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 OUR CORNER OF THE SOMME
A U ST R A L I A AT V I L L E R S- B R ET O N NE U X

Before the First World War, Villers-Bretonneux was a lively and flourishing
French town dedicated to textiles and agriculture. By the time of the
Armistice, it had been largely destroyed, and half its population had fled or
died. From March to August 1918, Villers-Bretonneux formed part of an
active front line, where Australian troops were heavily involved. As a result, it
holds a significant place in Australian history.

At the end of the war, Villers-Bretonneux became an open-air memorial to

Australia’s participation in the First World War. Successive Australian
governments have valorised the Australian engagement, contributing to an
evolving Anzac narrative that has become entrenched in Australia’s national
identity.

Our Corner of the Somme provides a robust, eye-opening analysis of the

memorialisation of Australia’s role on the Western Front and the Anzac
mythology that so heavily contributes to Australians’ understanding of
themselves. In this rigorous and richly detailed study, Dr Romain Fathi
challenges accepted historiography by examining the assembly, projection
and performance of Australia’s national identity in northern France.

Romain Fathi PhD is Lecturer in Australian History at Flinders University and

a chercheur associé at the Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po, Paris. He has
taught and researched at Sciences Po in France, Yale in the United States, and
the University of Queensland in Australia. His primary research interests
focus on the First World War, war commemorations and Australian identity.
OTHER TITLES IN THE AUSTRALIAN ARMY
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Peter Dean The Architect of Victory: The Military Career of
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Peter Williams The Kokoda Campaign 1942: Myth and Reality
Karl James The Hard Slog: Australians in the Bougainville Campaign,
1944–45
Robert Stevenson To Win the Battle: The 1st Australian Division in
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Jeffrey Grey A Soldier’s Soldier: A Biography of Lieutenant-General
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Mark Johnston Anzacs in the Middle East: Australian Soldiers, Their
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Craig Stockings Britannia’s Shield: Lieutenant-General Sir Edward
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Andrew Ross, Robert Hall and Amy Griffin The Search for Tactical
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Kate Ariotti Captive Anzacs: Australian POWs of the Ottomans
during the First World War
Margaret Hutchison Painting War: A History of Australia’s First
World War Art Scheme
OUR CORNER OF
THE SOMME

AUSTRALIA AT VILLERS-
BRETONNEUX

ROMAIN FATHI
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108471497
© Romain Fathi 2019
This publication is copyright. Subject to statutory exception
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ISBN 978–1–108–47149–7 Hardback

Reproduction and communication for educational purposes
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‘MACHIN, TRUC, CHOSE, tous morts, tous tués, crevés,
écrabouillés, anéantis, disloqués, oubliés, pulvérisés, réduits à zéro, et
pour rien [. . .].’
Blaise Cendrars, La main coupée, 1946

‘WHO’S-IT, WHAT’S-HIS-NAME and THINGUMABOB: all dead,

all killed, slain, crushed, annihilated, dismembered, forgotten,
pulverized, reduced to zero, and for nothing [. . .].’
Blaise Cendrars, Lice, trans. Nina Rootes, 1973
 FOREWORD

Some years ago, I came across an anonymous letter in the archives of the
Commonwealth War Graves Commission. It described a visit to the
Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux within months of
its dedication. A place pledged to remember Australian sacrifice in France
had already become a site of casual visitation. By day, this ‘beautiful
memorial’ became ‘a kind of picnic ground’: ‘tourists’ purchased ice
creams at the entrance and enjoyed a fine view of the countryside from
the heights of Lutyens’ commemorative tower. By night, the former
battlefield hosted even less appropriate pastimes. Install ‘iron railing with
a lockable gate’, the correspondent urged, otherwise ‘this hallowed spot’
will in time become a ‘lovers’ walk’ for all and sundry.
This letter reminds us of the multiple uses any commemorative site
might serve. It also suggests a tension between local, national and imperial
aspirations. What London and Canberra hoped for from Villers-
Bretonneux was very different from callow youths who parked bicycles
and smoked cigarettes beside the porch of the cemetery, or children who
‘jumped in and out of the entrance chapel’. Not all the locals were quite so
irreverent. Our correspondent was touched by workmen removing their
hats, and impressed by gardeners and police struggling to impose order
and decorum. Even so, the message was clear. Australia and the Empire
must assert its control over this external site; commemoration in a foreign
land involved a delicate renegotiation of sovereignty.
All these issues – and many more – are surveyed in this remarkable
book. Romain Fathi explores the reasons Villers-Bretonneux was chosen
as Australia’s principal commemorative site in France and the way this
‘open-air memorial’ has functioned. His study extends from the war years
to the present day, charting the way Australian national identity was
asserted first within an imperial framework and then as an aspect of
commemorative diplomacy. This is a project of considerable breadth.
What Dr Fathi calls the ‘assembly, projection and performance of war
commemoration’ occurs on French territory, through the mediation of

vii
viii FOREWORD

French locals, but is designed for ‘internal consumption in Australia’. It

involves both ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ remembrance. One of the most
rewarding discussions in this book is the relationship between personal
investments in war commemoration and the political purposes war
memory serves. Here he advances new explanations for the ‘Anzac
revival’ and brings new sources to our attention. This book is not the first
to survey responses through visitor books, but it does employ quantitative
analysis in a way none previously has. And that scan of some 20 000
entries suggests that Australians often take very different messages from
visiting the Somme than the perspective ‘suggested by official sources’.
What this book also establishes is the narrowing of the official com-
memorative compass in recent decades. Once, ceremonies on the Somme
were restrained affairs, focused on the sombre remembrance of the war
dead. Today, commemoration has taken on a carnivalesque character.
The Department of Veterans Affairs issues tickets to what it calls com-
memorative ‘events’, Villers-Bretonneux is fitted out with makeshift sta-
diums and remembrance is orchestrated for TV audiences ‘back home’.
Politicians speak less of loss and more of imagined Anzac virtues. Dr Fathi
dubs this the ‘impoverishment’ of remembrance. Paradoxically, that same
‘remembrance’ relies increasingly on costly digital recreations. The simu-
lation of battle in the Sir John Monash Interpretative Centre means the
most expensive museum raised on the Somme is something of a 3D
shooting gallery. One wonders how our letter writer would have viewed
this latest abuse of a ‘hallowed’ place originally intended as a ‘sanctuary’.
This book takes issue with abiding mythologies. Australian troops did
not save Amiens in 1918 and therefore (by extension) France. Forgotten
(and more effective) Moroccan troops fought beside them at Villers-
Bretonneux, as did British forces. Nor did Victorians rebuild the town’s
school alone. That ‘gift’ actually ran counter to wishes of the mayor, who
believed an abattoir would serve the purpose of civic reconstruction. His
proposal for a memorial slaughter-house was not well received in Austra-
lia! Here and elsewhere, Romain Fathi employs measured argument and
incisive analysis to craft a bold and revealing history. Our Corner of the
Somme is one of the most searching studies of Australian commemorative
practices abroad to emerge from the Great War’s Centenary.

Professor Bruce Scates, FASSA

Australian National University, July 2018
 CONTENTS

Foreword by Professor Bruce Scates vii

Maps x
Photographs xi
Figures and tables xiii
Preface xv
Acknowledgements xvii
Glossary xx

Introduction 1

1 Villers-Bretonneux: An Australian victory? 11

2 ‘The turning point of the war’: Occupying the memory front 30

3 A school or nothing 48

4 The Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux:

Commemorating the nation within an imperial frame 73

5 ‘Have we forgotten this place?’ 99

6 ‘The meaning of the Anzac tradition must be learned anew’ 112

7 ‘A piece of Australia in France’ 135

8 ‘It was great to see Australia acknowledged in such a great way’ 159
Conclusion 196

Appendix 204
Notes 208
Bibliography 240
Index 262

ix
 MAPS

1 Operation Michael, German Offensive, March 1918 13

2 German push on Villers-Bretonneux and Allied counter-offensive,
24–27 April 1918 19
3 Advance of the Moroccan Division from 0500 to 1800 hours,
26 April 22
4 Battle of Amiens, August 1918 25

x
 PHOTOGRAPHS

0.1 Do Not Forget Australia 7

0.2 N’oublions jamais l’Australie 8
2.1 Australian memorial plaque, cathedral of Amiens 32
2.2 American plaque, cathedral of Amiens 36
2.3 Canadian plaque, cathedral of Amiens 37
2.4 Newfoundland’s plaque, cathedral of Amiens 38
2.5 New Zealand’s plaque, cathedral of Amiens 38
2.6 British plaque, cathedral of Amiens 39
2.7 Tribute to General Debeney, cathedral of Amiens 40
2.8 Tablet offered to Australia by the inhabitants of
Villers-Bretonneux 44
3.1 & 3.2 Villers-Bretonneux’s church 49
3.3 & 3.4 Rue Arsène Obry, Villers-Bretonneux 50
3.5 & 3.6 Rue d’Herville, Villers-Bretonneux 51
3.7 Stele commemorating the donors, Victoria School 66
4.1 Lucas’ proposal for the Australian National Memorial 76
4.2 Lutyens’ proposal for the Australian National Memorial 79
4.3 Rising Sun motif on the entrance to the Australian National
Memorial’s tower 80
4.4 Orientation table at the top of the Australian National
Memorial’s tower 81
4.5 A section of the orientation table 82
4.6 The Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux,
July 1938 90
6.1 Plaque unveiled by French Minister for Defence André Giraud
in 1988 115

xi
xii PHOTOGRAPHS

6.2 The Bullecourt Digger 127

7.1 & 7.2 Setting the scene: Anzac Day preparations
at Villers-Bretonneux, 2010 147
7.3 Anzac Day Dawn Service, Villers-Bretonneux, 2009 148
7.4 The Sir John Monash Centre under construction 154
7.5 Front of the Sir John Monash Centre 156
8.1 Small commemorative items, Villers-Bretonneux 185
8.2 Villers-Bretonneux’s French–Australian Museum 193
 FIGURES AND TABLES

Figures
7.1 Visitors to the French–Australian Museum of
Villers-Bretonneux from 1992 to 2016 138
8.1 Estimated numbers of signatories in the visitor books of
Adelaide Military Cemetery and Villers-Bretonneux Military
Cemetery between 1989 and 2013 162
8.2 Samples of distribution of signatories’ nationality at the
Adelaide Military Cemetery 162
8.3 Samples of distribution of signatories’ nationality at the
Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery 163

Tables
8.1 Nationalities of soldiers buried at Adelaide and
Villers-Bretonneux military cemeteries 166
A.1 Visitors to the French–Australian Museum of
Villers-Bretonneux from 1992 to 2016 204
A.2 Estimated numbers of signatories in the visitor
books of Adelaide and Villers-Bretonneux military
cemeteries between 1989 and 2013 205
A.3 Samples of distribution of signatories’ nationality
at the Adelaide Military Cemetery 206
A.4 Samples of distribution of signatories’ nationality
at the Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery 207

xiii
 PREFACE

The Australian Army has a long and admirable record in fostering serious
research and publication about its history. For more than a century the
Army has seen the value of history to its future. From its outset ‘Military
History’ was part of the formal education of officers at RMC Duntroon,
and for a time officers’ promotion depended upon candidates being able
to give a coherent analysis of Stonewall Jackson’s Shenandoah Valley
campaigns in promotion exams. An understanding of the Army’s history
and traditions remains central to its esprit de corps in its most literal
meaning.
From the 1970s (as a consequence of educating officers at university
level) the Army has produced several generations of educated soldiers,
several of whom became historians of note, including John Coates, Robert
O’Neill, David Horner, Peter Pedersen, John Mordike, Bob Hall, Jean
Bou, Bob Stevenson and Craig Stockings. The creation of an Army
History Unit in the late 1990s demonstrated the Army’s commitment to
encouraging and facilitating serious history. Under Dr Roger Lee it
exerted a profound influence in managing the Army’s eighteen museums,
supporting research on Army history and in publishing its history.
One of the most impressive demonstrations of the Army’s commitment
to history has been its long association with several major publishers, and
notably with Cambridge University Press. This has been a productive
relationship brokered by Roger Lee and the long-standing former General
Editor of the Army History Series, Professor David Horner.
The Australian Army History Series brings to an academic and popu-
lar readership historical work of importance across the range of the
Army’s interests and across the span of its history. The series, which
I now have the honour to edit, seeks to publish research and writing of
the highest quality relating not only to the Army’s operational experience
but also to its existence as an organisation and as a part of its contribution
to the national narrative.

xv
xvi PREFACE

The Army History Unit has created a community of writers and

readers (including soldiers in both roles), the product of whose questions,
research, debate and writing informs the Army’s understanding of itself
and its part in Australia’s history. It is a history to be proud of in
every sense.
Romain Fathi’s Our Corner of the Somme begins with a challenging
account of the fighting around Villers-Bretonneux in the French spring of
1918. He contests the traditional Australian story by drawing on French
sources utterly unknown to Australians. His exploration of Australia’s
changing relationship with the community of Villers-Bretonneux – the
location of the Australian National Memorial – offers many revelations
and even surprises to Australians who cherish a simple narrative of French
gratitude. That Dr Fathi’s book deals with a commemorative site reinvig-
orated by the opening of the Sir John Monash Centre gives it a strong
relevance to those interested in understanding the complex relationship
between Australia and the nation in which lie more Australian soldiers
killed in battle than any other.

Professor Peter Stanley

General Editor, Australian Army History Series
UNSW Canberra
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A wide range of people and institutions have provided me with their

support to complete this book, which is based on research completed
during my doctoral studies. I have been extremely fortunate to have
Associate Professor Martin Crotty and Professor Guillaume Piketty as
my supervisors thanks to an auspicious cotutelle agreement between the
University of Queensland and Sciences Po, Paris. I owe my deepest grati-
tude to both Martin Crotty and Guillaume Piketty for their incredibly
supportive mentorship. Their advice, availability, dedication and encour-
agement provided the best environment a doctoral candidate could wish
for. I feel privileged to have learned from them as academics and as men of
great generosity. Thank you both.
Academic support has been essential to this project. I would like to
sincerely thank all those who have encouraged me and provided me with
guidance, feedback, advice on primary sources, conference or publication
opportunities, advice on public engagement, funding and all areas of early
career academia. I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to Stéphane
Audoin-Rouzeau, Damien Baldin, Joan Beaumont, Annette Becker, Laur-
ence Bertrand-Dorléac, Frank Bongiorno, Andrew Bonnell, Geoff Ginn,
Matthew Graves, Elizabeth Greenhalgh, Anne Hertzog, John Horne,
Patrick Jory, Marc Lazar, Morris Low, Nicolas Offenstadt, Melanie
Oppenheimer, Emmanuel Saint-Fuscien, Bruce Scates, Peter Stanley,
Shanti Sumartojo, Jakob Vogel, Ben Wellings, Caroline Winter and
Bart Ziino.
Thanks to Sciences Po’s Centre for the Americas, I was able to com-
plete a doctoral exchange at Yale University during my candidature. My
deepest gratitude goes to Professor Jay Winter, who supported my appli-
cation and welcomed me to the department, an invaluable opportunity
and a fantastic experience. I was lucky enough to become a Teaching
Fellow for Professor Timothy Snyder, whom I would equally like to thank
for his dedicated mentorship.

xvii
xviii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In Paris, the support and camaraderie of Paul Lenormand, Géraud

Létang, Victor Louzon, Camille Mahé, Paul Marquis, Claire Morelon,
Malcolm Théoleyre and Nina Valbousquet turned research and writing
into an exceedingly pleasant activity. In Brisbane, I am immensely
indebted to Kate Ariotti, Mark Cryle, Susan Kellett, Fiona Mcleod, Maria
Quirk and Laura Roberts for their generosity, friendliness and proofread-
ing, which were tremendously helpful as I faced the challenges of writing
in a foreign language. Beyond my supervisors who bore the brunt of this
situation, your dedication will be fondly remembered.
This research would not have been possible without the financial
support of several institutions. First and foremost, I would like to thank
the University of Queensland for having awarded me the UQI scholarship.
UQ’s Graduate School International Travel Award supported research at
Oxford, Maidenhead and Kew, while UQ’s School of Historical and
Philosophical Inquiry and Sciences Po’s École Doctorale both provided
significant travel funding for research in France, Australia and the United
States. I am also grateful to His Excellency Christophe Lecourtier, former
Ambassador of France to Australia and his predecessor, Stéphane Roma-
tet, as well as Catherine Hodeir, for their support, particularly through
the embassy’s Scientific Mobility Program award. I am also most grateful
to the International Research Centre of the Historial of the Great War in
Péronne, the Conseil Général de la Somme and the Foundation Gerda
Henkel for their financial support, and to the Chancellerie des Universités
de Paris at the Sorbonne, which bestowed a Prix de la Chancellerie upon
my work.
I am also deeply indebted to all those in the Somme who facilitated and
supported my research, including François Bergez, Guillaume de Fonclare,
Étienne Denys, Mélanie Driencourt, Lorraine El Yabouri, Hervé François,
Natalie Legrand, Hubert Lelieur, Marie-Pascale Prévost-Bault, Yves Taté
and Jean-Pierre Tranchard. Among the many archive centres this research
took me to (and institutions that served as research centres), a few distin-
guished themselves through the dedication of their staff. I am especially
grateful to the French–Australian Museum of Villers-Bretonneux, the
Archives Départementales de la Somme, the Centre de documentation
de l’Historial, the Préfecture de la Somme and the Australian War
Memorial. I wish to thank the staff of the Commonwealth War Graves
Commission at Maidenhead, Beaurains and Villers-Bretonneux, and
Andrew Fetherston in particular for his terrific and continuous support.
The support and dedication of series editor Peter Stanley and that of
Olivia Tolich, Associate Commissioning Editor at Cambridge University
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xix

Press, have been invaluable in transforming a much larger study into a

book. Professor Stanley’s clever suggestions and insights, and his cheerful
attitude, were particularly appreciated. After completing this research,
I was appointed a lecturer at Flinders University, and I would like to
thank my colleagues for their tremendous support since joining their
enthusiastic and dedicated team of scholars.
I would also like to express my sincerest gratitude towards those who
supported this research in other ways such as Alain Besoin, Emily Galla-
gher, Danielle Le Galloudec, Georgia Haydon, Marcy Kaufman, Judy
King, Agnieszka Rec, the entire Young family, and Claire Rioult in
particular for her caring support. All the friends who, wherever in the
world they may be, encouraged and stimulated this research simply
cannot be adequately acknowledged. Your patience, your laughter, your
proofreading, your conversation – and your spare bedrooms when I was
on field trips – have been invaluable. I am so very grateful to you all for
your support and companionship.
Finally, I wish to acknowledge my loving parents, who have been
incredibly supportive through the entire duration of the project, also
backing my relocation to Australia despite the distance. I am also
immensely grateful to my grandparents for their love and care, which will
always be inestimable. Merci à vous.
 GLOSSARY

ADS Archives départementales de la Somme

AIF Australian Imperial Force
ANM Australian National Memorial
AWM Australian War Memorial, Canberra
CWGC Commonwealth War Graves Commission
DVA Department of Veterans’ Affairs
ECPAD Établissement de communication et de production
audiovisuelle de la Défense
FAMVB French–Australian Museum of Villers-Bretonneux
IWGC Imperial War Graves Commission
MAE Ministère des Affaires Etrangères
MVB Museum’s visitor book
NAA National Archives of Australia
NARA National Archives and Records Administration
PMD Prime Minister’s Department
PVDAG Procès-verbaux des délibérations des assemblées générales
RSL Returned and Services League
RSSILA Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial League of
Australia
SHD Service historique de la Défense
VBMC Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery
VVBF Victoria Villers-Bretonneux Fund

xx
 INTRODUCTION

The habit of seeing ourselves through the eyes of the imaginary other is
the most lasting mental relic of colonialism.
Davison, ‘The imaginary grandstand’

Villers-Bretonneux is a small country town; it is nestled in the plains of

Picardy, and the vast majority of French people have never heard of it.
Thousands of kilometres away in Australia, however, it is considered
sacred ground. During the First World War, from March to August
1918, Villers-Bretonneux was part of an active front line that saw intense
mobile fighting between Allied and German forces, from Albert in the
north to Montdidier further south. Australian troops were heavily
involved on a small section of this front at Villers-Bretonneux and in
its vicinity such that, to this day, the small town is considered one of
Australia’s most important battlefields.
Before the First World War, Villers-Bretonneux had about 4500 inhab-
itants and was a lively and flourishing town dedicated to the textile
industry and to agriculture.1 By the time of the Armistice, Villers-
Bretonneux had been mostly destroyed, and half its population had fled
or died. The town never recovered its industrial capacity and, more
recently, has suffered from the industrial restructuring that was rife in
northern France in the 1980s and 1990s, the consequences of which are
still felt. However, one distinctive element sets Villers-Bretonneux apart
from neighbouring towns. Since the end of the First World War, Villers-
Bretonneux has become an open-air memorial to Australia, a shrine to its

1
2 OUR CORNER OF THE SOMME

participation in the Great War. While until recently few Australians could
afford to travel to Villers-Bretonneux, Australian commemorations in the
town were duly reported and commented on in Australia. The few local
villagers involved in those commemorations became the subject of widely
circulated press reports, in which they were dubbed with emphatic titles
such as ‘France’, or the ‘the French’, and were lauded for ‘honouring’,
‘remembering’ or ‘revering’ Australia and Australians through the
homage they paid to former Australian combatants. It is the staged nature
of such homage mobilised for the construction of a key aspect of Austra-
lia’s national identity that is the subject of investigation of this book.
This book examines the assembly, projection and performance of an
aspect of Australia’s national identity through the prism of Australian war
memorialisation at Villers-Bretonneux by scrutinising the tangible ties
between the town and Australia such as the Victoria School, the Austra-
lian National Memorial, the French–Australian Museum, the French–
Australian Association and the commemoration of Anzac Day, as well
as other forms of commemoration and commemorative devices. Through
war commemoration, Australian official and non-official agencies have
been closely involved in the designing of an evolving aspect of Australian
national identity: that linked to the Anzacs, the Australian soldiers of the
First World War who, in the national narrative, gave birth to the white
Australian nation.2 These three facets (assembly, projection and perform-
ance) of war commemoration, while occurring on French territory, are
designed for internal consumption in Australia through the mediation of
French locals. By analysing evolving Australian national images through
the prism of Villers-Bretonneux, this book reveals that the village has
acted as a stage on which to project a changing Australian national
identity and narrative. Australian commemorative patterns are the focus
of this study, which illustrates how they often relegate those who are
commemorated – the dead soldiers – to the background of commemora-
tive practices in order to benefit the agenda of those remembering them.
War propaganda, memoirs, the press and both professional and popu-
lar historians have nourished a lasting popular memory of Villers-
Bretonneux in Australia, based on the rendition of official historian
Charles Bean, testifying to the too often self-referential nature of Austra-
lian military history.3 It has often been claimed that Australian troops
saved Villers-Bretonneux, thereby saving Amiens and, by extension,
France. Stories of French gratitude have been extolled, and a positive
mythology has emerged of Australia’s military involvement in Villers-
Bretonneux. Many of the claims surrounding such involvement need to
 INTRODUCTION 3

be reassessed, as they often do not stand the test of critical transnational

analysis that this book proposes. Yet they have greatly contributed to the
formation of Australia’s national identity and are deeply entrenched in the
segment of Australian society that feels strongly about Anzac.
The Anzac legend, the role of this dominant narrative in the elabor-
ation of Australia’s national identity and First World War commemor-
ations in Australia have been well covered in the historiography
and remain of significant interest to the public.4 Nations do not
come into existence ex nihilo; rather, they are constructed and, for theor-
eticians of nations and nationalism, they follow a recipe, comparable to a
‘do-it-yourself’ kit.5 One of the necessary ingredients is a national narra-
tive, which is the tale of how the nation came into being, a tale in which
national characteristics are essentialised and given historical illustrations
in the past, which in fact serve only to embed in an historical depth
present values that the nation prizes. Nations also require an emotional
investment to come into existence and endure, and so do their national
narratives: as both are originally fictitious, they become real only by
‘collective adhesion’.6 This study investigates how Villers-Bretonneux
has been used to manifest and stimulate such adhesion and emotional
investment in Australia through war memorialisation. A nation is very
much a living and evolving entity. War memorialisation and public com-
memoration of war have been considered important elements of national
construction, particularly in the nineteenth-century conception of the
nation.7 ‘War memorialisation’ is understood to mean the creation of
records such as memorials, monuments, plaques, movies, pictures and
the rehearsal of the narrative through commemorations, ceremonies or
simply words written in visitor books and diaries. This book scrutinises
the life of these cultural productions at Villers-Bretonneux and studies
their meanings and how they have evolved.
The extraterritorial dimension of this study – Villers-Bretonneux is an
Australian commemorative site outside Australia – only renders more
apparent the images that Australia has projected of itself for viewing not
only by Australians but also by others, in this case mostly the French.
Traditional studies of national narratives, such as the French historian
Pierre Nora’s three-volume work Les lieux de mémoire (Realms of
Memory), and the many similar projects in other countries that have
reapplied its theoretical framework to their national history, have privil-
eged the study of the construction of the national narrative within the
borders of the state their nation inhabits.8 This book suggests that trans-
national history yields insights into national narratives, particularly in
4 OUR CORNER OF THE SOMME

Australia’s case where extraterritoriality and otherness have been essential

to validating the national identity presented in the national narrative.
Even though it observed typical processes for the construction of its
national narrative, Australia was atypical in the way it was progressively
formed as a nation.9 There was no bloodshed against the motherland, no
revolution, but the development of strong ideas of difference in which
similarities with Britain were nonetheless evident.10 The development of
Australia’s national identity has been multifactorial and multifaceted.
Early forms of Australian nationalism grew within a wider sense of
imperial loyalty that could appear at odds with the idea of a nation, which
implies notions such as political independence.11 Nevertheless, by the start
of the twentieth century, Australians felt no difficulty in having a threefold
allegiance to their state, the nation and the British Empire.12 Subsequent
evolutions of Australian nationalism, its ‘de-dominionisation’ and its
‘nationalisation’, from the end of the Second World War to the present,
are equally identifiable in the Australian involvement in the town of
Villers-Bretonneux.13 One of the goals of this book is to understand
how Australian war memorialisation has followed and contributed to
the reshaping of an Australian national narrative in the twentieth century.
In war commemoration, whatever shape it assumes, one is able to gain
a sense of the nation, how it differentiates itself, how it showcases
itself and which values it proposes as worthy of veneration.14 Acts of
commemoration are crafted and require public participation. They have a
performative dimension, explored here through the case study of Villers-
Bretonneux both at a national and at a personal level.15 This means that
through enunciation, commemoration constitutes simultaneously what it
expresses; it is a ‘performative act’ that ‘describes a condition and recre-
ates it’, represents it.16 In doing so, it also adds another layer of proof to
the existence of what is being commemorated, which strengthens and
reinvigorates the memory of the past event that is being remembered. This
study mostly considers institutional ‘agencies’, to borrow Jay Winter’s
terminology. It examines official collective forms of remembrance prac-
tices (‘Who remembers, when, where and how?’) such as that of the
Australian Government, state governments and smaller forms of local
government in Australia and France.17 Smaller and non-state Australian
and French institutions such as funds, associations and museums are
also scrutinised. More personal and private forms of remembrance by
individual actors are examined only to assess their reaction to or partici-
pation in the remembrance practices of institutional agencies; individual
‘pilgrimages’ are not the subject of this book.18
 INTRODUCTION 5

Several factors make Villers-Bretonneux the most appropriate environ-

ment through which to understand the phenomena uncovered by this
study. Many Australian sacred military sites are concentrated in the
Somme area. The geographical scope of the book could potentially stretch
as far as Belgium – but it would then become an exercise in cataloguing
with no coherent central question. By contrast, Villers-Bretonneux encap-
sulates the guiding thread of national identity synthesised under different
forms in a single place through commemorative activities, both official
and private. This book considers Villers-Bretonneux not just as a battle-
field but also as a lens through which to observe national, state, commu-
nity, associative and individual actors that converge at this particular
focal point to promote a version of Australian identity. A top-down and
bottom-up analysis of the interactions between these various bodies facili-
tates comprehension of the different evolutionary facets of an identity
meticulously defined over time, as opposed to a pre-existing identity,
innate or essential to a national character. It is the unicity of the place
that fosters the specificity of the phenomena observable at Villers-
Bretonneux and makes this town a powerful microcosm in which to study
the construction and evolution of Australia’s national identity through
commemorative activities. The use of the term ‘microcosm’ does not mean
that this study aspires to be the Montaillou of Australian presence at
Villers-Bretonneux.19 It means that the town encapsulates, in miniature,
the elements of something much larger, revealing Australian commemora-
tive patterns, their goals, their developments and their meanings in a
paroxysmal way. Thus the book proceeds in comings and goings between
Villers-Bretonneux and Australia through which Villers-Bretonneux
appears as a stage for an evolving Australian national identity, an identity
in search of itself and which uses otherness to define and strengthen itself.
It has been argued that in the early twentieth century Australians were
‘preoccupied’ with the way others saw them.20 In the case of Australian
war memorialisation at Villers-Bretonneux, perceived or even fantasised
foreign attention has been, and still is, of primary importance in the
shaping of images of Australian identity, images that Australian agencies
have been trying to craft.
The advantageous symbolic system linked to Villers-Bretonneux was
crafted, rearranged and used in Australian self-celebration to assemble an
aspect of the national narrative contributing to the definition of a national
identity. At Villers-Bretonneux, there has been a constant rewriting
of national narrative, resculpting the past in order to define oneself –
collectively and individually – in the present. A part of the Australian
6 OUR CORNER OF THE SOMME

community has been projecting and continues to project itself beyond its
national borders in order to define itself internally. This process helps the
community bind itself together back home. The metaphor of a theatre
stage could be used to grasp different aspects of the same phenomenon.
The book argues that Villers-Bretonneux acts as a performing stage on
which to construct one aspect of Australia’s national narrative and iden-
tity for Australian audiences, a stage Australians themselves erected in the
town through war memorialisation. On this stage, a valorised image of
Australian identity was, and continues to be, projected and carefully
monitored, an image testifying to the alleged superiority of the Australian
Imperial Force (AIF) and, by association, to that of Australians, as a
filiation is established between the diggers and other Australians. How-
ever, if one looks backstage, one can see that what is on display is crafted,
engineered, and not always based on reality. Yet the crafted narratives
have their own reality for they exist (once materialised by plaques and
memorials), but this reality is performative. The elements being celebrated
exist only through the commemoration that enshrines them, but they are
not necessarily validated by historical facts; they become historical
through commemoration and the recording of traces of such commemor-
ation. As a result of such commemorative processes, the illusion that
France ‘remembers’ and ‘honours’ Australia is diffused through the media
and government agencies in Australia because, if others embrace the
projected and crafted narrative, it means that it is validated and therefore
worth believing in for every Australian.
Examining commemoration at Villers-Bretonneux is watching Austra-
lian identity being shaped and remodelled by war memorialisation for
Australian consumption and Australian benefit. Australians come to, or
use, Villers-Bretonneux (in Australian press, history, politics and so on) to
establish and contemplate a proud national narrative set amid one of the
biggest slaughters of the twentieth century. While post-war European
memories broke away from this vision of heroic warfare as a result of
the First World War and its mechanisation, official Australian representa-
tions of the conflict since the end of the war have drawn the values of the
national character from those attributed to their First World War com-
batants.21 A century after the war, this phenomenon continues, and in
2015 the Australian Prime Minister came to Villers-Bretonneux to
‘honour what’s best and noblest in human nature’.22
The inhabitants of Villers-Bretonneux do not mind, mostly, as it is in
their interest to host this Australian show. Villers-Bretonneux is a quiet
country town of 4200 inhabitants that has little to offer to visitors apart
 INTRODUCTION 7

from Australian paraphernalia, and if it were not for this and the war
dead, there would be nothing to attract Australians to the town. Austra-
lians come and take a photograph of the ‘DO NOT FORGET
AUSTRALIA’ sign (photo 0.1) in the yard of Victoria School. This is the
heir of the small ‘Never forget Australia’ signs (photo 0.2) put in every
classroom in the 1920s by another Australian, Frank Tate, Director of the
Education Department of Victoria.23
Today’s Australians photograph the schoolyard’s sign to keep a record
of how ‘the French’ remember Australia. This is of course misplaced, for
the great majority of the French population ignores the fact that Austra-
lians fought in the First World War, with the exception of a few villagers
in north-eastern France who have become accustomed to Australians’
présence mémorielle – their ‘memory presence’, or, in Joan Beaumont’s
terms, Australia’s ‘memory footprint’.24 Indeed one of the central
elements of the Australian show at Villers is showcasing Australia to
imagined ‘others’. Yet, as this book reveals, ‘others’ do not come to
Villers-Bretonneux. The perception of Australians that they are being
observed and acknowledged in France contributes to their national pride.
Much of the commemorative behaviour analysed through this book
shows that Australians come to Villers to watch themselves on a positive

Photo 0.1 DO NOT FORGET AUSTRALIA – sign, 8 metres long, erected in

the late 1980s, Victoria School schoolyard, Villers-Bretonneux
(Author’s photograph)
8 OUR CORNER OF THE SOMME

Photo 0.2 N’OUBLIONS JAMAIS L’AUSTRALIE – sign, 40 centimetres long,

one of several original signs displayed in Victoria School classrooms in the
late 1920s
(Author’s photograph)

stage that they themselves, or other Australians, have built, assuming that
the French and other nationalities approve of, or admire, their national
narrative. Traditional national narratives are generally self-validated. In
the case of Australia, Villers-Bretonneux illustrates how a national narra-
tive has required intermediaries and mediation.

This book is structured chronologically and divided into eight chapters.

Chapter 1 demystifies Australian military engagements at Villers-
Bretonneux in 1918; it is based on military history. It identifies the
common myths perpetuated in the literature since the end of the First
World War and reassesses them on the basis of new data and trans-
national research. It takes into account the role of the Moroccan Division
at Villers-Bretonneux and other empirical evidence regarding the Battle of
Amiens and the use of Allied troops. Chapter 1 demonstrates that not only
have accounts of different operations at Villers-Bretonneux been unsatis-
factory for so long but also they have resulted in unreliable records and
false or severely inaccurate claims in Australian public remembrance.
Chapter 2 deals with the immediate post-war period and the craving
for Australian acknowledgement on the global and local scenes. The
chapter explores Australian commemorative ceremonies in the Somme
 INTRODUCTION 9

département and the visit of Australian VIPs to Villers-Bretonneux. The

chapter illustrates how some Australians, representing various interests,
crafted a glorious narrative related to Villers-Bretonneux immediately
after the war through commemorative activities. It also demonstrates
how some inhabitants of the Somme played a part in this process of
memorialisation by reinforcing and reusing Australian self-promotion
for their own agenda.
Chapter 3 studies Victoria School, the primary school of Villers-
Bretonneux, which was built as a result of generous Victorian donations
in the 1920s. For the French mayor of the time, Dr Vendeville, it seems to
have been a poisoned chalice in the sense that he wanted to use the
donation for purposes other than building a school, and its construction
attracted unnecessary interference in the way the town was rebuilt. The
chapter also explains that the Victorian donation, despite carrying an
altruistic dimension, was primarily an action conducted for Australian
interests.
Chapter 4 studies the Australian National Memorial erected at Villers-
Bretonneux by the Commonwealth of Australia. The chapter argues that
compared to the war years and the early 1920s, the making of the
Australian National Memorial from the late 1920s through to its
unveiling in the late 1930s testifies to a return of the affirmation of
Australian national identity within and through an imperial framework.
The main focus of the chapter is the Australian National Memorial’s
unveiling ceremony on 22 July 1938, during which the Australian com-
memorations were relegated to the background of the Franco-British
Entente Cordiale celebrations.
Chapter 5 provides a microcosm through which to examine the sup-
posed ‘death’ or ‘fall’ of Anzac Day in the 1950s and 1960s. It examines
Villers-Bretonneux as a counterpoint to study the declining interest in
Anzac Day in Australia. The chapter establishes that there was an overall
decline in the resonance of Australian official and non-official commem-
orative practices at Villers-Bretonneux for the Australian community,
concomitant with the development of very active local networks (both
in France and Australia) dedicated to the maintenance of links with
Australia through remembrance activities in Villers-Bretonneux.
Chapter 6 analyses the renewed interest of the Australian Government
in Villers-Bretonneux throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The chapter
considers how Australian government agencies, and most particularly
the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, encouraged and exploited the multi-
plication of Australian visitors at Villers-Bretonneux to promote a version
10 OUR CORNER OF THE SOMME

of Australia’s national identity through rhetoric, new memorials and

other commemorative devices. It also looks at how the local French
population adapted to the growing presence of Australian visitors, com-
memorations and memorials.
Chapter 7 examines how Villers-Bretonneux, within the context of
the Australian rediscovery of the Western Front, became the most import-
ant Australian overseas commemorative ground besides Gallipoli under
John Howard’s prime ministership between 1996 and 2007. The
chapter documents the increase in Australian commemorative activities
at Villers-Bretonneux since the late 1990s and the explosion in the
number of Australian visitors. Analysing the link between these two
phenomena, the chapter explores and explains the evolution of Australian
commemorative behaviour and practices. It also illustrates how the
French have benefited from the Australian presence in the town by pro-
moting their own agenda, which has affected Australian commemorations
in the Somme.
The final chapter, chapter 8, investigates recent commemorative pat-
terns of Australian visitors and provides an opportunity to assess whether
these visitors accept the Anzac legend as proposed by Australian author-
ities at Villers-Bretonneux since the 1990s. This chapter is based on a
statistical and qualitative analysis of more than 20 000 comments col-
lected in the visitor books of two of Villers’ military cemeteries together
with other private sources. These comments are personal and offer a
markedly different perspective from that suggested by official sources.
They provide insights into what Villers-Bretonneux means for a part of
the Australian population today.
Looking at nearly a century of Australian agencies’ connections to
Villers-Bretonneux yields insight into the evolution of Australian national
identity and commemorative patterns. While they both insist on their
permanency to affirm legitimacy, they are in fact in constant evolution,
catering for the present needs of those who perform them. They are
constructions, learnt behaviour, not innate or pre-existing permanent
structures. This study captures these evolutions to understand their motiv-
ations beyond the commemoration of the war dead.
 CHAPTER | 1
VILLERS-BRETONNEUX
AN AUSTRALIAN VICTORY?

Encapsulating the then popular understanding of Australia’s role at

Villers-Bretonneux, Bruce Scates has written: ‘France had survived
because the German army had been turned back at Villers-Bretonneux.
There Australian troops had held the line.’1 However, those who shared
and still share such a view would perhaps be surprised to learn that
Villers-Bretonneux is a town unknown to the vast majority of French
people – still less the fighting that had occurred there during the First
World War – owing to Villers’ marginal significance to the greater course
of the war. The reality is that the previous perception of Australian
military engagement at Villers-Bretonneux is the fruit of a long tradition
of Australian self-aggrandisement, encouraged by wartime propaganda.
Since 1918, Australian accounts have followed this pattern and have
repeatedly explained that in ‘saving’ Villers-Bretonneux, Australians
saved Amiens and therefore saved France. Yet preventing the loss of
territory before Amiens is hardly the same as the grand victory rendered
in such accounts or in commemorative speeches recently delivered by
Australian ministers at Villers-Bretonneux. Australian accounts of their
three main military operations in and around Villers-Bretonneux in
1918 have paved the way for false or severely inaccurate claims by various
agents of memory throughout the last century. There is a need to reassess
the three key operations in which Australians were involved in and
around the town to understand the military objectives at stake, the oper-
ational unfolding of combat, and Villers-Bretonneux’s relevance to the
overall military situation on the Western Front in 1918. Before doing so, it

11
12 OUR CORNER OF THE SOMME

is worth locating Villers-Bretonneux within the wider context of the

Western Front.
In the winter of 1917, from the bitterly cold and windy plains of
northern France and Belgium to the woody and hilly massifs stretching
from the Ardennes to the Vosges, entrenched soldiers knew that the new
year would bring intense fighting on the Western Front. The German high
command wanted to strike the Allies as soon as the winter was over. The
spring and summer of 1918 would be decisive. The economic situation
was becoming dire for Germany and her allies, making the end of the war
more necessary than ever.2 The forthcoming military landscape was also
concerning for the Central Powers. The United States had declared war on
Germany in April 1917, which meant that American troops would soon
start to pour over the Western Front, threatening to tip the balance
irreversibly in favour of the Allies.3 One element, however, brought hope
to the Central Powers. With the Russian revolutions, an armistice had
been sought by the Bolsheviks and signed in December 1917, eventually
leading to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.4 This meant that much of Ger-
many’s forces on the Eastern Front could soon be redeployed to the west
for major offensives. By March 1918, Germany’s forces on the Western
Front were ready to emerge from their trenches and commence the
Kaiserschlacht – the Emperor’s battle.
The Kaiserschlacht started with Operation Michael (map 1), launched
on 21 March 1918. German storm troops attacked on the Western Front
in the Somme area with the goal of separating the British from the French
armies and driving the British to the sea. At first, the tactics proved
extremely successful and German troops advanced deep into French
territory. This was unprecedented in what had become a trench war of
restricted mobility. Notwithstanding this grand feat, German Quarter-
master General Ludendorff was unable to sustain the advance as the
storm troops’ tactical approach had its drawbacks: the rapid advance
had exhausted German supply lines and revealed the inability of massed
artillery to match the troops’ advance. Consequently, the Allies were able
to stabilise their retreat, and this offensive came to an end. After attacking
the British on the south of their lines, with Operation Michael, Ludendorff
sought to break the front line in the north. The initial success of the first
week ended, and Operation Michael was officially called off on 5 April
1918.5
Operation Georgette (9–29 April 1918) was then launched, from
Poelcappelle to La Bassée, aiming for Ypres, in Belgium. The pressure
on the Somme decreased, with the main effort concentrated on the Ypres
 VILLERS-BRETONNEUX 13

Map 1 Operation Michael, German Offensive, March 1918: German push from
right to left
(Map from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian
Federation, German documents of the First World War, TsAMO RF, Fond
500, Series 12519, Folder 336)
14 OUR CORNER OF THE SOMME

salient. Here again, the German advance was brought to a standstill at the
cost of a high death toll on both sides. No major German goal was
achieved because, once again, the artillery and the supply lines experi-
enced difficulties in reaching and covering the front line. The German
army then turned south, into the Aisne area, to attack the French sectors
with Operation Blücher-Yorck (27 May – 5 June 1918), then back to
Noyon and Montdidier for the Battle of the Matz (also called Operation
Gneisenau; 9–15 June 1918) and finally around the Reims sector, with the
Marneschutz–Reims offensive (15 July – 3 August 1918). Ludendorff had
noticed that in the north the British had been able to hold the line only
with the help of French reinforcements. By attacking the French, who had
already lost many men in the previous offensives, Ludendorff sought to
weaken them further in order to finally break the British lines, which
would lose their French reinforcements as a result of this attack. The
progress of the Marneschutz–Reims offensive on the Marne worried the
French. Their reaction was consequential, deploying twenty-four divisions
in the first and second lines on 18 July 1918, maintaining ten divisions in
reserve.6 Outnumbered three to one, the Germans withdrew and, within a
few weeks, the French regained the ground previously lost.
At the end of the German retreat, the Entente forces launched the
Battle of Amiens. An impressive push into German lines began on
8 August, and until 12 August, when the offensive was brought to an
end, the Allies kept advancing. From then on, all over the Western Front,
the advance became steady. The French and the Americans made moder-
ate gains in the Meuse, in Argonne and in the north and, by the end of
September, the Allies were facing the fortified Hindenburg Line. By early
October they had passed the Hindenburg Line and kept advancing until
the Armistice was signed on 11 November 1918.7
In these critical months from spring to autumn 1918, Australians
contributed to the Allies’ advance. They were assigned a limited section
of the front, progressively driving the Germans eastward from Villers-
Bretonneux to Montbrehain, some 80 kilometres away, between April
and October 1918. In Australia, Villers-Bretonneux became synonymous
with victory, good news that was much needed for the divided civilian
population.8 To appreciate the degree of importance of Villers-
Bretonneux in Australian collective memory, it is worth considering the
original military involvement of the Australian Corps in and around the
town in 1918. If today’s Anzac Day ceremonies on the Somme mainly
encompass one experience of Villers-Bretonneux – the fighting of 24 and
25 April 1918 – it is to the detriment of other Australian military actions
 VILLERS-BRETONNEUX 15

in and around the town. Indeed, there were three major instances in which
the Australian Corps was heavily involved at Villers-Bretonneux: 4 and 5
April 1918, 24 to 27 April 1918 and from 8 August – the date on which
the Allies launched the Battle of Amiens. In all three instances, Charles
Bean, Australia’s official historian of the war, had a crucial role in shaping
the memory of Villers-Bretonneux.

E P I S O D E 1: 4 AND 5 APRIL 1918

The official British history of the First World War refers to the operations
on 4 and 5 April 1918 to the east of Amiens as ‘the last phase’ of the
‘German offensive in Picardy’ (end of Operation Michael) while its Aus-
tralian counterpart, The Official History of Australia in the War of
1914–1918, hails them as ‘First Villers-Bretonneux’. As often, Australian
official war historian Charles Bean did not adequately contextualise the
Australian involvement and commenced his narration from when the
Australians began to participate in the operation. Bean cannot be blamed
for such a penchant. In contrast to other official historians aiming to
provide lessons for future generations of army officers, Bean’s aims were
to memorialise the AIF’s effort and to refer to as many Australians as he
could as a tribute to their involvement. Yet, in adopting such an approach,
Bean leads the reader to believe that the German push occurred only in
and around Villers-Bretonneux. However, the German push against the
British forces stretched from Bouzencourt to Hangard and that against
the French forces, from north of Moreuil to south-west of Aubvillers. The
assault consequently stretched for 30 kilometres and was notably intense
in the French sector around Moreuil.9 Villers-Bretonneux therefore repre-
sented a very small section of the Allies’ front line.
Bean’s factual account of the operations on 4 and 5 April 1918 in the
Villers-Bretonneux sector can be considered accurate. However, Bean
extols the work of the Australian troops and attempts to define a quintes-
sential Australian fighter who could become an exemplum for the nation.
In so doing, he tends to exaggerate the influence of Australian involve-
ment and diminish that of other nationalities in the defence of Amiens.
First, he diminishes the French contribution, writing:
But here [Bois de Sénécat] the deep penetration was only at one point,
and, with French reinforcements steadily arriving, the danger had
probably been less than at Villers-Bretonneux, the capture of which
might, at the lowest estimate, have influenced the whole remainder of
16 OUR CORNER OF THE SOMME

the spring campaign. The averting of this danger on this occasion must
be credited largely to the 3rd Cavalry Division and the 9th Australian
Infantry Brigade.10

Three affirmations in his statement need to be examined in greater detail.

First, if Amiens was the objective, then the success of the Germans on
4 and 5 April can be measured by the proximity of their troops to the
objective and, consequently, the dangers, for the Allies, can be measured
by assessing the distance to which they were pushed back to the closest
point in the direction of Amiens. Taking the extreme point of retreat from
the front line of 4 April to the frontline of 5 April, the Australians lost
roughly 1.1 miles in front of Villers-Bretonneux. Meanwhile the British
and the French were pushed back 1.4 miles respectively to the north of
Bois de Hangard and Bois de Sénécat.11 However, looking at the distance
from the objective – Amiens – in relation to the line established on 5 April
after the German advance, one can see that the closest point to Amiens
that the Germans reached was 11.3 miles away from the objective on the
Australian front, 9.6 miles on the British front and 8.5 on the French
front. One can see Amiens from Bois de Sénécat, a position defended by
the French. The greatest danger was a breakthrough so close to Amiens,
where the French were experiencing a very tough fight. Such calculations
do not aim to diminish the hardship experienced by the Australians or the
British. Rather, these calculations aim to assess Bean’s statement because
it has framed the Australian version of First Villers-Bretonneux.12 In
reality, the danger was far greater at Bois de Sénécat than at Villers-
Bretonneux. By granting such importance to Villers-Bretonneux, Bean
intended to legitimise his claim for the defence of Amiens as an Australian
success when in fact it was a common Allied effort or, in many ways, a
German failure.
Second, Bean omitted to state that if the Australians held the ground at
First Villers-Bretonneux, it was in fact thanks to the Canadians.13 The
competition between the two dominions was so strong that such acknowl-
edgement would have obscured the value of the diggers. Yet, at some
point, the gap established between the British 55th Brigade and the 35th
and 33rd Australian Battalions was so significant that the British official
history offers a radical contrast to Bean’s conclusion, a contrast also
expressed in the Official History of the Canadian Army.14 The British
official history reads: ‘But for five Canadian motor machine-gun batteries,
with six armoured cars – sent up by the Fourth Army with orders to hold
Villers-Bretonneux to the last – which came into action about 4 p.m.
 VILLERS-BRETONNEUX 17

north-east and south of the town, the way into it from the south-east
seemed open to the enemy.’15 Australian defences might not have been as
successful as Bean suggested. Indeed, the previous quotation implies that
the Australians were struggling to hold the line. The British official history
congratulated the Canadians: the gap established between the British and
Australian troops could not have been filled without the Canadians, who
restored the line and offered covering fire to the Australians.16 By mini-
mising the role of the Canadians at First Villers-Bretonneux, Bean once
again tried to celebrate Villers-Bretonneux as an Australian victory, an
interpretation that has not been challenged since his accounts were
published.
Third and finally, the idea that First Villers-Bretonneux ‘influenced the
whole remainder of the spring campaign’ is hyperbolic. Just south of
Villers, at Moreuil, the sheer number of counter-attacks by the Germans
illustrates how important and strategic the French sector was.17 It was not
a weak point in which Ludendorff saw an opportunity; he identified it as a
goal and a gate to Amiens.18 That the strong army of French General
Debeney hurried to hold Moreuil was a firm sign of commitment on the
part of the French army, seconded by the Canadians or British at times,
not to yield ground to the enemy and to maintain the connection between
the French and British armies. The fighting at Villers-Bretonneux that
occurred from late March to late April was sporadic, while at Moreuil it
was more continuous throughout April.19 Although Villers-Bretonneux
was subject to gas shells and barrage fire, the damage it suffered could not
be compared to Bois de Sénécat, a strong position on the outskirts of
Moreuil, which was obliterated.20 In reality, Bois de Sénécat was the
closest point the Germans came to the Paris–Amiens railway line, one of
their objectives, barely three kilometres away from their positions.21 The
fighting at Moreuil and Bois de Sénécat in late March until mid-April was
longer, more intense and strategically more significant than that at Villers-
Bretonneux.22 This fact does not intend to detract from Australia’s mili-
tary participation in operations in and around Villers-Bretonneux.
Rather, the evidence suggests that Australian military history, both popu-
lar and sometimes academic, ought to broaden its spectrum of investi-
gation and look at a much wider front to fully comprehend the nature of
Australian participation in the war. Alongside the defence of Moreuil,
another significant moment in the defence of Amiens was the fighting that
took place in and around Hangard in the French sector, immediately
south of Villers-Bretonneux.
18 OUR CORNER OF THE SOMME

All of these elements prove Bean’s statement to be more of a claim for

fame than historical reality. In truth, the success of the defence of Amiens
lay in the relative coordination of the different Allied nations at work and,
importantly, the difficulties encountered by the Germans after the rapid
progress of Operation Michael. The latter were recounted by an anony-
mous German soldier, whose letter was quoted in the very popular and
widely circulated French weekly L’Illustration. After mentioning his
exhaustion, his extreme hunger and how dirty he was, the soldier wrote:
‘Nothing turns up. Neither food nor munitions. The watchword is always
“Tomorrow”, and “Save up!” Personally, I only have forty-two cartridges
left.’23 The German army running out of steam is perhaps a more signifi-
cant explanation of the German failure to take Amiens than the martial
valour of Allied troops facing them. Villers-Bretonneux was no more
important than Hangard, Moreuil or Bois de Sénécat. It was the rupture
of the front line that would have represented a danger for Allied troops, at
whichever point this might have happened in the vicinity of Amiens.
However, at this stage of Operation Michael, this was unlikely. Indeed,
Operation Michael died from its own weaknesses and from Allied stabili-
sation of the front line after a severe debacle in the first few days of the
offensive. By early April, the capture of Villers-Bretonneux by German
forces would not have altered ‘the whole remainder of the Spring cam-
paign’, as Bean suggested, because, on that specific front, the Germans
had come to a standstill after having encountered significant logistical
problems. Yet, to boost their populations’ morale after such incredible
German advance, the press in the Allied nations promptly published
glowing reports of how the Germans had been stopped in Picardy, each
nation’s press writing on the importance of the sector allocated to their
troops. The Germans’ difficulties were downplayed to turn the Allies’
struggle into a military success. Australia conformed to this process,
and this element of wartime propaganda should not be overlooked
when considering how press reports eulogised First Villers-Bretonneux
in Australia at a time when the Australian Corps was desperately short of
new recruits.

E P I S O D E 2: 24 AND 25 APRIL 1918

The second engagement of Australian troops at Villers-Bretonneux
occurred on 24 and 25 April during an operation lasting from 24 to 27
April (map 2). This time it was not the Canadians who were wiped out of
the Australian narrative but the whole Moroccan Division of the French
 VILLERS-BRETONNEUX 19

Map 2 German push on Villers-Bretonneux and Allied counter-offensive,

24–27 April 1918
Key:
— Allied frontline before the German attack
••••• Limit of German advance
– – – Allied line restored by 27 April
(État-major des Armées – Service historique, Les Armées françaises dans la
Grande Guerre, book VI, vol. I, map volume, map 34)
20 OUR CORNER OF THE SOMME

Army. By 24 April, it had been a number of weeks since Ludendorff had

called off Operation Michael. However, a small-scale operation was
launched to seize Villers-Bretonneux. The localised fight that ensued in
the following days was a diversion by the German army, which was
simultaneously launching a much larger operation to seize Ypres and
drive the Allied forces to the channel ports, in another attempt to cut off
the British and French forces. This operation, the Lys Offensive, was part
of Operation Georgette. The British official history quotes German
accounts:
The object of the attack [on Villers-Bretonneux on the 24th of April]
was ‘to hold the enemy forces on this front and thus assist further
German attacks at another place. The secondary object was to advance
the line so as to permit of a still more effective artillery attack on the
great railway establishments at Amiens, and thus prevent the shifting of
enemy forces.’24

The generalissimo of Allied forces on the Western Front, Marshal Foch,

noted that once the Villers-Bretonneux sector was lost, the Germans did
not renew their operations in order to seize the town, also indicating that
it was an operation of diversion.25
In late April, holding Villers-Bretonneux was not the German Com-
mand’s primary goal; it simply was a diversion. Yet no Australian account,
from the wartime press to more recent historical studies, has ever presented
it as such. The reality is nothing like the grand trial presented by Bean, who
explained that this operation ‘brought great fame to the Australian infantry
[and] had rescued the Allies’ and that this counter-attack was ‘not infre-
quently cited as the most impressive operation of its kind that occurred on
the Western Front’.26 Such an account paved the way for subsequent
writers. To support his claim, Bean quoted Monash’s book, itself an
exercise in self-aggrandisement.27 Bean also referred to Brigadier General
George Grogan, who had written that the attack by night at Villers-
Bretonneux had ‘perhaps [been] the greatest individual feat of the war’.
Bean, however, did not disclose that Grogan was mostly referring to the
work of his own British brigade, the 23rd, 8th Division. As historian Linda
Wade observed, ‘Bean’s account of the fighting of the AIF at Second Villers-
Bretonneux has set the tone for many subsequent accounts of Villers-
Bretonneux penned by military historians.’28 Such a romanticised account
diminished both British and French contributions.
Bean, for example, consigned the Division Marocaine to oblivion. The
Division Marocaine fought at Second Villers-Bretonneux, but to this day
 VILLERS-BRETONNEUX 21

its role has not been acknowledged by Australian historiography, which

has not consulted French military archives on the matter. About the
Division Marocaine Bean wrote: ‘The details of the costly attack by the
Moroccan Division, which followed, form no part of this history, for
which the barest outline must suffice.’29 In Bean’s defence, one may argue
that the Australian official history is dedicated to Australian soldiers and
focuses on an Australian readership. However, Bean’s statement, as legiti-
mate as it might be, coincides with the type of history that he was writing.
The Moroccan Division is the great absentee in the Australian literature
when it comes to understanding the operations of late April 1918 at
Villers-Bretonneux. The shaping of a certain public memory by Bean –
and by army officials and government speeches and publications based on
his work – has eliminated the participation of the Moroccan Division
from the fighting of Second Villers-Bretonneux.30 What matters in Aus-
tralian accounts is the retaking of the town by the Australians on 25 April
owing to the symbolic relevance of the date concurring with Anzac Day,
thus transubstantiating 25 April 1915 Gallipoli defeat into 25 April 1918
France victory – a very powerful symbol for Australians. However, this is
part of a larger operation in which not only Australians took part but also
Englishmen, Frenchmen, Algerians, Tunisians and Russians.31
Villers-Bretonneux had no strategic importance per se. What mattered
was the plateau on which Villers-Bretonneux and other towns were
positioned. This was an Allied operation in which everyone played a
part.32 It was just not an Australian victory; it was, at best, an Allied
effort to regain what was lost on 24 April; an attempt in which, on a
purely military assessment, the Moroccan Division was more successful
than the Australians in the south of Villers-Bretonneux.33 In fact, what
was not reconquered by the 13th Australian Brigade was taken by the
Moroccan Division on 26 April (map 3).34 Yet Bean describes their attack
as a ‘magnificent but entirely useless daylight advance against the
German machine-guns’, an incorrect and biased statement.35 If it had
been the case, it is unlikely that the French President would have granted
the Légion d’honneur to the 8e régiment de marche de Zouaves with the
following citation: ‘regiment of superb heroism and bravery [. . .] The year
1918 finds them ready for acts of boldness and sacrifices. On April 26,
they attack Villers-Bretonneux and block the road to Amiens.’36
It may be argued that a complimentary recognition of their actions
would have been rather difficult for Bean or the AIF. Bean mentioned the
fact that these troops consisted of white and non-white soldiers, and
‘racial pride occupied an unspoken centrality in the AIF’s identity’.37
22 OUR CORNER OF THE SOMME

Map 3 Advance of the Moroccan Division from 0500 to 1800 hours,

26 April
Key:
– – – Starting point for the French attack
••••• Location of the British–Australian line before the French took position
prior to their attack
— Allied front line restored by the French
(‘Croquis faisant ressortir l’avance réalisée dans la journée du 26 avril 1918’,
included in Daugan’s report in 24 N 2915, SHD)
 VILLERS-BRETONNEUX 23

Non-white troops had retaken a section of the front that Australians had
not been able to recover. In particular, the Division Marocaine prevented
the disappearance of the AIF’s 52nd Battalion, which had suffered heavily
in the attack.38
Just like First Villers-Bretonneux, Second Villers-Bretonneux was not
an Australian victory. It was an Allied effort to regain lost ground and was
not entirely successful. The action beginning on the night of 24 April and
ending on 27 April can be summed up as follows: the Australians encir-
cled the town, and the English helped to clear it (which proved a very
difficult task), also offering support during the operation. South of Villers-
Bretonneux, the French almost pushed back the Germans to their line of
24 April, securing the south of the plateau. Any attempt to understand the
Villers-Bretonneux engagement of late April 1918 without these three
movements is misguided. They each relied upon the other to be successful.
It is the coordinated support of all these different battalions that led to a
mostly successful operation.
Following the recapture of Villers-Bretonneux, numerous Australian
accounts have reported that it had prevented the bombardment of
Amiens.39 Such claims, however, are also inaccurate. With the German
spring campaign, the first shells fell on Amiens on 22 March 1918 and the
last on 15 August.40 When the Australians, the British and the French
retook Villers-Bretonneux in late April, the town was held by the Allies
from then on.41 Did this change the way Amiens was bombarded? Before
25 April, at least 4534 shells and bombs were directed at Amiens over the
course of thirty-five days, starting on 22 March, after the beginning of the
Michael offensive.42 After the capture of Villers-Bretonneux by the Aus-
tralians and the British, until 30 May (that is, thirty-five days, in order to
provide a similar comparative scale), another 4719 explosive devices
headed towards Amiens.43 This was followed by another 2100 devices
from 30 May to 15 August, the date on which the bombardment of
Amiens ceased.44 Although these numbers look impressive, they pale in
comparison to what rained down on French cities such as Soissons, Arras,
Reims or Verdun, all ravaged by the Great War.45 Amiens was bombarded
regardless of whether Villers-Bretonneux was in German or Allied hands.

EPISODE 3: 8 AUGUST 1918

The Allies’ 8 August offensive aimed to drive away the Germans from the
vicinity of Amiens, to free one of the Paris–Amiens railway lines while
pushing the Germans behind the River Somme.46 In 1914, the Germans
24 OUR CORNER OF THE SOMME

had entered Amiens without fighting and left it the same way two weeks
later.47 In 1918, however, the situation had changed: Amiens had become
an important railway hub and had many military hospitals; hence it was a
strategic position for the Allies and worth preserving.48 During the spring
of 1918, plans were therefore developed to drive away the Germans as far
as possible from Amiens. However, owing to the violent Aisne offensive
and the German push in Flanders, no large-scale Allied operation could be
undertaken. It was only when the Germans were brought to a standstill by
the French, and were subsequently pushed back during the Second Battle
of the Marne with the help of US divisions in mid-July, that Foch and
Haig could safely envisage an Allied push east of Amiens.49 The Second
Battle of the Marne was a turning point in the war, as the German tide
reversed.50
The Battle of Amiens, from 8 to 11 August (map 4), was essentially a
British-led operation, with massive French involvement in the south.
Australians and Canadians have been particularly active in overplaying
their role in this engagement since the end of the war as it represented a
considerable effort in proportion to the size of their forces.51 The 33rd
Division of the American Expeditionary Force also contributed, fighting
alongside the British north-east of Amiens. On the first day of the oper-
ation, British General Rawlinson and his Fourth Army had at their
disposal two British divisions and one in reserve, three Canadian divisions
and one in reserve, two Australian divisions and two in reserve. To
support his ‘active divisions’ Rawlinson disposed of another five British
divisions at the rear. The French and their First Army only engaged four
divisions on 8 August.52 The final objective to be reached was established
along the line that stretched from the south of Morlancourt to the south of
Moreuil, a front of almost 26 kilometres. The Australians were only a part
of this front, almost five kilometres, with a final objective established from
the south of Méricourt to Harbonnières.53 British and French efforts only
grew stronger in the following few days.
Foch’s initial plan was to push on the flanks of the breach created by
the attack of 8 August. However, the resistance encountered by the British
Fourth Army prevented this move. The French Third Army had more
success in the south and retook much ground from the Germans. Each
corps was assigned a first, second and third (final) objective and, overall,
all succeeded. These objectives were determined by the difficulty the
troops would encounter in their advance. Overall, from 8 to 11 August,
the French First and Third Armies gained two and a half times more
ground from the Germans than the British Fourth Army (to which the
Map 4 Battle of Amiens, August 1918
26 OUR CORNER OF THE SOMME

Canadian and Australian Corps belonged with four and five divisions
respectively), as opposition and terrain encountered by British troops had
rendered their task more difficult.54 The French did, however, have the
benefit of a wider rotation of their divisions. They engaged approximately
twenty-five divisions over four days. However, by 1918, the French Army
had 109 divisions, which allowed for such a rotation.55 The Battle of
Amiens could not become one of the French Army’s ‘realms of memory’
such as Verdun or the Marne, not only because of the brevity of the
engagement but also because it was not a common experience shared by
French combatants across the Army. In Amiens, nearly all available
Canadians and Australians fought, hence its national resonance for these
former British dominions.
The memorialisation of the Battle of Amiens commenced soon after
the end of the Great War. Both Australia and Canada tried to claim the
Battle of Amiens. For the Canadians, Australians were good enough
fighters but Canadians were better. For the Australians, the opposite
applied. Although compliments were occasionally paid for good measure,
one can feel the tension between the two dominions, even though they
worked side by side during this successful Allied operation. The Canadian
account of the 8 August offensive opens by stating that ‘The Australians
were acting as a screen behind which the Canadian Corps was to concen-
trate for a major role in the forthcoming offensive’. The narrative goes on
to explain how the 15th Australian Brigade required the assistance of the
Canadians in order to reach its objective and how the Canadians, later in
the day, had no choice but to wait for the Australians to advance, so as
not to expose their own flank by being too far ahead of the Australians. It
is even recorded that the Canadians ‘echeloned back’ towards the Austra-
lians’ right flank, about five kilometres behind. Adopting a competitive
tone, the account notes that the Canadians pushed the Germans back up
almost 13 kilometres that day, the Australians 11 and the British and the
French even less.56
Yet this version of events, however flattering for the Canadians, does
not account for the greatly unequal resistance encountered by the different
corps. In the same way, Bean’s account relegated the Canadians to a
secondary role. At the beginning of the operations, for instance, when
Australians and Canadians were still side by side and encountered resist-
ance, the Australians are recorded as going forward, taking ten prisoners
and ‘hand[ing] [them] over to the Canadians’. Later, Bean chronicled
that the Canadians’ left asked the Australians for help. Similarly, he
reported the Canadians as being ‘far behind’ the Australian right, at
 VILLERS-BRETONNEUX 27

around 11.00 a.m. on 8 August or, later that day, that the far right of the
5th Australian Division had to wait for the Canadians when the rest of the
division had already reached its objective.57
In these two accounts, the facts are sufficiently substantiated to be
considered historically accurate. Nevertheless, while both accounts
showed a great ability to record the difficulty encountered by the other
ally, they hardly mentioned the challenges faced by the men whose story
they are narrating and, when they did, it was justified by a stronger
resistance. The assistance provided by the respective corps was portrayed
as illustrating good grace on the part of the helping corps, which put itself
in a position of superiority. Facts from which panache and glory can be
extracted were overplayed, whereas incidents that could question the
value of the troops were downplayed. Worst of all, the very nature of
the combat was not presented for the reader’s understanding. Mutual
assistance was not provided by good grace but by strict necessity. The
Australians or the Canadians did not wait for one another out of courtesy,
but did so in order not to expose their own flank. Nothing could be
achieved without the other, very much as in a Greek phalanx where each
man protected the man standing next to him.58
The success of Amiens did not lie in the superior martial value of the
Australians or the Canadians, or in the multitude of divisions engaged by
the British or the French. Even though this success is multifaceted it can,
for the most part, be attributed to the coordination of the movements of
the different corps and a very advantageous fog that particular morning,
together with thorough logistical organisation. Planning, coordination,
cooperation and unity of command were decisive in the way the men from
all Allied nations involved were able to perform in the field.
Notwithstanding the availability of up-to-date academic works on the
events on the 8 August offensive, popular accounts in Australia still claim
the whole success of the operation for the Australians and tend to forget
their allies. Monash’s 1920 account was arguably more influential
than Bean’s 1942 account, and has become a reference for Anzac Day
speeches or popular history in Australia over time.59 This sort of self-
congratulatory tone when it comes to the telling of the Battle of Amiens is
not just an Australian characteristic. Canadians, both post-war and in the
present day, maintain the same memory of the event. According to Cana-
dian accounts, Canadian troops saved Amiens and did so before the
battle itself, during the German push in March and April.60 These con-
ceptions are not based on facts but on wartime newspapers, which main-
tained a high level of propaganda throughout the conflict. They have been
28 OUR CORNER OF THE SOMME

passed on in a slow conscious and unconscious national identity-making

process that this book investigates in the Australian case. In the Australian
wartime press, ‘Australians saved Amiens’.61 In the Canadian wartime
press, ‘Canadians saved Amiens’.62
When historians, essayists or journalists reprint conceptions inherited
from such accounts, they fail to present a critical analysis of the events and
to contextualise their sources, when much understanding of wartime and
present society could be gained in adopting a more critical and trans-
national approach. Boasting or asserting supposed martial qualities of the
soldiers of a given nation only serves nationalism when fundamental
questions are left aside. These statements need to be understood in their
context, with regard to factors such as the need for recruitment at the
time, maintaining morale in a society at war, how propaganda can come
from the top as well as from the bottom, or how what French historians
call cultures de guerre are shaped.63 Evidence shows that during the Battle
of Amiens, one British corps, the Canadian Corps, the Australian Corps,
seven French corps and a few US brigades and regiments took part in the
operations. This should encourage a more historical and less aggressively
nationalist reading of the Battle of Amiens and the defence of Villers-
Bretonneux.
Villers-Bretonneux is, first and foremost, important in the Australian
collective remembrance of the war, unlike in that of other belligerents, for
which Villers remains a standard fighting ground with no intrinsic import-
ance. The brief reassessment of the military engagements provided by this
chapter calls for greater research into, and the re-evaluation of, Australian
‘battles’ by integrating them into a broader context: that of a moving front
line on which military operations were closely linked to one another.
Moreuil, Hangard or Bois de Sénécat, for example, held the same strategic
importance as Villers-Bretonneux but remain ignored in Australian
accounts and historiography. The German push towards Amiens came
from the north-east (Arras), east (Villers-Bretonneux) and south-east
(Moreuil, Hangard and, further south, Montdidier and Noyon). Yet,
because Australian troops were not involved in other parts of that front,
these operations have been overlooked in Australian historiography.
By failing to understand Villers’ position in relation to a much wider
active front line from March to August 1918, Australian historians have
overemphasised the importance of Villers-Bretonneux, presenting at times
a very localised and biased account that has done little to increase overall
understanding of the Great War. Foch made no mistake in ordering
General Rawlinson to do all he could to seize Villers-Bretonneux.
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
He said he found you an ‘interesting young man.’”
“Did he? Confound his impudence!” That monocle-man certainly did
ruffle Bob.
“You forget he’s an old friend of my aunt’s.” Severely. “As I was
saying, Lord Stanfield found you ‘interesting,’ and we agreed there
might be a method,” studying him closely, “but when we came to
search for one, we couldn’t find it.”
She didn’t ask a question, so he didn’t have to reply.
“Mr. Bennett, why did you answer me like that down in the village?”
Bob hung his head. He felt worse than a boy detected stealing
apples. “Had to,” he muttered desperately.
“Why?” There was no mercy in that still pitiless voice.
Bob took another long breath. “Please don’t ask me,” he pleaded
after an ominous pause. That wasn’t not telling the truth; it was only
temporizing.
The violet eyes gleamed dangerously. “I’m just a little bit curious,”
said the girl in the same annihilating tone. “In the light of
subsequent proceedings, you will understand! And as Mrs. Ralston’s
niece! Aunt doesn’t quite realize things yet. The others have spared
her feelings. I haven’t, of course, gone to her. Aunt and I never ‘talk
over’ our guests.” Proudly.
That made Bob wince. He looked at her with quite helpless eyes.
“Maybe she will order me off the premises before long,” he said
eagerly. “I have already been considering the possibility of it. Believe
me,” earnestly, “it would be the best way. Can’t you see I’m—
dangerous—positively dangerous? I’m worse than a socialist—an
anarchist! Why, a Russian nihilist couldn’t make half the trouble in
the world that I can. I’m a regular walking disturber. Disaster follows
in my path.” Bitterly. “Some people look upon me as worse than the
black plague. Now if your aunt would only turn me out? You see I
can’t go unless she does. Got to think of that even-tenor-of-my-way!
But if she would only quietly intimate—or set the dog on me—”
The girl gazed at him more steadily. “I wonder if the judge and the
doctor and Mrs. Vanderpool aren’t right, after all?” she observed
slowly. “Let me look in your eyes, Mr. Bennett.” Bob did. Miss Gerald
had heard that one could always tell crazy people by their eyes. She
intended to sift this matter to the bottom and therefore proceeded
with characteristic directness. Folk that were—well, “off,” she had
been told, invariably showed that they were that, by a peculiar
glitter.
Miss Gerald gazed a few moments critically, steadily and with
unswerving intention. Bob withstood that look with mingled
wretchedness and rapture. He began to forget that they were just
the eyes of a would-be expert on a mental matter, and his own eyes,
looking deeper and deeper in those wonderful violet depths (he
stood so she got the benefit of the moonlight) began to gleam with
that old, old gleam Miss Gerald could remember in the past. Bob had
never talked love in those blissful days of yore, but he had looked it.
“I don’t see any signs of insanity,” said the girl at length with cold
assurance. That gleam wasn’t a glitter. Nothing crazy about it! She
had seen it too often in other men’s eyes, as well as in Bob’s—not
perhaps to such a marked degree in other men’s eyes,-but
sufficiently so that she was fairly familiar with it. “You look normal
enough to me.”
“Thank you,” said Bob gratefully.
“And that’s just why”—a slight frown on the smooth fine brow—“I
don’t understand. Of course, a man not normal, might have
answered as you did me (I’m not thinking of it as a personal matter,
you will understand).”
“Oh, I understand that,” returned Bob. “I’m just a problem, not a
person.” She made him quite realize that. She made it perfectly and
unmistakably apparent that he was, unto her, as some example in
trigonometry, or geometry, or algebra, and she wanted to find the
“solution.” He was an “X”—the unknown quantity. The expression on
her patrician features was entirely scholastic and calculating. Bob
now felt the ardor of his gaze becoming cold as moonlight. This
wasn’t a lovers’ bower; it was only a palestra, or an observatory.
“You haven’t answered me yet,” she said.
No diverting her from her purpose! She was certainly persistent.
“You insist I shall tell you why I didn’t want to see you?”
She looked at him quickly. “That isn’t what I asked, Mr. Bennett. I
asked you to explain that remark in the village.”
“Same thing!” he murmured. “And it’s rather hard to explain, but if
I’ve got to—?” He looked at her. On her face was the look of proud
unyielding insistence. “Of course, I’ve got to tell you the truth,” said
Bob, and his tone now was dead and dull. “In the first place, dad’s
busted, clean down and out, and—well, I thought I wouldn’t see you
any more.”
“I fail to see the connection.” Her tones were as metallic as a voice
like hers could make them.
“It’s like this!” said Bob, ruffling his hair. Here was a fine romantic
way to make an avowal. “You see I was in love with you,” he
observed, looking the other way and addressing one of the
furthermost stars of the heaven. “And—and—when a fellow’s in love
—and he can’t—ah!—well, you know—ask the girl—you
understand?”
“Very vaguely,” said Miss Gerald. Bob’s explanation, so far, was one
of those explanations that didn’t explain. If he had so heroically
made up his mind not to see her, he could have stayed away, of
course, from the Ralston house. He couldn’t explain how he was
bound to accept the invitation to come, on account of being in
“honor bound” to that confounded commodore, et al., to do so.
There were bound to be loose ends to his explanation. Besides,
those other awfully unpleasant things that had happened? He had to
tell the truth, but he couldn’t tell why he was telling the truth. That
had been the understanding.
Miss Gerald, at this point, began to display some of those alert and
analytical qualities of mind that had made her father one of the
great railroad men of his day. For an instant she had turned her
head slightly at Bob’s avowal—who shall say why? It may be she had
felt the blood rush swiftly to her face, but if so a moment later she
looked at him with that same icy calm. One hand had tightened on
the cold balustrade, but Bob hadn’t noticed that. She plied him now
with a number of questions. She kept him on the gridiron and while
he wriggled and twisted she stirred up the coals, displaying all the
ability of an expert stoker. He was supersensitive about seeing her
and yet as a free agent (she thought him that) he had seen her.
From her point of view, his mental processes were hopelessly
illogical—worse than that. Yet she knew he was possessed of a
tolerable mentality and a good-enough judgment for one who had in
his composition a slight touch of recklessness.
“I give it up,” she said at length wearily.
“Do you? Oh, thank you!” exclaimed Bob gratefully. “And if your aunt
orders me from the place—”
“But why can’t you just go, if you want to? I’m sure no one will
detain you.” Haughtily.
“Can’t explain, only it’s impossible. Like Prometheus bound to the
rock for vultures to peck at, unless—”
“How intelligible! And what a happy simile—under the
circumstances!” with far-reaching scorn. “What if I should tell my
aunt that her guest compared himself to—?”
“That’s the idea!” returned Bob enthusiastically. “Tell her that! Then,
by jove, she would—Promise me! Please!”
“Of course,” said the girl slowly, “my diagnosis must be wrong.” Or
perhaps she meant that she had lost faith in that glitter-theory.
“If you only could understand!” burst from Bob explosively. It was
nature calling out, protesting against such a weight of anguish.
But Miss Gerald did not respond. A statue could not have appeared
more unaffected and unsympathetic. She had half turned as if to go;
then she changed her mind and lingered. It annoyed her to feel she
had been baffled, for she was a young woman who liked to drive
right to the heart of things. Her father had been called a “czar” in his
world, and she had inherited, with other of his traits, certain
imperious qualities. So for a moment or two she stood thinking.
An automobile from the village went by them and proceeded to the
house. It contained Mrs. Dan and Mrs. Clarence returning from the
telegraph office, but Bob hardly saw it, or was aware who were its
occupants. Miss Gerald absorbed him to the exclusion of all else
now. He had no mind for other storms that might be gathering.
Suddenly the girl turned on him with abrupt swiftness.
 CHAPTER VIII—NEW COMPLICATIONS
“Is your father’s embarrassment serious?” she asked.
Bob looked startled. He didn’t like the way she had shifted the
conversation. “Pretty bad,” he answered.
“I believe, though, it’s customary for men on the ‘street’ not to stay
‘downed,’ as they say?”
“Don’t know as it’s an invariable rule,” returned Bob evasively. Then
realizing it wouldn’t do to be evasive: “As a matter of fact, I don’t
believe I’m very well posted as to that,” he added.
“What does your father say?” she asked abruptly.
Bob would much rather not have talked about that with her. But
—“Dad says there is no hope,” he had to say.
Miss Gerald was silent for a moment. As a child she remembered a
very gloomy period in her own father’s career—when the “street”
had him “cornered.” She remembered the funereal atmosphere of
the big old house—the depression on nearly every one’s face—how
everything had seemed permeated with impending tragedy. She
remembered how her father looked at her, a great gloomy ghost of
himself with somber burning eyes. She remembered how seared and
seamed his strong and massive face had become in but a few days.
But that was long ago and he had long since left her for good. The
vivid impression, however, of that gloomy period during her
childhood remained with her. It had always haunted her, though her
father had not been “downed” in the end. He had emerged from the
storm stronger than ever.
The girl shot a sidewise look at Bob, standing now with his arms
folded like Hamlet. Perhaps he had come from such a funereal house
as she, herself, so well remembered? Had dad’s trouble, or tragedy,
weighed on him unduly? Had it made him—for the moment—just
slightly irresponsible? Miss Gerald, as has been intimated, had
frankly liked Bob as an outdoor companion, or an indoor one, too,
sometimes, for that matter. He was one of the few men, for
example, she would “trot” with. He could “trot” in an eminently
respectful manner, being possessed of an innate refinement, or
chivalry, which certainly seemed good to her, after some of those
other wild Terpsichorean performances of myriad masculine manikins
in the mad world of Milliondom.
“I suppose your father has taken his trouble much to heart?” Miss
Gerald now observed.
“Not a bit.”
“No?” In surprise.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Said he looked to me to keep him in affluence the rest of his days.”
“To you?”
“That’s right.”
“But how?—What are you going to do?”
“Hustle.”
“At what?”
“Don’t know. Got to find out.”
“What did you plan doing, when at college?”
“Nothing.”
“Is it”—Miss Gerald got back to where she had been before—“the
sense of awful responsibility,” with slight sarcasm, “that has turned
your brain?”
“I’m not crazy.”
“No?” She remembered that most people in asylums say that.
“Though I may be in a matter of three weeks,” Bob added, more to
himself than to her.
“Why three weeks?”
“Well, if I don’t—just shouldn’t happen to go crazy during that time,
I’ll be all right, after that.”
“Why do you allow a specified period for your mental deterioration?”
“I didn’t allow it.”
“Who did?”
“Can’t tell you.”
Miss Gerald pondered on this answer. It would seem as if Bob had
“hallucinations,” if nothing worse. He was possessed of the idea, no
doubt, that he would go crazy within three weeks. He didn’t realize
that the “deterioration,” she referred to, might have already begun.
He looked normal enough, though, had the most normal-looking
eyes. Could it be that he was acting? And if he was acting, why was
he? That seemed incomprehensible. Anyhow, it couldn’t be a sense
of responsibility that had “upset” Bob. She became sure of that now.
He played a losing game with too much dash and brilliancy! Hadn’t
she seen him at polo—hadn’t she held her breath and thrilled when
he had “sailed in” and with irresistible vim snatched victory out of
defeat? No; Bob wasn’t a “quitter.”
“So your father looks to you to support him?”
“So he said. The governor’s a bit of a joker though, you know. He
may be only putting up a bluff to try me out.”
“What did he advise you to do?”
Bob shivered. “Matrimonial market.”
“You mean—?”
“Heiress.” Succinctly.
“Any particular one?”
“Dad did mention a name.”
“Not—?” She looked at him.
“Yes.”
An awful pause.
“Now you know why I didn’t want to see you,” said Bob, in that even
fatalistic voice. “First place, I wouldn’t ask you to marry me, if you
were the last girl in the world! Second place, I was afraid if I saw
you, some of these things dad said to try me, would be bound to
pop out. You mustn’t think badly of dad, Miss Gerald. As I’ve said, he
didn’t mean a word of it. He was only sizing me up. Don’t I know
that twinkle in his eye? Just wanted to see if I’m as lazy and good-
for-nothing as some chaps brought up with the silver spoon. Why,
he’d—honestly, dad would just kick me, if I took his advice. Why, if I
went back home to-morrow,” went on Bob, warming to the subject,
“and told him we were engaged”—the girl moved slightly—“and
were going to be married right off”—the girl moved again—“why—
why, old as I am, dad would take off his coat and give me a good
trouncing. That’s the kind of a man dad is. I see it all now.”
He really believed he did—and for the first time. He felt he had
solved the mystery of dad’s manner and conduct. It had been a
mystery, but the solution had come to him like an inspiration. Dad
wanted to see whether he would arise to the occasion. He had told
him he didn’t believe he was worth his salt just to see his backbone
stiffen. He had alluded to that other way of repairing the “busted
family credit” just to observe the effect on Bob. And how dad must
have chuckled inwardly at Bob’s response! Why, they’d almost had a
scene, he and good old dad. Bob could smile at it now—if he could
smile at anything. He certainly had been a numskull. Dad, pulling in
fish somewhere, was probably still chuckling to himself, and
wondering how Bob would work out the problem.
“Dad was always just like that when I was a boy,” he confided to
Miss Gerald, now standing more than ever like a marble lady in the
moonlight. “He would propose the contrariest things! Always trying
and testing me. Guess that’s why he acted so happy when he went
broke. Thought it would make a man of me! By jove, that’s it! Why,
he was as care-free as a boy with a new top!”
“Was he, indeed?” said Miss Gerald, studying Mr. Robert Bennett
with eyes that looked very deep now, beneath the imperious brows.
“How nice!” Oh, that tone was distant. It might have been wafted
from one who stood on an iceberg.
“Isn’t it?” Bob heaved a sigh. “I’m not afraid of you any more,” he
said, “now that I’ve got that off my chest.”
Again Miss Gerald shivered slightly, but whether at the slang or not,
was not apparent.
“You can’t frighten me any more,” said Bob.
“But why,” said Miss Gerald, “did you tell me, at all, of dad’s—as you
call him—charming suggestion?”
“Had to. Didn’t you ask me?” In faint surprise. Then he remembered
she didn’t know he had to tell the truth. That made him look rather
foolish—or “imbecile,” in the light of all those other proceedings.
Miss Gerald’s brow contracted once more. Again she might be asking
herself if Master Robert was acting? Was this but gigantic,
bombastic, Quixotic “posing” after all? It was too extraordinary to
speak of such things as he had spoken of, to her! Did he only want
to appear different? Did he seek to combine Apollo with Bernard
Shaw in his attitude toward society? Or had he been reading
Chesterton and was he but striving to present in his own personality
a futurist’s effect of upside-downness? Miss Gerald felt now the way
she had at the modernists’ exhibition, when she had gazed and
gazed at what was apparently a load of wood falling down-stairs,
and some one had told her to find the lady. It was about as difficult
to-night to find the real Mr. Bennett—the happy-go-lucky Bob
Bennett of last month or last week—as it had been to find that lady
where appeared only chaotic kindling wood.
Miss Gerald let the cool air fan her brow for a few moments. This
young man was, at least, exhilarating. She felt a little dizzy.
Meanwhile Bob looked at her with that sad silly smile.
“You can’t ask me any questions that will disconcert me now,” he
boasted.
Miss Gerald looked at him squarely. “Will you marry me?” she said.
It was a coup. Her father had been capable of just such coups as
that. He would hit the enemy in the most unexpected manner in the
most unexpected quarter, and thus overwhelm his foes. Miss Gerald
might not mean it; she, most likely, only said it. Under the
circumstances, to get at the truth herself, she was justified in saying
almost anything. If he were but posing, she would prick the bubble
of his pretense. If those grandiloquent, and, to her, totally
unnecessary protestations didn’t mean anything, she wished to know
it. He would never, never marry her,—wouldn’t he? Or, possibly, her
question was but part of a plan, or general campaign, on her part, to
test his sanity? Six persons—real competents, too!—had affirmed
that he wasn’t “just right.” Be that as it may, Miss Gerald dropped
this bomb in Master Bob’s camp and waited the effect with mien
serene.
Her query worked the expected havoc, all right. Bob’s jaw fell. Then
his eyes began to flash with a new fierce love-light. He couldn’t help
it. Marry her?—Great Scott!—She, asking him, if he would? He felt
his pulses beating faster and the blood pumping in his veins. His
arms went out—very eager, strong, primitive arms they looked—that
cave-man kind! Arms that seize resistless maidens and enfold them,
willy-nilly! Miss Gerald really should have felt much alarmed,
especially as there was so much doubt as to Bob’s sanity. It’s bad
enough to be alone with an ordinary crazy man, but a crazy man
who is in love with one? That is calculated to be a rather unusual
and thrilling experience.
However, though Miss Gerald may have entertained a few secret
fears and possible regrets for her own somewhat mad precipitancy,
she managed to maintain a fair semblance of composure. She had
the courage to “stand by” the coup. She was like a tall lily that
seems to hold itself unafraid before the breaking of the tempest. She
did not even draw back, though she threw her head back slightly.
And in her eyes was a challenge. Not a love challenge, though Bob
could not discern that! His own gaze was too blurred.
Miss Gerald suddenly drew in her breath quickly, as one who felt she
would need her courage now. Almost had Bob, in that moment of
forgetfulness, drawn her into his arms and so completed the
paradoxical picture of himself, when the impulse was abruptly
arrested. He seemed suddenly to awaken to a saner comprehension
of the requirements of the moment. His arms fell to his side.
“That’s a joke, of course,” he said hoarsely.
“And if it wasn’t?” she challenged him. There was mockery now in
her eyes, and her figure had relaxed.
“You affirm it isn’t?”
“I said if it wasn’t?”
“I guess you win,” said Bob wearily. These extremes of emotion were
wearing on the system.
“You mean you wouldn’t, even if I had really, actually—?”
“I mean you certainly do know how to ‘even up’ with a chap. When
he doesn’t dare dream of heaven, you suddenly pretend to fling
open the golden gates and invite him to enter.”
“Like St. Peter,” said the girl.
“Ah, you are laughing,” said Bob bitterly, and dropped his head. Her
assurance was regal. “As if it wasn’t hard enough, anyway, to get
you out of my darn-fool head,” he murmured reproachfully.
“Then you reject me?” said the girl, moving toward the entrance.
“Good! I mean, bad! So humiliating to have been rejected! Good
night, Mr. Bennett. No—it isn’t necessary for you to accompany me
to the house. I really couldn’t think of troubling you after your
unkind refusal to—”
Bob groaned. “I say, there is always your aunt, you know, who can
ask me to vacate the—” he called out.
“I’ll think about it,” said the lady. A faint perfume was wafted past
him and the vision vanished. Bob sank down on the cold marble
seat.

He remained thus for some time, oblivious to the world, when

another car, en route from the village to the house, purred past him,
spitting viciously, however, between purrs. Bob didn’t even look
around. Spit!—spit!—purr!—purr!—Its two lights were like the eyes
of some monster pussy-cat, on the war-path for trouble. Spit!—it
seemed in a horribly vicious mood. More “spits” than “purrs,” now!
Then the car stopped, though it was some distance from the house.
“Curse this old rattletrap!” said a man’s voice.
“Oh, I guess no one’ll pay any attention to it,” spoke another
occupant. “Besides, it was the only one to be had at the station, and
we had to get here quick.”
“You bet! The quicker, the better,” observed a third man.
They all got out, not far from where Bob sat in the dark gazing into
a void, but he did not notice. Cars might come, and cars might go,
for all of him. He was dimly aware of the sound of voices but he had
no interest in guests, newly-arrived or otherwise. One of the trio
paid the driver of the car and it purred back, somewhat less
viciously, from whence it came.
“Better separate when we get near the house and approach it
carefully,” said the first speaker in low tense tones. “We’ve got to get
hold of him without anybody knowing it.”
“That’s right. Wouldn’t do to let them”—with significant accent
—“know what we’ve come for,” said the second man. The trio were
quite out of ear-shot of Bob, by now.
“Hope it’ll turn out all right,” spoke the third anxiously. “Why, in
heaven’s name, didn’t we think of this in the first place?”
“Can’t think of every contingency!” answered the first speaker
viciously. “Our plan now is to get hold of one of the servants. A nice
fat tip, and then—Come on! No time to waste!”
As they made their way up the driveway to the house Bob looked
drearily around. His eyes noted and mechanically followed the trio of
dark forms. He saw them stop near the house; then he observed
one approach a side window and peer in. A moment later another
approached another window and peered in.
“That’s funny!” thought Bob, without any particular emotion. At the
same time, he recalled that a band of burglars had been going
about, looting country-houses. Perhaps these fellows were after a
few hundred thousand dollars’ worth of jewels? There might be half
a million dollars’ worth of jewelry sprinkled about among Mrs.
Ralston’s guests. But what did it matter? The presence of these
intruders seemed too trifling a matter to think about now, and Bob
sank into another reverie.
How long he remained thus, he did not know. The laughter and talk
of a number of guests, coming out the front way (end of a “trot,”
probably) aroused him and Bob got up.
As he did so, he fancied he saw again the three men he had noticed,
then forgotten, slip around toward the back of the house.
Throughout the gardens, the moonlight made clear spots on the
ground where the bright rays sifted through the foliage or shone
down between the trees, and they had to skip across one of these
bright places to get around somewhere behind the big mansion.
Undoubtedly, the appearance from the house of the guests who
wanted to cool off had startled the intruders and inspired a desire to
make themselves less conspicuous for the time being. Bob
entertained a vague impression that the conduct of the trio was
rather crude and amateurish, though that didn’t worry him. He didn’t
care whether they were full-fledged yeggmen of the smoothest
class, or only bungling artists, a discredit to their profession. He
dismissed consideration of them as quickly again as he had done
before.
A yawn escaped his lips, and it rather surprised him that a broken-
hearted man could yawn. He looked at his watch, holding it in the
moonlight, and saw that it was late enough now so that he could
retire if he wished, without violating, to any great degree, that even-
tenor-of-his-way clause. Accordingly Bob got up and walked toward
the house. A side door was open and he went in that way and up to
his room. He was glad he didn’t encounter any one—that is, any one
he had to speak to. The monocle-man drifted by him somewhere,
but Bob didn’t have to pay much attention to him. He could imagine
the superior way in which the Britisher had informed Miss Gerald
that he found him (Bob) an “interesting young man.” The monocle-
man and the bishop seemed to agree on that point.
Undressing hastily, Bob flung himself into bed. He had gone through
so much he was tired and scarcely had he touched the sheets when
the welcoming arms of Morpheus claimed him. His sleep was sound
—very sound! In fact, it was so sound that something occurred and
he didn’t know it. It occurred again—several times—and still he did
not know it. Another interval!—a long one! Bob yet slept the sleep of
the overwrought. His fagged brain was trying to readjust itself. He
could have slept right through to the dawn, but this was not to be.
Long before the glowing god made its appearance in the east, Bob
was rudely yanked from the arms of Morpheus.
 CHAPTER IX—ANOTHER SURPRISE
Three men were in his room and Bob found himself sitting up in bed
and blinking at them. The lights they had turned on seemed rather
bright.
“Hello!” said Bob.
“Hello yourself!” said the commodore in a low but nasty manner.
“And not so loud!”
“Some sleeper, you are!” spoke Dickie in a savage whisper.
“Believe he heard, all right!” came Clarence’s hushed, unamiable
tones. “Perverse beast, and pretended not to!”
Bob hugged his knees with his arms. “You’ve torn your pants,” he
observed to the commodore.
“Never you mind that” as guardedly, though no more pleasantly than
before.
“Oh, all right,” said Bob meekly. He didn’t ask any questions, nor did
he exhibit any curiosity. There couldn’t anything happen now that
would make matters much worse. But in that, he was “reckoning
without his host.”
“Got in the window, of course,” he observed in a low unconcerned
tone, as if their coming and being there after midnight was the most
natural occurrence in the world. “Not so hard to get in, with that
balcony out there. All you had to do was to ‘shin up’ and then there’s
that trellis to help. Good strong trellis, too. Regular Jacob’s ladder!
Easiest thing for burglars! Thought you were burglars,” he added
contemplatively.
“You mean you saw us?” snapped the commodore, almost forgetting
his caution. His expression matched his tone. He was no longer the
jovial sailorman; he wore now a regular Dick Deadeye look. To Bob’s
comprehensive glance he appeared like a fragment in a revival of
Pinafore.
“Oh, I didn’t know it was you,” said Bob.
“Where were you?”
“Summer-house.”
“Think of that,” murmured the commodore, disgustedly. “Bird at
hand, and we didn’t know it. Fool of a bird had to hop away and
make us all this trouble!”
“I told you I thought you were burglars,” observed Bob patiently. He
didn’t care how they abused him or what names they called him.
That disagreeable look on Dan’s face was replaced by a startled one.
“Good gracious, man”—only that wasn’t the expression he used—“I
hope you haven’t told any one you saw burglars prowling around?
Nice for us if you did!” As he spoke he gazed anxiously toward the
window, before which they had taken the precaution to draw a
heavy drape after entering.
“No, I didn’t tell a soul.”
“But—I don’t understand why you didn’t when you thought—?”
“I ought to have spoken, I suppose,” said Bob with a melancholy
smile. “But it didn’t seem very important and—I guess I forgot.
These little jewel robberies are getting to be such commonplace
occurrences!”
The commodore stared at him. Then he touched his forehead. “A lot
of trouble you’ve made for us,” he said, speaking in that low tense
voice, while Clarence and Dickie looked on in mad and reproachful
fashion. “Bribed a servant to tell you to slip out! Told him to whisper
that we were waiting in the garden and simply had to see you at
once! Didn’t you hear him rap on your door?”
“No,” answered Bob sorrowfully.
“Heavens, man! believe you’d sleep through an earthquake and
cyclone combined! Servant came back and told us he’d tapped on
your door as loudly as he dared. Was afraid he’d arouse the whole
house if he knocked louder. When you leave a ‘call’ at the hotels,
how do they manage? Break down the door with an ax?”
Bob overlooked the sarcasm. The commodore might have thumped
him with an ax, at the moment, and he wouldn’t have protested very
hard. He murmured a contrite apology.
“Get my telegram?” said the commodore.
“Yes. What could you have been thinking about when you sent it?
How could I leave when I had to stay? Thought you must have been
sailing pretty close in the wind at the yacht club, when you dashed it
off! Could just feel your main-sail fluttering.”
The commodore swore softly but effectively. Clarence and Dickie
murmured something, too. Bob hugged his knees closer. Being so
unhappy himself, he couldn’t but feel a dull sympathy when he saw
any one else put out.
“See here,” said the commodore, “what’s the situation? We never
dreamed, of course, that you would come here. Have you been
talking with Mrs. Dan and Mrs. Clarence? Dickie’s been conjuring all
kinds of awful things you might have told them, if they cornered you
and you got that truth-telling stunt going. Dickie’s got an
imagination. Too confounded much imagination!” Here the
commodore wiped his brow. That was quite a bad tear in his pants
but he appeared oblivious to it. “Maybe you would have thought it a
capital way to turn the tables on us poor chaps?” he went on,
stabbing Bob with a baleful look. “Perhaps you came here on
purpose?”
“No,” said Bob, “I couldn’t have done that, of course, owing to the
conditions.” And he related what had happened to bring him there.
Dan groaned. “Why, it was we, ourselves, who steered him right up
against her at the Waldorf. It was we who got him asked down here.
I suppose you’ve been chuckling ever since you came?” Turning on
Bob, with a correct imitation of Mr. Deadeye, at his grouchiest
moment.
“No,” said Bob, speaking to immeasurable distance, “I haven’t done
any chuckling since I came here. Nary a chuckle!”
“Let’s get down to brass tacks,” interrupted Dickie, “and learn if our
worst apprehensions are realized. There’s a girl down here I think a
lot of and I’d like to know if, by any chance, any conversation you
may have had with her turned on me. I allude to Miss Dolly—”
“Hold on,” said the commodore. “That’s not very important. Suppose
she should have found out a few things about you? You aren’t
married. It’s different in the case of married men, like Clarence and
me here. We’ll dismiss Miss Dolly, if you please, for the present—”
“I really haven’t said anything to Miss Dolly about you,” said Bob to
Dickie. “Your name hasn’t been mentioned between us.” He was glad
he could reassure one of them, at least. He wouldn’t have had Dickie
so sorrowful as himself for the world.
That young man looked immensely relieved. It may be he
experienced new hope of leading the temperamental young thing to
the altar, and incidentally consummating a consolidation of
competing chimneys, conveniently contiguous. “Thanks, old chap,”
he said, and shook Bob’s hand heartily.
“But what about us?” whispered the commodore sibilantly. “Have
you talked with Mrs. Clarence or Mrs. Dan to any great extent?”
“I haven’t had hardly a word with Mrs. Clarence,” answered Bob,
whereupon Clarence began to “throw out his chest,” the way Dickie
had done.
The commodore shifted uneasily, seeming to find difficulty in
continuing the conversation. He moved back and forth once or twice,
but realizing he was making a slight noise, stood still again, and
looked down at Bob.
“Talk much with Mrs. Dan?” he at length asked nervously.
“I did have a little conversation with Mrs. Dan,” Bob was forced to
reply. “Or, I should say, to be strictly truthful, rather a long
conversation. You see, I took her in to dinner.”
The commodore showed signs of weakness. He seemed to have very
indecisive legs all of a sudden. “Talk about me?” he managed to
ejaculate.
“Some. I’m not certain just how much.”
“What—what was said?”
“I can’t remember all. It’s very confused. I’ve had a lot of
conversations, you see, and most of them awfully unpleasant. I
remember, though, that Mrs. Dan impressed me as a very broad-
minded lady. Said she had lived in Paris, and was not a bit jealous.”
“What!” Dan was breathing hard.
“Said she always wanted you to have the best kind of a time.”
“Did she say that?” asked the commodore. “And you believed it? Go
on.” In a choked voice. “Did you tell her about that cabaret
evening?”
“I believe it was mentioned, incidentally.”
“Say I was there?” put in Clarence quickly. He was losing that
“chestiness.”
“I rather think I did. I—what is that?” Bob looked toward the
window. There was a sound below at the foot of the balcony. Some
one turned out the light in the room and Bob strode to the window
and looked out. “It’s a dog,” he said. “He’s snuffing around at the
foot.”
“He’s doing more than snuffing,” observed the commodore
apprehensively, as at that moment a bark smote the air. They stood
motionless and silent. The dog stopped barking, but went on
snuffing. Maybe it would go away after a moment, and they waited.
Dickie and the commodore had thrashed out that question of dogs.
With so many guests around, they had figured that, of course, they
would be dog-safe. Didn’t they look like guests? How could a dog tell
the difference between them and a guest? It is true, they hadn’t
been expecting so much trouble as they had been put to, to find
Bob. They had, in that little balcony-climbing feat, rather exceeded
what they had expected to be called on to do. In their impatience,
they had acted somewhat impetuously, but it had looked just as
easy, after the servant had pointed out the room and told them Bob
was in, as certain sounds from his bed indubitably indicated.
They couldn’t very well enter the house as self-invited guests,
though they, of course, would have been made welcome. They
couldn’t very well say they had all changed their minds about those
original invitations which had naturally included husbands as well as
wives. After all three had declined to come on account of business, it
would certainly look like collusion, if all three found they hadn’t had
urgent business, at all, in town. If anything untoward or disastrous
had happened in the conversational line, with Bob as the Demon
God, Truth, their sudden entrance upon the stage of festivities,
would seem to partake of inner perturbation; it might even appear
to be a united and concentrated case of triple guilty conscience.
This, obviously, must be avoided at any cost. How they had heard
Bob was here at the Ralston house, matters not. Naturally they had
kept tab on his movements, where he went and what he did being
of some moment to them.
The dog barked again. Thereupon, a window opened and they knew
that some one had been aroused.
“He’s looking out. It’s the monocle-chap,” whispered Bob.
“Who’s he?”
“One of Mrs. Ralston’s importations. Belonged to that Anglo-English
colony when she did that little emigration act in dear old London.”
“Hang it, we’ve got to get out,” whispered the commodore nervously.
No matter what had been said; no matter what the Demon God of
Truth had done, it was incumbent on them not to remain longer,
with that dog looking up toward Bob’s window and making that
spasmodic racket. Some one might get up and go out and see
footprints, or a disturbed trellis. The commodore forgot a certain
desperate business proposition, apropos of that confounded wager,
he had come to put to Bob. That infernal dog got on his nerves and
put that other matter, which would settle this truth-telling stunt at
once, right out of his mind.
It was all very well, however, to say they “had to get out,” but it was
another matter to tell how they were going to do it. They couldn’t
descend the way they had come, and meet doggie. Bob arose to the
occasion.
“I can let you into the hall and show you downstairs, to that side
door on the other side of the house. You can take one of my golf
sticks, just as a safeguard, but I think you’ll be able to circumvent
the jolly little barker without being obliged to use it.”
“What kind of a dog is it?” whispered the commodore who had a
pronounced aversion to canines.
“Looked like a smallish dog. Might be a bull.”
“Better give us each a club,” suggested Clarence in a weak voice.
Which Bob did. The dog renewed the vocal performance, and—
“Hurry,” whispered the commodore. “Find means to communicate
with you to-morrow, Mr. Bennett.” Bob didn’t resent the formality of
this designation, which implied to what depths he had fallen in good
old Dan’s estimation. “Can we get down-stairs without any one
hearing us?”
Bob thought they could. Anyhow, they would have to try, so he
opened the door softly and led the way. Fortunately, the house was
solidly built and not creaky. They attained down-stairs safely, and at
last reached the side door without causing any disturbance. Bob
unfastened the door, the key turned noiselessly and they looked out.
There was no sign of any living thing on lawn or garden on this side
of the house.
“Out you go quickly,” murmured Bob, glancing apprehensively over
his shoulder. His position was not a particularly agreeable one.
Suppose one of the servants, on an investigating tour as to the
cause of doggie’s perturbation, should chance upon him (Bob)
showing three men out of the house in that secret manner at this
time of night?
But before disappearing into the night, the commodore took time to
whisper: “Was Gee-gee’s name mentioned?”
“I fear so,” said Bob sadly.
The commodore wasted another second or two to tell Bob fiercely
what he thought of him and how they would “fix” him on the
morrow, after which he sprang out and darted away like a rabbit.
Bob wanted to call out that they were welcome to “fix” him, but he
was afraid that others beside Dan might hear him, so he closed and
locked the door carefully and stood there alone in the great hall, in
his dressing-gown. Then he sat down in a dark corner and listened.
Better wait until all was quiet, he told himself, before retracing his
steps to his room. The dog seemed to have stopped barking
altogether now and soon any persons it might have awakened would
be asleep again. His trio of visitors must be well on their way to the
village by this time, he thought. He was sorry the commodore
seemed to feel so bad. And Clarence?—poor Clarence! That last look
of his haunted Bob. Anyhow, he was pleased Dickie had, so far,
escaped his (Bob’s) devastating touch.
How long he sat there he did not know. Probably only a few
moments. A big clock ticked near by, which was the only sound now
to be heard. Suddenly it occurred to him that he had better return to
his room, and wearily he arose. Up-stairs it seemed darker than it
had been when he had left his room. He had the dim lights in the
great hall below to guide him then. Now it was a little more difficult.
However, after traversing without mishap a few gloomy corridors—
he realized what a big house it really was—he reached, at last, his
room near the end of one of the upper halls and entered.
He had a vague idea he had left his door partly ajar, but he wasn’t
sure; probably he hadn’t, for it was now closed; or maybe a draft of
air had closed it. Groping his way in the dark for his bed, he ran
against a chair. This ruffled his temper somewhat as the sharp edge
had come in contact with that sensitive part of the anatomy, known
as the shin-bone. He felt for his bed, but it wasn’t there where it
ought to be. He must have got turned around coming in. His fingers
ran over a dresser. Some of the articles on it seemed strange to him.
He thought he heard a rustle and stood still, with senses alert,
experiencing a regular burglar-feeling at the moment. He hadn’t
become so ossified to emotion as he had supposed. But everything
was now as silent as the grave. Again his hand swept out, to learn
where he was, and again his fingers swept over the dresser. What
were all those confounded things? He didn’t know he had left so
much loose junk lying around. And where was that confounded
switch-button?
At that moment some one else found it, for the room became
suddenly flooded with light. Bob started back, and as he did so,
something fell from the dresser to the floor. He stared toward the
bed in amazement and horror. Some one, with the clothes drawn up
about her, was sitting up. Bob wasn’t the only one who had a
surprise that night. The temperamental, little dark thing was treated
to one, too. Above the white counterpane, she stared at Bob.
 CHAPTER X—INTO BONDAGE
She continued to stare for some moments, while he stood frozen to
the spot. Then the young lady’s face changed. Fear, startled wonder,
gave way to an expression of growing comprehension and into her
eyes came such an excited look.
“You!” said Miss Dolly in a thrilling whisper. And then—“Pick it up,
please.”
Instead of picking anything up—he didn’t know what—Bob was
about to rush for the door, when— “Stop! Or I’ll scream,” exclaimed
Miss Dolly. “I’ll scream so loud I’ll wake every one in the house.”
Bob stopped. In his eyes was an agony of contrition and shame.
Miss Dolly, however, seemed quite self-possessed. She might have
been frightened at first, but she was no longer that. Her
temperamental, somewhat childish face wore a thrill of pleasurable
anticipation. “Now pick it up,” she repeated.
“What?” stammered Bob in a shrinking voice.
“The brooch, to be sure. Didn’t you drop it?”
“I?” said Bob, drawing his dressing-gown closer about him. They
were speaking in stage whispers.
“Of course. Wasn’t it what you came for?”
“Came for? Great heavens!—Do you think?—”
“Think?” said Miss Dolly. “I know.”
Bob looked at her. Her face appeared elf-like, uncannily wise. But for
all her outward calm, her eyes were great big, excited eyes. His
horrified glance turned quickly from them to regard a gleaming
diamond and pearl brooch on the rug. “Jumping Je-hoshaphat! You
don’t think I’m—”
“One of those thrilling society-highwaymen, or social buccaneers?”
said Miss Dolly. “Of course, and I’m so glad it happened like this. I
wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Really, I’ve always wanted to
meet one of those popular heroes. And now to think my dream has
come true! It’s just like a play, isn’t it?”
“It is not,” replied Bob savagely. This was too much. It was just
about the last straw. “I—” Then he stopped. Suppose any one
should hear him? Miss Dolly’s temperamental and comprehensive
eyes read his thought.
“I don’t think there’s any danger,” she purred soothingly. “You see
there’s a bathroom on one side of the room and a brick wall on the
other. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the rooms are separated by brick
partitions,” she confided to him. “Mrs. Ralston likes everything
perfect—sound-proof, fire-proof, and all that.”
“See here,” said Bob. “I was just wandering around—couldn’t sleep—
and—and I came in here, quite by mistake. Thought it was my own
room!” With some vehemence.
Miss Dolly shook her head reprovingly, and her temperamental hair
flowed all about her over the white counterpane. She knew it must
look very becoming, it was such wonderful hair—that is, for dark
hair. Bob preferred light. Not that he was thinking of hair, now!
“Can’t you do better than that?” asked the temperamental young
thing.
“Better than what?” queried Bob ill-naturedly. He was beginning to
feel real snappy.
“Invent a better whopper, I mean?”
“It isn’t a whopper, and—and I positively refuse to stay here any
longer. Positively!”
“Oh, no; not positively,” said Miss Dolly, nodding a wise young head.
“You’re going to stay, unless—you know the alternative. Since I’m
destined to be a heroine, I want a regular play-scene. I don’t want
my part cut down to nothing. Don’t you love thief-plays, Mr.
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