Endurance Page 24

  This London winter has already gone on too long for me. Better to be living under an upturned boat. I am terrified by the London cab drivers, whose madcap antics on icy roads are a greater threat than the German zeppelins. I go for longer and longer walks; Hyde Park, Regent’s Park, St James’s Park. I am saddened by the disrepair of these once-proud gardens. Overgrown hedges, unkempt lawns and weeds tell me the gardeners have all gone to France; the iron railings and gates have all gone to cannons.

  Even my hotel and the London theatres lose their lustre. I am driven mad by the habitual tipping that is expected and obsequious fawning behaviour it induces in waiters, waitresses, barmen, barmaids, lift attendants, doormen, porters, chambermaids, cloakroom staff, bathroom attendants, cab drivers, newspaper boys, ushers and so on and so on. It is utterly contemptible they are not paid a decent wage. The only reliable wages are in the army. And that is to say nothing of the divide between the upper and lower classes which the British education system churns out. The trenches are the great leveller.

  ●

  The date of my departure for South Georgia was to be mid-February. By this time the U-boat situation had worsened considerably. Perris, however, remained optimistic the German blockade of British ports would fail and that Germany’s sinking of neutral ships would bring America into the war.

  ‘I tell you, Hurley, that is the only way this war can be won. The Chronicle has just reported that the US has severed diplomatic relations. A declaration of war can only be days away. And it can’t come too soon; in two days last week U-boats sank twenty-seven ships.’

  ‘What should I do about my trip to South Georgia?’

  ‘What do you mean what should you do? Have you made your will?’

  ‘No. Should I?’

  ‘Irresponsible not to, in these times. But I shouldn’t worry too much; the ship we’ve booked you on will have a special anti-U-boat gun fitted.’

  ‘Well, that will be handy for the daytime.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve had a cable from Shackleton. They’ve rescued the Ross Sea party, but they weren’t in good shape. Three dead, I’m afraid.’

  It was a few more days before there were any details. It sounded a total disaster. They established food depots for our trans-Antarctic party, which never even set foot on the Antarctic coast. They suffered starvation and quite likely scurvy, and all the time the poor bastards were just waiting and waiting for Shackleton.

  In February 1917 I travelled to Glasgow, where I boarded Pentaur, a filthy old oil and coal transport. I was her only passenger, and to make my journey legal I signed on as a purser at one shilling sixpence a month. I had my two Pomeranian puppies for company—I named them Blizzard and Blubber—along with fifteen hundredweight of photographic equipment. Our departure was held up by the mounting of a twelve-pound gun to the stern. Having previously had no interest in being an active participant in the conflict that gripped the world, I found myself suddenly quite excited by this small artillery piece. I insisted that, as I was part of the crew, I be trained in its operation. I was champing at the bit to see a U-boat in the same way one might hope to see a blue whale. I would have loved to have written Azzi to tell him I too had fired a shot in anger. After the dull monotony of London I was thrilled by the prospect of running the gauntlet of the U-boat blockade; I did not pause to consider the mismatch between the ancient Pentaur and a modern well-armed submarine.

  On our first day out of port I volunteered to act as sight layer and had the dubious satisfaction of firing practice on a floating target at five hundred yards and then at one thousand yards and fifteen hundred yards before the target disappeared, untouched, in the swells. We then spent nervous days and nights peering at every whitecap as we hugged the Irish Coast before heading out into the Atlantic.

  After a week I lost patience watching for submarines. As the tension on board eased and my own excitement abated, I retreated to Pentaur’s saloon, where there was nothing for me to do but read and await the next mealtime with the captain and steward and whatever argument they were having that day. Apart from Blizzard and Blubber, I was wretchedly lonely for the six-week voyage. Tragically, Blizzard, who was constantly escaping outside, failed to return one day and a short time later Blubber pegged out after coming down with distemper. That was the sad end of Perris’s special effects.

  We reached South Georgia at the end of March, very late in the season to start filming. I found myself back in Grytviken and all those memories returned from the early days of the Shackleton expedition. This time, however, I was my own boss. I was free of the petty rivalries and boorish behaviour of an overcrowded party. A small coastal launch, aptly named Matilda, was made available for my peregrinations to the penguin and seal colonies. Pentaur’s second mate volunteered to accompany me and help lug the cameras, cinematograph and tripod up hill and down dale as I searched out the best shots.

  For four weeks we tramped the foreshore, camped overnight on shingle beaches, walked the valleys, traversed glaciers and climbed small peaks. The weather was wild, constantly changing, and at times threatened to blow us and our small tent out to sea. But in between storms I captured a thousand feet of cinefilm and hundreds of photographs, including Paget colour plates of penguin and seal rookeries and spectacular scenery. I was in my element. This was the life I loved most of all. I captured plenty of penguins for Perris.

  ●

  By late June I was back at the Chronicle’s offices in London, thoroughly refreshed. As Perris had predicted, America had declared war on Germany and was sending troops.

  I handed over the film. ‘Here are your penguins,’ I said. ‘I can start putting it all together.’

  ‘That’s marvellous, but I think the penguins are going to have to wait now for this damn war to finish. I’m afraid the only explorers the public will pay money to see are dead explorers, and Mr Ponting already has that film.’

  Perris had that way of taking the wind out of my sails. Nevertheless, I had my work cut out for me in the darkroom and editing the cinefilm.

  And then the war came to me by way of a letter shoved under the door of my room at the Imperial Hotel. In July 1917, some two and a half years after hostilities commenced, I was invited to make an appointment at the London headquarters of General Sir William Birdwood, whom even I knew to be the commander-in-chief of the Australian Infantry Forces in the British Army. The AIF wanted to appoint an official photographer and Mawson had put my name forward. ‘Insist on some rank,’ he advised. ‘A lieutenant at least.’

  To me, the war was an inexplicable madness that I hoped would pass. I had never considered joining up. But not so many receive an invitation from the commander-in-chief—and I knew no one else willing to pay for my services while the war dragged on.

  Sir William Birdwood was remarkably charming and intrigued by my Antarctic expeditions. By the time I left our meeting, I had agreed to depart for France and report to Captain Charles Bean, Australia’s official war correspondent. Charles Bean’s reporting on the Australian soldiers had made him a household name. He went ashore with the Anzac troops on the first day of the Gallipoli Campaign and witnessed their heroic deeds there and later in France at Pozières, Bullecourt and Messines. He, more than anyone, was responsible for their reputation for courage and daring.

  What I was cock-a-hoop about, however, was that despite my never having served in the Army Reserve, Sir William Birdwood agreed I was to have an immediate honorary commission of captain, and would earn a captain’s pay.

  Part IV

  13

  Menin Road, September 1917

  I bought all the London papers and began reading voraciously of the war I was about to experience first-hand. I examined the grainy black and white images reproduced on the front pages. There were photographs of soldiers, but I saw no photographs of a ‘war’.

  The fighting had been going on since before I joined Endurance and throughout the whole time we had been stranded and drifting unawares in the icepack. On arrival in Punta
Arenas we had been dumbfounded at the stories of zeppelins and aeroplanes dropping bombs on cities, U-boats sinking passenger ships, machine guns, poison gas and liquid flamethrowers. And we thought our lives had been in peril! Before our departure I had no idea that such things could happen, but on our return the unspeakable had become the commonplace. I struggled to grasp what had changed in our absence. While in Chile I had shaken hands with both expatriate British and expatriate German businessmen. The whole thing seemed a madness that would surely pass by the time I reached England, if only because of the deadly nature of the conflict. But now the word on the street in London was it would drag on through yet another winter, although for all the casualty lists there seemed little movement in the newspaper maps of opposing armies.

  The Chileans had revelled in their role in Shackleton’s rescue of his crew, but after we departed Chile we received little in the way of fanfare for what we had endured. World events made our failed voyage insignificant to the public imagination. The conflagration in Europe made trivial that we had survived when so many had given up their lives. Not being soldiers, we couldn’t be heroes. Shackleton, however, was seen as heroic for having rescued his own disastrous expedition. I realised the truth of Lady Scott’s words: that the time of great polar explorers like Mawson and Shackleton belonged to another age. Scott was talked about only for having died a noble death.

  Most of my Endurance colleagues enlisted as soon as they reached home, despite being scientists by trade and having no experience fighting wars. They enlisted as if it was the most natural and normal thing compared to the merely idle madness they had engaged in with Shackleton. The younger members felt guilty they had cheated death when siblings and friends made what they called ‘the supreme sacrifice’ for their country.

  And now it was my turn to depart for Europe wearing the uniform of a soldier—though of course I was a non-combatant. From Charing Cross Station in London, the military train was full of officers. I had never seen such a concentration of the best of British in uniform. My captain’s uniform seemed drab compared to the bright red tabbed collars of the general staff officers. I was seated in a compartment with two colonels who pointed out various majors and a general. I felt an imposter just as I had when joining the Mawson expedition, that I did not belong, that I was no more a soldier than a scientist. I dared not look up for fear of missing a salute.

  At Folkestone I boarded Princess Victoria. She was full to the brim with subdued soldiers returning from leave. Somehow I found George Wilkins, who had been appointed my assistant photographer. He was from South Australia, a little younger than me, and had a bright impish grin. Wilkins was my soulmate if ever I had one. While I had been drifting in the Antarctic, he had been wandering in the Arctic with the Stefansson expedition, and before that he had been a photographer in the 1912 Balkan War. He did not have my photographic experience, but I had to admit he was more modest and he knew how to fly an aeroplane.

  As our boat came into Boulogne, I was taken aback by the picturesque beach, colourful parasols and large numbers of men, women and children bathing in public. The pale sand and translucent green water brought back memories of hot February days on the other side of the world. But in my last Australian summer I had witnessed nothing like this scene of gay abandonment. I pressed against the railing and was transfixed by the sight of a young man and woman holding hands on the edge of the deep, near naked it seemed to me as they plunged into the water. I watched their brown shoulders bobbing above the gentle motion of the sea. They laughed at the attention they attracted from the mass of khaki alongside me. The couple embraced and turned away so that Princess Victoria, her decks crowded with British soldiery, could not spoil their pleasure. It all seemed so incongruous, knowing the deadly purpose of those around me. Surely there could not be a murderous war within a day’s journey from this scene.

  On shore, George and I were busily gathering our equipment when I heard someone say, ‘Captain Hurley, Lieutenant Wilkins.’

  I turned to find a tall thin officer with bright carrot-coloured hair, a pointy nose and spectacles.

  ‘I’m Captain Bean, welcome to France.’

  Bean looked older than I’d expected. But for his uniform and slouch hat, he looked like a professor, very fair-skinned and frail-looking—though he grabbed his share of luggage.

  Bean had two cars with drivers, one of which we filled with equipment. From the other, George and I had our first look at the French countryside as we exchanged stories with Bean. This was my first time on the Continent. I may have been an experienced traveller in the remote uninhabited world, but here in this ancient cultivated land I was a complete novice. The road was lined with poplars and ran through small fertile fields. The villages were attractive with old solid stone cottages and churches. The inhabitants were industrious, though elderly. In the fields, labourers wielded ancient sickles into the late evening to reap the harvest. Golden sheaves of wheat were bundled, tied and raised into a series of great conical ricks scattered across freshly cut fields of stubble.

  It was several hours drive to army headquarters at Hazebrouck, and darkness fell before we had reached Saint-Omer. Being close to the front we drove without headlights. We rounded one corner at some speed, and there in front of us on the road was a flock of sheep. There was a frightful noise and some ominous thumps. The driver pulled up, and by torchlight we found all but two of the flock had disappeared. Our vehicle had inflicted a mortal blow on one and the other had blood coming from its forehead and was bleating hideously. A herdswoman arrived and commenced an even louder wailing, at the same time running back and forth between the two beasts. It was a piteous scene as we lifted both sheep clear of the road and laid them in the field. Bean apologised to the herdswoman in his best schoolboy French and handed her a roll of notes, but this did not appease her. He went back to the car and returned with additional notes, which she shoved in her dress while still maintaining her lament. Bean searched his pockets for coins and proffered these, but in her agitation they were scattered in the dark across the road. Unable to do more, we left her there alone in the night and continued our journey.

  Nearing Hazebrouck the western sky was lit up as if by an electrical storm. As we drove into that storm and I heard the dull thunder, it was then I knew for the first time what it was to hear the sound of a thousand heavy artillery guns. From the pit of my stomach an uneasiness grew, until all my senses were on edge. We drove on into the night as the flashes of light were followed more closely by the increasing roar. Wilkins and I fell silent.

  After midnight we came across an encampment. Sentries emerged from the dark as we pulled up. Bean showed us to some stretchers under a large canvas awning, and we tried to fall asleep to the sound of the now-intermittent artillery barrage. This eerie night-time arrival marked the end of my naive ignorance as to the gobsmacking callousness of the combatants. I woke to a vivid nightmare from which there was no escape.

  I was up before first light, taking in the different sights, sounds and smells. There was a distant crackle of rifle and machine-gun fire, and the intermittent thump of something bigger. Closer at hand in the dark was the sound of coughing from nearby stretchers.

  Bean joined us early with three steaming mugs of tea. ‘We’re off to Hill 60 this morning,’ he said in a jolly voice. ‘It’s a good place for your first look at the frontlines.’

  ‘Will we be based there?’ asked Wilkins.

  ‘Good heavens, no. I have organised one of the cylindrical Nissen huts for you at Steenvorde, about ten miles from the front, just inside Belgium. It will have a darkroom and all you need. And I’ve organised a car and driver so while it’s quiet you can get around the different Australian brigade headquarters.’

  ‘Was last night quiet?’ I asked tentatively.

  ‘Oh, our artillery has been building up. Noisy, aren’t they? But believe me, it is far better to be giving than receiving. It’s a sign there’ll be action soon to break this deadlock.’

&n
bsp; We set out in the car, Bean in front with the driver, and almost immediately joined a procession of military vehicles; troops crammed in motor lorries and open trucks, horse-drawn wagons laden with artillery guns and shells, ambulances and truckloads of supplies needed to keep a modern army in the field. Bean leaned over the back of the front passenger seat and continued his briefing.

  ‘The Australian soldier has already made a name for himself in this war, but our photographic record is nonexistent. Your job is to create that record. You are going to see trench parapets and German pillboxes, scenes of heroic struggles that have taken a toll in lives. Those scenes and the units that fought there need to be recorded with your cameras and preserved for future generations.

  It was hard to suppress our excitement. Bean’s impressive knowledge gave my confidence a considerable boost. He knew almost every officer we met and all of the generals.

  ‘And of course,’ he added, ‘of more interest to Prime Minister Hughes is propaganda, anything to keep up enlistment, front-page stuff for newspapers. Hurley, I’ll leave the propaganda photographs to you. And one other thing to keep in mind is that Australia House in London will hold a photographic exhibition of the Anzacs early next year. Your work will be on display.’

  I could hardly believe this. Despite all my work on the Shackleton pictures, my first international exhibition would be photographs I had not yet taken of the AIF in France.

  Away from the military traffic on the road, rural life continued unabated. The stone villages and farmhouses were, I imagined, unchanged in the hundred years since Napoleon. Then our car entered the town of Voormezeele. Not even Napoleon could have matched the carnage wrought upon this place. No building was undamaged. That which could catch fire had been burned, and that which would not burn had been toppled. No habitation remained. Homes, churches and public buildings were but crumpled masonry and stones. There were no roofs or windows. The road through had been cleared of rubble and the inhabitants had fled.