Odd bits from the end of the War

I was listening to a good radio documentary on the ABC about World War 1 and its effect on Australia.   Some things that got a brief mention that I don't recall seeing depicted in TV, movies or fiction books before:

*  the food riots in Melbourne caused by great cost of living increases during the war (and affecting food in particular).  Here's a bit I found elsewhere about that:

The cost of living issue and the associated food riots caused two months
of turmoil in Melbourne during September and October 1917. Recent work
by John Lack adds to our understanding of the significance of these riots by
tracing the reasons particular commercial establishments and places of work
were targeted and demonstrating the deep-seated, class-based resentments
about economic injustice that preceded the war and were aggravated by it.161
This embedded anger underpinned the extensive involvement of Melbourne
workers in the Great Strike of 1917, which, as a number of historians have
argued, was driven by ordinary workers, especially the unskilled at the grass
roots of the labour movement, rather than their leaders.162 While the strike
about the introduction of the Taylorist timecard system began and remained
centred in New South Wales, by early September more than 20,000 workers
in Melbourne were also affected – a third to a half of them actually on strike
or locked out and the rest stood down or on short time. The wharf labourers
were already out over the cost of bread, but now added a refusal to handle
black goods (goods handled by non-union labour) to their cause. As the
mainstay of the Victorian strike – first out and last back – they comprised
over a quarter of the state’s strikers. 

*  the impossibility of a fast return of soldiers to not only Australia, but all Allied nations.  (They said there just were not enough ships in the world to get soldiers back home within a year.)   On that topic, I see this today:

Despite the war being over, and Australian troops not constituting part of the Allied occupying force in Germany, it was to be a long time before many Australians would return home. The day after the armistice, Private A. Golding wrote:

They told us we would be another 12 months in France.

Repatriation to Australia was organised by Lieutenant General Sir John Monash, on a first come, first go basis.

While awaiting transport, some men took advantage of the opportunity to travel around France and Britain- one of the incentives for enlisting in the first place. A few hundred Australian servicemen went on to serve in Russia as part of a British force fighting Bolshevik forces. Some light horse units also helped with suppressing an Egyptian nationalist revolt in early 1919.

Had I heard about Diggers fighting Bolshevik's before?  Maybe.   Surely there would be some good material for a story there.

* that some returning soldiers jumped overboard from their ships, probably (in come cases) from the stress of the thought of having to explain to wives or family that they had contracted a venereal disease.   On that topic, I also note an article today about a book written all about the Australia experience with VD during that war:

Two of Australia's Victoria Cross recipients had been sent home with VD and at least six men on board The Wiltshire – that ship of shame – ended up being highly decorated. Initially, army regulations made it difficult for men who had committed acts of misconduct, including contracting VD, to be awarded medals but this was later retracted: around 15 per cent of the entire AIF contracted VD.

How this fits with the overall statistics amongst allied soldiers depends on who you ask. Dunbar says: "Some people like to think that Australian soldiers caught more VD than those in other combatant countries and other people say they caught less. I think it depends on the extent to which the person you are talking to upholds the myth of the heroic digger."

It would be a challenge for any writer to make an entire book on sexually transmitted diseases appeal to a wide audience, but Dunbar's sensitive probing of the human psychology and social mores involved transcends the First World War experience and is a timely reminder of the damaging effects of glossing over our human flaws.