Missing in Action by Marianne van Velzen

Author:Marianne van Velzen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2018-04-05T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

RE-ESTABLISHING THE AGS

The behaviour of the Australian men in the AGS had not gone unnoticed. Historian Charles Bean wrote in his diary that these Australians were by far ‘the roughest lot of officers found in the AIF’.1 William McBeath, who worked for the AGS, wrote home that although they had only been doing the work of reburying bodies for two weeks they already had two strikes with the men refusing to work until there were better means of handling the bodies, better food and all ceremonial parades had been cut.2 Charlie Kingston, when first posted to Villers-Bretonneux, described his own men as a ‘bad lot, inefficient, neither dependable nor reliable’.3 Even Fabian Ware thought it would be a good idea to withdraw the Australians as soon as possible because ‘they were getting up to much mischief’.4

The Australian Graves Services had been instituted to honour the memory of the AIF soldiers who had sacrificed their lives during the Great War. The men, left without much supervision, had created their own playground, bending the rules in such a way that they themselves lost any notion that their behaviour was unacceptable. Of course, not all men serving with the AGS were prone to improper behaviour—on the contrary, most of the men had volunteered out of sheer honest compassion for the fallen men and their families and had behaved accordingly.

The court concluded that the rotten apples would have to go. All of them. That meant removing Kingston, who was deemed unqualified and unfit for the job. Lieutenant Lee, who was found guilty of conduct unbecoming the character of an officer and gentleman. Bollen, who stood accused of nothing other than being a discontented grumbler but was highly disliked by most of the men, Coughlan and Billy Edwards for running estaminets and pimping, plus a number of others who had testified and made complaints. Then of course there was MacKay, who was accused of embezzling goods and also of stealing a car, and Wally Furby, who was his accomplice.

The court made a list of sixteen men who were to be discharged. In the end, none of them were prosecuted. Embedded in the rules of the court of inquiry was stated that the findings could never become part of the record of any man, could not constitute a charge and could not be offered in evidence.5 Although the court had carefully considered the matter of retaining Kingston and Lee to be court-martialled, in the end it was decided that no good purpose would be served by implementing a form of punishment. The resultant harm of such a disclosure would far outweigh any good that could have been done,6 although the members were not unanimous when it came to MacKay. Meikle found his fraudulent practices highly offensive but charging a soldier for misbehaviour would have no doubt drawn attention to what had happened, and under the circumstances that would have been highly undesirable. Sending the men back to Australia was justified as part of the ongoing demobilisation and as such would not attract any attention.

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