The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 97

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD SATURDAY, APRIL 22, 2000 Spectrum features 7 TO ELEI N. A TIN HAr The World War I diaries of Sydney journalist George Warnecke tell of a young idealist made old before his time, writes TONY STEPHENS. g0w WVvm Left: George Warnecke's diaries now at the Australian War Memorial. Above: Warnecke, second from left, on leave. Main photograph by mike bowers EORGE WARNECKE was an I Australian journalist who led a distinguished career.

He created The Australian Women 's Weekly, I was editor-in-chief of Australian Consolidated Press, wrote a syndicated column from New York, worked with the United States Office of War Information in World War II and was a confidant to Dr H. V. Evatt, Australian Labor Party leader. Yet he hid away his most powerful work. His niece, Meg Sordello, found it in 1981, after Warnecke's death at 87.

Opening an old shoe box, covered in dust and tied with grubby string, she found a collection of diaries and notebooks. They tell the story of a young, idealistic patriot transformed by the horrors of World War I into a man old before his time. Bridget Griffen-Foley, the historian who wrote a paper on Warnecke and refers to him in her new book, The House of Packer, contrasts his male, wartime experiences with life at the Weekly, where he was the only male editor. Sordello has given the diaries to the Australian War Memorial. The wonder is that they have never been published.

born in Armidale, the son of a blacksmith of German descent, was a 20-year-old journalist in Sydney at the time of the Gallipoli landings of 1915. His mother, Emily, thought of him as the last person to make a soldier but he wanted to "do his He had a weak left eye but memorised the sight-testing card. He joined the 19th Battalion, 2nd Division of the AIF. He sailed in January 1916, on the Runic, describing the farewell at Woolloomooloo as "inexpressibly He wrote on January 29, after leaving Fremantle: "There is no sign of Australia now. We are out in the open sea the faint outlines of the coast were lost to sight in the dusk.

We're all in for it now. Home is already years and years away." February 20: Approaching Port Suez, the boys of the 9th gave a concert. "We rolled out Auld Lang Syne. There was a thrill in my heart and a feeling of solemnity such as I had not even felt when the huge transport pulled away, from the tearful folk on the Woolloomooloo wharf. With clasped hands we raised the song." The 1st and 2nd Divisions of the AIF sailed from Egypt to France in March.

"The enemy welcomed us cautiously when we first went into the trenches. He did not turn on a bombardment, as we half expected. And he did not retire straight away to the Rhine. "We began the relief of the Tommies, after dark. By midnight the garrison along the Armentieres sector consisted solely of Australians.

The men who had been on Gallipoli were looking around for good sleeping places; the new men were peering into the blackness of No Man's Land, with a thousand strange thrills and fancies "There, out in No Man's Land, I saw a board with a notice in English, ADVANCE AUSTRALIA, IF YOU CAN." The men of the 19th were inspected by the French General Joffre and General William Birdwood, the Australian commander. "A fine body of men," Joffre said. "They should do good work." Warnecke wrote before the main Somme offensive: "It is the nature of Australians to regard everything in the war zone as items in a variety show and EN II in the guns Bang, bang, bang, bang! The incessant noise doesn't abate for one minute." An officer ordered: "You're going to take up a position with no trenches and dig yourself in. If anyone's killed or wounded, you'll have to leave him. And there will be many killed July 26: "There never was such a place Warnecke went to a deep shell hole, where he noticed one of the several human forms move.

"God! He was in a terrible way. With another chap he was jammed in the side curiosity nad been, up till now, the dominating feeling. We were curious and eager to hear what our guns could do; and they did nothing. Next day Fritz knocked down a slender church tower behind our lines." May 5: "We first heard the voice of the guns in anger. A sheet of flame swept across the sky, behind our lines.

A stunning crash of thunder broke and a sudden hurricane-gust of shells went hissing into the sector in front of us. "Wonderful! Fritz was getting something at last!" Warnecke wrote of rumours that the war would end by August. "The women of France sowed the seed in spring, but the men would reap the harvest." The rumours were terribly wrong. The Somme offensive, led by Britain's General Sir Douglas Haig, began on July 1. Britain lost 57,470 troops for a gain of about 1.5 kilometres.

The Australians lost 5,533 men at Fromelles in 27 hours. Three Australian divisions joined the fighting around Pozieres and Mouquet Farm late in July. The 2nd Division lost 6,846 men killed, wounded or missing during 14 days around Pozieres. After seven weeks fighting in the area, Australian casualties were put at 23,300, nearly three times the deaths at Gallipoli. July 25: "No doubt now, we are in a real battlefield at last.

Here the Tommies, not long ago, climbed to charge the German main line. Rifles, bits of equipment, tin hats with holes and dents in them are everywhere. And half-buried Tommies. There is a horrific stench of dead everywhere. The air is quivering constantly from the roaring of "The sensation was most curious.

I realised that I could at least breathe. My tin hat formed a sort of little veranda over my face, leaving a pocket of air and some space for my nose to take it in. The main trouble seemed to be the earth, pressing so heavily on my chest. Intense cold crept all over me. The earth was damp and chill.

I would have shivered had I been able to. "I didn't worry at all. At any rate, I was safe from that Hell of disrupted iron foundries on the top. I thought of a man who had been buried alive just like this, and had suffocated to death. Even this recollection didn't seem to worry me Mates dug Warnecke out, but he was hit soon after.

"At first I thought I was killed. Then a tingling about the mouth and smarting eyes told me I was alive. But it seemed that half my face was blown off. I couldn't pluck up enough courage to lift up my hand to find out. I could feel blood running over my lips and on to my chest.

I could not see. The corporal was pressed right on top of my knees. His head was blown off "Perhaps, I thought, it might be better not to see. if all there was to be seen was broken earth and broken men." Warnecke went to hospital, slept and felt the touch of a nursing sister on his head. 'How are you feeling, But I was too tired to answer.

She had a soft, gentle voice." Warnecke recovered his sight and enough fitness to return to the front line, watching Birdwood present medals in September to men who won them at Pozieres. "I know how much you want a spell, boys," Birdwood said. "I know what you've been through. But you're wanted in the line. There's more work to be done." At Flers in November, "the dead and wounded were lying huddled together in shell holes and mud holes, like flies on sticky paper.

Great numbers of men ith broken bones and bleeding wounds were crawling from hole to hole Shrapnel hit Warnecke in the back, ending his war. He recovered in England before returning to Australia in 1918. Years later, Meg Sordello played as a young child on the beach at Umina. where Warnecke lived at the time. She asked about the nasty mark on his back.

He said he had hurt himself when he was very, very young. Sordello: "As young as me?" Warnecke: "Almost." 'shrapnel pellets We are just going up the line, digging July 28: "Some of the chaps are completely broken up with the shelling. Springett, just after Billy Green had been hit, had gone half crazy. He whimpered and cried and, with tears streaming down his face, started to climb over the top. 'Give me a gun and let me at them; they've killed all my "The shells are dropping in terrible monotony all the time boom, boom, boom.

The earth is shaking and I find it difficult to write, for, apart from the trembling earth, I have to duck constantly as each whizz seems to be about to end right on top of me." July 29 (my "The charge began. We waited excitedly to see how the attack went. Red and green flares burst like a fountain of joyful fireworks from the German lines. Other flares, white ones, rose and fell in endless suc cession. Machine-guns rattled from a score of points and the crackling of bombs could be heard.

"The wounded began to limp back. A man with only half of his face. Another with broken hands We hardly dare ask how the stunt had gone It was a failure all right Pell-mell, the others were surging back cursing loudly the staff and heads "I went up to the village There was scarcely a stump of a tree! Hardly a sign of the houses that had lined the road! Bricks crumble easily and the constant shelling had literally transformed the houses into stacks of powder! "God, how the troops have suffered! The dead. The dead and wounded everywhere. Mutilated, torn, broken men.

A terrible, unbelievable sight. "There were hundreds of wounded about one old chap, who looked like a regular old family man out of his bearings, propped up against a charred tree trunk. 'Give me a hand when you get a chance; but there's no he said quietly. I forgot about him till a long while after, when I passed by there again. He had tumbled forward on to his face, dead "I heard the general din, roaring, thudding, banging in my ears, and then silence, complete beautiful silence.

A wonderful quietude It was the quiet I realised first, then I was struck by the fact that I was buried. Entirely buried. I tried to move, but nothing happened. I couldn't even move a finger. LARGE SCALE ATLAS OFTHE- ALLIESFIGHTINGLINE-IN -THE -WEST knees of the one alive; the latter was in a peculiar sort of half-sitting position.

They must have been jammed thus for 24 hours. Whether or not the living man realised his horrible position to the full, I cannot say. He was blind. "The shell burst must have been very close, for his face was blackened from the powder. Many other dead were lying in the shell hole and we had to climb over their bodies to get to tne one living.

"His hand went frequently to the motionless head on his knees. He touched the features and hair, as out of curiosity, until, with a shock, he realised the truth. "Then he covered his black, ua a v.un,ucu eyes aiiu nicu jui, vjci 1 me out of it, get me out of July 27: 'I have just had a dnnk of smelly tea out of a petrol tin, some stale bread and gritty jam, but I don't feel like eating and, though exhausted, could not sleep. I don't really feel very nervous about the shells I just can't bear this sitting down, waiting in the trenches to be shot at. "Helm and I had a good look round.

'Gallipoli was never like he said. wonder if Australia will ever know what it "It is indeed a battlefield. Broken, burnt trees, torn down hedges, shell holes everywhere. The whole earth is tumbled up, and grey, and broken. Not a bit of solid surface.

What strikes me even more is that not one single blade of grass is left anywhere. Either the ground has been flung open, or the grass whipped off by the storm of 35L I thought might be ot the crater by a pile of tumbled The dead man's head was resting on the it better was 1 not to see. if all there to be seen wa broken earth and broken men. Above: Warneckes the editor, left, with his wife and Frank and Gretel Packer in 1936. Right: off to war.

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