Currie – Monash commemorative dinner address
Australians all let us rejoice, for we are young and free.
O Canada!
Our home and native land
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free.
Two anthems, two nations, two histories bound in common values and aspirations.
Canada, Australia – strong, young and free.
We pause here at the Australian War Memorial where our nation, Australia, reveals its soul, its character.
Australian and Canadian, we do so as free and confident heirs to a legacy born of idealism, forged in self-sacrifice and passed now to our generation.
We gather in renewed commitment to one another, our two nations, the values that bind us and the ideals of mankind.
As US President John F Kennedy observed at the ground breaking for the Robert Frost Library at Amherst College in 1963, a nation reveals itself not only in those whom it chooses to lead, but those it chooses to honour.
On this day we honour two men who by their leadership gave us a greater belief in ourselves and a deeper understanding of what it means to be Australian and Canadian.
General Sir John Monash GCMG, KCB, VD commander of the Australian Corps and General Sir Arthur William Currie GCMG, KCB who commanded the Canadian Corps.
On this day in 1918 each man led our respective troops in what would be the greatest blow against the Germans of the First World War.
The Battle for Amiens was famously described by the German Army’s commanding officer, General Erich Ludendorff in his 1919 memoirs as:
….the black day of the German army in the history of war….the worst experience I had.
‘Amiens’ lent its name to the decisive defeat delivered by the British Fourth Army and the French First Army on 8 August 1918 against German forces in northern France.
There were twin objectives - to finally and permanently break the German lines driving a wedge between them, and then to protect Amiens, its railway station, rail lines and critical infrastructure.
The British part of the operation – aimed at driving the Germans east, away from Amiens, for a distance of up to eleven kilometres – was launched by three corps: the British 3rd Corps north of the Somme River (50 divisions); the Australian Corps south of the Somme River and north of the Amiens-Chaulnes railway line; and the Canadian Corps on Australia’s right, between the railway and the Amiens-Roye road.
Twenty five French Divisions were on the right flank.
The Canadians were brought down from Arras in great secrecy, while the Australian Corps was augmented by the return of its 1st Division from the Lys front.
Guns silently registered onto their targets rather than ranged by firing a few rounds.
Into the attack were brought 430 British tanks under the cover of masking aircraft noise – a device successfully employed by Monash at Hamel.
Monash addressed his troops on the evening of 7 August:
For the first time in the history of this corps, all five Australian Divisions will tomorrow engage in the largest and most important battle operation ever undertaken by the Corps. They will be supported by exceptionally powerful artillery, tanks and aeroplanes on a scale never previously attempted.
The battlefield was thickly covered in fog when massed British guns brought down the creeping barrage signalling the start of the advance at 4.20 a.m.
In the pre-dawn on the 8th of August, Monash wrote:
In black darkness 1 million infantry are deployed over 12 miles of front…..with a mighty roar 1,000 guns begin in symphony and a great illumination lights up the eastern horizon and the whole complex organ began to advance
Sergeant Walter (‘Jimmy’) Downing of the 57th Battalion wrote:
The waiting men fidgeted….As though a flaming dawn had been flung into the sky, the whole world flared behind us…..a titanic pandemonium of ten thousand guns. We shouted to each other, but we could not hear our own voices, buried beneath colossal ranges of sound…..The hoarse and frantic rumbling of the sixty-pounders, the long naval guns, the great howitzers, was like the rapid burring of a thousand drums…
… Then a rattling of machine-guns told us that the lads in front were at grips with the enemy…
… We hurried forward fearful lest we should be late at our places as bullets zipped among us. …
…. the Canadians took Marcelcave, immediately across the railway from where we were, and all was ready for us to go forward. We had watched them at work – encircling villages, storming strong posts and fighting through woods.
They (Canadians) had a rough time, for the difficulties of their terrain were often great, but they were good men. In the ancient Homeric style they were led in person by their colonel, accompanied by their chaplain. We were often able to assist them when we were farther forward than they, by firing into the backs of the enemy across the railway line.
Barely three hours later the German front line trench system had been overrun.
In the Australian sector, the 4th and 5th Divisions passed through the 2nd and 3rd Divisions, who had led the assault until then, pushing ahead to the second line of objectives another three kilometres on. By mid-afternoon, these too had been taken.
Gunner Helmore reported from deep into enemy territory:
Entering Fritz’s land with mixed feelings….abandoned gun positions, corpses littered about, blankets strewn everywhere….we could not repress a shudder at the gruesome sights we saw.
German trenches ploughed up by shells and a few still shapes in grey uniforms told the tale of our big barrage…..there was no barbed wire; no support or reserve trenches, just a small shallow front line as if the enemy feared no offensive from our side or was planning an advance himself…very different from the German defences at Ypres.
The RAF provided strong aerial support and improved techniques for co-ordinating with ground forces. Allied aircraft circled above the infantry when not in the multiple dogfights.
Canadian air ace Raymond Collishaw wrote:
The fighter Squadrons suffered heavily…..the whole Roye road was strewn with hundreds of aircraft and derelict tanks. Each time the fighter pilots were launched to assault the infantry, they could see the aeroplane graveyard beneath them, and one was conscious, while passing through a hail of fire, that at any moment the frail shell, in which the pilot felt poised precariously, might join its kind below
George Maxwell of the Canadian 49th Battalion observed the human toll on the ground. He found a group of dead machine gunners from his Battalion, none bearing visible wounds, killed by the concussion of a high explosive shell.
Some were in a crouching posture, as if tending their guns. They looked as if they were still alive, some resembled wax figures. One….was caught in the act of lighting his pipe, his hands still cupped around where the match had been…and there he knelt, stone dead
For a time the British corps in the north had fell behind the required rate of progress, thereby exposing the 4th Division’s left flank to fire from German troops north of the Somme around Cérisy.
The Australians still pushed on to the second objective – catching in the process hundreds of German support and reserve troops in the Morcourt Valley – then continued on with the third and final stage still with the Germans firing into their flank and rear.
On reaching the ridge overlooking Morcourt, A Company with its left flank exposed saw Germans preparing to escape from the Australian advance. The OC of A Company boldly decided to attack the village without the other two companies, although it was reduced to half strength.
Whilst two small groups flanked the village, the remainder, led by Captain Norman Wilson, entered the village from the south headed by one tank, machine guns and a six pounder in rapid action.
The early vigorous German defence was quickly defeated in ferocious fighting and the village captured along with many machine guns and 200 prisoners.
For his leadership and courage, Wilson was awarded the Military Cross.
The 116th Battalion was the least experienced of the Canadian units deployed on 8 August. But it was led by one of Canada’s bravest and most competent soldiers – LTCOL Georges Pearkes VC.
Pearkes had been awarded the Victoria Cross in the bloodbath of Passchendaele, but at Amiens he valiantly led the ‘Umpty Umps’ as the Battalion was known.
Pearkes had trained his unit in the new Canadian and Australian techniques of assault. Under Currie, they no longer moved en mass. Men now dashed from position to position under cover fire from other small units and then in turn covering their advance.
The unit’s cohesion was shattered in an ambush at Hamon Wood. Suffering many casualties the Battalion wavered. But Pearkes gathered up his scattered men and drove them on towards their objectives, the 116th taking more than 400 prisoners.
Pearkes’ adjutant noted:
The dash of our men was marked, showing a marvellous difference from the old staid method of following the barrage shoulder to shoulder
By nightfall, both the Allied armies had reached their final objectives south of the Somme.
A shattering blow had been dealt to the German Army, which sustained 27,000 casualties - 16,000 prisoners of which half were taken by the Australians, another third by the Canadians.
Among the 450 guns captured was the 11-inch German gun mounted on a railway platform, which had been shelling Amiens from the village of Harbonnières.
Attacked by British aircraft, then British cavalry, the gun was finally secured by Australian infantry. Its barrel is displayed here today at the Australian War Memorial, a powerful reminder of the brutal industrialised killing of the First World War.
Three days later, on 11 August King George V arrived at Amiens and Knighted Monash, the first battlefield knighthood in 100 years. It would also be the last.
Monash and Currie, in the perfection of teamwork, gave us a war winning combination.
Both were meticulous planners who developed reputations for the clever application of firepower.
Each was a Corps commander of genius, co-ordinating infantry, tanks, artillery and air support.
Both men had been in a business before the war that almost went broke.
Both were pre-war members of the militia who rose through the ranks to become corps commanders of their respective national military forces.
Both are subject to popularly-held views that their achievements as military commanders have not been given ‘proper recognition’.
Of John Monash, his biographer Geoffrey Serle wrote:
…..he had the first essential qualities, the capacity to bear great strain and to make quick and clear decisions. His sheer intellect, breadth of grasp, his articulateness especially, together with his forceful personality, induced respect and confidence among his juniors … in 1918 the men in the line knew that all was right behind them
Arthur Currie is widely considered one of the ablest generals of the First World War. He had executed the heroic Canadian victory at Vimy Ridge that would give his nation its ‘story’.
Among his strengths was his emphasis on meticulous planning and preparation, and recognition of artillery’s importance to trench warfare.
Canadian Prime Minister Borden held Currie in high esteem.
Britain’s wartime Prime Minister David Lloyd George called him a “brilliant military commander.”
There is even evidence to suggest that Lloyd George at one point had considered appointing Currie commander of all British forces.
But like Monash, he courted controversy and criticism.
Australians and Canadians have served, fought, suffered and died in almost every major conflict from the Anglo-Boer War, two World Wars, to Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan. In peacekeeping – including East Timor, counter piracy and disaster relief, we have been there together.
We have each paid a similar price in casualties and our combatants have been awarded a similar number of Victoria Crosses.
We are Pacific nations who know there are truths by which we live that are worth fighting to defend – politically, diplomatically and militarily.
We are nations motivated to defend these truths in the belief that our interests are our values, and our values are our interests.
We are nations whose citizens enjoy political, economic and religious freedoms.
We are nations that uphold a free press, an independent judiciary, free academic enquiry and a societies in which faith coexists with reason.
The world is always changing.
Cataclysms such as the Napoleonic Wars or the Second World War make it obvious the world has changed and will never be the same again.
But there are occasions when humankind moves through a transformation to a new age unaware of the scale and nature of what is happening.
Perhaps we are living through such a time.
In 2014, the then Chief of Army Lt General David Morrison delivered the Australian Army’s birthday address in the Memorial’s commemorative area.
To 400 of his uniformed personnel, he said that the Australian Army must - as after the Vietnam War, prepare for and adapt to the ‘long peace’. It would, he said, be an era of relatively low operational activity.
As I listened, I hoped he was right, but feared he was wrong.
Three years later, a former Chief of the Australian Defence Force, Admiral Chris Barrie (Ret’d), has warned of a world ‘sleep walking’ to war.
As I listened, I hoped he was wrong. But fear he could be right.
Paul Kennedy, the Richard Dilworth professor of history at Yale and head of its International Security Studies Centre, published an essay in 2011 in which he argued that as with the transition from the late 15th to the early 16th century, humankind moving to a ‘new age’.
As evidence he posted the diminishing role of the US dollar as the sole global reserve currency; the key instruments of the post-world war two world – especially the United Nations Security Council are failing the world that is, let alone the one that is coming; the existential economic crisis facing Europe and its fracturing is driving even deeper European introspection.
But most significantly, Kennedy asserts that Asia has moved to centre stage. The world of 1500 is at an end.
The flow of economic and political power ebbing from Europe and North America to the Asia Pacific was greatly accelerated by the Global Financial Crisis.
The re-emergence of China runs in parallel with an arms race in East and Southern Asia.
And this as we are on the cusp of living in a world in which we have not lived since the Franco-Prussian war or the Quing dynasty.
Also published in 2011, was Henry Kissinger’s tome entitled China.
In it he draws out the remarkable similarities between late 19th century Europe after the unification of Germany and that of the Asia Pacific today.
The most significant relationship in the world, he reminded us is that between China and the United States.
It is being forged here in our region now, a region replete with multiple, deep geostrategic uncertainties.
The United States, whose substantial naval presence in the western Pacific since 1945 has been the bedrock of security and economic prosperity in the Region, is now threatening a return to isolationism exacerbated by volatility in its leadership.
We are fighting resurgent totalitarianism in the form of Islamic extremism and those who have hijacked the name of Islam to build a violent political utopia.
We are witnessing the mass movement of people, resurgent nationalism, populism, questioning of science as the basis for informed decision making and the repudiation of liberalism with its free and open markets.
A resurgent ‘class war’ is emerging, drawing from the perception of a deepening well of ‘inequality’. There is bitter resentment from those who ‘have not’ towards those who ‘have’ – both within and between countries.
With the exception of Canada and New Zealand, the ‘Anglosphere’ is racked by self-doubt about the very things which made it great.
And what might address this inequality?
Only months ago, Professor Walter Scheidel from Stanford University published a book entitled, The Great Leveller: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the 21st century.
He has studied and carefully documented the history of inequality since the Stone Age.
History shows there is nothing done by governments that have had any appreciable impact on the inequality driving our western ‘winter of discontent’.
Only four things have reduced inequality:
- Epidemics and Pandemics such as the black death that changed the value of land and labour
- Complete collapse of whole states and economic systems such as the Tang Dynasty or collapse of the western Roman Empire
- Total revolution as in China and Russia
The fourth is what brings us here tonight – mass mobilisation for war.
Twentieth century wars brought increased income taxes, property taxes, damage to capital goods, and mass mobilisation for war followed by post war inflation and significant trade union membership.
‘Modern’ warfare dramatically reduced inequality.
The Canadian author, Margaret MacMillan reminded us in her brilliant book, The War the ended Peace, that many Europeans believed in the late 19th and early 20th century, that war was needed to ‘cleanse and revitalise decadent societies’.
Crisis, she observed, ‘tested political manhood’.
Finally, Historian Kenneth Clarke in his stunning BBC documentary series, Civilization studied human civilization throughout history.
Having examined them all, at the end of the final episode he concluded:
No matter how complex it can be, society is fragile. It is lack of confidence more than anything else that kills a civilization. We can destroy ourselves just as easily by cynicism and disillusionment as by bombs.
What is most important in all of this is for us, Australians and Canadians, to be confident about whom we are and in what it is that we believe.
It is not for us to lecture other nations about their values, but we must be very clear about our own.
And upon this bedrock must be a clearly articulated vision for our nations that is economic, human and social.
Canadians and Australians – we are defined less by our respective constitutions, flags and machinery of democracy given us by the British than we are by our values and our beliefs, the way we relate to one another and see our place in the world.
We are shaped most by our heroes and villains, out triumphs and failures, the way as a people we have faced adversity and how we face the inevitable adversities coming and respond to threatening, new and emerging horizons.
Two heroes, two leaders of men who shaped not only victory in war but confidence in ourselves and our two nations have brought us here.
We best honour them and those whom they led by the way we live our lives, shape our nations and world.
Inspired by them we are strong and we are free.