Will the Army Relent on Vandertak?

By Frank Cranston

19 December 1977 The Canberra Times

On Saturday, November 5, The Canberra Times published an article telling of the long struggle by the family of Gunner Vandertak to gain satisfaction from the Australian Army for what they believed to be his undeserved dishonourable discharge in World War I.

Last Saturday, after further research, another article was published on The Saturday Page which included the transcript of the court-martial proceedings against Gunner Vandertak.

Today's concluding article comments further on the case and poses some questions arising from what appear to be irregularities in the army's procedure.

There appears to have been considerable disagreement among the witnesses not only as to the events alleged but even more so regarding their timing.

Every witness attests that the gunner was sober at the time of the alleged offences yet he is still formally charged with drunkenness. Why? According to one authority it was an easy way in World War I to get the MPs involved and to get a man so irate that he might become aggressive and risk other offences.

The first witness denies having said Gunner Vandertak was drunk yet the gunner reacted to this allegation. With no one whit of evidence as to drunkeness, why was the charge persisted with to the court martial stage?

Why was it not dropped before the charge sheet was prepared? Was it a holding charge on which the others could later be hung, even though it was not to be persisted with? Was it in the basis of a frame-up so that an "example" could be made of the big, burly lad from Tumut, NSW, veteran of Gallipoli and of several other torrid battles, to whom his fellows might be expected to look for example?

Precise

Why did the first witness think it might be necessary to see about parading Gunner Vandertak to the Medical Officer? Why did the first witness think the events took place at 5pm whereas the second believed it to have been 6pm.

The third witness was more precise. He thought it was "about 5.50pm". The fourth witness thinks it could have been 6pm or 7pm. Why did not the court think it necessary to more closely examine the point? Might it not have led to a closer examination of other aspects of the matter? Why was Gunner Vandertak not eventually taken to the medical officer?

Who called the MPs? Nobody knew. But their arrival time, where noted at all, again differs widely from witness to witness. Why was not the MP Sergeant asked who called him and why?

The senior officer who gave evidence, Lt A., referred to Gunner Vandertak having struck the Battery Sergeant-Major "in the shoulder" - more of a shove than a punch apparently. Two men who were closer to the event including the BSM claimed the punch was directed at the head.

Discrepancies

Is it likely that a punch in the head from a fairly physically fit man standing 6ft 4½in would have left the BSM standing? He apparently was not hurt by it.

Besides discrepancies in the evidence, though, there were other elements which the court-martial did not take into account. Gunner Vandertak's exposure to battle over a prolonged period could have been such as to render him liable to combat fatigue akin to the condition later to be recognised as "shell shock" so that he might not have been accountable for his actions from time to time.

That could easily explain why it was deemed necessary to parade him before the medical officer. The symptoms were often akin to those of drunkenness but they knew he was not drunk and unanimously testified to that effect.

Why did nobody canvass the possibility? Perhaps they were all under strain and believed that their behaviour was fully justifiable even though by today's standards they might not have been. Vandertak was not a criminal. He was a man who volunteered his services and was proud of the army in which he served though, like many others, he may have developed doubts about the war itself and the way in which it was being fought.

Reduced

From the court-martial of July 15 (if that was its date) there was no appeal available, and it either stood or fell on the confirmation of the officer commanding the 4th Division. He confirmed the sentence on July 23, 1917, and Gunner Vandertak was committed to a military prison.

On August 19, though how and by whom, is difficult to ascertain, the sentence was reduced from five years to two. There was no appeal provision so even at that time somebody obviously believed the gunner to have been harshly dealt with. And he was not the only one who believed it.

According to card indexes from army files which have probably been culled over the years (the files themselves seem to be unavailable) one J. J.G. McGirr, MLA. of NSW, wrote to the Adjutant-General in October asking that the Vandertak case be reopened.

Conscription

Mr McGirr had been approached either by Mr Vandertak's mother or been written to by men of his unit claiming that he did not get fair treatment and that the matter should be re-heard. Mr McGirr's letter to the army was received on October 10, 1917.

As the member for Yass- Cootamundra, Mr McGirr was already making his mark in NSW Labor politics (he was to become one of its most successful Premiers). The army would not have ignored him. Especially not with the second conscription referendum looming.

On November 3 Gunner Vandertak, perhaps deciding he had had enough, or believing that he could, if he got out, choke the truth out of somebody, or for some other reason, decided to "go over the wall".

Instead he was shot and almost killed, the bullet passing just up wards of his heart and damaging the main artery. He might have been expected to die in the light of medi- cal knowledge at the time, but he did not.

Embarrassing

On the same day the army, which was then headquartered in Melbourne, entered a note from the AIF, London, with a report of the court- martial which was referred to the Adjutant-General and the Military Secretary.

That an Australian soldier had been near-mortally wounded by an English provost, had it become known in Australia at that particular time, would have been highly embarrassing for the Government of Mr Billy Hughes.

He was about to launch his campaign for the second conscription referendum. It is not an unknown thing today for Governments to conceal information which might be politically embarrassing. It could have been equally true then and much easier to do in the light of draconian censorship regulations.

According to the current army record, Gunner Vandertak, apparently fit enough to travel, "re turned to Australia as a prisoner under escort on May 24, 1918".

Significant

But the card-index file shows an entry on June 14 (mails took about four or five weeks) "Vandertak Gun H(574). Returning to Australia for medical reasons".

And on July 4, 1918, an even more significant note was made on the cards.

"Vandertak Gun H. Did not return under arrest and was paid disembarkation allowances, etc" the card noted. Compare that with what the army still believes to be correct from its surviving records.

On August 2, 1918, there is a note that there was to be no remission of sentence and on August 14 and 23 two notes requesting remission.

On August 22 there is another significant entry. "Vandertak H. Returned to Australia without proper commitment warrant".

Revealing

On August 24 the card indexes note, "From AG's Gun H. Van- dertak DOMC [decision of military court] and warrant forwarded for remission of sentence".

And even more revealingly on September 4, "When sentenced abroad and returning without their   commitment warrants AG desires   advice on whether any provision for dealing with these men would be   made by Regulation".  

But if the army in Australia was   looking for some way of undoing   what even then it might have   perceived to be an injustice done to Gunner Vandertak, it appeared that AIF, London, had no such qualms.  

"From AIF London", notes an entry for September 19,1918, "Vandertak H. 574 No remission for".

And that was where they were wrong. By the time their letter was received in Melbourne he had al- ready been released.

One of the most unusual documents to emerge from the archives concerning Gunner Vandertak is the order of the Executive Council that such of his sentence as was unserved be remitted and that he be discharged. The order was issued by King George V to the Governor General of Australia, Sir Ronald Crauford Munro-Ferguson, Commander-in-Chief of the Australian forces.

Just how the British came to intervene is not clearly distinguishable at this distance, though the army has made urgent inquiries to try to establish the reason.

But on the day that Gunner Vandertak's discharge from Darlinghurst Jail became effective there was also posted from England what the family called the "King's Pardon" in which they have placed such faith for 60 years.

Curiously enough it is of itself not particularly important. They were issued by the thousand but it was enough to keep a family convinced for six decades that an injustice had been done to their hero.

Discharged

After his return to Australia in May, Gunner Vandertak was sent home to Tumut to recover from his wound and there he stayed until July when he was called back to Sydney for medical examination.

There he was told to report back to the army in two weeks so that he could begin completion of his two years' sentence. He reported back to the jail in August, but was then discharged under the Executive

Council's order.

But the second file kept operating, the one from which even today the army seems to be getting inaccurate information. A soldier discharged from the army during a period of detention lost everything - service medals, pension rights, repatriation rights and, of course, his eligibility for honourable discharge.

The army's record is unsure as to just what sort of discharge Gunner Vandertac did get. His file does not mention "dishonourable" but there is a notation, "medals forfeited" indicating that he got the treatment due a man discharged during sentence.

But Gunner Vandertak was not under sentence when he was discharged! Certainly he was still in prison when the order came for his release, but that order remitted any part of his sentence which remained unserved on August 15. Though physically still in custody, he was not still under sentence. And the army was wrong to treat him as if he were still under sentence.

Mutinies

Was it acting on its AIF, London, file which never seemed to catch up with events? Was there some fear that mitigation of treatment to a man made an example of might have a deleterious effect on discipline?

Because by that time there had been mutinies in the Australian Army and even in August/September, 1918, it looked as though the war to end all wars still had some way to go. The German Army was being beaten but it had shown remarkable resilience before and a fighting withdrawal into Germany was to be expected.

Whatever the reason, it appears today that Gunner Vandertak, probably wrongly treated even at his court martial, continued to be the victim of some vendetta - not necessarily aimed at him directly but through him as an example to other potentially recalcitrant soldiers.

Insistence

Now none of this would have been too serious for anyone else, apart from Gunner Vandertak, if it had not continued into other people's flies, but it did.

Applications he made at the insistence of Mrs Vandertak for pension rights were continually denied as various boards and appellate tribunals decreed that his physical condition was brought about by a breach of discipline. It was not considered to have been brought about by war service.

Several applications brought the same sort of response even when his widow applied a year after his death in 1938.

Then, on February 6, 1940, the War Pensions Appeal Tribunal had a change of heart.

"The Tribunal has accepted that your late husband's death is attributable to his war service", Mrs Vandertak was advised just 20 years after she first sought some redress. And before she died, about 20 years ago, she also was to receive War Service Homes financial assistance as the result of his service.

Stigma

It would be less than charitable to suggest that the Appeal Tribunal might have had in mind the impact on the then recruiting drive of publicity which could attend continued refusal to Gunner Vandertak, even posthumously, of a war pension. The harsher side of World War I was not exactly the sort of material that recruiting officers wanted promoted in 1940.

Mrs Vandertak died but the stigma lived on through Gunner Vandertak's daughters and his sister, and through his grandchildren. They felt they knew him better than the army ever could and to this day they have not stopped believing in him.

As one of his daughters, Mrs I. C. Struber, of Ainslie, said to me recently, "I don't want , to go to my grave with this hanging over Dad's name".

Or his sister, Mrs Muller; "My brother was one of the whitest men that lived. All his old mates from the army swore by him and they always told us he was set up".

Not possible

It is not easy for the army to change such records. It cannot be done indiscriminately and certainly only for valid, legal reasons. There must be strong grounds for such a course. It has been done, but very rarely and only in a few cases where it could be shown that the ends of justice were not served by what went before.

It is not possible for them to judge a 1917 court-martial by standards of 60 years later, but even by the standards of its time Gunner Vandertak's case appears to have been unreasonable and unfair and in at least some aspects outside the bounds laid down in the military law of the time.

The facts surrounding the withholding of Gunner Vandertak's medals and the fact that he was apparently not issued an honourable discharge appear to be beyond dispute. He was unfairly treated. If he was denied basic soldier's rights because he was "under sentence" at the time of his discharge then there was a grave miscarriage of justice.

Disillusionment

Whatever his physical disposition at the time of his discharge on September 7, 1918, 574 Vandertak, Gunner, H. was not a soldier serving part of a sentence. It had been remitted as of August 15.

If the army relents, then the weight of disillusionment and bitterness which will be lifted from the shoulders of the late gunner's family will be immense. Two generations will have their faith restored in Australian fair play.

It will not as we have noted be easy for the army to reverse a course upon which some of its predecessors embarked there in France more than 60 years ago, but if it is able to do so it will have earned the respect, even the affection, of a far wider circle of people than those directly involved.

There is still a little way to go yet before the army can present its report and its advice to the Minister for Defence and possibly the Governor-General. From what we have been helped to discover and from our knowledge of the tremendous efforts being made by the army in the same cause we await the outcome with confidence.