The Friends of the 15th Brigade held their annual ‘Pompey’ Elliott memorial service at the Burwood Cemetery, Melbourne on Monday 23rd March, 2009 – the 78th anniversary of Elliot’s death.
FFFAIF member Ross McMullin and author of Pompey Elliot’s biography delivered the eulogy at the service.
Following is an extract from the eulogy in which Ross focussed on Brigadier General Elliot’s interaction with his men.
Pompey’s interaction with the men he was commanding was a feature of his leadership. This started from the very start of World War I. On 16 October 1914, when he and the original enlisters in the 7th Battalion were still at Broadmeadows wondering when they would finally leave Australia, at last the official word came that they would be leaving in two days. Next day was the Caulfield Cup. The morning roll-call disclosed a number of absentees without leave. After they returned they were ordered to parade before Pompey. What he said to them was remembered later with much merriment:
Never before have I seen such an array of horse-lovers. My interest in the animal has always been limited to using it for carrying me over distances I would otherwise have to walk. I have never been attracted to horse races, and much less to the duties a stable entails. I am glad to have discovered your attachment at so opportune a time, as it solves any difficulty associated with the care of the horses we are taking over with us. You can all expect to be called upon to act as horse batmen for the duration of the voyage.
Another diverting vignette concerns Pompey’s language. He was a man’s man, and sometimes resorted to mildly coarse language-bloody, bugger and so on. But even they were too much for his demure wife Kate, who preferred him to eschew all kinds of bad language. When Pompey became famous for his indomitable leadership at Gallipoli, stories about him filtered back to Melbourne, and reached Kate. In some of these Pompey anecdotes he was reputed to have used expressions she didn’t like, and Kate wrote him a letter saying she wasn’t happy. This was his reply:
There is no use denying it, I did swear sometimes and it did good Katie … it made them pay attention to what I said. I don’t like it Katie a bit more than you do, but I do everything calculated to make my boys do what I want.
Anyway, now he was promoted to brigadier, he assured her, he would no longer have to swear because that was his battalion commanders’ job.
But before long he had to modify this assurance. His battalion commanders were to blame, he told Kate, and he had lectured them accordingly. This is what he wrote to Kate:
I [told my battalion commanders that] my wife said she had heard all sorts of stories about me, including one that I had developed a habit of swearing at the men, that you had said you didn’t believe it and hoped if it were true I would stop it at once. That I had thereupon written to assure you that having been promoted to command a Brigade I now had four Battalion Commanders to do all swearing necessary and I would be able to be good. That after the march from Tel-el-Kebir unfortunately I had to write again, and confess that instead as in the 7th [Battalion] swearing for 1 only, I found I had to swear for 4, ie for the whole Brigade. This very much amused [the battalion commanders], but I assured them I was not a bit amused at the prospect and they would have to do their job and relieve me from the necessity for swearing at their men.
That didn’t satisfy Kate, and she wrote to him again about it. All was well, he replied, because he now had better battalion commanders, and he didn’t have to do the swearing. In fact, he wrote, “I would pass for a Sunday School teacher anywhere at present”.
Pompey’s tempestuous temperament generated heaps of anecdotes. In mid-1918, after he had received yet another award, an officer from another formation wrote to congratulate him. His letter said this:
It could not have been better deserved. The “official” grounds for the distinction could be made convincing enough to all minds. But the thing which specially appeals to me, and I think too to all Aussies, are the unwritten yarns about Pompey Elliott which are bandied from mouth to mouth. You tell one of them yourself, and immediately someone answers with a better! And all together we find them among the most stimulating tonics and aids to winning the war that we know … I would not venture to write this if I did not thoroughly believe it, and thank you for it.
Now to two penetrating assessments of Pompey by Australian war correspondents. The first is from Fred Cutlack:
There is one man on the western front who … loves to be in the thick of it. He is of big, burly build, with immense head and jaw; his large forehead is exaggerated by baldness at the temples, and a tuft of iron grey hair stands up in the middle of his head above the forehead-stands up permanently on end with sheer energy … His every utterance-if it be but to ask the day of the week-he gives out with a lift of his chin like a challenge. The stoutest chairs creak under his weight. When he clasps his hands the sound is as of the foresail of a great ship as it luffs up into the wind. His heart is as big as the heart of an ox and as fresh as a schoolboy’s. He has led his unit … into every fight he could find. He thrives on the war. He dreams Homeric battles, it is said, every night of his life … His men have the greatest affection for him. They would probably like him just as much if he enjoyed a battle less. But the valiant bigness of the man takes their fancy, and they know they would never fail in a fight for lack of stoutness in him, their leader. Whenever his unit comes into action against the Germans it goes for them, as if in some resentment-caught from the spirit of its commander-that Germans should dare to stand in its way.
And here is something written by Charles Bean, who was the official corespondent with the AIF during the war and the official historian after it, when he dedicated over 20 years of his post-war life to doing his utmost to ensure that the story of what the Australians did in the war was told with all the accuracy he could muster. Bean knew Pompey very well, and admired him as a commander. Bean also valued Pompey for being such a wonderful character in the extraordinary story he was taking decades to tell. When Pompey died, Bean was toiling away at volume 4 of his history, the volume on 1917, which was the most difficult and depressing to write. In March 1931 he learned that Pompey had died. He responded by dashing off a superb tribute. Here’s part of it:
So Pompey Elliott is gone! No more shall we meet in Collins Street or at Canberra that sturdy figure, the bluff red cheeks, almost without a line, the twinkling, knowing eyes, the confident smile. No more we shall feel that iron grip of a handshake, or catch that decisive voice. The old soldier has laid down his arms. The stalwart figure has gone … we can picture Pompey going round the turns of that long road that we all must travel some day, with his head high, his senses alert, his strong chin set. It is not the first time that he has gone out alone into No-mans-land. We know this about Pompey: he goes out as a soldier, utterly unafraid … What a brigade he made of the 15th! … In his exuberant vitality he overworked them, strafed them, punished them; and yet they would do anything he asked of them … [H]istory will do him an injustice if it does not hand him down to posterity as-with very few peers-one of the outstanding and most lovable characters of the AIF.
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