Within months of the arrival of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in France, a War Office Directive – No. 1968 of 15 October 1916 – directed that all troops enlisting in the Army undertake a fourteen-week standardised course of basic recruit training. This directive included all Dominion troops training in their own camps in the United Kingdom; and by early 1917, the British syllabus was incorporated as the core curriculum for training in the AIF’s depots in the United Kingdom. During the Great War, there was commonality in equipment, tactics and procedures among all British Empire infantry formations on the Western Front. Recruit training was the foundation of BEF infantry battlefield effectiveness, and the AIF recruit training process in England was entirely British. Standardisation underwrote the British Expeditionary Force’s (BEF) level of battlefield effectiveness during the second half of the Great War. This chapter details the significant physical and administrative resources allocated to establishing Australian recruit training schools on the Salisbury Plain between 1916 and 1918, and it emphasises that individual basic training in Wiltshire was elemental to the development of Australian infantry on the Western Front.

Bleak winter weather at the beginning of 1917 on the Western Front was a depressing omen for the New Year. During 1917, Tsar Nicholas abdicated. Late in the year, Russia withdrew from the conflict. In an attempt to starve Britain out of the conflict, Germany announced its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare in February, and America reversed its foreign policy and declared war against the Central powers in April. In 1917, French general Nivelle’s offensives along the Aisne River south of the Somme resulted in thousands of casualties for little gain. As a result, in late May and June after two and a half years war, mutiny swept through the French Army’s ranks. In Britain at the beginning of 1917, Welshman David Lloyd George was a new Prime Minister for a new year, and in Australia another Welshman, William Morris Hughes, had been recently re-elected as Prime Minister. Lloyd George came to openly criticise Haig during 1917; he was just as damning about the battles of attrition occurring in France. The year commenced with the experiences of the Somme and Verdun being codified into new training pamphlets and also brought the promise of further British offensives. For the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) these occurred initially at Arras and, later, further north in the Flanders near the Ypres Salient.

Newly trained and returning Australian soldiers undertook a reinforcement process after their arrival on the Continent in accordance with the British Army schooling system in France that trained troops in operating modern weapon systems. Contrary to popular belief, these schools and their associated processes and training pamphlets provided a robust and valuable education to Empire soldiers in preparing them for the rigours of combat. The training methodology was British Expeditionary Force (BEF) wide, and the development of Australian infantry can only be viewed in this context. The schooling system must be studied holistically as there was a disparate dissemination of doctrinal and training standards among the different British armies to which Australian infantry were allocated in 1917. An overview of the 1917 campaigns in which Australian infantry were involved provides further context. These campaigns show how army commanders had a very real influence on the application of the latest tactics and doctrine among their formations on the Western Front. Despite discrepancies, the overarching theme remains that the education methodology employed by the BEF comprised specificity in training and habituation and was a concept as old as the armies of Alexander the Great.

Leadership was central to the development of Australian infantry on the Western Front. Even Haig, who most often has the blame for the conduct of the war laid at his feet, realised the importance of leadership and training. There was an absolute ‘need for the training of battalion commanders’, he wrote in February 1918, ’who in their turn must train their company and platoon commanders. This is really a platoon commanders’ war’ Nevertheless, popular history today reviles British generals of the Great War as callous and negligent. The background for such perceptions is decades old and lies in the prose of a generation of war poets who wrote prolifically in the aftermath of the conflict. An infantry officer in 1917, Owen was diagnosed as suffering from shell shock and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland where he wrote extensively. The difficulties faced by British commanders on the Western Front were significant and numerous. After 1916, the British high command was required to regenerate an army, grow a competent officer corps and develop and disseminate the doctrine necessary to win the war. Australian leadership shaped these events in the development of Australian infantry on the Western Front.

By the last year of the Great War, Australian infantry on the Western Front had developed to a highly capable and professional standard. The Anzac legend cannot account for this evolution; effectiveness was hard earned through the rigours of systematic training, and in a specialist schooling system common across the entire British Force. The corollary is clear. Australian infantry progressed because of their ties to the British Empire. Indeed, by the time that Australians arrived on the Western Front, monumental developments in small arms and quick firing weapons were precipitating a complete rewrite of the tactical methods employed by small infantry units in the BEF. Because of this, by 1918, effectiveness equated to standardised training, operational experience and technical mastery. The Anzac myth pays little credence to such matters – even less to the dull aspects of logistics and fire support, most of which was supplied to the Australian infantry by Britain. In concert with the wider force, by 1918, Australian infantry had developed to a point where they were well trained, technically savvy and battle hardened.

This chapter will focus on the platoon-level weapons systems utilised by Australian infantry on the Western Front from 1916–18. The introduction and use of these weapons occurred in concert with organisational and training developments that were concurrently occurring throughout the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). The weapon systems were in every sense the platoon-level tools of the trade during the Great War. Developments in their tactical application evolved significantly after the Somme campaign of 1916. In particular, the British and Imperial platoon weapons systems of 1916–18 comprised the rifle, bayonet, light machine-gun (LMG), grenade and grenade launcher. All of these weapons were used by the Australian infantry platoon and its subordinate elements, the section, in the last two years of the Great War. This chapter will focus on the technical detail associated with each system, and in particular the schooling systems in which Australian infantrymen learnt to operate and maintain their various weapons. This chapter will not discuss high-end weapons systems or combined arms operations – tanks, aircraft, artillery and the like – other than in the wider context of the development of infantry tactics.

By the end of 1914, a newly formed Australian Imperial Force (AIF) had accepted and deployed more than 20,000 Australian volunteers overseas to train and prepare for combat. The majority of them were sent to Egypt to train, thousands of miles and a hemisphere away. In the following four years, a further 290,000 followed. Most of these soldiers served as infantrymen – the great majority of them on the Western Front – and by the end of the conflict, they had earned a reputation as a highly effective and professional component of the wider British Army. This book examines the substance of this reputation. In particular, it examines the development of Australian infantry on the Western Front from 1916 to 1918 as a way of determining if this reputation is justified. This is where, in 1918, for perhaps the only time in the nation’s history, Australian infantry engaged the main enemy in a decisive theatre and defeated it.