Phillip Schuler and Charles Patrick Smith
Phillip Schuler and Charles Patrick Smith were special correspondents for the competing Melbourne morning daily newspapers The Age and The Argus respectively during the Gallipoli campaign. Phillip, or Peter as he was also known, was the son of the editor at The Age, Fredrick Schuler, while Smith had been employed at The Argus as a reporter from 1911. Smith was a nominee for the position of official war correspondent, which was won by Charles Bean.
As was the practice at the time, readers rarely knew the actual names of the journalists who wrote newspaper articles. They were in all but exceptional circumstances identified only as 'special correspondent' or 'special representative'. Hence articles appearing in the Age by 'the Age Special Representative' and in The Argus by 'Our Special Correspondent' were probably by Phillip Schuler and Charles Smith. However, articles carrying those descriptions could also have come from news agencies or other sources, and material from news agencies could have been inserted into the correspondents' copy.
Schuler left Melbourne for the war in October of 1914, while Smith followed with the 4th Infantry Brigade (commanded by Brigadier General [Sir] John Monash) in December of 1914. They both arrived in Egypt, joining the troops at their desert training camp at Mena. Ultimately, Schuler would remain in Egypt or on the island of Lemnos for much of the duration of the Dardanelles campaign. Smith was in a similar situation and both had to rely for their reports on official military despatches, the correspondence of others and the second-hand eyewitness accounts of returning injured and visiting military personnel. Schuler also wrote of the troops stationed in Egypt, as well as the medical arrangements there, exposing a scandal in which English medical staff left wounded on a ship at Alexandria because they wanted to go to the races.
In July of 1915, Schuler and Smith received permission from Hamilton to visit Gallipoli, which they did for a month, between 20 July and 20 August. During this period they sent many despatches to Australia. These despatches ranged in subject matter and included the pair's records of the August offensive and the battle for Chunuk Bair which they witnessed.
In 1916, after the Gallipoli campaign had ended, Schuler wrote the book, Australia in Arms (London: T Fisher Urwin, 1916, NLA call number N 940.40496 SCH) about the achievements of Australasian forces at Anzac, described by journalist Les Carlyon as being 'an astonishingly good book when you remember that its author was only 26 years old'. The next year, Schuler joined the army. He signed up to be a driver (although he could probably have enlisted as an officer) and was stationed in Europe. In 1917 he was promoted to second lieutenant, but tragically in June of that year he died in Belgium of multiple wounds.
Smith went on to cover the war in the Balkans after his tour in Gallipoli and, upon returning to Australia in 1916, became chief of the literary staff at The Argus. In 1921, he was appointed assistant general manager of the paper and went to London as the representative of the Australian Press Association for the Imperial Conference. Smith resigned this position in 1927 prior to his appointment as managing editor of the West Australian newspaper (he was promoted to director in 1931). He worked in Western Australia for the rest of his life, retiring from the West Australian in 1951 but retaining his interest in journalism. He died in Perth in 1963 at the age of 86.




