Free Our Darkest Day by Patrick Lindsay Page B

surge in recruitment back home. The numbers jumped from just on 6000 in April 1915 to more than 36,000 in July (perhaps also kicked along by a reduction in the height restriction from 5 foot 6 inches to 5 foot 2 inches and the news that a German submarine had infamously sunk the British passenger liner the Lusitania on 7 May). The situation was subsequently energised by Australia’s new prime minister, William Morris Hughes, who took office in October and immediately offered to increase the monthly quota of 9500 reinforcements being sent to the war zone. Hughes carried out an audit of the available pool of eligible men in Australia. It revealed 215,000 potential recruits within the military age group. Hughes offered the British War Office an additional 50,000 troops. Not surprisingly, they jumped at the offer.
    The newly created Australian divisions would soon be sent to France and one, the 5th Division AIF, became the first Division of the AIF to see action there. The 5th Division comprised three brigades of infantry – the 8th, 14th and 15th – each, in turn, made up of four battalions and support troops. The 8th Brigade (drawn from South Australia, Western Australia, Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria) comprised the 29th, 30th, 31st and 32nd Battalions; the 14th Brigade (from New South Wales) the 53rd, 54th, 55th and 56th Battalions; and the 15th Brigade (from Victoria) the 57th, 58th, 59th and 60th Battalions.
    The integration of the reinforcements with the veterans required a massive readjustment. It also opened up many opportunities for promotion. Gallipoli veteran, Captain Roy Harrison, was promoted to major and given temporary command of the 54th Battalion. He was charged with forming the battalion and training it while his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Walter Cass, recuperated in hospital. As revealed in Neville Kidd’s well-researched self-published biography of Harrison, An Impression Which Will Never Fade , Harrison wrote to his cousin Emily on 17 February 1916:
I have been promoted to Major in the 2nd Battalion and have since then been transferred as second in command, with 13 other officers and 400 men to form the 54th Battalion, which I am forming and command temporarily. Lt Col Cass has been appointed commanding officer, but as he is away in hospital, the job has fallen to me to organise the battalion. We have received a draft of 500 men yesterday, and we have now nearly 1000 men, but of course have to organise our signallers, machine gunners, transport, stretcher bearers, band, etc. Naturally we are all kept pretty busy.
    The new units struggled initially with their esprit de corps in the face of their dilution by the new recruits, as Harrison noted on 20 February:
I told you I was temporarily commanding the 54th Battalion which was formed a week ago, by transferring 14 officers and 442 men from the 2nd Battalion and then filling us up to war strength by sending a large draft of reinforcements. We were all very sorry to leave the old battalion, but as it is all for the good of the force, we are making the best of it. I am now bucking in to make the 54th the equal of the 2nd and I must say the new men are trying hard.
    The new units trained hard in Egypt, driven by a combination of their desire to reach battle-readiness and the prevailing threat of an attack on the Suez Canal by the Turks, now untrammelled by their defensive commitments to the Gallipoli campaign. The reports of Turkish reinforcements at Beersheba prompted plans for two of the Australian divisions to cover the central section of the Canal defences, a line of around 40 kilometres, from Ferry Post to Serapeum.
    Meanwhile, the first Australians bound for France, I Anzac Corps, left on 13 March 1916. While welcomed by the remaining Australian units of II Anzac Corps, the move created some unexpected difficulties for those left behind. The 4th and 5th Divisions had been assigned to take over the defence of the Suez Canal, but