Thomas James Richards, Diaries, Transcript Vol. 3, 26 January to 8 November 1916 - Part 12

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throw off of British rule. The Central Powers can push
their railway line from Baghdad into the heart of India and
cause ferment of strife bringing succour to the Indians
without Great Britain or the Allies being able to interfere
at one particular spot. The failure of British arms in
Serbia, in the Dardanelles, in Mesopotamia, will be a slur
that cannot be effaced in the eyes and the minds of the
Indian nation. Even the winning of this great war by the
Allied Powers, the squashing of both Austria and Germany,
can never retrieve Britain's damaged reputation. This
downfall of British prestige will spread throughout Japan,
China and South Africa, South America and wherever the simple
mind of the coloured people lives. In fact I have beside
me at the moment an extract from an interview in an
Australian paper with Archdeacon Batchelor who has 40 yrs.
experience in Japanese Missionary work. He says, "Throughout
Japan there is the friendliest feeling for the British but,
to speak quite candidly the great bulk of the people
considered the British very weak as soldiers, though the
official classes know better." When shown, on board ship,
a splendid type of a British youth, one of the Japanese
passengers turned to the Archdeacon and said, "Yes, but
what's the use of having such big bodies when, in war time,
the heart is weak." This shows clearly what the Asiatic
thinks of the British fighting stock due entirely to the
resultsof our battles of late, and particularly against
Turkey. No doubt the fighting stock of Britain must suffer,
and this makes it hard when as clear as a pikestaff stands out
the incompetence of the Government.
The Irish Riots is their latest blunder - what's wrong
with Ireland I have never been able to form any idea, but I
simply know by the diminishing population that the Government
is very bad indeed, and has been, all these years. We brag
and skite about the splendid colonisation work of Great
Britain and sure enough it is correct as long as the Colony
is far enough away to be free from molestation as Canada,
 

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Africa and Australia, but in Ireland's case (a colony beyond
a doubt) what a sickening failure the English people have
always made and are still continuing to make. My heart is
with Mr. Bottomley; close up the "house of babble" and let the
rule of a War Council be supreme. There will be no
"Question time", no "discussions", no Orders - only orders
to get on with the war.
The poorly equipped expeditionsthat have lowered
British fear in the minds of India and the whole of the East
will take years to efface, in fact I fear that British rule
will be laughed at in every corner of the world when the
truth is known and understood. I cry to think of the men I
have seen murdered by these "rulers" and still they come
forward again and again myself amongst to die willingly for
the love of the country and the freedom we have enjoyed.
God save the King.
I was told only a few days ago by O'Sullivan that I
was a damn fool to take the war and the doings of our fool
Government so much to heart. It is making an old and serious
man of me. He said, "they are treating the whole thing at
Home as if it were a huge burlesque, so why do you not join
in and treat the whole thing in a like manner". Laugh, he
said, and b----- the world!! This I believe is the correct
manner, but then, no sooner do I adopt the lighter frame of
mind than in comes a rush of wounded and dying men, men as
brave as anything that ever breathed the breath of life.
This brings back the murder on Gallipoli. Men lying on
stretchers aboard a tramp? ship en route for Alexandria went
green and rotten for want of medical attention, and have to
be cut away from the stretcher. 650 patients with two
medical men and a dozen orderleys to attend them left Anzac
on one ship. From Cape Helles came similar reports, so can
you dear reader think hard of me, or think for a moment that
I don't know what I say, when I condemn the British Government
(not the British nation, mark you) for their terrible crimes.
 

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I must, however, treat the whole sordid thing in a lighter
vein and would also too, but for the loss of blood and valuable
lives that goes on around me.
May 14th. Sunday.
The Maoris played a team of Welshmen at Laventie again
today - I was not present but I hear it was a good game, and
as the Maori put in a better team than last Sunday (when a
5 points all resulted) they won out easily by 16 to 4 points.
The weather has been wet for some time, and the roads
therefore both slippery and muddy. We have missed almost
entirely x the aeroplanes and their capering about, the clouds
are too heavy for them to observe anything at all. Yet, if
the sky clears for only a few minutes even, there are surely
one or more of them to be seen about.
The romantic town of Laventie is now guarded and we
cannot travel to and fro as usual. This I regret as it
does one good to walk down there, look around the gardens,
have a drink and then stroll back home again.
May 15th and 16th. Monday and Tuesday.
Yesterday was again gloomy and quiet, I had no work to
do as the night job building a gas-proof shelter is finished,
so I got busy and wrote up the trip from Marseilles to Flanders
and will post it through to Hollingsworth today. I must write
up sporting stuff as I have long promised for J.J. Davis,
Sydney "Herald".
Today, Tuesday, the day broke clear and still, one
might have thought on waking that it was a tropical country
as the stillness was suggestive of the scrub, silence and
stillness of the Herbert River, Queensland. Long before I
opened my eyes I knew it was a brilliant day as I could hear
the anti aircraft guns at work bursting their shells after
the aeroplanes of both sides.
As we were having dinner, and I was engaged in opening
a tin of meat and vegetable rations, there was a whirling, an
 

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explosion anda moment later, dirt and stones striking along
the sides and roof of our messroom. There was a great
scatter and rush to see what had happened but only a small
crater was seen in the soft earth. It was an aircraft shell
not a bomb, that means that we are living within range.
May 17th. Wednesday.
It is breakfast time on Thursday. I am reasonably
contented at having got off 13 pages on our trip from Marseilles
to Flanders. A letter to Carroll, Hynes and Elvy. The sun
went down last night midst a haze like burnished copper orb,
later the moon rose in a like manner from the opposite side
of the firmament. What the sign means, I am anxious to
note. Some said it was to be an excessively hot day. We'll
see later on what it really is.
At the table this morning the officiousness of a
Lance Jack was under discussion, and as is always the case,
I know of no exception at all, the discussion drifted upon
the Lance Jacks fighting ability; and whether he could fight
or not he'd get a whack on the jaw sooner or later. Its
remarkable how this primitive method of proving a man's worth
is always adopted by our Australians. If an argument of
any kind is taking place, the outcome sooner or later will
end in a challenge to fight. Then they fight and then both
of them are sorry for their rival and themselves. Still,
they will fight again and abuse anyone at any time. Merely
a wild, primitive people, that's all. Fighting comes
instinctively to them, in the same light as it comes to the
animals of the jungle.
May 18th. Thursday.
Yesterday was, as predicted by the red ball of the sun
at sunset/, the previous evening, a really hot day. There was
a fair breeze blowing which made the day a pleasant one and
as I got hold of a camera, I took some photos. of my Anzac
stretcher squad. The Spring is not yet over although
alterations in the flora and general vegetation is not nearly
so marked from day to day.
 

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I had received instructions to meet an engineer
at Weathercock corner at 8.30 tonight. So, with a party
of ten men I went and gathered up picks and shovels and
waited at the corner getting there at 7.30. An engineer
came along and, to my astonishment, we had to go along with
the same old job that I had been working on for 14 days past.
I was very indignant about the arrangements and felt so nasty
all night that the engineer fellow was very much squashed
indeed. This is just typical of the military folk. Working
on the same job for 14 nights with practically the same
party of men and then some new damn fool officer comes along
and, because the job is new to him, we are messed about. We
lost a good hour of daylight work and walked on top of our
usual walk of 4½miles, the distance of 3 miles. Needless
to say, we did not do much work this night.
May 19th. Friday.
The weather is still glorious and the aeroplanes
in their daring flight against a curtain of fire occupy most
of the limelight. We have a few artillery duels from time
to time, usually in the early morning or late in the evening.
However, it is moonlight now and there is not nearly so much
machine gun or rifle fire going on at night time. Neither
are there the same number of rocket flares going over. On
dark nights, these flares are very bright indeed and help us
splendidly to keep in the road and also to break the monotony o
of the dreaty walk home after midnight and some hard work.
It seems that the Allies cannot get a place to anything like
equal the Germans in brilliancy and that a good reward is
offered for the invention of one or the capture of one from
the Germans.
I enjoyed a horseback ride of some 14 miles this
afternoon. I found out where I could get films developed and
was glorified by the bright look of the green fields and the
richness of the trees and shrubs - everything was glorious.
 

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At 8 o'clock our alarm bell rang. Naturally we
thought it was a gas alarm, moreso as the wind was from a
very favourable quarter in the East. But, no, it was brought
about by a despatch to the effect that there were 60 wounded
men coming along from a certain quarter. Our 6 cars were
at once turned out and rushed to the scene, meanwhile Mervelle
hospital was rung up and their cars sent along to assist.
Our wards were prepared and the dressing rooms got ready.
Lamps were lighted and all kind of candlesticks brought into
action. Then along came the cars, the stretcher squads told
off and each man to his different post and to his duty. Five
men in the first car, four stretcher cases, two very bad
ones. Two more cars came along, but in the last of them was
only one stretcher and one sitting up case. When asked why
he was not full up, he said there were no more wounded there,
but our officer sent him out again saying "damn fool, why
don't you keep your eyes open, there are 50 more cases out
there yet". The next car came in empty and then another,
both declaring there was no more wounded about. It was
indeed difficult to realise just what was the matter. But
the truth was a party of 10th Battalion fatigue men were near
Weathercock corner and the Germans got the whole party of nine
men.
May 20th. Saturday.
There was no digging party last night and I am mighty
glad too, as that gas proof dug-out job is getting on my sore
side. In England the politicians raze and chat about it
being an economic war. And in some departments of the war
business economy is rigidly enforced, for instance, in the
matter of picks, shovels and even in ammunition, great care
is enacted, but when it comes to an economic labour question,
there is waste that no nation can ever possibly redeem or
account for the enormous wastage. The hundreds of transport
men are eating their hearts out day after day for 21 long
months, now and today they sweat and rub their fingers sore
 

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while tears well up their eyes and dismay at their hearts is
rasping. They can see the fruitlessness of their labour;
making steel chains and iron buckles shine like silver; and
to be working hard doing absolutely nothing concerning the war
and instead of doing something to aid the end of the war, they
just work about and waste, waste, waste. In the building of
this gas proof shelter, the sides are 4 feet thick and the
roof over 3 ft. thick of earth sods and pieces of brick - now
at the two ends of a double set of gas doors and here the
walls for absolutely no reason than to square off the sides
of the building are sand bagged and built up to a thickness
of 10 ft. on the side and 5½ feet on the roof, and as the
country is level all around here, this earth is dug out of a
farmyard and from an orchard over the way to a depth of 2½ ft.
at which depths water makes and cannot possibly be baled out
with buckets. So to make this ill fitting shelter, we are
compelled to work for a whole week with 15 men and wheelbarrow, 
so that it will have a square appearance and at the
same time injure both the appearance and the actual use of a
field, damaging the trees and spoiling the farmers' back yard
for 60 yards around.
It is shortsightedness, and alas waste of both materials
and labour; yet it goes on unrestrainedly day after day. So
much does this waste bother me that should we win this war,
I for one will be confident that it could have been won
months or years sooner but for the wastage. And should we
lose (by losing, I mean agree for an arrangement by which
Germany is left with more land in her possession than before
the war) "A peace without a peace, kind of thing", I will
accept same in all quietness and ease, but still I will
always feel in my heart that it was the sheer wastage that
robbed us of a better peace or an absolutely clear cut win.
If our transport men were ploughing and rolling the idle
land about, there would be some sense in it.
 

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May 22nd. Sunday. Doulseu.
We have once again changed our abode, this time we
come back away from the firing line and are in charge of a
Divisional Rest Station. The kind of place that men who are
off colour and ailing from some simple trouble are treated.
Well, there are just on 93 patients in here at present and
they live in comfortable canvas huts and have their meals in
the big mess shed. It has fallen to my lot to have charge
of this mess room and with 7 men I have to keep the place
orderly and clean.
On leaving Neuve Monde? yesterday, it came to my lot
to stay behind and look after the billets, mess rooms &c. with
three men. Had I not seen the state that it is possible to
leave the place in, I could not have believed it possible.
Particularly is this true of the officers' kitchen, never
did I think it possible for a place to be so absolutely vile.
Heaps of fermenting dirt and slop lay everywhere. How our
officers could have lived there I cannot understand.
After working like hell for two hours with full kit
up, we walked into our present location 9 kilos distant. I
never spent a day so unlike a Sunday as today really is and
feels, we've worked hard to get things fixed up, but I did go
into the village and have two glasses of coffee.
May 22nd. Monday. Pay Day, 20 francs.
I have now worked off the stiffness from my ride and
walking, and feel a much better man today. Aeroplane shell
and loose shrapnel have been falling about here today. We
hear an occasional rally from the big guns, but they are a
long way away and we don't feel the nearness of the war or the
possibility of a stray 9 in. shell dropping at your front door.
We were paid this afternoon, and I drew 20 francs which is
ample for knocking about here.
I wrote to Wales asking the Williams to write for me
to attend Mabel's wedding on June 17th. I wrote also to
Angus Ferguson asking him to write for me and to follow it up
 

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with a cable, mentioning that a soldier loves a liar from
the O.C. down to the commonest man, so he is quite safe there.
I stated that my conscience was extremely elastic nowadays
and that lying as long as it was not directed to injure anyone
was practised. I have told A. Ferguson that if I come in
June, I will want money from him to see me through as my £20
from Sydney and £20 from Africa can hardly be due yet, and
I cannot save anything out of my 1/6d per day. Although
it is enough to knock about here on.
May 23rd. Tuesday.
My world seems somewhat grooved at present. This
mess room stunt does not give me a clear mind to work with.
I had a long walk in the evening and find the fruit and the
crops coming on wonderfully. Cherries are half grown and well
ahead of the other fruits, but I can see us having a jolly
good time in a couple of months' time with these different
fruits and a large range of vegetables.
There has been a whole lot of artillery firing going
on about our quarter during the past few hours, but I think
it is only the blowing away of some surplus ammunition in an
attempt to keep the fellows interested, and to some extent to
let them know there is a war going on round about. By the
English papers, one would never dream that there was a war
going on and that the birthright of their Empire was at
stake. It is full of pure argument and advice to the
Ministers. One might be excused for thinking that there
was a huge picnic or a pantomime coming off and that the
Empire was interested in the organisation to a most spirited
degree. And the House of Commons still drags rackingly on.
Each politician afraid to move for fear of offending his
electors and thereby losing his job or profession when the
elections come round. It is scandalous to think of mere
politicians running a war such as this one.
May 24th. Wednesday.
Two more of our men have returned from their 8 days
 

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in London, and, like the others, all sing songs of the great
time they have had. Everybody is good and kind to them and
everything a delightful surprise. I wanted to get away about
July next, but now I am trying to rush it along to June. I
wrote to Wales and to Ferguson asking them to write me something
to show to the Colonel, lies or otherwise it did not matter,
moreso as every soldier loves a liar.
I took an afternoon off and went for a most delightful
walk with Bill Drummond up to Outtersteen, some six kilos.
distant. The country lanes and roads are most delightful and
have made most wonderful alterations in their appearance since
our arrival here two months ago. Even then we considered the
walks very delightful, but now their beauty has increased 40%
since the Spring season has brought forth so many colors of
green and so many blooms and flowers. It was threatening
rain all the afternoon, but with only a slight fall of rain we
were dry.
On reaching Outtersteen, we found that the 41st Brigade
were holding an afternoon sports meeting - we saw several foot
races and wrestling on horseback, which were very good indeed
and much enjoyed by the Tommies. These Tommies by the way,
were a good looking sort of soldier, a whole lot better than
the crowd sent to Suvla Bay, Gallipoli.
At 5.30 p.m., we tried to get something to eat-after
finding several houses full up a woman decided after some
coaxing to cook us some eggs and get tea ready. She was a
better type of a French woman, as we meet them in this country,
and had tea with us. Her two children, a boy and girl,
youngest about six years, were very good. The boy was shedding 
his first teeth and one of the finest performances I've
seen was the mother getting a piece of cotton around that tooth
to pull it out. The youngster was passive of course and the
way his mother smooged to him and got him to submit to the
operation was just remarkable. I enjoyed the incident better
than many a comedy I have seen. We had two tins of fruit for