Francis
Edmund Westbrook was born in 1889 at South Yarra in Victoria Australia and died
in 1976 aged 87 years in Hawthorn, Victoria. He is described as a ‘working
class hero’. He had worked various country jobs, such as a rover, a shearer, a
farm labourer and even a ship’s cook. He was a lover of the Australian bush,
and this is quite evident from his writing. Like many men of his day, he was caught
up in the euphoria of patriotic fervour at the beginning of the war. So, in
1914, he enlisted in the 1st A.I.F., and joined the 2nf Field
Artillery Brigade as a Trumpeter. He left Australia on the 20th of
October, 1914, on the HMAT Shropshire for Egypt. He was at the famed landing on
the 25th of April, 1915, and, having been made a Gunner of the 4th
Battery, 2nd Brigade, he took part in his Battery’s deployment at
Gallipoli. His battery had the distinction of taking ashore on Gallipoli the
first gun at Anzac beach on April 25 1915.
Having
seen ‘months of action’ at Gallipoli, he was eventually evacuated, suffering
from ‘severe diarrhoea’ (known on the Peninsular as the ‘Gallipoli Gallop’). Frank
was send to the island of Lemnos to recover, however, he was eventually send on
to England in early 1916 (a Blighty); no doubt, the dysentery was so bad that
it warranted complete evacuation. There is, however, strong speculation that
Frank was sent to England to convalesce from neurasthenia following shell-shock,
after being wounded while serving on the Western Front.
While in England, Frank, the typical Australian lad,
found it difficult to worry too much about obeying roll calls, and as he had
met, and fallen in love with a girl called Winifred Eggleton, his Army service
record shows a few AWOL’s. The two, Frank and Winifred, were wed on the 21st
of June, 1918, in England, before returning to Australia, where Frank picked up
his life more or less where he had left it.
It would appear that the war brought out the poetry in
Frank, for he wrote no known poetry before or after the war. He wrote a few
poems prior to the landing on Gallipoli, a small book ‘Anzac and After’ (1916) and another small book ‘Echoes of Anzac’ (1930). An important
aspect of his first book, is that it was predominantly written on while serving
at Gallipoli. This makes it very important as authoritative soldier poetry. His
poetry, however, is very moving and heart felt. He talks about the Australian bush
and his comrades. Sometimes, his poetry is rather full of patriotic zeal, but
it should be remembered that Frank, like most Australians at the beginning,
were filled with patriotic zeal and a tremendously burning love for the Mother
country, England. After some time though, Frank’s zeal toned right down, and
changed for the simple love of his own homeland, Australia. He missed Australia
and this is seen in his poetry.
There
was also a rather interesting incident involving Frank and the Australia War
Correspondent, Charles Bean. Just prior to the landing at Gallipoli, Frank
became involved in a published disagreement with Charles Bean. At the time,
Australian troops had been stationed at Mena Camp in Egypt. Because of various
reasons, predominantly boredom and overcrowding, by late December 1914, the
behaviour of Australian troops on leave in Cairo had become a problem for
military authorities, who were concerned at the level of public drunkenness and
the incidence of venereal disease within the ranks. Under instructions from
Major General Sir William Bridges, commander of the 1st Australian
Division, Bean briefly raised the matter in a dispatch, which was published in
the Australian newspapers in January and February 1915. Over the following
weeks, Bean’s dispatch came in for a good deal of attention in the press, with
Bean often being criticised for having insulted the reputation of the
Australian troops in Egypt. When the troops in Egypt became aware of the
dispatch, they too entered the fray, with many writing letters to family and
friends in Australia, protesting their innocence and expressing their annoyance
with Bean. A number of these letters were in turn published in the press.
Westbrook
wrote a poem called ‘To Our Critic’, which attacked Bean, calling him a ‘whining
wowser’, and had it published in an Egyptian newspaper, The Egyptian Mail, and
was very popular with his fellow soldiers. When Bean issued a ‘clarification’ that
he was misrepresented and apologised, Westbrook wrote another poem, ‘On Our
Critic’s Apologies’. From this episode, we can see that Frank E. Westbrook was
a man who would fight against authority. He was, as it seems, a people’s poet
as well.
Sources:
Pages:
Bean's brief raising of the matter amounted to over a thousand words. http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/154580117
ReplyDelete