HIDDEN WAR

He was relatively old for a new recruit, but his diary entries from the beginning of his military career abound with the enthusiasm and naivety of a young man off to see the world.

Cecil began his journey to the Western Front late in the night of 1 August 1917 when he boarded the 11.30pm train from Liverpool, in Sydney's West, to Central Railway Station. There he assembled for the march to the troopship Miltiades, which was to carry 1020 young Australian men to the War.

Though it was past 3am on a cold winter’s morning by the time they boarded the ship, the young men’s spirits were high, buoyed no doubt by the presence of many of the ‘fair sex’ (‘are you there Bill?’, ‘where’s Johno?’, ‘where’s my B – hat? Some cow’s taken my coat’). As they passed through Sydney Heads on the Miltiades, boats with well-wishers flocked around the ship in farewell.

As it was for other young Australians, the outward journey from Australia was almost as monumental for Cecil as the war itself. The long cruise to Europe inspired artistic reflections in the young photographer. Wellington Harbour ‘filled me with a longing to stay here & sketch’ and waterspouts on the high seas were a source of fascination.

Writing of the clouds off Panama he noted that ‘they tower in pyramidical forms right to the very top of the heavens – the edges aglow with soft sunlight. I hasten to get my camera – for I cannot miss the opportunity of getting a snap.'

He also took interest in a camouflaged ship in the convoy:

This was Cecil's introduction to the mechanised world of total war. When he finally arrived in England he was struck by the scale of the Empire’s war industry, and he described with wonder that ‘the chimney stacks are belching forth flame & smoke... Now we see a huge blaze of light. The door of a vast furnace is opened – molten metal is poured from its vitals, and the splashes and hissings penetrate the inky blackness of the night... great factories were at it hammer and tongs, ever working the very symbols of Industry – or necessity.'

Cecil joined the Western Front in the final stages of the war, when the Allied powers were beginning a great push towards the German Hindenburg line – the last and greatest of Germany’s defence systems. He served with the rank of Corporal as a gunner in the 39th Battery of the 10th IAB. In addition to the daily duties of trench life, he was required to plan barrages, analyse maps and plot German positions, and on one occasion he worked as an intelligence officer.

Camped at Heytesbury in south eastern England, on the eve of his embarkation for France, Cecil reflected on his mission to come. ‘We are in good fettle,' he recorded, ‘and look forward to the day when we get our orders to proceed to the front, and join in the throng, who make the noble army of the British Empire, who are fighting for right, and the conquest of the Prussian Military Domination. To restore to those unfortunate peoples their liberty, and to crush the ravaging octopus of the unscrupulous Hun organism.'

As the war drew to a close Cecil’s unit pursued the retreating German forces. As they liberated German-occupied France they made often gruesome discoveries. Further along the Hindenburg line he discovered tunnels in which it was rumoured – incorrectly – that the Germans were rendering fat from human bodies. But at Montbrehain he found 30 French civilians, hysterical from living in a tunnel filled with human waste.

Then, at Premont he found civilians in German hands. ‘The young boys & girls that were old enough to work – had been taken away…,' he observed. ‘The girls had been forced to cohabitate with the German officers & there were many children born to these women in consequence. They cried when we came through & poor as they were – would insist on us sharing their meagre faire.'

At a place called Banidival Farm Cecil received ten days' leave in Paris. That was the last he saw of actual fighting. ‘We are informed that hostilities are to cease on November 11th at 11am,' he wrote on his return’. ‘Everyone takes the news quietly – nobody seems to be excited at all – & many would not believe it. After a few days… my work was finished. I now began to realise that I had pulled through some tough times without any serious mishap & was truly, very thankful.'

Cecil’s last acts in the war were celebratory. After the armistice his unit remained in France, where he met an American sergeant who was an excellent pianist. They found a piano and played and sang in their spare time, forming a jazz band to entertain the troops. He organised a concert party, given in the Hall of Le Cateau.

In January 1919 Cecil was relieved from his battalion. 'At last my “Blighty” leave came through & one bitter cold morning in January I left the Brigade – never to return,' he wrote. 'Having reported at Headquarters – I am ready to proceed wherever they deem fit to send me. I was offered a position in the Photographic Section which I gladly accepted as I thought this would give me an opportunity of seeing the Greatest City in the world – London.'

In that year he exhibited the photograph Day breaks-cold-shrieking-bloody at the Photographic Salon in London. The Bulletin carried a notice about him on 14 August 1919:

Broody and atmospheric, Day breaks-cold-shrieking-bloody carries the emotional weight of Cecil’s experience in the trenches. Soldiers are silhouetted against the sky and he has allowed what was generally considered to be a technical imperfection – halation, or the prominent halo of light particles around the gun – to remain for the sake of a dramatic image. This light patch is ambivalent; it might be the breaking dawn or smoke from a recently discharged gun. Australian critic Alek Sass thought it ‘a picture and a photograph beyond criticism … Bostock’s emotional vision rises to its highest in this picture.'

Thought to be his only exhibited photograph from the war, in Day breaks-cold-shrieking-bloody Cecil found visual poetry in the horror of the trenches.

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Weaver shared his rum with them. He passed out and woke up on his back, feeling himself suffocating in the mud. He crawled out of the trench, this time in daylight, and reaching home was immediately placed on a stretcher and carried out. 'I was full of a sense of immense relief,' he wrote.

One hundred and forty days after Weaver left the Somme battlefields the offensive ended. By then more than 1 million men had been wounded or killed. The British and French Forces were victorious over the German army. Together they had captured only 9.7 kilometres of territory.

One of only 200 men from his regiment to survive the battle, Weaver was critically injured at the Somme. In a letter to his father he wrote that he would not lose his arms, 'but it will take a very long time to heal'. Twelve operations and two and a half years spent at an English hospital gave him back partial use of his hands.

Before the war Weaver trained as an artist at the Camberwell School of Arts. Together with fellow students David Jones and Frank Medworth, he saw and was inspired by Roger Fry’s 1910 Manet and the Post-Impressionists exhibition in London.

For Weaver, like so many young men, the Great War was a call to action and he had enlisted as a rifleman in the army, for a regiment known as the London Territorials. He was mobilised in August of 1914 and served at the Western Front for one year and nine months. He had become attached, as a Lance Corporal, to the Signal Section of his regiment. Weaver spent four days in front line, four days in support and four days just behind the line, ‘never out of gun fire at all’.

The experience marked him for life. He was unable to forget the piercing screams of a soldier who was left in a trench for half a day until he was carried out at night ‘peppered all over with bits of metal from an enemy rifle-grenade’. Alongside him in the trenches a rifleman died 'disembowelled by a rifle-grenade from the enemy trench. He died screaming and trying to hold in his intestines.'

In it she described a city consumed by talk of war. ‘The invasion of England… seems to be regarded here as a certain probability at the present moment,' she recalled. ‘The Germans seem absolutely confident of winning, and there is not a foreign soldier, excepting prisoners, on German soil ... Rome is full of German spies, and crowds of them enter England disguised as Belgian refugees.'

Although her fears of an invasion of the United Kingdom proved to be unfounded, Dora’s account of the rising tension in Rome was quite real. Italy had entered the war only six months earlier, and what would become a 12-battle campaign against Austria-Hungary along the Isonzo River was taking a huge toll on young Italian soldiers.

Dora too was beginning to feel the impact of the war on her personal and professional life. ‘In time of war art is the first thing people cut out of their daily needs.' She continued, ‘I shudder to think what will become of us all. Men artists can at least be killed, women can’t. In six months there will be only women and crowned heads left. Even bishops and Labor members shed their blood.'

Dora Ohlfsen was born in 1869 in Ballarat, Victoria. As a young woman she showed great promise as a pianist, and at the age of 23 left Australia to study music in Berlin. Though talented, her musical career was cut short when she developed neuritis of the arm, and temporarily lost the use of one hand. Then, as The Register reported in 1922, ‘too proud to become a mediocre performer, Miss Ohlfsen abandoned the pianoforte; and it will be seen how much such a sacrifice cost from the fact that she refused to play a note after wards.'

Abandoning her musical studies, Dora moved to Russia and then Italy, where in 1902 she began studying with artists of the French Academy, including the medallist Pierre Dautel. After setting up a studio in Rome, she became known as a sculptor and medallist. In 1908 the Sydney Morning Herald reported that as a relief portraitist ‘she is a most successful exponent, and orders crowd upon her. British and American visitors are her chief customers, though she works also for the foreign nobility and the clergy.'

Italy’s entry into the First World War brought some privations to the streets of Rome. In letters written to Gother Mann, then director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Dora wrote that prices were high, some people could no longer afford to heat their houses and life for many was a misery:

Prior to the war Dora had trained as a nurse, which allowed her to serve in a voluntary capacity at the Italian Auxiliary Hospital in Rome, which was almost directly opposite her studio, and later in Venice. Serving as a nurse brought her closer to the effects of the war and, through her work in the arts community, she became conscious of the impact of the war on Italian society and culture. ‘There is a great need of nurses and now a branch of the English Red Cross Society has come to Rome and English women are asked & go through a Voluntary Aid course,' she recorded. ‘Great preparations are being made for bringing English wounded to this country and one sees crowds of English, French and Serbian officers and soldiers about ... I also told you that when I first [contacted] Paris I found my founder was dead and my reducers for medals – all killed. The number of artists killed too is appalling.'

While working in Rome, Dora had been maintaining her links to Australia. She had been commissioned by the trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales to design a bronze frieze to go directly over the entrance door to the Gallery. The major feature was a Greek chariot race, but Dora had reservations about the side panels. The director wanted portraits of Leonardo and Michelangelo to accompany the race, but the strong-willed Dora opposed them as anachronistic.

In any case, Dora was unable at the time to cast the bronzes due to the high costs of materials because of the war. This became a source of tension between her and the Gallery, which she felt deliberately neglected her demands. Writing to Mann, she asked whether he could:

Dora’s association with the Fascists in fact went beyond merely observing them in parade. In 1924 she was commissioned by the Fascist Italian Government to produce a war memorial at Formia on the Mediterranean coast of Lazio, titled Sacrifice. She produced a twice life-sized sculpture of a muscled and shirtless young Italian soldier, both arms reaching towards the heavens. She was later commissioned to create a relief portrait of Mussolini himself, which was well received.

Having made commemorative art works for two countries, Dora’s contribution to remembering the First World War was unique, particularly since during her lifetime those two countries would become enemies in another world war. Dora did not abandon her patriotism for Australia, and in fact she remained fiercely protective about the public commemoration of Anzac.

She was particularly scathing about the construction of the Anzac Memorial in Sydney’s Hyde Park in 1934, delivering a thinly-veiled accusation of plagiarism to sculptor Raynor Hoff:

‘Tell me this,' she continued, ‘is the crucified woman meant to commemorate the Lousberg brothers (German) in Belgium where women of every task, age and class were requisitioned and is she meant to remind the Diggers of their friends occupation of allied countries? A Latrine Parade and a naked woman on a cross! Is this our Australian mentality or merely a group of Sadists (artists and committee) giving full play to their imagination? For this form of degradation in the name of art it seems Australia has tens of thousands of pounds to expend!!! The person who wrote to me about the naked woman on a cross mentioned that the Roman Catholics had protested. Don’t forget to tell me all about it.'

Dora could not have foreseen Fascism’s role in bringing about another war, but her work on the war memorials of two countries highlights the complex politics of veneration and commemoration. Indeed, the stories of Cecil Bostock and Weaver Hawkins also ask us, looking back a century after the First World War, to question the consequences of war and the role of artists in transcribing and preserving the experience of battle.

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