Who was Charles Bean?

Over 1914-18, Bean travelled to locations where Australian soldiers served, and provided Australians at home with reports of our troops’ experiences on the frontline.

His fresh perspective focussed on ‘ordinary’ people and his writings resonated with men and women in Australia.

Charles Bean, best known as C. E. W. Bean, was endorsed by the Australian Journalists’ Association, and assigned after narrowly beating another journalist Keith Murdoch (father of the future News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch).

Bean had worked in London as a correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald, and published several books.

After being commissioned as an honorary captain, he went ashore at Gallipoli, five hours after the seaborne landing of Australian troops.

Except for being a civilian, he would have been awarded the Military Cross for his bravery in assisting wounded men on the night of 8 May 1915. He was then shot in the leg on 6 August and was the only Allied correspondent to stay on Gallipoli from April to December.

When the theatre of operations moved to France, Bean reported on all but one of the engagements involving Australian soldiers.

His writings were accurate and detailed, and he absorbed the atmosphere and events around him. At the same time, his 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.

His reputation and influence grew and, in 1916, he was granted access to British Army war diaries, a privilege not extended to some British historians.

He noticed Australian soldiers were avid collectors of battlefield souvenirs and, on the Western Front, gave deep consideration to how Australia should honour its war effort with a museum, memorial and archive.

Simultaneously, the Australian War Records Section was set up to manage the collection of war documents and artefacts, gathering 25,000 objects, paper records, photographs and artworks.

In July 1918, Bean travelled to the French village of Villers-Bretonneux to salvage the remains of a typical house that had been shelled.

Artist John Longstaff painted the scene, while photographer Hubert Wilkins and War Records staffer Syd Gullett retrieved a wardrobe, window frames, tiles, ceiling material, wallpaper, and German military gear.

Bean was envisaging an Australian war museum back home and wanted to reconstruct the French room as an experience for ‘ordinary’ Australians.

At the end of the war, he returned to Australia, wrote six volumes of the 15-volume Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918, edited eight more and with a colleague annotated the volume of photographs. He was also instrumental in establishing the Australian War Memorial.

His enduring focus on the ordinary soldier shaped an even greater narrative, that of the Anzac legend – a fighting-fit, stoic and laconic larrikin who never forgot a mate.