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A TIME IN THE LIFE OF PETER OGORMAN, TOGETHER WITH

SOME MATTERS RELATING TO IT.

ONE

Peter O Gorman enlisted in the Australian Imperial Forces in the

town Charleville, Queensland, on November 23rd, 1916. By then the

First World War was into its third year. It was to continue for another

twenty four months.

(Recruiting Rally, Charleville, 1915)

After the Gallipoli fiasco Australians who hadnt enlisted to date

became known among Army rank-and-file as Deep Thinkers, they

were taking so long to think about it. Soon afterwards the term Fair

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Dinkum was applied to anyone who did join up. Only a brave man

would, once hed been confronted with the list of casualties that had

followed on the slaughter at Gallipoli and the early battles in France

and Belgium.

Its estimated that something in the region of 3,000 Irish-born served

with the A.I.F in the course of the War. Why Peter chose to enlist is

not clear. Perhaps it was out of loyalty to his newly-adopted country,

or a desire for adventure, or to impress, or that he found the mid-

summer temperatures in the Queensland Outback intolerable, (summer

high, 36 degrees) or could it have been in response to some of the

unscrupulous recruiting taking place at the time where men were

morally blackmailed into taking up the colours ?

Only 38.7% of all eligible Australian males did join up. 50% of these

men enlisted between July 1915 and August 1916. Between August

1916 and November 1918 the number dropped to 26%.

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(A Deep Thinker.)

Obviously hed have known many who enlisted, including no doubt

one Roy Wilkinson, a storeman working for the Queensland Railways

at Cheepie. Wilkinson had joined up a few months earlier. Cheepie,

where Peter lived and worked at the time, was such a sparsely

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populated place that they couldnt but have known each other. They

may even have been close friends. Wilkinson died in France of

gunshot wounds on October 12th 1917.

Many enlisted in the A.I.F. because it paid well. A Private in the

Australian Army got 6 shillings per diem. (one shilling of that was

deferred till he was demobbed) a considerable sum in a country where

unemployment was widespread. When His Majesty George V heard

how well the Australian soldier was paid he was more than a little

surprised. His British Tommy received a basic one shilling a day,

although he could earn extra for certain skills and proficiencies.

We are the Anzac Army

The A.N.Z.A.C.,

We cannot shoot, we dont salute

What bloody good are we ?

And when we get to Berlin

The Kaiser he will say

Hoch, Hock ! Mein Gott, what a bloody lot

To get six bob a day ! (1)

By the end of 1916 the Australian Army needed every man it could

get. Recruitment had fallen drastically to little more than half of what it

had been in June 1915. The rate of attrition on the Western Front was

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so enormous that something in the region of 7,000 men per month

were now needed if numbers were to be kept up to strength.

Many of those who enlisted towards the end of 1916 had been

rejected earlier for one reason or another. Peter may have fallen into

this category. Men who d formerly been failed through bad health were

now sometimes accepted without as much as a cursory medical

examination. In his diary of the War Pte. V. Schwinghammer of the

42nd Battalion wrote, This time Dr. Bignall passed me, without even

examining me, because he could see that I was eager to enlist and

men were badly needed. Obviously, the War Machine wasnt as fussy

about the quality of recruits as it had been originally. This can be

deduced from the numbers that were sent home from the Western

Front suffering from ailments that should have been detected, (and

probably were) long before those men ever they set a foot outside

Australia.

A month before Peter enlisted the Labour Government of Prime

Minister Billy Hughes attempted to introduce conscription. The British

War Council needed increasing amounts of cannon fodder and so had

introduced conscription at home. It was to be hoped the Dominions

would follow suit and Hughes, for his part, was only too happy to

oblige. British-born, he was a died-in-the-wool Imperialist who believed

that Australia was beset by all sorts of enemies, not just Germany, but

by Trade Unions, Socialists, Communists (Red Raggers), Sinn Feiners,

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International Workers of the World (Wibbly-Wobblies), and that

civilisation would collapse if the Germans were victorious. Accordingly,

he saw to it that the following proposition was put before the

Australian electorate on October 26th 1916 :

Are you in favour of the Government having, in this grave

emergency, the same compulsory powers over citizens in regard to

requiring their military service, for the term of this war, outside the

Commonwealth as it now has in regard to military service within the

Commonwealth ?

On a poster pasted near us

Was a speech by Mr. Hughes

Since Aussies are born heroes

He believes theres no excuse

To shirk the Empires battles

The Empire is our shrine

And everyone must conquer

Like the Anzacs at Lone Pine.

Hughes encountered stiff opposition on the question within his own

Labour Party and was soon expelled from its ranks. Undismayed, he

continued to fight tenaciously to see his motion through. The issue was

highly divisive and the country split along many lines, not least

sectarian.

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Heated argument became the order of the day. Dr. Alexander Leeper,

the Anglo-Irish Warden of Trinity College in the University of

Melbourne, proposed to the Anglican Synod meeting in that city

shortly before voting day, that this synod is so convinced that the

forces of the Allies are being used by God to vindicate the rights of

the weak and to maintain the moral order of the world, that it gives its

strong support to the principle of universal service .. His motion was

carried without discussion after which the Synod burst into a rousing

rendition of God Save the King.

Among those who campaigned against change was the Catholic

Archbishop of Melbourne, Daniel Mannix. In a public speech delivered

in September he maintained that conscription was ever a hateful thing

and resulted in nothing but evil. An honourable peace, he argued, was

possible without it. He was cheered to the echo by his listeners and

the meeting concluded with the singing of God Save Ireland.

When the result was finally declared on December 11 th the anti-

conscriptionists were seen to have won the day, but only by a narrow

majority, 47% For : 52% Against. A mere 64,549 votes separated the

two sides. Undaunted, or perhaps encouraged, Hughes made a second

attempt a year later. The motion was again lost, this time by a margin

of 149,795 votes, 44% For : 55% Against.

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No doubt stories of the slaughter at Gallipoli (7,818 dead) and at

Pozieres (7,000 dead) had a profound bearing on the Australian mind.

Almost 50% of the rank and file of the A.I.F. voted against the

proposal.

Peters attestation papers give his address at the time as : c/o

Fitzwalter & Co., Cheepie, Queensland. This company described itself

as Merchants (see photo below) so its reasonable to assume that its

Cheepie branch served in some way the large outlying stations that

surrounded it where huge numbers of cattle and sheep were grazed in

the wet season. This part of Queensland is known as the Channel

Country. Its an inhospitable region where rain rarely falls so that the

region must rely on the summer monsoons for water. These rains

occur further north and pour into the Georgina, Hamilton, and

Diamantina Rivers and from they overflow into the many thousands of

channels that criss-cross those parts. The township of Cheepie was no

more than two years old when Peter enlisted. It had its origins in the

coming of the Railway and at first water was brought in large tanks by

rail.

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Fitzwalter had their main retail outlet in the much larger town of

Charleville at the time. Charleville, called after the Co. Cork home town

of William Alcock Tully who in 1868 surveyed and laid out its streets,

is approximately 85 miles east of Cheepie. In 1920 Fitzwalters

Manager in Charleville was a man called William Michael Connolly.

That year Connolly appeared before a Queensland Government

committee in his capacity of Secretary of the Charleville Railway

League to plead for an extension of the line from Charleville north to

the township of Blackall. He appears to have been successful. The

photo below is of its premises at Charleville around the turn of the

century.

(Fitzwalter & Co., Charleville.)

According to Lonely Planet theres nothing much in Cheepie these

days apart from a post office and a phone booth. In reality it doesnt

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seem to have been much of a place at any time. Apart from the

railway stop and a post office it had a few tented shops, a few tented

boarding houses, and 2 vegetable gardens, in its early days. A

temporary school was opened there in October 1915 only to close in

June 1917. It seems to have been without any educational facility from

that date till June 1930 when a new school opened. This continued to

operate till it too was closed on April 11 th 1974. The railway no longer

runs there.

Peters attestation papers reveal that he was 33 years and 1 month

at the time of enlisting, and that he was single. He states he is a

Roman Catholic, a natural born British subject, and he named his

mother, Mrs. Mary OGorman of Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, Ireland, as

his next of kin. His papers indicate that he is a shop assistant and

that he served his time for two years at Messrs. Todd Burns in Dublin.

This was quite a substantial drapery located in Mary Street, and a

household name to Dubliners till it closed in the 1960-70s. The Jervis

Shopping Centre now stands on the site. His medical report tells us

that he was 5ft. 5 ins. in height, (a little, but only a little, below the

average recruit - the British Army, and presumably the Australian too,

categorised its recruits by Grade - a Grade 1 man was 5ft. 6ins,

weighed 130 lbs and had a chest girth of 34 ins. A Grade 3 man was

a physical wreck - incapable of undergoing even a moderate degree

of physical exertion. In 1914 the British had insisted that all recruits be

5ft. 6ins. or over.) Peter weighed 120 lbs, had a fair complexion, grey

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eyes and brown hair. He had two vaccination marks on his left arm

and a scar across his left cheek.

Peter swore the following oath on the 23rd November 1916 in the

presence of his attesting officer, Lieut. A.R. Irving at Charleville :

I, Peter OGorman, swear I will well and truly serve our Sovereign

Lord, the King, in the Australian Imperial Force from the 23 rd of

November 1916 until the end of the War, and a further period of four

months thereafter unless sooner lawfully discharged, dismissed, or

removed therefrom ; and I will resist His Majestys enemies and cause

His Majestys peace to be kept and maintained ; and that I will in all

matters appertaining to my service faithfully discharge my duty

according to the law.

So Help Me, God.

Six months previously the 1916 Rising had taken place in Dublin

and, on a much smaller scale, in Enniscorthy. There the Rebels had

sited their headquarters in the Atheneum, almost next door to Peters

home where his Mother was living. I dont know where he was at time,

possibly Cheepie, but the news was bound to have reached him soon

afterwards. One wonders how he reacted.

The following appeared on November 13th 1916 in The Irish Times,

at the time the mouthpiece of the British ascendancy in Ireland :

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If the state of things in Dublin is a true indication of the state of

things in this country generally, it may safely be said that recruiting is

dead in Ireland. Here, a man of military age, even if he be a young

man of the cap brigade, may loiter at street corners, saunter about the

city, or seat himself in a Picture house or Music hall in the full

confidence that no recruiting sergeant, official or self-appointed, will

come along to trouble him. There are few people on this side who

would pin any hopes to a new recruiting campaign as a means of

bringing into the Service the thousands of men of fighting age and

fitness who may be seen in Dublin on any day of the week. The

atmosphere is too unhealthy for any appeal to duty or national

honour or patriotism or anything else which, in more favourable

conditions, might lead men to enlist of their own free will.

The words speak for themselves.

NOTES :

(1) In his Retreat From Death, (Hutchinson & Co., 1936) George

Herbert Hill has this to say about Australian soldiers :

Knowing nothing about Australians I accepted his word at the time

anyhow, but for all that there was a glamour about an Australian that

was sadly lacking in home troops.

They preserved some idea of freedom in the serfdom of the war

and refused to bow down blindly to stupid authority. They carried on a

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feud with the Red Caps and according to rumour had killed not a few.

In the Jock mutiny at Etaples they had been sent to restore order and

had joined forces with the mutineers against the common enemy. Then

the Guards had been sent.

Digger wore a beautiful made uniform and expensive boots. In

addition he was well supplied with money, even for an Aussie. At the

weekly pay parade he drew fistfuls of notes in comparison to our

meagre allowance.