First World War Galleries- Photograph Portrait Ribbon

Friends’ Ambulance Service

photographer unknown
England, c. 1914
AWM P02686.025

Support for the war in Australia was not altogether unanimous. Some opposed the war on political or moral grounds; others, such as Charles “Frank” Fryer, because of their religion.

For Fryer, military service was a contradiction to his Quaker beliefs. At the outbreak of war he volunteered for the Friends’ Ambulance Service, a civilian medical force established by the Society of Friends (Quakers) to provide ambulance and relief support to sick and wounded soldiers and civilians in France. Working mainly in Sommeilles and Sermaize-les-Bains, Fryer and other volunteers carried on the tradition of their faith, helping vulnerable soldiers and citizens during the course of the war.

Before returning to Australia, Fryer married Ethel Helena Ubsdell, a British nursing sister who originally went to France with the Society of Friends’ War Victim Relief in November 1914. She then served two-and-a-half years attached to the 36th French Army Corps.

Anzac diversity

photographer unknown
France, c. 1917–18
AWM P08550.001

The Commonwealth Defence Act 1909 excluded any person not of “substantially European” origin from serving in the military, and this included some immigrants and those Indigenous Australians considered not substantially European. But many Australians of Asian descent as well as more than 1,200 Indigenous Australians did serve during the First World War.

Sergeant Leslie Kew-Ming was one of an estimated 200 Chinese Australians who served with the Australian Imperial Force. He was promoted several times during his service in France and Belgium and won the Military Medal at Broodseinde on 9 October 1917 for bravery and leadership in the field while wounded. He survived the war, returning to Australia in 1919.

Discipline and desertion

photographer unknown
place unknown, c. 1917
AWM P11289.001

By 1918 the illusions of a brief, glorious war had long passed, and many Australian soldiers were suffering from battle fatigue. With no obvious end to the fighting in sight, many sought escape by absenting themselves from the lines.

Private Frederick “George” Bailey enlisted in 1916 and saw action in some of the costliest battles for the Australians on the Western Front, including at Lagnicourt, Bullecourt, Menin Road, and Poelcapelle.

Bailey was in Britain in 1918. A series of increasingly long absences without leave and two convictions for minor thefts saw him committed to a civil prison at Wandsworth in England. The war finished before he had completed his sentence and he returned to Australia on board HMAT Ceramic in January 1919.

The U-boat menace

photographer unknown
New South Wales, c. 1915–18
AWM P11193.005

In the early morning of 26 February 1918 the hospital ship Glenart Castle was torpedoed by the German U-boat UC-56. Among those killed was Sister Edith Blake, an Australian nurse serving with the Queen Alexandra Imperial Nursing Service. Her family placed a small memorial notice in the Sydney Morning Herald on the first anniversary of her death:

For her there were no flowers

To adorn the unmarked surface of the water;

The ocean alone decks her grave with gifts of pearls and shell,

And wreathes her brow with seaweeds rare.

Blake’s family was sent a memorial plaque in 1923 “as a solace for bereavement and as a memento.” Some 60,000 of these plaques were issued in Australia, with only 25 going to the families of Australian nurses. These bore the unique inscription: “She died for freedom.”

“Poor old Bert … lying in his shallow soldier’s grave”

photographer unknown
Australia, c. June–October 1916
AWM PR85/163.001

There are many stories of brothers serving together in war: some end happily, with the family reunited in peacetime; others, like the story of Corporal Bertie and Sergeant Victor Harding, reveal the depth of family bonds and the impact of the loss of a beloved brother, son, or husband.

Bertie and Victor Harding were the only sons of Joseph Samuel and Annie May Harding. The boys were close; as Victor described, they “were as two brothers seldom are, all in all to each other”. Although in separate units, the brothers “used to see each other as often as possible when we were out of the line, in fact it was the only thing we had to look forward to”.

Bertie Harding was killed during the 2nd Division assault on the German defensive position at Mont St Quentin on 31 August 1918. His brother, who had just returned to the front from leave in Paris, shared his grief with his aunt in Australia:

It has been the most miserable and desolate time of my life since he went … I am alone now, no one can ever take his place, and I can only hope that he is better off than we who are left behind. He knew the risk he was taking and never hesitated or flinched, and at least I must try and be worthy [of] the honour of calling him “brother”. All the time in Paris there enjoying myself my poor old Bert was lying in his shallow soldier’s grave on Mont St Quentin. Can I ever forget it?

“War’s grim toll”

photographer unknown
Adelaide, c. 1919
AWM P10687.045.002

Other portraits offer a window onto the struggles faced by returned men after the war. One such story is that of Lieutenant Colonel Harry Downes, who was a decorated officer of the 48th Battalion and former adjutant. Downes took his life on 11 November 1931, 13 years after the war had ended.

Only a few months before, he had been a pallbearer at the funeral of Captain David Twining (known as Don Ack Toc), a fellow battalion member who had committed suicide. Downes had contributed to Twining’s obituary in the returned soldiers’ journal Reveille; these words would become his own epitaph:

To some people the war finished in 1918, but to those of us who understand, the Grim Reaper is still taking his toll, just as surely as he did at Messines or Passchendaele, and, to me, “Don Ack Toc” has gone to join his comrades of Gallipoli and Flanders, “killed in action” just as surely as if he had “stopped it” in the strenuous days of 1914–1918.

“I am an old warrior”

photographer unknown
Australia, c. 1919–25
AWM P10266.096

Matron Mary “Bessie” Pocock was a self-proclaimed “old-warrior”. A dedicated career nurse and decorated veteran of the Boer War, she was among the first contingent of nurses to embark Australia in 1914.

During her service with the AIF she worked as a senior sister in hospitals in Cairo and Ismailia in Egypt before taking up duty as a matron on board the hospital ship Assaye, which transported wounded soldiers to England. She went on to serve in France, Belgium, and Britain. Matron Pocock was awarded the Royal Red Cross, and was later twice Mentioned in Despatches.

Matron Pocock continued caring for servicemen after the war while working at Gladesville mental hospital, and she later opened a convalescence hospital in Chatswood called “Ismailia”. She never married, and lived with her brother, sister, and nieces until her death on 16 July 1946.

Fate unknown

Arthur and Son
Mount Gambier, South Australia, c. 1915–19
AWM P06001.001

One of the final photographs in the ribbon is of an anonymous soldier bearing the scars of war. His name and fate are unknown but he is representative of the more than 2,200 soldier amputees who had returned to Australia by 1919. The Armistice may have marked the end of the war, but for many returned soldiers and their families it signalled the start of years of struggle, sacrifice, and rehabilitation.