INTRODUCTION: THE AUSTRALIAN ARMY CORPS

THE RENOWN OF THE AUSTRALIANS as individual fighters, in all theatres of the Great War, has loomed large in the minds and imagination of the people of the Empire.

Many stories of the work they did have been published in the daily Press and in book form. But it is seldom that any appreciation can be discovered of the fact that the Australians in France gradually became, as the war progressed, moulded into a single, complete and fully organized Army Corps.

Seldom has any stress been laid upon the fact that because it thus became a formation fixed and stable in composition, fighting under a single command, and provided with all accessory arms and services, the Corps was able successfully to undertake fighting operations on the grandest scale.

There can be little question, however, that it was this development which constituted the paramount and precedent condition for the brilliant successes achieved by these splendid troops during the summer and autumn of 1918—successes which far overshadowed those of any earlier period of the war.

For a complete understanding of all the factors which contributed to those successes, and for an intelligent grasp of the course of events following so dramatically upon the outbreak of the great German offensive of March 21st of that year, I propose to trace, very briefly, the genesis and ultimate development of the Corps, as it became constituted when, on August 8th, it was launched upon its great enterprise of opening, in close collaboration with the Army Corps of its sister Dominion of Canada, that remarkable counter-offensive, which it maintained, without pause, without check, and without reverse, for sixty consecutive days—a period full of glorious achievement—which contributed, as I shall show in these pages, in the most direct and decisive manner, to the final collapse and surrender of the enemy.

In the days before the war, there was in the British Service no recognized or authorized organization known as an Army Corps. When the Expeditionary Force was launched into the conflict in 1914, the Army Corps organization was hastily improvised, and consisted at first merely of an Army Corps Staff, with a small allotment of special Corps Troops and services, and of a fluctuating number of Divisions.

It was the Division * and not the Corps, which was then the strategical unit of the Army. Even when the necessity for the formation of Army Corps was recognized, it was still a fundamental conception that it was the Division, and not the Army Corps, which constituted the fighting unit.

[* A Division consists of three Infantry Brigades, Divisional Artillery, three Field Companies of Engineers, three Field Ambulances, a Pioneer Battalion, a Machine Gun Battalion, together with Supply, Sanitary and Veterinary Services. Its nominal strength is 20,000.

An Infantry Brigade consists of four Infantry Battalions, each of 1,000 men, and a Light Trench Mortar Battery.

Divisional Artillery comprises two Brigades each of four batteries, each of six guns or howitzers, also one Heavy and three medium Trench Mortar Batteries, and the Divisional Ammunition Column.

This composition of a Division was modified in detail during the course of the war.]

To each Army Corps were allotted at first only two, but later as many as four Divisions, according to the needs and circumstances of the moment. But the component Divisions never, for long, remained the same. The actual composition of every Army Corps was subject to constant changes and interchanges, and it was rare for any given Division to remain for more than a few weeks in any one Army Corps.

The disadvantages of such an arrangement are sufficiently obvious to require no great elaboration; at the same time, it has to be recognized that, during the first three years of the war, at any rate, the Army was undergoing a process of rapid expansion, and that, on grounds of expediency, it was neither possible nor desirable to adopt a policy of a fixed and immutable composition for so large a formation as an Army Corps.

Moreover, the special conditions of trench warfare made it imperative to create, under the respective Armies, and in the respective zones of those Armies, a subordinate administrative and tactical authority with a more or less fixed geographical jurisdiction. Thus, the frontage held by each of the five British Armies became subdivided into a series of Corps frontages, and each Corps Commander had allotted to him a definite frontage, a definite depth and a definite area, for his administrative and executive direction.

It was within this Corps area that he exercised entire control of all functions of a purely local and geographical character: such as the maintenance of all roads, railways, canals, telegraphs and telephones; the control of all traffic; the apportionment of all billeting and quartering facilities; the allocation and employment of all means of transport; the collection and distribution of all supplies, comprising food, forage, munitions and engineering materials; the conservation and distribution of all water supply; the sanitation of the area; the whole medical administration within, and the evacuation of sick and wounded from the area; the establishment and working of shops of all descriptions, both for general engineering and for Ordnance purposes; also of laundries, bathing establishments and rest camps; the creation of facilities for the entertainment and recreation of resting troops, and of schools for their military training and for the education of their leaders.

The Corps Commander was, in addition, directly responsible to the Army Commander for the tactical defence of his whole area, for the creation and maintenance of the entire system of field defences covering his frontage, comprising trench systems in numerous successive zones and field fortifications of all descriptions; for preparations for the demolition of railways and bridges to meet the eventuality of an enforced withdrawal; and for detailed plans for an advance into the enemy’s territory whenever the opportune moment should arrive.

The extensive responsibilities thus imposed upon the Corps Commander, and upon the whole of his Staff, obviously demanded an intimate study and knowledge of the whole of the Corps area, such as could be acquired only by continuous occupation of one and the same area for a period extending over many months. It would therefore have been in the highest degree inconvenient to move such a complex organization as an Army Corps Staff from one area to another at short intervals of time. On the other hand, the several Divisions allotted to any given Corps for the actual occupation and maintenance of the defences could not be called upon to carry out without relief or rest, trench duty for continuous periods longer than a few weeks at a time. During the first three years the number of Divisions at the disposal of the British High Command was never adequate to provide each Army Corps in the front line with sufficient Divisions to permit of a regular alternation out of its own resources of periods of trench duty and periods of rest. For a Corps holding a two-Division frontage, for example, it would have been necessary to provide a permanent strength of at least four Divisions in order to permit of such a rotation.

The expedient generally adopted, therefore, was to withdraw altogether from the Army Corps, each Division in turn, as it became due for a rest behind the line or was required for duty elsewhere, and to substitute some other available Division from G.H.Q. or Army Reserve. The broad result was that such an deal as that of a fixed composition for an Army Corps proved quite unattainable, and there was a constant interchange of nearly the whole of the Divisions of the Army, who served in succession, for short periods, in many different Corps, and under many different Commanders.

To this general rule there was, from the outset of its formation, one striking exception, in the case of the Canadian Army Corps, consisting of the four Canadian Divisions, which, with rare exceptions, and these only for short periods and for quite special purposes, invariably fought as a complete Corps of fixed constitution.

It is impossible to overvalue the advantages which accrued to the Canadian troops from this close and constant association of all the four Divisions with each other, with the Corps Commander and his Staff, and with all the accessory Corps services. It meant mutual knowledge of each other among all Commanders, all Staffs, all arms and services, and the mutual trust and confidence born of that knowledge. It was the prime factor in achieving the brilliant conquest of the Vimy Ridge by that Corps in the early spring of 1917.

The consummation, so long and so ardently hoped for, of a similar welding together of all Australian units in the field in France into a single Corps was not achieved in its entirety until a full year later, and it will be interesting to trace briefly the steps by which such a result, strongly pressed as it was by the Australian Government, was finally brought about.

Australia put into the field and maintained until the end, altogether five Divisions of Infantry, complete with all requisite Artillery, Engineers, Pioneers and all Supply, Medical and Veterinary Services, in full conformity with the Imperial War Establishments laid down for such Divisions. But the method and time of their formation and organization, the manner and circumstances of their war preparation, and their employment as part of a Corps...