Charles Bean

Early life and education

Charles Bean was born in Bathurst, New South Wales, the first of three sons of the Reverend Edwin Bean (1851–1922), then headmaster of All Saints' College, Bathurst, and Lucy Madeline Bean, née Butler (1852–1942).

In his paper "Be Substantially Great in Thy Self: Getting to Know C.E.W. Bean: Barrister, Judge's Associate, Moral Philosopher", Geoff Lindsay SC contended that Bean's family and his formal education fostered his values which were influenced by "The Arnold Tradition". This was the model of moral values and education championed by Dr Arnold of Rugby School, which emphasised individual self-worth and qualities associated with "good character": trust and reliability, honesty, openness, self-discipline, self-reliance, independent thought and action, friendship, and concern for the common good over selfish or sectional interests". Further, according to Lindsay, Bean's preoccupation with character was consistent with, if not a reflection of, the "Arnold Tradition".

Bean's formal education began in Australia at All Saints' College, Bathurst. In 1889, when Bean was nine, the family moved to England, where he was educated at Brentwood School, Essex (1891–1894), of which his father was the newly appointed headmaster. In 1894 Bean entered Clifton College, Bristol — his father's alma mater, the ethos of which was also in the tradition of Arnold.

While at Clifton, Bean developed an interest in literature and in 1898 won a scholarship to Hertford College, Oxford, taking a Masters of Arts in 1903 and a Bachelor of Civil Law in 1904. During his schooling Bean served in the volunteer corps, both at Clifton College and at Oxford University.

Early career

In 1904, Bean taught at Brentwood and as a private tutor in Tenerife. Later that year he returned to Australia where he retained his parallel interests in teaching and writing, becoming an assistant master at Sydney Grammar School and writing articles for the Evening News, at that time edited by Andrew 'Banjo' Paterson.

Admitted to the New South Wales Bar in 1905, Bean commenced his legal career in Australia as a barrister, and as a judge's associate. As such he saw much of New South Wales on circuit in 1905–07 and, as Inglis noted, he was struck by the outback way of life.

In 1907, in his last days as a judge's associate, he wrote articles about "The Australian character" which were published in the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) under the banner "Australia."

In 1908 Bean abandoned law for journalism and, at the suggestion of Paterson, applied to join the staff of the SMH

In mid-1908, as a junior reporter he covered the waterside workers' strike and wrote a twelve-part series of articles on country NSW under the banner 'Barrier Railway.'

Later in 1908, as a special correspondent for the SMH on HMS Powerful, the flagship of the Royal Navy squadron in Australia, Bean reported on the visit of the United States' Great White Fleet to Australia. The following year the articles were published in book form as With the Flagship in the South in which Bean advocated the establishment of an Australian Navy Fleet. The Imperial Naval Conference of 1909 decided that Australia should be advised to form her own Fleet unit, which occurred in 1911.

In 1909, Bean was sent by the SMH to far western New South Wales to write a series of articles on the wool industry. This event reinforced his views on the Australian character — mateship, resilience and laconic good humour in the face of adversity. Bean took that sense of an independent Australian character with him to war. His articles from this experience were subsequently reworked into two books: On the Wool Track, first published in 1910, reprinted many times and now accepted as an Australian classic, and the social documentary of the Darling River, The Dreadnought of the Darling, an account of his trip down the river on a small paddle steamer, first published in 1911.

World War I

Following the declaration of war by Britain, and Australian forces becoming involved, the Australian Government requested the Australian Journalists' Association to nominate an official correspondent to accompany the Australian Imperial Force (A.I.F). In September 1914 Bean was elected by his peers, defeating Keith Murdoch in the national ballot. He became an embedded correspondent, whose despatches, reporting on Australia's participation in the war, were to be available to all Australian newspapers and published in the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette.

He was accorded the honorary mess rank of captain, provided with a batman and driver and was required to submit his despatches to the British censor. On advice, however, he retained his civilian status in order to be free of unnecessary military restrictions in carrying out his duties as a correspondent. Whatever he wrote was to be subject to rigid censorship.

Senator George Pearce, Minister for Defence in the Commonwealth Labor Government, told Bean before he sailed to the war that he hoped Bean would write the history of the Australian part in it on his return to Australia. Bean’s work habits throughout the war were predicated on gathering material for that purpose. On 21 October 1914, Bean left Australia on the troopship HMAT Orvieto, which carried Major General Bridges and his headquarters. He was accompanied by Private Arthur Bazley, his formally designated batman, who became his invaluable assistant, researcher, lifelong friend and, later, acting Director of the AWM.

During the course of the war, although Bean developed close relationships with senior commanders, he was never far from the front line, reporting on the activities of the A.I.F. he could personally witness. He would position himself with his telescope "about 1,200 yards from (or, on Gallipoli, almost right in) the frontline."

As well as reporting, Bean kept an almost daily diary record of events. These diary entries also reflected the feelings and views of an individual who witnessed those events which ranged from battles to planning and discussions in headquarters, and to men at rest and in training. He regarded his diaries as the foundation of the official history, “especially for the detail of what happened in and immediately behind the front line”. In later years he reviewed his diary comments and sometimes revised his wartime opinions, but the immediacy of each diary entry provides insight into the times and conditions as he was experiencing them.

Egypt

Bean arrived in Egypt on 3 December 1914. He was asked by Senior A.I.F. Command to write a booklet, What to Know in Egypt … A Guide for Australian Soldiers, to help the troops better understand their new environment. Despite the advice contained in the guide "a handful of rowdies" was sent home from Egypt. Bean was asked to send a report covering the issue. The resulting newspaper coverage aroused concern with families in Australia and resentment towards him from among the troops in Egypt.

Gallipoli Campaign

Bean landed on Gallipoli about 10 am on 25 April 1915, a few hours after the dawn attack.

The Australian Dictionary of Biography entry on Bean notes: "Australians at home read a detailed account of the landing in the papers of 8 May. It was not by Bean, whose first dispatch was held up by the British authorities in Alexandria until 13 May, but by the English correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett. Both accounts were reprinted many times. Bean's was the more precise, for he had seen more. The English reporter betrayed surprise that untrained colonials had done so well; Bean was seeing what he hoped to see: the Australian soldiers, as he described them, were displaying qualities he had observed out in the country".

For the help he gave to wounded men under fire on the night of 8 May 1915 during the Australian charge at Krithia, Bean was recommended for the Military Cross, for which as a civilian he was not eligible. He was, however, Mentioned in Despatches. His bravery erased whatever hostility remained from his report from Egypt about those soldiers who were sent home. During the August Offensive, the last British throw at the Dardanelles, Bean was shot in the thigh. Reluctant to relinquish his post at a time of activity he refused to be evacuated from the peninsula to a hospital ship, convalescing in his dugout. The bullet remained lodged within millimetres of his femoral artery for the rest of his life.

The only Allied correspondent who stayed on Gallipoli throughout the campaign, Bean sent a stream of stories back to his newspapers. "While some editors", according to The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History, "complained that Bean’s despatches were insufficiently graphic, his writing was sober and painstakingly accurate and sought to convey within the limitations imposed on him, something of the experience of the Australians at the front."

As no official photographer was appointed to cover Gallipoli, Bean also recorded events with a camera. The AWM's official photograph collection contains 1100 of his prints covering the first convoy, Egypt and Gallipoli.

Bean left Gallipoli on the night of 17 December 1915, watching and recording from the deck of HMS Grafton the final evacuation of A.I.F. troops from Anzac Cove.

Western Front

In late March 1916, Bean sailed with the A.I.F. from Egypt to France, where he reported on all but one of the engagements involving Australian soldiers. As evidenced by his diary entries, he moved back and forth along the Western Front with the Australian troops, often at the frontline under fire, running from shell hole to shell hole for protection. He sent press despatches back to Australia, continuing to record military actions, conversations, interviews, and the evidence of "what actual experiences, at the point where men lay out behind hedges or on the fringe of woods, caused those on one side to creep, walk, or run forward, and the others to go back".

The website of the Sir John Monash Centre notes that Bean’s editorial opinions often contradicted military authorities, yet he was highly respected. Bean observed the "fog of war" (communication breakdown between commanders in the rear and troops at the frontline) and he described the devastating effects of shellshock. Intense artillery fire, he said, ripped away the conventions of psychological shelter and left men "with no other protection than the naked framework of their character", an experience too much for many. The Centre’s website further notes that Bean's reputation and influence grew and, in 1916, he was granted access to British Army war diaries, a privilege not extended to some British historians.

Having missed the poorly conceived and executed attack at Fromelles on 19 July 1916, the first big Australian action in France which had resulted in heavy losses, Bean was there the following morning moving among survivors getting their stories. It was the fallen at Fromelles to whom Bean dedicated his Letters from France, a selection of his first-hand observations from the Western Front published in 1917. The dedication reads; "To those other Australians who fell in the Sharpest Action their Force has known, on July 19, 1916, before Fromelles, these Memories of a Greater, but not a Braver, Battle are herewith Dedicated". The author's profits from the book were devoted to the fund for nursing back to useful citizenship Australians blinded or maimed in the war.

Several days after the battle of Fromelles ended, Bean witnessed the battle of Pozières. Over several weeks he was on the ground and sometimes in the trenches as the fighting raged. The experience shook him as it revealed the horror and destruction of modern warfare. The heavy casualties incurred there almost broke the back of the all-volunteer A.I.F. Bean recorded in his diary: 'Pozieres is one vast Australian cemetery'.

Post-war

Whilst still in France at the end of 1918 when the Germans were seeking an armistice, Bean resumed thinking of a post war Australia. He took leave and in several weeks wrote and published his tract, In Your Hands, Australians, exhorting Australians to pursue the aims of peace with the dedication, organisation and tenacity with which they had fought the war. He asked "What can we do for Australia in the long peace which many who will not return have helped to win?" Of the tract he wrote: "….this little book is written to suggest a few ways in which every man, woman, and child can live for his country; ways in which you can all enlist in this great, generous fight for Australia, to place and keep your country, if possible, amongst the greatest countries in the world."

In the tract Bean urged the creation of an "Anglo-Saxon nation of free, happy brilliant people". At the time of writing it, Bean was a supporter of the White Australia ideology which, Rees has noted, he [Bean] would revisit and re-evaluate over the years ahead. Inglis also noted that "The sense of values established in [Bean’s] boyhood remained constant; some of the opinions he derived from it were still changing. Before 1914 he had employed serenely the notion of an English race, and briskly defended White Australia.…By 1949 he was arguing for admission of limited numbers of immigrants from Asia rather than perpetrating a 'quite senseless colour line'." In his essay "Racism in Australia – A Contribution to the Debate", Ellis has charted Bean's shift from support for a "White Australia" before World War I to a multi-racial immigration policy after experience of two World Wars and the horror of Nazi racialism.

Bean also envisaged a future Australia as being an agrarian society with millions of farms which thinking was, according to Bolleter, "in the ascendant until the mid-twentieth century and beyond".

Despite Bean's interest at the outbreak of World War I in investigating social conditions in Aboriginal communities to publish a series of articles, Aboriginal Australians are not mentioned in his vision or referred to by him in his text, but neither are they necessarily excluded from his vision or the text. There are instances in the tract where Bean uses inclusive language such as: "…the making of a nation is in the hands of every man and woman, every boy and girl", and "We must plan for the education of every person in the State in body, mind and character".

The Australian Historical Mission

In February–March 1919, on his homeward journey, Bean led a group of eight Australians including artist George Lambert, photographer Hubert Wilkins, and scribe John Balfour on a visit to Gallipoli. The aim of the group, the Australian Historical Mission, was to carry out research on the battlefields of the 1915 Anzac campaign; create new works of art and photographs to help convey the story of the trauma and tragedy; collect sacred relics; discuss a plan for the Gallipoli war graves, and to obtain from the Turks their story of the fighting. The mission was the subject of Bean's Gallipoli Mission (1952), but he gave a good summary of its scope in a contemporary newspaper interview.

Bean returned to Australia in May 1919 after an absence of four and a half years.

The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918

With a small staff, Bean took up his appointment as official historian in 1919, based first in the rural setting of Tuggeranong homestead, near the then unbuilt Federal Capital, Canberra, and later at Victoria Barracks, Sydney. The central stipulation that Bean laid down when he became official historian was that the history was to be free from government censorship, though he had to yield when the Australian Commonwealth Naval Board insisted on removing critical passages from Volume IX, A. W. Jose's The Royal Australian Navy.

In 1916, the British War Cabinet had agreed to grant Dominion official historians access to the war diaries of all British Army units fighting on either side of a Dominion unit, as well as all headquarters that issued orders to Dominion units, including the GHQ of the British Expeditionary Force. By the end of the war, the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) was less than willing to divulge this information, possibly fearing it would be used to criticise the conduct of the war. It took six years of persistence before Bean was allowed access and a further three years for a clerk to make copies of the enormous quantity of documents. Bean therefore had available to him resources that were denied to all British historians who were not associated with the Historical Section of the CID.

Bean was unwilling to compromise his values for personal gain or political expediency. He was not influenced by suggestions and criticism from British official historian, Sir James Edmonds, about the direction of his work. Edmonds reported to the CID that, "The general tone of Bean's narrative is deplorable from the Imperial standpoint." For his stance, it is likely that Bean was denied decorations from King George V, despite being recommended on two occasions during the war by the commander of the Australian Corps. Many years later when he was offered a knighthood, he declined.

As noted by Inglis, Bean had no exact model for the history he wanted to write. Bean wrote in "Our War History" published in The Bulletin in May 1942: "We knew that – because of the opportunities given to us during the war of seeing what really happened at the cutting edge of battle as well as headquarters - Harry Gullett, Cutlack and I had material for a new kind of war history."

According to Stanley, in writing the Official History Bean was animated by a guiding principle: that the history was to be a memorial to those who had served, suffered and died, and the question which Bean set out to explore, as he later explained, was "how did the Australian people … come through the first universally recognised test of this, their first great war?" It was answered by his conclusion that through service and sacrifice in the war "Australia became fully conscious of itself as a nation."

Australian War Memorial

Bean's idea was to create a national memorial where families and friends could grieve for those buried in places far away, as well as being a place that would contribute to an understanding of war itself. Accordingly, the style of the AWM reflects Bean's desire for the building to at once be museum, monument, memorial, temple and shrine to Australians who lost their lives and suffered as a result of war. Bean's vision for the AWM appears on the wall inside its front doors: "Here is their spirit, in the heart of the land they loved; and here we guard the record which they themselves made."

The AWM had been Bean's conception emerging from the horror that the A.I.F. had endured at Pozieres in 1916. In 1919 an Australian War Museum committee was established with the hope that Bean would become the first director of the Memorial (the term now being used) as well as official historian, but it was evident to Bean that he could not undertake both tasks. H. S. Gullett (later Sir Henry), who had been in charge of the AWRS in Egypt and a war correspondent in Palestine, was appointed director. Bean and Lieutenant-Colonel Treloar conceived that the memorial and museum functions were philosophically and operationally inseparable and, with Gullett, they were to guide its creation and operations over a 40 year period.

From selecting the site in 1919, Bean worked on creating the AWM, and was present when the building opened on 11 November 1941. He served continuously as a member of the AWM Board from 1919 and was its chairman from 1952 to 1959 remaining on the Board until 1963. As the general editor and principal author of the Official History Bean was also associated with the AWM as publisher and as a donor and adviser on the collections including post-war art commissions. According to Piggott "Dr Bean ..more than any other individual, expounded the philosophy of commemoration through exhibits, documentary collections and the roll of honour”. In the 1950s Bean drew up a list of exhibition principles, suggesting among other things that the galleries should "avoid glorification of war and boasting of victory" and "perpetuating enmity … for both moral and national reasons and because those who have fought in wars are generally strongest in their desire to prevent war."

Further post-war works: war-related; civil-related; publications

Both during and after the years in which he was engaged in the writing and editing of the Official History and in his work with the AWM, Bean promoted his ideals in various fields of national interest. Most reflected his concern to improve the nature of Australian society and the welfare of its people, particularly in relation to education, causing him to be described by Rees as a "social missionary". Other Bean interests were linked with his wartime and pre-war occupations.

In some of the societies and organisations formed around these interests and occupations Bean held official positions: councillor of the National Fitness Council of New South Wales for ten years; councillor of the Town Planning Association of New South Wales; president of the New South Wales Institute of Journalists; vice–president of the Recreation and Leadership Movement; chairman of the NSW Standing Committee on Community Centres; member of the Australian Services Education Council; chairman of the Promotions Appeal Board of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (1947 to 1958) and vice president of the United Nations Association, NSW.

In support of these interests, Bean wrote to the press, maintained an output of articles (mostly for soldiers' journals), gave lectures and occasional broadcasts.

Underscoring his concern for open spaces and the natural environment, in 1930 he established the Parks and Playgrounds Movement of NSW and became the Movement's honorary secretary. Its aims included the provision of suitable public spaces to enable sports, especially team sports; the preservation of adequate passive recreational spaces and reserves for flora and fauna; ensuring that existing and future parks and reserves were properly used; and maintaining the right of all Australians to enjoy the natural beauties of Australia and of healthy open-air sport and play.

In 1932 Bean persuaded the AWM to buy the Pozieres windmill ruins in France. In July 1916 he had written that the Pozieres ridge "was more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other spot on earth". Today the site, a place of pilgrimage, is in the care of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission with a memorial tablet bearing Bean's words.

Honours

Bean did not seek personal honours. He declined a knighthood on more than one occasion but accepted other acknowledgments and honours for his work. In 1913 The Royal Society of the Arts awarded him its Silver Medal. He was Mentioned in Despatches (1915). In 1930, the Royal United Services Institute awarded him the Chesney Gold Medal. In the same year the University of Melbourne awarded him its degree of D.Litt. and in 1959 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws by the Australian National University, an institution which he had been one of the first to foresee.

Legacy

Bean was admitted to Concord Repatriation Hospital in Sydney in 1964 suffering from dementia and died on 30 August 1968.

Military Contribution and Civil Contribution

The significance of Bean's papers held by the AWM (and the State Library of NSW) was recognised by their listing on the 2021 UNESCO Memory of the World Programme. The listing citation states, inter alia: "They document his role as one of the founders of the Australian War Memorial and other civic institutions, and are regarded as fundamental to an understanding of critical aspects of Australian identity and commemorative practices." Piggott has referred to the papers as "riches" and in the AWM publication, A guide to the Personal Family and Official papers of CEW Bean, has noted that they occupy 27 metres and document "practically every aspect of his life." Lindsay has recognised the scope and significance of Bean’s papers as providing "a resource for the study of Australian society, not limited to military affairs, during the course of his [Bean's] long life" observing that his "constancy of character, his personal growth in the opinions he held, and his role in shaping national opinion provide a means of calibrating national change."

According to the Australian Media Hall of Fame: "It is his [Bean's] extraordinary, painstakingly detailed (and often harrowing) private notes and diaries written during the war that remain one of his greatest achievements." Their significance was recorded in the 2021 UNESCO Memory of the World Register: "The heart of the (Bean) collection is an irreplaceable set of 286 diaries and notebooks that recount Australia's part in the First World War. They describe the activities, conditions and experiences of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) from the perspective of an eye-witness and a journalist who sought the best possible evidence from a wide range of participants, including enlisted men of all ranks, the military hierarchy and political decision-makers."

The AWM website recognises that Bean’s work on the Official History established the tradition and set the standard for subsequent Australian official war histories and that the work is still used as an essential reference, often as a starting point for research today, because of Bean’s command of the sources and the clarity of his narrative. Bean's history is further described as "notable" because "it was the work of a participant, one who instigated the collection of the archive on which it was based, and was the product of an individual vision of one man who worked with a tiny staff of co-authors and dedicated colleagues".

The AWM has been listed on the Australian National Heritage Register. The AWM is unique in that it combines a shrine, museum, and an extensive archive.