Caring for the past

12 June 2007 by Anne-Marie Conde. No comments
To Flanders Fields, 1917, Research material, War records

It is not enough to expect the evidence of the past to be preserved as a matter of chance or accident. Someone has to care.

Australian soldiers and British women working for the Australian War Records Section in the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane, London, on 26 September 1918. There were many civilian women staff at the Section, as they were cheaper to employ than soldiers and they freed military personnel to work in battle zones where only soldiers could go. This is the earliest known photograph of the Section’s staff at work, and is therefore the earliest known photograph of D00073

Evidence of the past comes to us by many means: documents, photographs, books, newspapers, objects, works of art, films, buildings, landscapes, eyewitness accounts. Not everything is kept, however. Time, neglect, destruction and sometimes –perversely – a desire to forget, mean that only a fraction of the evidence of the past survives and still less finds its way into libraries, galleries, museums and archives. Someone has to make a choice, to take deliberate steps to preserve (or rescue) the means by which our histories can be passed on.With the story of Australians at war, everything starts with Charles Bean, Australia’s official war correspondent and official historian of the First World War. Many people know that Bean edited the 12 volume history of Australia’s involvement in the war, and wrote six of the volumes himself. But before such a history could be contemplated, Bean knew that he would need adequate records from which to work. He also believed that it would be owed to the Australian people that the relics and records of their part in the war should be taken home to Australia, not swallowed up in some vast museum or library in Britain. Something would have to be done.Late in 1916, two years into the war, Bean became aware that the Canadian military forces had secured an agreement from the British government that Canada could keep its documentary records, not hand them over to the British Government. It was obvious that what had been granted to Canada could not be denied to Australia. Bean successfully persuaded senior commanders within the Australian forces to likewise push for a “war records section” on the Canadian model. The Australian War Records Section came into being on 16 May 1917, when a young Australian officer, Lieutenant John Treloar, crossed from France to London to take up his duty as officer-in-charge.That day might not seem so special, but between the Commonwealth of Australia coming into being on 1 January 1901 and 1917, little had been done to preserve the records of the new commonwealth government. There had been some talk, but little result. There was no national archives or public record office. The tiny Australian War Records Section was the first organisation whose sole task was to gather and preserve any records of the Commonwealth.

John Treloar set to work at once. He was a hard-working, steadfast and idealistic young man, aged 22, who had made his way through the ranks as a clerk, for armies need people who wield pens as well as fire guns. Perhaps it didn’t occur to him that he was Australia’s first national archivist, but this was effectively the case. He began with a staff of four. Two rooms were made available to him within the British Public Record Office (PRO) in Chancery Lane. This magnificent gothic pile was built in the 1850s to bring together the 800 years worth of British public records that until then had languished in many parts of London. The contrast between this grand statement about the importance of public records and Australia’s first efforts was stark, but Treloar was not to be put off.

By July 1917 he had surveyed the records of the Australian Imperial Force and was ready to issue instructions to ensure that they could be improved. The most basic record being kept was the “war diary”: a day-to-day record kept by each military unit. It was a record not just of lessons to be learned but of history in the making. Treloar found that at first they had been kept rather sketchily, but the best way to improve them was to convince their keepers that the diaries were being valued as historical records. Treloar read, commented upon and criticised the war diaries, spoke to their keepers, had special stationery printed, and even encouraged a sense of competition among units to keep the best diary. “REMEMBER!” he exhorted his diarists, “a well kept diary is the surest pledge to future recognition.”

A sense of competition also worked wonders in persuading individual soldiers to collect battlefield relics on behalf of the War Records Section. To encourage enthusiasm for collecting, Treloar had monthly tables distributed which showed the top 25 best collecting units in the AIF. He made sure that rank and file soldiers understood that contributions from them were as welcome as those from officers and that the material they collected would one day be shown in the “nation’s memorial” in Australia as a tribute to their fallen comrades. Years later, in an interview with the Argus newspaper, he recalled these wartime experiences and claimed that “every soldier went into action with a pocketful of museum labels”. Of course, this was not literally true but the War Records Section did have museum labels printed and supplied to units so that objects would come back with their origins and significance properly described. “A good description transforms a piece of salvage into an interesting relic,” Treloar observed, and no museum curator, then or now, would disagree with that.

In late 1917 Bean went from France to see Treloar and found him doing “splendidly”. He had “the whole scheme of work systematised in his head and the branches admirably divided”. But he was hopelessly congested for want of room. Those two gracious rooms in the PRO were now much too small. Treloar had “not a square inch in which to put an additional chair”, not even a chair for Bean, who had to content himself with an office atop a building in Great Peter Street in Westminster. Bean and Treloar shared lodgings, however, at 1 Lexham Gardens in Kensington, and there they talked and planned “night after night” about the war records and what should happen to them after the war. Treloar was working ten-hour days six days a week, Bean found, as were some of his staff, and Bean was worried for their health. “In the whole of these great public records offices of Great Britain, the majority of the British staff come about 9.30 am and finishes at 5 pm, and the only section that is always at work after them, is our little Australian section.”

But the “little Australian section” did not remain little. In February 1918 it moved into larger quarters at AIF Headquarters in Horseferry Road, Westminster. It collected records, photographs, maps, works of art, films, objects, books and other printed material. It established offices in France and Egypt, and by November 1918 had about 600 staff, civilians and soldiers. Complex arrangements were in place for salvaging, storing and transporting tens of thousands of objects – everything from documents to water bottles, tanks and aircraft –to Australia.

Bean, Treloar and others had been working to establish an Australian war museum and by 1919 a committee was formed to guide into existence the organisation we now know as the Australian War Memorial. The vast collection built by the Australian War Records Section was transferred to the new Memorial, to form the nucleus of a collection that now includes material of every conceivable type from all wars in which Australia has been involved. Treloar was appointed director in 1920 and remained in the position until his early death in 1952. Bean said then that Treloar had given his life for the great work that he had conceived. Pondering that, we might easily think that Treloar’s was heroism of a special kind.

This article, ‘Caring for the past’, by Anne-Marie Condé, was originally published in Wartime: the Official Magazine of the Australian War Memorial, Vol 32, 2005, pp. 40-43.

Australia’s records: preserved as sacred things

12 June 2007 by Craig Tibbitts. No comments
To Flanders Fields, 1917, Research material, War records

Australia’s records: preserved as sacred things - pictures relics and writings.

By C. E. W. Bean, The Anzac Bulletin, Vol 40, 10 October 1917.

British Headquarters, France,
September 29 [1917].
By C. E. W. BEAN.

Bean in northern France, December 1917 E01430

Every country after this war will have its war museums and galleries, and its library of records rendered sacred by the millions of gallant, precious lives laid down in their making. In London, Paris, Belgium, the war collections, the war pictures, the war archives will be the goal of millions of visitors and the centre of thousands of students as long as their peoples endure. Some day a magnificent collection in some great Australian city will be the equal of them all; Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth, Hobart will contain their war museums of this great war as interesting to visitors from Europe or America and to Australians themselves as are the great London collections, with their relics of Nelson and Wellington, the Crimea, the Mutiny, and the Soudan, to-day.

The Australian record of the war ought to be as interesting as any one of those in Europe or America. At least, the organisation which has been established to collect and preserve it is, as far as is known, the most complete of those which have been gradually established by any British state during the war. Canada gave us great help in starting it, but we have gone beyond her. New Zealand is in some ways joining in with us. Great Britain has given the most generous support in that part of the field which she covers, but she leaves many important parts of it alone. The Australian organisation now at work in London and France provides for every sort of record that has up to the present suggested itself.

The Written Records.
There are three records, the written record—that is to say, official diaries, memoirs. maps, orders, messages sent and received in battle, and official or unofficial correspondence; the record of pictures — official photographs and cinema records, unofficial sketches, and the official artist’s pictures painted or drawn on the spot; lastly, the records in material—trophies, the things our men and units have actually used in battle or the German has used against them, with the marks of battle upon them.

When the history of a war comes to be written the main source of it is the diaries which are ordered to be kept by various headquarters from armies down to brigades, by battalions, by brigades of artillery, by independent companies which see almost more of the fighting than any others, such as trench mortar batteries and machine-gun companies; by field ambulances, which are responsible for the only records which can do justice to their magnificent stretcher-bearers; by engineers, pioneers, and especially by any detached units, such as a tunnelling company or a detached heavy battery, whose work, often the very best worth hearing about, will go completely unrecorded unless some officer can be found with the time at intervals to make its diary complete.

We Start to Keep Our Own.
At the beginning of the war and until long after the Australians came from France, the British Records Office had the responsibility of receiving all our records for us, with all the orders, maps, air photographs, messages, and other details attached, while the Australian Records received only the bare duplicate of diaries of such units as sent a duplicate in. It was felt that her records were a sacred possession to Australia, and early this year a section of the Australian Imperial Force was formed to receive and classify them—the Australian War Records Section. The Canadians had formed such a section before and gave us the help of their experience; and the British authorities helped magnificently by every means they could—gave the Australian Section two rooms in their own fine magnificent office, and entrusted to us at once the records they had kept for us, on one condition only—that we should give them a duplicate of all diaries and appendices received.

As soon as it controlled its own diaries the Australian Force set out immediately to make the records complete in every way it could think of. Every sort of additional memoir of fighting, the original reports sent in by officers and men fighting out ahead to their headquarters during battle—a most precious and valuable form of relic—accounts written by various officers afterwards, when they had the leisure to think of what they saw and knew, records of incidents that ought not to be lost to history—even those humorous incidents which are a flashlight on the character of the Australian soldier and invaluable for the writing of the history of the regiment—maps, photographs, sketches were all asked for to be sent direct to the War Records Section. An Australian officer, formerly a well-known war correspondent, who is to organise the historical system in Egypt, was first sent over to France to visit and explain to units what the Section would do for them, and arrange if possible for the keeping of those precious records of individual detail the histories of regiments and batteries, and for the collection of material for future Australian Museums.

Our Photographs: the Rigid Truth.
Australia has now two official photographers and a small staff, with an exceedingly well provided dark-room close to the front. It is the duty of one photographer to see that there is obtained for Australia a photograph of every subject that will be important in Australian history—the scene of every tough struggle, the trench corner or blockhouse that proved a knotty point, the hills that overlooked us, and pictures taken from them showing what the German could see. The record photographer is responsible for all these in times of action; in times of rest his duty is to visit the battalions and brigades and obtain as far as possible a record of each famous unit, its men and its staff. The other official photographer is responsible for the pictures for the Press and for future Australian galleries —his eyes has [sic] to be open for everything which makes a picture. He is also responsible for the cinematograph record.

It is doubtful if these two offices could he better filled than they are lilted for Australia at present. The senior photographer is one who was for five years in the Antarctic as photographer for two consecutive expeditions. The record photographer is an Australian who had just returned from Stefannson’s Expedition to the Arctic, of which he finished as second in command. Throughout the recent fighting they have been daily in the front line, and amongst the batteries. Australians may know this, that whatever is found amongst the Australian official photographs is genuine, taken where and as its title indicates. The first principle laid down for the Australian official photographs is that they are a sacred record—standing for future generations, to see for ever the plain, simple truth.

Besides the official photographs, portraits of all Australians who distinguished themselves here and in Gallipoli are being sought for from every unit; and every photograph of Gallipoli that can be found or heard of.

The Australian Artists.
Every original Australian negative and one copy of every Australian cinema film goes to the Australian War Records Section, to be kept with the greatest care, as the national record. Duplicates are taken and kept by the High Commissioner’s Office, which manages their publication. The interests of publicity and of preservation for record are quite distinct—publicity needs quick, masterful handling, record needs careful, tender, methodical preservation. Therefore, all publicity—of photographs in “Australia and the Great War,” of cables and articles in the British Press and “Anzac Bulletin”—is managed by an affiliated but separate section, the National War Records, in the High Commissioner’s Office.

A national record of the Australian Imperial Force is also in process of being obtained from the Australian artists, of whom two are continuously at work on the Australian front. By a recent arrangement, besides the official black and white artist, who has been working for Australia at the front ever since the Somme winter, two of the Australian divisions have with them artists who will each paint at least one big historical picture for Australia, and whose stretches at the front will go to the nation. When the present two artists have been here for three mouths, two others will take their place, who will be succeeded by a further two. The whole management of the artistic record is undertaken by the authority which is responsible for publicity—the National Records Section in the High Commissioner’s Office.

Australia’s Sacred Relics.
Every relic that can possibly be saved for Australia—from rifles with fixed bayonets dropped in the old No-man’s Land during the first charge at Pozières, and the last tiny Union Jack that flew over a signal dug-out at Anzac down to signal lamps blown up in the last fight around Polygon Wood, or the splintered reel which our signallers carried with them in the third wave at Messines, and the shattered breech-block of a Lagnicourt gun—all these are now sent in by those units who wish to place them on record to a War Museums Collecting Depot. Officers and men whose trophies are too heavy or cumbersome for themselves, or who choose to let the future people of Australia see them rather than the small circle of the home, send them in to this collection station with their name, unit and the description of the relic written on labels, which are sent to every commanding officer. The relics are received, whether in the field, at the base, in London, or presently in Egypt. They are there carefully numbered and listed, and packed to a further depot, from which they will be removed as soon as transport becomes secure and easy to provide. This work of collection has the greatest goodwill in the Force - patriotic Australian Salvage and Ordnance officers are helping to send in scores of interesting small relics which would otherwise be used for scrap-iron.

Australia’s Full Support Needed.
These trophies are entirely those which, if not so collected, would either be given away to landladies in France or be rusting on battlefields or as scrap iron in ordnance yards. They do not touch the province of those trophies taken by the troops in battle which are officially claimed by the units and kept for them by the British Government. For those greater trophies there is a procedure laid down by the British authorities, and the trophies will apparently he controlled by the Committee of the British National War Museum, which works under the War Office, and which is attended by an Australian officer when subjects connected with trophies captured by Australian troops are under discussion. By far the greater part of Australian war material passes into purely British hands, and the British, perhaps, because of their nearness to the spot, attach far less importance to the record of the war—either in photographs, trophies, or pictures, than the Australian nation does. For this reason the effort being made by the Australian Imperial Force to preserve for the, country every record that is capable of preservation calls for the full support of the Australian nation.

The most necessary step is the establishment of the three great centres of Australian national study—the National Australian Museum, the National Australian Gallery, and the National Australian Library; or at any rate the highly competent central authority which, when the war is over and it its safe to send these precious and sacred records oversea, will be all ready established to receive and house them with the most extreme care, distribute to the States to whose battalions they belong those trophies intimately connected with the troops of those States—provided, first, that State authorities are properly constituted to receive them with equal care; and arrange for the careful duplication of the original collection of photographs for the State galleries. Gallipoli relics and photographs can chiefly be collected in Australia to-day. With our great Australian force oversea, the Australian War Records Section has been given an important and growing status. It is under the most capable officers available; its system is intensely careful. Until a centre of all great future national research exists in Australia, the Australian War Records Section which the Australian Imperial Force has established will preserve and tenderly care for the sacred things which will some day constitute the greatest public possesion [sic] Australia will have.

The Field that is Sacred.
There is one material record which we, who have had these records at heart in Europe, would urge with all the power that we have. The field of Pozières and Mouquet Farm, which is more consecrated by Australian fighting and more hallowed by Australian blood than any field which has ever existed or is likely to exist in Europe, is a bare, bleak moor and hilltop to-day. There is not a house left in it, nor yet the cellar of a house. Every trench is marked with the white crosses of Australian graves. It overlooks the whole Somme battlefield, and it contains the sacred memorials of Australian regiment after regiment, division after division. The whole field is not a square mile in size.

In 1914, ninety-nine years after the Battle of Waterloo, the British nation was about to purchase the field of Waterloo, when its chances of doing so became lost, perhaps, for ever. The trenches of Pozières—its roads and even the broken German wire, are still traceable. Its graves, named and nameless, stand still where some Australian fell. We have had no cemetery like it, and probably never will have. Might not the Australian democracy ask the French people for the right to purchase that small square mile for the sake of those Australians whose sons and fathers lie there?

The Australian War Records Section

12 June 2007 by Anne-Marie Conde. 3 Comments
To Flanders Fields, 1917, Research material, War records

Ninety years ago, in May 1917, the Australian War Records Section (AWRS) was formed in London. It is from this date that we trace the formal origins of the Australian War Memorial. Over the next two years the AWRS acquired approximately 25,000 objects, as well as paper records, photographs, film, publications, and works of art. All were brought back to Australia in 1919 and formed the basis of the collection of what would eventually become the Australian War Memorial.

The AWRS was set up at the prompting of Charles Bean, Australia’s official war correspondent, soon to be made official historian. It was led by John Treloar, a young army officer later appointed the Memorial’s Director. On 16 May 1917, Lieutenant Treloar walked into an obscure office in London, pulled up a chair and got down to work. He initially had a staff of just four. The section’s task was to collect and organise the documentary record of the Australian forces, so that it could be preserved for Australia, rather than be absorbed into Britain’s records. Bean had been impressed with the work of the Canadians in establishing in London a Canadian War Records Office. And like the Canadians, the Australian section quickly began collecting and commissioning a wide range of material.

Studio portrait of Lieutenant John Treloar taken in March 1916 P04505.002

The Canadian and Australian governments were aware that a war museum was being formed in Britain and they would on no account allow the British to secure the best Canadian or Australian ‘trophies’ and records for its museum. Bean felt strongly that the records and ‘relics’ (as he called them) that told of Australian achievements and sacrifice should be collected and shipped home to become the possession of the Australian people.

Under the direction of John Treloar and the AWRS, this is what happened. After the war, in 1919, an ‘Australian War Museum’ (later Memorial) was formed in Australia from the collections amassed by the section. In 1920 Treloar was appointed Director, a position he held until his death in 1952. Bean and Treloar worked together during these years to guide the Australian War Memorial into being.

The AWRS is therefore the parent organisation of the Memorial. From tiny beginnings, it grew. Based in London, it developed networks of field officers in France and Egypt, and by late 1918 was employing over 600 staff, military and civilian. Through its circulars and by personal contact, it encouraged soldiers of all ranks to maintain the best possible official records, and to collect and send in the best museum objects. By February 1919, approximately 25,000 objects were waiting to be shipped home. These included not just large objects such as vehicles, heavy weapons, a tank and several aeroplanes, but smaller weapons and equipment, tools, trench signs (including the famous ‘Roo de Kanga’ sign), uniforms, flags, medals and souvenired material. Some objects were distributed to the Australian states in the immediate post-war years; the rest were retained by the Memorial.

Roo de Kanga sign in Peronne. Now on display in the Australian War Memorial's Western Front Gallery E03412

German tank in the hands of the AWRS. This has been on display at the Queensland Museum since 1919. E02876

Trophies captured by the Australian troops during the battle of Hamel, at the AWRS Collecting Depot at Ailly-sur-Somme. These items were probably later scattered around the towns of Australia. E02743

It is on the basis of this collection, and the vision and dedication of the people behind it, that the Memorial has become more than just a monument. It is an expression of a unique idea: that people should come to the Memorial to learn and to understand, as well as to reflect and to remember. The Memorial’s building in Canberra opened in 1941 and it has become one of the world’s finest museums, holding a collection of historic material that documents and illustrates the Australian experience of war. Its three parts - the commemorative area, the galleries, and the Research Centre - work together to fulfil the Memorial’s purpose.

From March 1918 onwards, this building, in Horseferry Road, London, contained the main offices and darkrooms of the AWRS. It was immediately opposite AIF [Administrative] Headquarters. D00767

Two stacks of war diaries kept by units of the five Australian divisions. Each stack is a month’s worth. On the left are those submitted before the establishment of the AWRS in May 1917, and on the right, those submitted afterwards. The increased bulk is the result of valuable documents having been attached to the diary. D00115

The Public Record Office in Chancery Lane, London. In this building the AWRS was formed in May 1917 and it continued to occupy rooms here until March 1919. D00768

AWRS staff completing duplicate war diaries at the Public Record Office in London. Taken on 26 September 1918, this is thought to be the earliest photograph of AWRS staff at work, and the earliest known photograph of archival work being done on records of the Commonwealth of Australia. D00073

Members of the War Records Section in the office. From left to right: Lieutenant Murray, Official Surveyor; Henry Gullett, Official War Correspondent; Lieutenant O'Connor, Photographic Officer. B01393

To mark the 90th Anniversary of the establishment of the Australian War Records Section, the following items are currently on display in the Reading Room of the Memorial’s Research Centre.

AWRS display case

AWRS trophy register

This is a page from a trophy register, one of many compiled by the AWRS. The damaged oil bottle in this showcase appears on this page of the register as F1765. The AWRS allocated a number to each object; that number stayed with the object, recorded on its label, and was also used to list and describe the object in the register. (AWM333, [RC05187])

Carrier pigeon

Hubert Wilkins, an official photographer working with the AWRS, recovered this French army carrier pigeon. The bird was believed to have died from exhaustion near Amiens on 11 June 1918. The AWRS often preserved animal remains because of the stories of endurance that they represent. (REL/10638)

A pair of goggles collected in early 1918 for the AWRS by Lieutenant Arthur Birks of the 44th Battalion, AIF. They were used as protection against gas attacks. (RELAWM04094)

War diary page

One of the most fundamental military historical records was the monthly war diary kept by each unit. Collecting and organising these was the AWRS’s first responsibility. Here the diary-keeper, Lieutenant Cecil Henry, has made his mark on history by adding a series of strange and whimsical drawings to the covers. For easy access, war diaries were bound, rather like books, by the AWRS in London. They remained in their covers until the 1980s, when they were unbound in preparation for microfilming. The war diaries are now being digitally copied for yet another generation of users. A sampling of the old covers have been kept by the Memorial. (AWM4, 14/14/25, 2nd Pioneer Battalion. [RC05191])

AWRS war diary register

Thousands of unit diaries were created, in triplicate, during the First World War. Their receipt by the AWRS and subsequent locations needed to be recorded. Today such a task would be done using a computer database: not possible in 1917. Two large registers were created, and this is one of them. (AWM128, Item 2 [RC05185])

AWRS historical records booklet

This is a booklet prepared in December 1917 by the AWRS reminding commanding officers of their recordkeeping responsibilities. Measures like this were successful: from late 1917, huge quantities of records flowed into the AWRS offices in London. (RC05184)

The photostat room of the Australian War Records Section in London, June 1919. In the foreground, maps are hanging over a line to dry. Photostating was to enable the Section to quickly copy war diaries and other documents D00628

The War Diaries Subsection, again in London during June 1919. Clerical staff are completing duplicate and triplicate copies of the diaries. The duplicates were then passed to the British Government, with the triplicates used as a working copies. D00627

View digital scans of original AIF war diaries online

AWRS label

Labels like these were allocated to units in the AIF by the AWRS so that objects and records recovered in the field could be identified. Without this, they were valueless. The AWRS had the labels made out of a durable material: recent analysis has revealed it to be woven cotton impregnated with a thick layer of starch. (RC05199; RC05200; RC05201)

This is the ubiquitous AWRS diamond-shaped stamp which can be seen on countless files in the Memorial’s Official Records Collection.

Other items featured in the display

Rifle oil bottle
A rifle oil bottle was damaged by shrapnel in the battle that killed its owner, Private Henry Browning, on 24 April 1918. The details were recorded on the museum label, still attached. The officer-in-charge of the AWRS, John Treloar, insisted that ‘a good description transforms a piece of salvage into an interesting relic’, and he was right. What significance would this object have without its story? (RELAWM07714).

Aerial bomb
A German aerial bomb, typical of the objects collected by the AWRS. It was apparently taken from the wreck of a German aircraft brought down by the famous French air ace Georges Guynemer, shortly before he was killed in September 1917. Objects like this were much prized by soldier–souvenir hunters (RELAWM07623).

German postcards
Captured German records, military and personal, were often passed to the AWRS such as the postcards taken from the possessions of Adam Mayer. He is largely unknown to us except through these simple reminders that he had a family and they were thinking of him. We do however know from the field postal address given, that Mayer served with 8th Company, 2nd Battalion of the 4th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment (RIR). This regiment belonged to the Bavarian Ersatz Division and the only time it faced the Australians was at the Battle of Menin Road (just east of Ypres in Belgium) in September 1917. Since the 4th Bavarian RIR is known to have suffered many casualties and lost the ground it was holding to the Australians, it is likely that Mayer was either captured or killed during the Menin Road attack which began on 20 September 1917 (AWM46, 195; [RC05191; RC05192; RC05193])

Envelope
An envelope, still with its AWRS label, contained records taken from the pack of a German soldier in Vaire Wood in July 1918. Its condition suggests it still had a rough journey ahead before being received by the AWRS (RC05199).

Further reading

Books

Shaune Lakin, Contact: photographs from the Australian War Memorial collection (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 2006). [Includes a chapter covering photographic work of the AWRS.]

Michael McKernan, Here is their spirit: a history of the Australian War Memorial 1917-1990 (Canberra & St Lucia, Queensland: Australian War Memorial & University of Queensland Press, 1991). [Includes a chapter that substantially covers the work of the AWRS.]

Articles

Charles Bean, ‘Australia’s records: preserved as sacred things: pictures, relics, writings’, The Anzac Bulletin, Vol 40, 10 October 1917, pp. 14-15.

Anne-Marie Condé, ‘Caring for the past’, Wartime, Vol 32, 2005, pp. 40-43.

Anne-Marie Condé, ‘Imagining a collection: creating Australia’s records of war’, reCollections: The Journal of the National Museum of Australia, Vol. 2, Number 1, March 2007.

Anne-Marie Condé, ‘War history on scraps of paper’: exhibitions of documents at the Australian War Memorial, 1922-1954, Public History Review, Volume 14, 2007 (forthcoming). [Includes a section on the AWRS and Bean and Treloar’s ideas about collecting and exhibiting the collection.]

Michael Piggott, ‘The Australian War Records Section and its aftermath, 1917-1925’, Archives and Manuscripts, Vol. 8, No. 2, December 1980, pp. 41-50. [Mainly about archives. This is the first serious published treatment of the work of the AWRS.]

Ann Millar, ‘Gallipoli to Melbourne: the Australian War Memorial 1915-1919’, Journal of the Australian War Memorial, Vol 10, April 1987, pp. 33-42. [General]

Simon Cooke and Anna Froude, ‘The Australian War Records Section’, [paper presented as part of the Australian War Memorial’s Summer Scholarship Scheme, 1989]. [Probably the best general treatment, but should be read in conjunction with McKernan].

Peter Stanley, ‘Ernie Bailey: “founder” of the Australian War Museum’, Wartime, Vol 28, pp 34-35. [Bailey worked for the AWRS and died in an accident while on duty]

Unpublished sources

John Treloar, ‘Report on the work of the Australian War Records Section from May 1917 to September 1918 by the Officer-in-Charge,’ AWM224, MSS553 Part 1.

Charles Bean, ‘The Australian war records: an account of the present development overseas and suggestions of course necessary to be taken at the end of the war’, AWM38, 3DRL 6673/362.

Charles Bean, ‘Further memoir, together with appendices, by C.E.W. Bean, official historian, Australian Imperial Force, concerning the official records and history of the Australian Imperial Force and the establishment of the Memorial’, AWM93, 2/5/7.

Charles Bean, ‘The Beginnings of the Australian War Memorial’, AWM38, 3DRL 6673/619.

Bruce Harding, ‘Official primary sources in the Library of the Australian War Memorial’, March 1973, AWM315, 535/002/001.

John Treloar, ‘Australia’s war records: how they were collected, what will be done with them’, [draft of an article for Life magazine], AWM93, 20/1192.