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Diaries versus Despatches

REFERENCE
Bean's despatch 'Battle of Krithia'
The Age, , 31 July 1915, NLA newspaper call no. NX 233, pp. 1703-1705
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A comparison between Charles Bean's diary entries for the second battle of Krithia in May 1915 and his officially sanctioned despatch on the battle as it appeared in the Melbourne Age illustrates the challenges facing war correspondents. An entry in his diary for 8 May reads:

Behind us was lying the poor volunteer from the 8th Battalion, shot through the intestines, in terrible pain-at times crying like a child-incoherently-asking for 'Doctor, doctor!' They asked me if I had any morphia [morphine]. I found some J. had given me, and gave [it to] him . . . He seemed quieter after that, but soon was in pain again, and kept on rolling over on to the broken leg of the signaller . . . The boys in the trench tried to readjust them-and told the poor chap in pain: 'Try to be still, old man. It's the best thing for you. Try and bear up!' It was all they could do.

REFERENCE
Bean's official despatch on Lone Pine. pp.1703
Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, 3 September 1915, pp. 1703-1705
Click to view manuscript

While the despatch gives a typically detailed account of aspects of the battle, it lacks some specific observations and the emotional realism found in the diary entry. In the article Bean mentions that, as far as he could see, the Australian infantry came through one advance 'without a man hurt', but 'some must have suffered'. However he does not mention the extreme of that suffering which he witnessed later in the battle. In his diary, he relates the pain he encountered in his trips across the battlefield bringing aid to wounded men and the sense of hopelessness the wounded suffered waiting for help to arrive.

 

Away to our right . . . a man was always crying 'Stretcher-bearer! Stretcher-bearer!!'-and somewhere out in the dark was another-they cried in a rather dry, quavering voice. You could hear plenty of others further away calling always the same 'Stretcher-bearer' . . . One messenger who came up to the H.Q. dug out, when the wounded men there called for stretcher-bearers, said: 'You won't see them tonight my boy-they're rarer than gold. You won't get them along here'. It was an idiotic thing to say. 'You might let us think we will' said one of the wounded men feebly.

The poignancy of this particular incident is deepened by Bean's earlier recollection in his diary of a comment made to him by a Brigadier. 'The Brigadier told me it was impossible to reach the ridge behind Krithia. “They set us an impossible task”, he said.' The diary entry underscores the realisation that the painful and enormous loss of life suffered in the second battle at Krithia was essentially pointless, the cost of a campaign that was destined for failure from its outset. A close reading of Bean's official despatches often gave a better indication of the truth than most censors would wish. In his despatch on Lone Pine, referred to sometimes as Lonesome Pine, Bean wrote that 'over a thousand dead have been removed from the trenches . . . men simply had to fight over the bodies two or three deep in the bottom of the trenches . . . About half these dead were Turks'. A reader would not have to be very discerning to realise that the other half were Australians.

There are a number of reasons why the vivid descriptions of battlefield suffering and comment on failed strategy that Bean and others wrote of in their diaries were not included in articles as they appeared in Australian newspapers. Censorship precluded publication of details likely to undermine civilian morale and military recruiting. More importantly, the media shies away from publishing graphically offensive or obscene material that will upset readers (and viewers and listeners today). This is because of both long standing conventions and commercial considerations of reader sensitivity.