Society before taking up a position in Rangoon, Burma; Harold a surgeon at Guy’s Hospital in London; Marian an arts graduate from the University of Adelaide; and Fred, another doctor. However, Phoebe stood apart even in such accomplished company.

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The Netherland’s national archives, Nationaal Archief, has recently completed a research project: Afscheid van Indië (Separation from Indonesia), which includes the web publishing of over 175,000 pages of digitised records. The site tells the story of the separation of the Netherlands from its former colony of Indonesia during the 1940s. This turbulent decade in the history of the Netherlands is told through the use of archival material sourced from three continents including the collections of the Australian War Memorial.

nationaal-archief

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Anzac, the landing 1915 by George Lambert ART02873

For ninety four years the story of Gallipoli has galvanised Australians to remember, on ANZAC Day, those that have served, and continue to serve, in conflicts around the globe. The description by poet John Masefield in 1917 of the landing on Gallipoli creates an indelible backdrop to the fighting:

Those who wish to imagine the scene must think of any rough and steep coast known to them, picturing it as roadless, waterless, much broken with gullies, covered with scrub, sandy, loose, difficult to walk upon, and without more than two miles of accessible landing throughout its length…Then let them imagine the hills entrenched, the landing mined, the beaches tangled with barbed wire, ranged by Howitzers, and swept by machine guns…

(See rare movie footage of Anzac and Suvla here) 

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