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Model-T Fords, a far flung corner of WWI
ARMY
Barry Stone
10987654321
Map vii
Introduction ix
CHAPTER 1 1
A MAD ENTERPRISE
CHAPTER 2 69
THE GREAT FAMINE
CHAPTER 3 103
THE HUMANITARIAN ARMY
CHAPTER 4 169
A HASTY WITHDRAWAL
Epilogue 217
Bibliography 223
Index 226
A MAD ENTERPRISE
What one lacked the other had and we really must have been a
very difficult trio to tackle. Our earlier escapades were on the lines
of simple buffoonery, but we soon evolved on to a higher plain of
astute plotting on more intellectual lines, the essence of each plot
being that it should leave our adversaries nothing to hit back at.
region it may well have been, although once war broke out the
IndianAfghan frontier was far removed from providing the
sort of opportunities for advancement that one had in Europe.
Even with a new command, Dunsterville would often lament he
was again in the same backwater he was before, a dull world of
routine garrison duties and uneventful patrols.
His steadily accumulating experience in dealing with ethnic
groups in the Far East, however, coupled with his fluency in
Russian, German and Persian, would soon stand him in good stead
for a new and prestigious appointment. Late in 1917 he received
orders to relinquish his Indian command and report immediately
to army headquarters in Delhi, where he was promoted to the
rankof major general and given a slew of new titles, including
Chief of the British Mission to the Caucasus, and British
Representative at Tiflis, the capital of Georgia (now Tbilisi). He
would be sent to Baghdad, he was told, and be given command
over a new all-volunteer army made up of the finest officers and
NCOs the War Office could find. Together they would move north
through Persia (modern-day Iran) and into the Caucasus to Tiflis
and work diplomatically to keep Tiflis out of Russian, Turkish
and German hands, to create a buffer zone between Turkey and
Russia, and assist in establishing a government sympathetic to
British interests. The men he would command were nicknamed,
with an air of inevitability, the Dunsterforce.
It wouldnt be easy. The British government was a long way
behind the diplomatic eight ball in the Caucasus, and Georgia in
particular. Long before the first shots were fired in this war, the
The truth of the matter is that Tiflis, long before the war, had what
the Russians called a German orientation. In their deep preparation
for this great war the Germans left no stone unturned, and the
Caucasus, north and south, had been thoroughly exploited by them
in view of possible eventualities.
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left the chateau with more questions than they had answers for
and no wiser as to the specifics of their mission. In the days that
followed that initial briefing the list of Australians was seen as
so impressive that a second request came to Birdwood for an
additional forty officers of similar stature.
This continual adding to its numbers was typical of how
Dunsterforce grew over time. One of the names on that initial
list was 2nd Divisions Captain Stanley George Savige. Born in
Morwell, Victoria on 26 June 1890, Savige left school at the
age of twelve, became a blacksmiths striker for two shillings a
week, and later joined a cadet detachment as a bugler. He studied
the life of Baden Powell and joined the Boy Scouts, and was a
deeply committed Christian, being baptised full immersion as
aBaptist after being raised Anglican. At the age of seventeen he
moved with his family from Gippsland to Melbourne, and when
war came in 1914 found himself with something of a dilemma,
wanting desperately to serve his country while at the same time
wanting to remain true to his religious convictions. Savige joined
the AIF on 6 March 1915 and was posted to the 24th Battalion,
which landed on the beaches of Gallipoli in September. After
a series of promotions he was put in command of one of his
battalions rearguard parties when they evacuated in November.
In March 1916 he was sent to France and was promoted to
captain in September after serving as an intelligence officer at
Pozires and Mouquet Farm. Wounded at Flers in November, he
returned to his battalion in February 1917 and a series of battles
followedWarlencourt, Grvillers, Bullecourt. A recipient of
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I have the best battalion in France. There never were men truer,
braver, more gallant or loyal or capable, or more loved by their
senior commanding officer...this is just breaking my heart. I could
not say goodbye to a single soul.
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a lunar-
like landscape of water-
filled craters. Five Australian
divisions were at the forefront of the attack on Passchendaele,
including Roy Stewarts 34th Battalion, which was thrown into
the nightmare with eight hundred men and twenty officers only
to emerge from it with eighty men and three officers. No wonder,
then, that Stewart and other 3rd Division officers responded as
they did on hearing of a request from General Birdwood calling
for men with the rank of captain to volunteer for an unspecified
operation a long way from the horrors of the Western Front.
Anything had to be better than the battlefields of Belgium.
For some volunteers, though, it wasnt the horrors of the
battle
field that provided the incentive to leave, it was the
insufferableness of their commanding officers. John Warden
of the 102nd Canadian Infantry Battalion and a veteran of the
Boer War in South Africa, couldnt wait to get away from his
own commanders, whom he considered phonies and decoration
hunters:
I should never have left the Canadians, but for the fact I could
not stand my Brigadier General Victor Odlum any longer, nor
Major General David Watson, Divisional Commander. Both very
mercenary men...who used their commands to gain public notice
and repute.
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