The Great War that erupted in 1914 remains the single most cataclysmic event this nation has suffered, in terms of both numbers of lives lost and the impact to the Australian economy. With our country less diversified back then we relied on imports. But trade routes ceased or were extremely limited by the war and with Germany the biggest buyer of our metal exports, wool and wheat at that time, the economy shrank, the unemployed grew in number and then there was the terrible personal cost, both at home and abroad.

Nearly two in five of the total male population aged between 18 and 44 volunteered for service. Two thirds of these would become casualties of that war, either killed, wounded, suffering from sickness, made prisoners of war or simply missing. By the 1920s Australia’s national fertility rate fell from an average of three live births per woman to an average of two live births. Many widows left behind would never know the joy of children, many would never marry. A common phrase used by spinsters by the late 1920s was, ‘my husband died in the war’.

But what of the experiences of those who served? What of their loss? There are many books and movies on the subject and I have been exploring some of them during this occasional series. Here we look at two very different accounts, a young soldier’s experiences in France and Belgium in G.D. Mitchell’s first hand account in Backs to the Wall and Peter Weir’s acclaimed movie, that later produced a novel tie-in, Gallipoli.

backs to the wallBacks to the Wall.

In that hour was born in me a fear that lasted throughout the whole winter. It was the dread of dying in the mud, going down in that stinking morass and though dead being conscious throughout the ages. Waves of fear at times threatened to overwhelm me… a little weakness, a little slackening of control at times and I might have gone over the borderline.

 In the light of the sun, on firm ground, I could laugh at fate. But where the churned mud half hid and half revealed bodies, where dead hands reached out of the morass, seeming to implore aid – there I had to hold tight.
In this gripping account, George Deane Mitchell relives the horror and the humour of being an Australian soldier on the Western Front in World War I. Backs to the Wall by was originally published in 1937.

220px-Gallipoli_original_Australian_posterGallipoli is a 1981 Australian film directed by Peter Weir. It’s the story of several young men from rural Western Australia who enlist during The Great War following which they are sent to the peninsula of Gallipoli in the Ottoman Empire (modern-day Turkey), where they take part in the  Gallipoli Campaign. During the course of the film the young men slowly lose their innocence about the purpose of war. The climax of the movie occurs on the Anzac battlefield at Gallipoli and depicts the futile attack at the Battle of the Nek on 7 August 1915.

Gallipoli provides a faithful portrayal of life in Australia in the 1910s while capturing the ideals and character of the Australians who joined up to fight, as well as the conditions they endured on the battlefield. It does, however, modify events for dramatic purposes and was criticised on release for containing a number of significant historical inaccuracies. It remains however a deeply moving film, one which enthralled movie-goers and is still lauded.