His philosophy was that this is a story too great for people who hadn't been involved in it to understand, and he just said, we will never the people at home will never understand what it meant to charge the trenches at Lone Pine or to fight across that desolate plane at Crithia.
I'm Jen Kelly from The Herald Son and Missus in Black and White, a podcast about some of Australia's forgotten characters. Today we'll hear the life story of a remarkable man whose name has popped up frequently in our episodes over the past five years. His name was Charles Bean, and he's best known as the official historian of World War One. He documented the war in six extraordinary volumes and then
went on to establish the Australian War Memorial. But today we're going to hear about another fascinating side to the life of a man best known as a journalist and historian. As the official correspondent at Gallipoli, Been willingly put his life in danger time after time to join the ANZAC troops advancing on the front line in order to report the action through their eyes. At the deadly Battle of Crithia, where the Australians suffered enormous losses. Bean risked his life
to place himself at the heart of the action. Despite being a civilian armed only with a notebook and writing implements, Bean was an active participant. He dragged a wounded man to safety, for which he was recommended for a Bravery Award, and he was nearly killed several times. To share the tale, we're talking again to military historian Matt McLaughlin, who tells the amazing story and many others in an upcoming book
called Crithia about the long forgotten Anzac Battle. Matt is best known as the founder of Matt McLachlin Battlefield Tours and he's the host of the Living History podcast. Now Matt is here with the story of times been Welcome back to the podcast, Matt.
Great to be back.
Jen, No, it is always great chatting to you, but this week it's particularly exciting because you're about to release a new book.
Yeah, I'm very excited.
It's the end of a two year project, so I think anyone who's written a book out there will understand just the trials and tribulations and what a commitment it is. And I'm very excited that we've reached the end of that process and the new book's coming out.
Congratulations. Now we're talking today about Charles Bean. Was Charles been always destined to be a writer?
Do you think it's a great question. He's an interesting bloke. Charles been a bit of an enigma. He's someone that I've admired for a long time. I think we'd say he's an unusual guy by our modern standards. He's not a typical ossie that we would meet today. He's very much from an earlier time and he was very much a man of his time. And so I think it's a rather long witted answer, you Ques, but I think yes, he always was destined to be a writer. He always
loved writing, He always loved telling stories. So I think he always was going to write, but it was an interesting journey to get there.
Whereabouts did he grow up?
He was born in Bathurst and grew up in New South Wales, but his father suffered from ill health and moved them to England, and ancestrally he'd been His family was from England, and so I think that's a key part of his character. He was always very British. He was a proud Australian and he definitely saw the strengths and the weaknesses of the Australian character, but he saw himself as very British as well at the same time, and I think what he saw in Australia was the
best of Britain. So I think that's really essential to establish at the outset is he saw Australia as an important component of Britain in many ways, and he saw good Australians as good British subjects, and he saw himself as at least partly.
British as well.
And where was he educated.
He was educated at Clifton College, which I think is interesting because a number of other prominent, prominent people who would serve in the war were old boys of that school. Sir Douglas Haigue is probably the most prominent, the commander of the entire British forces, but also William Birdwood, who would command the ANZACs at Gallipoli, was also an old
boy of Clifton College. And Bean went on to study at Oxford as well, But Clifton always had a big impact on him and a lot of the values that he learned as a boy studying at Clifton College in the UK stuck with him and he played a lot of cricket there he learned about what he thought it was to be a man and a good citizen of
the world. But in addition, an interesting little footnote that I've discovered about him is that later in life, when he lived in Sydney, well after the war and in the late stages of his life, he lived in a house in Lynnfield which he called Clifton after his school. And then he moved to Coleroy, actually very near to
where I lived for a long period of time. And one day I went for a drive around just trying to see if I could find the house that being lived in in his later years, And as I was driving down a street which I knew was the street he lived in, I saw a house at the end of the street with the word Clifton written on the front of the house.
So even at the end of.
His life, when he was a man in his eighties, he was still living in a house named after his school in England.
So at some point did the whole family move back from the UK to Australia.
Yeah, they came back eventually, or Bean came back after his studies, after he studied at Oxford.
He came back to Australia.
And part of the experience he'd had while he was in Europe was his family had spent a bit of time in Belgium, and as part of that experience, Bean had spent quite a bit of time on the battlefield
of Waterloo, which is very close to Brussels. And while there he'd walked the fields and picked up relics from the fighting which had taken place less than a century before he'd been there, and I think that imbued in him a sense of the importance of walking the ground, the importance of touching and feeling tangibles from the battle, because he visited the museum at Waterloo and saw all the relics and found some relics himself on the battlefield.
And he always said that that was a really important contribution to his understanding of warfare and to the story of what would come on later in his life after the First World War.
So, before we talk about the important events of World War One, are there any more key points from his background before the war that we should know about.
Yeah.
Basically, he studied as he studied law and took the bar, so it was working as a lawyer, but it really wasn't for him. And he knew Banjo Patterson quite well and they both worked together in Sydney on various newspapers, and Banjo Patterson had served as a war correspondent during the Boer War, so I think this was a source of inspiration to be leading into the First World War. But in the first sort of fifteen years of the new century, being traveled around Australia a lot, he wrote
a lot of articles about the bushmen of Australia. He developed this love for the idea of the country and the man from snowy River and men riding their horses around and the hardy bush people. He really developed this love for it in the first ten or fifteen years of the century and that influenced what would happen during the First World War. Sage and been a very well educated man, tall and skinny, red hair glasses, not a typical soldier or a typical even journalist, you'd imagine, very
good with a pen, very observant. He was quite a dry writer during his time, and he once said quite condescendingly that he wanted to write prose, that a housewife of middling intelligence would understand, not a very acceptable statement these days, but it illustrates that he had this desire to write plainly and simply and without flowery prose, which was the sort of the style of the day, and so that would have a big influence on what he would write during the First World War and in later years.
Will take us forward to the war and how did it come to be known as the father of the Anzac legend.
Well, there was a number of prominent journalists who were sort of lobbying to become the correspondent for the Australians during the First World War. It was known that the Australian government would appoint an official correspondent, just one journalist whose job it would be to travel with the Australians as they went off to fight in the First World
War and to write their story. There would be a number of war correspondents who would be selected throughout the course of the war, but it was always known that there would be one official, dominant war correspondent, and so a number of journalists lobbied for that. But it was
Bean that was selected rather I think unexpectedly. I don't think too many people thought he would get the gig but Bean was then selected to be the official war correspondent for Australia and left with the first contingent of troops at the end of nineteen fourteen to head overseas,
first to Egypt and then obviously to Gallipoli. They didn't know it at the time when they left Australia that Gallipoli would be their destination, but being traveled with them from the earliest days, so he saw the Australians in training, he saw British troops during training, and he started to establish this feeling that the Australians were more manly, that
they were stronger. He came up with this idea that I don't think it's a particularly accurate idea, but being loved at the idea that British troops had been drawn from the cities of Ing, from the industrial cities and the slums of London, and so they were smaller and less fit and less healthy, whereas the Australian men had all come from the bush and played sport and spent their whole time in the sunshine. So therefore they was taller, stronger,
fitter than their English counterparts. And I don't think it's actually true. I don't think the evidence suggests that is the case, but it was something that stuck with being for a long time and illustrates this idea that he just basically was in love with this concept of Australian manhood. I mean, he just was absolutely enamored with this idea of the strong, tough Australian bushmen.
Ah. And so were people able to read what he was writing, you know, weeks and months later or you know, was this history compiled and not read until long after these events?
No, it was read, not quite live. It took a while. It took several weeks for the Bean's first correspondences to be published in Australian newspapers. So he was writing articles, the most famous of which was the description of the landing at Anzac and being to share very early on the morning of the landing at Gallipoli on the twenty fifth of April nineteen fifteen. But it wasn't until May, I think about mid May that his dispatches were published
in Australian newspapers. So it wasn't quite live reporting, but it was certainly timely reporting. There was a delay of a few weeks between the events themselves and Bean's reporting of them appearing in Australian newspapers and.
Tell us about some of his descriptions. What was he sort of best known for? Was what sort of writing was he best known for.
It's a good question.
As a writer myself, I'm always interested in Bean's style and the descriptions that he wrote.
He was a very dry writer.
He did not, as he said, he did not sort of fall into that technique of colorful prose. He was probably a bit too dry. I think he was very descriptive. He'd get very bogged down on detail. He actually copped criticism during the war for being too dry with his dispatches. Where the British correspondents were writing about daring charges and our brave heroes, Bean was reporting quite quite a bit more succinctly, and he was accused of being a bit of a dry writer. And I think that's a fair
accusation when you read his writings. Now there's a lot of Bean's work that you can now read, and most scholars of the First World War being just about every day, it is pretty dry. And in some of his later works, the Official Histories, for example, he gets very bogged down in detail. But that's a great resource for us now, if you can get through the dry writing style, it's a great resource because.
He talked about just about everything.
He talked about training, he talked about food, he talked about what the men were wearing, and he was a great observer of what the men were doing in a fairly detached manner, in a fairly sort of observing from above kind of way. He would talk about what the men were doing. But there's absolutely no doubt that he had a great admiration for Anzac soldiers and that comes through in just about everything that he wrote.
Yeah, so all these reports that he was writing day to day and that were being published not live but almost live during the war, where they then compile after the war to become the sort of official history of our war.
Okay, well that's an interesting question. The answer, the simple answer is no, it didn't quite work like that. But so he was writing dispatches for newspapers. Basically he was keeping people updated with what was happening on the battlefield and what would then happen is he then after the war, he was then appointed to write the official history. So that was a brand new project that started from scratch and no doubt he referred a lot to his diaries.
For example, he kept very detailed diaries during his time at Gallipoli and on the Western Front, and so he referred to those. But the dispatches that he wrote during the war are quite a separate resource from the incredible amount of research and work that he did after the war in compiling official histories.
Yeah, okay, Now, obviously you've been most interested in his experiences at Crispia during the battle. Can you tell us about that and the profound effect that it had on him?
Yeah?
Absolutely, So a little bit more broadly, I've always been fast by Charles Bean, and from my earliest days as a teenager, when I was first studying the First World War, I was reading Bean's Official History. So I've always had a soft spot for Bean, and it depending on what I'm currently working on, depends on which part of Bean's histories that I'm delving into. So he did a lot of great work on the Western Front as well as
he's reporting on Gallipoli. But I really think his first two volumes of the Official History, where he broke down the Anzac campaign at Gallipoli in huge detail, I think these are absolutely some of his best work, and I've been digging into those a lot lately because of the new book that's coming out about the Battle of Crithia at Gallipoli. And I know we talked about Crithia several episodes ago gen when we talked about General James McKay,
we talked all about the Battle of Critia. But it was a battle that Charles Bean was very heavily involved
in and reported from right from the front line. And the quick summary of that battle is Australian troops and New Zealand troops were sent from the Anzac sector down to the British sector at Cape Hellez only a couple of weeks after the landing at Gallipoli, and on the eighth of May nineteen fifteen, fought this huge battle at Crithia where they lost about fifty percent of their men, so a couple of thousand men were killed or wounded
in that action. So a huge action for the ANZACs, but one that's really slipped through the cracks as far as Australians and New Zealanders are concerned, and we don't really remember.
It as part of the Gallipoli story.
So I've really enjoyed delving into Bean's accounts of Crithia to write my new book about that battle, and it's really fascinating. Bean was there with the troops. He was in the front line. He didn't have to be in the front line. He could have easily just been in the general area and then interviewed people after the attack, but he wanted to see it from the front line, and so he actually put himself in a lot of danger. There were several occasions where Bean was in danger of
being killed. He was advancing with the front line troops as they went forward in one of the deadliest battles Australians would fight in at Gallipoli. And it's not just his own accounts. We have accounts from soldiers describing how they saw Bean on the battlefield and how in or they were of him and his reckless bravery during that advance. So Bean later said that the battlefield at Cristia was the battlefield he knew amongst the best of the war
because he just spent so much time there. And in fact, during this terrible fighting, when Australians were being killed or wounded, Bean was not only reporting on it, but he was active in the whole thing. He dragged a wounded man to safety, for which he was recommended for Bravery Award. He didn't get the Bravery award because he was actually a civilian who was an honorary captain in the army, so he wasn't eligible for a bravery award. But he
was very nearly killed several times. A soldier described watching Bean advancing and watching him suddenly turn his head as a bullet flew past his ear. He helped Colonel MacKaye that we mentioned in the previous episode. In the former episode, James mckaye, he assisted Mackay in the front line when MacKaye was wounded. He ran messages backwards and forwards, and of course we should remember Jen throughout this he was
completely unarmed because he was a correspondent. The only thing he had with him was a notebook and a pencil. So it was really extraordinary how actively he participated in this battle at Cristia, simply because he felt it was the right thing to do. And as soon as the battle was over a week or two later, he actually went back to the battlefield while it was still under
fire from the Turks. They were getting long rage fire and he and another officer walked to the ground to try and make a little bit more sense of what had been going on. So he certainly can't be faulted for his bravery. He was in the thick of the action and it's stuck with him. I can tell from reading about his experiences at Crithia that it was an experience that stuck with him for the rest of his life.
We'll be back soon to find out what happened after the battle, so stay with us and are there any other sort of standout points for you from his time at Gallipoli?
Yeah, I think I think there was a couple of very notable points at the start of the August offensive. I think on about the sixth of August, he got shot in the leg while he was at Gylipoly, which
was no doubt a notable experience for him. So he was just working near his dugout and a bullet that had been fired from the front line came flying over the ridge and struck him in the leg, which is a pretty That was actually a pretty common injury at Gallipoli, that not being directly shot but hit by fire that
had come from the front line. Because it was just such a small area they were fighting in at Gallipoli, and Bean was very badly wounded for several weeks and eventually hobbled back to the front line.
He refused to be evacuated.
He was just treated in his dugout at Gallipoli, so he stayed close to the action, and then a couple of weeks later he was able to with a help a walking stick, sort of hobble back to the front line and report on what was going on. But incidentally, that bullet that hit him at Gallipoli was still in his leg when he died. So yeah, so quite an
amazing story. And so he Yeah, so, as I said, he was certainly in the thick of the action for that whole time, and he gained an interesting perspective on the ANZACs, which I think I think is really important in our collective remembrance today, because how can I put this, It seems fairly natural to us that we would look back on the original ANZACs and Gallipoli and the First World War with these feelings of admiration and huge respect. And we remember Anzac Day and we commemorate the bravery
of these men. But that wasn't a given that we would look at them that way. I mean, we certainly don't do that for the Battle of Waterloo, we don't do it for some other actions that Australians have been involved in. And I think a huge reason for the fact that we do that for the First World War was Charles Bean. Was he really developed this idea at Gallipoli of the just the bravery and the courage and
the esteem we should hold these soldiers in. And I think that's why we call him the father of the Anzac legend, because he developed these ideas at Gallipoli and promoted them when he got back to Australia. So I think that's why Gallipoli was so important in the story of Charles being and important for all of us in our remembrance of Anzak.
Know what about Charles Ben's time on the Western Front and his standout moments.
There, Yeah, I mean he did great work on the Western Front. The Western Front was a much bigger war than Gallipoli, obviously, you know the scale, the number of battles the Australians fought in, and Charles Bean did great reporting on the fighting on the Western Front. I think he always had a soft spot for Gallipoli. I think after the war, and looking at his writings and the official history, it was Gallipoli that really captured his imagination.
But that's not to say he didn't do brilliant work on the Western Front as well. So he was there just about every important battle. He wrote a lot about the Battle of Possier in the Somme, Australia's most deadly conflict in our military history actually the Battle of Posier, so he spent a lot of time reporting on that.
He reported on all the great actions into nineteen seventeen, the disaster at Passiondale when so many Australians were killed, and then on into the great Australian victories of nineteen eighteen, and so he was always there. He was always considered a very Haughton part of the Australian system, the Australian Imperial Force, he was always an essential component of that. He lobbied unsuccessfully against General John Monash when Monash was going to be was suggested to be the commander of
the Australian Forces in nineteen eighteen. Bean didn't feel that Monash was the right man for the job, so a bit of controversy there where he lobbied quite hard against him and he wanted General brudnal White to be the commander of the Australian forces, but I think because we all know, Monash was absolutely the right choice. So a little bit of a cloud over him there that he was on the wrong side of history in lobbying against John Monash, But overall he did a great job reporting
on the Western Front. Probably the most interesting thing that he missed out on was the Battle of Fromel, the first big battle the Australians were involved in, and listeners probably know it quite well, this huge disaster where Australia lost five and a half thousand men killed or wounded in one day's fighting. Bean wasn't at that battle because he didn't realize what a significant event it would be, so he was in another part of the front at
the time time. And so interestingly, on the eleventh of November nineteen eighteen, the day the war ended and the first day that Bean could move freely around the battlefields without risking being killed, he went to Fremel, the one battlefield that he hadn't been to, even though the Battle of Fremel had taken place in nineteen sixteen, so more than two years earlier. That was the one place that
Bean felt he had to be at. So on the eleventh of November nineteen eighteen, when all the other Australians were drinking beer and celebrating end of the war, Charles Bean was at Fremmel, walking that battlefield and eventually and working on the notes and the stories that he would eventually tell very well in the official history. So, you know, a fascinating guy, a very dedicated, hard working man.
And what did he get up to after the war?
Well, this is a really an interesting chapter of what he got up to immediately after the war. Because again, as soon as the war ended, Bean had a choice. Now he was the official historian, he was official correspondent. He could choose where he wanted to go and what he wanted to do. But there was only one place he wanted to go, and that was back to Gallipoli. And he went to the powers that be and he said, we still don't know a lot of things about Gallipoli.
There's a lot of mysteries about Gyllipoli because we left in such a hurry, you know, and I don't feel our story of Gallipoli is complete. So with your permission, he said, I would like to assemble a group of people which he called the Australian Historical Mission, and they traveled to Gallipoli in early nineteen nineteen. So they braved
the freezing conditions at Gallipoli. The war was very freshly over, the fighting had only ended at the end of nineteen eighteen, and these are in the opening months of nineteen nineteen, and he led a historical mission back to Gallipoli to answer these mysteries about where the Australians had heard, how far they'd reached inland on the day of the landing, what the Turks could see from their positions, the locations of Turkish guns, and also he walked again the battlefield
of Cristia in some detail, where he'd been effectively four years earlier, and walked the battlefield and found the battlefield still littered with Australian bodies from that attack four years earlier. And as part of this revisit to Gallipoli, he also collected a lot of relics. He saw a lot of things which again inspired him and this idea that the Australian story should be told, and he found relics of Australian soldiers. He found a huge Australian gun he found.
He collected pine logs from Lone Pine. He collected a huge number of relics, and you could already see even in early nineteen nineteen, this idea was forming in his mind that the Australian story had to be told back in Australia, that it was so heroic and so important that they had to find a way of telling this story. And I think as he walked around in the snowy whether at Gallipoli in nineteen nineteen, that was where the seed of the idea for the Australian War Memorial really
really blossomed as he did that. And incidentally, if you want to read one of the greatest Gallipoli accounts you ever will read, read Charles Bean's book about his time walking the ground at Glipoli after the war, which he published a book called Gallipoli Mission, and that's an absolutely fascinating account of the Glippoli Campaign. So I'd strongly recommend that to anyone.
Okay, So, with Charles been heavily involved in founding the.
War Memorial almost completely. It was his idea.
He wanted a museum at first, and his philosophy was that this is a story too great for people who hadn't been involved in it to understand, and he just said, we will never the people at home will never understand what it meant to charge the trenches at Lone Pine, or to fight across that desolate plane at Crithia, or to live through the mud of Passiondale, or the hell of the bombardment at Posier, or indeed the great victories
that Australia spearheaded in nineteen eighteen. And he just felt it was a story to too grand and too large for people who hadn't lived through it to understand. So he said, we need a museum and we can put these relics in there. We can tell the story of the Australians. And when he came home, well, firstly, he was also working as the official historian, so he was working on writing and editing the Great Australian Official History of the War, the twelve volumes that would tell the
story of the war. But he was also developing this idea of the bringing together of relics, the tell of stories, and he envisaged a great institution where all of this would come together, And of course it wasn't until nineteen forty one we saw that vision come through to fruition, but that was the Australian War Morale in Canberra. So Bean was the founder of the War Moral and the architect of a lot of these concepts of remembrance that we now see in the war oril today.
It's incredible. Now, what do we know about the rest of his life.
Well, his great achievement was the Official History. I think that's what we should most remember him for. His correspondences during the war were very important, but I think that his legacy is the Official History, and I think if he was here now he would agree with that as well. That he wrote the first two volumes about Anzac. Those are the first two things he did. So he set himself up in Tangradong Homestead just outside Canberra and for five years or so worked on the official histories there.
He had a few health problems and it was a bit too cool in Canberra for him, so he moved to Sydney then and finished his work there. But he wrote, he wrote the volumes dealt with Australia in Gallipoli and the Western Front, So those six volumes of the Official History, and then he edited the other six volumes that make up the official history, so he was instrumental in that, by far the best account if you want to understand exactly what Australia did on the Western Front and in Gallipoli.
The six volumes of Charles Bean's Official History are the absolute go to. A little bit dry in the writing. The books are big and cumbersome and quite expensive to buy these days, but there's online versions. The Australian War Oril has them online. It's the essential resource. When I was writing my recent Gallipoli book, that was the number one resource I would go to as my starting point for any information. So that's his great legacy, but also, of course the Australian Warmril.
These are the things he should be remembered for. The Australian War morals evolving.
It's a different place from the one that being envisaged when it opened in nineteen forty one, but it's his vision and his legacy that we have the War Memorial. And after that he worked in a number of committees. He was a very good public serve and he wrote many more books. He turned down the opportunity of a knighthood on several occasions when it was offered to him.
Really yeah, absolutely, so very humble man.
Well he was a very humble man, he said again a little bit condescendingly, but he said, I don't want missus Bean to have to go down to the butcher and be referred to as lady being. So you know, he was a very humble man. And yeah, and he lived out his years in, as I said, a house in Lynnfield named Clifton, after his school in England, and then one up on Colleri Plado which is still there,
the house that he lived in. And then later in his life, when he was in his eighties, he suffered from ill health and dementia and died in nineteen sixty eight in Concord Repatriation Hospital, no doubt, surrounded by so many of the ANZACs that he'd written so much about. So, you know, an interesting man, as I said, a man
of his time. I think he wouldn't fit in well in modern Australian society, but a really important man, the father of the Anzac legend, the founder of the warm boil, and really a great Australian who told a great Australian story.
Episode really follows on from the earlier chat that we had about Crithia so if anyone wants to go back and listen to that episode, it was on May seventh. So your book is called Critia. Where and when can people get hold of a copy Matt.
It's out at the end of July and available where you get books Australia wide.
Brilliant. Now it's a while since we've had a chat about your tours, Matt. So, Matt McLaughlin battlefield tours. Can do you talk about Crithia on any of the tours?
Yeah?
Absolutely, it's interesting, Jen, Thank you for bringing it up, because I'm doing I mean, we do battlefield tours all over Gallipoli in the Western Front and Vietnam and everywhere you want to go. But I personally only lead one tour a year, and that's coming up in May twenty twenty five, which is to Gallipoli for the first time. So it's called the Matt McLaughlin Signature Tour, and so for the first time I will be leading that tour
to Gallipoli. Normally we go to France and tell the story of the Western Front, but this time I'm going to Gallipoli and we're going to spend a lot of time walking the battlefields. Also in the company of Peter Hart, a historian that many people will know, an expertlipopoly historian. He's going to come with me and a key part of that will be telling the story of the Battle of Crithia, because working on this book has just revealed
how little people know about such an important action. So I can't wait in May twenty twenty five to get over there with a group of people that want to come with me, and we're going to walk the ground at Callipoli and spend a week exploring the whole story.
But Crithia will be a key part of that time on the battlefield.
Amazing, great timing. Well, thanks for sharing the story with us today. Matt really appreciate it.
It's always great to talk to you. Jen.
Thank you, thanks for listening. This has been in Black and White, a podcast about some of Australia's forgotten characters, written and hosted by me Jen Kelly, edited by Phoebe Zukowski, and produced by John ty Burton. You can find all the stories and photos associated with our episodes at Heroldsun dot com dot au slash. I'd be aw if you've enjoyed this podcast. We'd love you to leave a five star on Apple Podcasts. Even better, leave a review. It's one simple way you can help us get the word
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