Harold Edward Elliott (1878-1931) soldier, lawyer and politician was born on 19th June 1878, West Charlton, Victoria, son of Thomas Elliott, Farmer and his wife Helen nee Jarvin. He was educated at Ballarat College and Ormond College, University of Melbourne where he joined the University Officer Corps (later Melbourne University Regiment).
In 1900 he interrupted his studies to enlist in the 4th Victorian Imperial Bushmen (4VIB) and was promoted corporal on the basis of his previous military experience and leadership potential. In February of 1901 his unit was involved in the hunt for de Wet; the 4VIB rode 170 miles in approximately four days during which time they caught up with de Wet as he tried to cross the flooded Orange River. A large number of prisoners were taken as well as de Wet's remaining two field guns.
A week later on the night of 28 February/1 March 1901 Captain Dallimore OC D Squadron with 15 troopers including corporal Elliott tracked a party of Boers to the junction of the Orange and Sea Cow Rivers. Although outnumbered Dallimore with Elliott's support chose to attack. Elliott perhaps with several other troopers went in at night and quietly removed the Boers' horses. At dawn Dallimore's force attacked and the Boers were unable to mount and ride away. The heavy aggressive rifle fire coupled with a bluff by Dallimore convinced the Boers to surrender. The little party captured 27 Boers, 6 African servants and 54 horses. Elliott was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) (London Gazette 7-5-01).
As a result of this and other actions he was offered a British commission in the Royal Berkshire Regiment but with 4VIB then being critically short of officers Elliott remained with them but was transferred to Captain Tivey's 'C' Squadron. He and his OC were totally different personalities and were to remain bitter rivals until the end of their military careers. In March 1901 at Steynsberg and in May west of Doornbosh Elliott was involved with 4 VIB in heavy actions with superior numbers of Boers.
4VIB left South Africa 22 June 1901 on the Orient, Elliott found himself as one of the few officers from his unit travelling on the ship and was appointed adjutant for the trip. It was a difficult job with a tired group of soldiers wanting to let their hair down. Lt Col K Mackay, CO NSWIB who was on board the boat wrote;
"This young officer performed the duties of adjutant for the Victorians on board the 'SS Orient' in a manner about which I can not speak too highly. Under exceptionally difficult circumstances he showed an amount of tact which was most praiseworthy while his capacity for hard work is remarkable."
Elliott quickly decided to return to South Africa to serve again and sailed on the SS Brittanic in August 1901 in charge of a Victorian draft of 105 soldiers for the Scottish Horse although he was not attached to that regiment. This group, along with Queenslanders on the boat was drafted by Kitchener to form the Australian Commonwealth Regiment which was intended to patrol the Natal border against Boer incursions. It was a short lived unit about which almost nothing is known so it is not clear if Elliott too found himself in that unit.
On the 18th October 1901 Elliott joined the Cape Colony Cyclist Corps and found himself assigned as assistant press censor at Prieska in Western Cape Colony. It was not a job to his liking so on the 1st December 1901 seeking more action he was able to transfer to the Border Scouts as a troop commander. This unit was operating in North West Cape Colony against Boer commandos who were increasingly being force by Kitcheners sweeps to look for distant places to lay up. Elliott commanded an isolated detachment of about twenty troopers being responsible for patrols and preventing Boers either infiltrating or running off stock. In early January 1902 Elliott was attacked by the very much larger commando of Commandant Conroy. A fierce fight raged for several hours but the Boers were driven off empty handed. A telegram from Lord Kitchener to his OC stated
"Please tell Lt Elliott that I am very pleased with his conduct and that of his men in driving off Conroy and saving horses."
He was subsequently Mentioned in Dispatches for this action.
He remained with the Border Scouts until they were disbanded at Uppington 21 July 1902 and returned to Melbourne on board the Nineveh 25 September 1902 having received both the Queens and Kings South African Medals.
Returning to the university in 1903, he won many scholarships and prizes (LL B, 1906; LL M, and BA, 1920); he was also a champion athlete. In 1907 he was called to the Bar of Victoria and the Commonwealth; he also set up a firm of solicitors, H. E. Elliott & Co. He had returned to the army in 1904 as a second lieutenant in the 5th Infantry Regiment (militia). In 1913 he became lieutenant-colonel commanding the 58th Battalion in the new universal training scheme. As Charles Bean observed, 'his whole heart and interest were in the Army' and this meant not only parades and camps but also the study of textbooks and military history. On 27 December 1909 at Northcote he had married Catherine Frazer Campbell with Presbyterian forms. They had a daughter and a son.
When the Australian Imperial Force was being raised in August 1914, Elliott was appointed to command the 7th Battalion in the 2nd Brigade. His massive frame-he had been a good footballer and university champion weight-putter-his energy, strength of character and explosive temper quickly established him as one of the characters of the force. His men called him 'Pompey', a nickname which did not please him but clung to him to the end. Hard training and stern discipline were the foundations on which he built the 7th at Broadmeadows and in Egypt.
On the day of the Gallipoli landing, 25 April 1915, Elliott was wounded and evacuated, not returning until early June. He soon won a reputation for cool courage in the fighting for German Officers' Trench. At Lone Pine on 8 August he relieved part of the 1st Brigade and in the next twenty-four hours repulsed the Turkish counter-attacks by furious close-quarter fighting and bombing. Of the seven Victoria Crosses awarded for Lone Pine, four went to Elliott's battalion but his own work was not recognized. His divisional commander, Major General (Sir) Harold Walker, had told him that his name had been at the head of his list of recommendations. This was the beginning of an irritation for Elliott, which, before the end of the war, had become an obsession.
He was evacuated sick in August, returning in November but, on the eve of the evacuation of Anzac, a sprained ankle caused him to be sent off ahead of his unit. In February 1916 Elliott was made commander of the 1st Brigade but on 1 March he was given the congenial task of organizing the 15th (Victorian) Brigade in the new 5th Division and promoted brigadier general.
In July Elliott began his service on the Western Front where he fought in most of the great battles of the
AIF. He trained his brigade as he had trained his battalion and made it 'a magnificently effective instrument'. This he did in spite of the appalling losses in battles such as Fromelles, their first action, when his two assaulting battalions suffered 1452 casualties in less than twenty-four hours. Elliott had protested about the hopelessness of the task; he was in the front line at zero hour and visited his troops before they were withdrawn. Next morning, Arthur Bazley, Bean's assistant, saw him greeting the remnants: 'no one who was present will ever forget the picture of him, the tears streaming down his face, as he shook hands with the returning survivors'.
Although he could himself be foolhardy, Elliott tried to avoid taking risks with his soldiers. He visited his front line daily about dawn. He thrived on battle and was exhilarated by the achievements of his men. 'It is beautiful to see them fight', he wrote in March 1917, 'and then it is fine to see the old Bosches jump out and run … and our guns open on them and smash them. It is just the fun of the world'. After the capture of Péronne in September 1918 he found a punt and took a friend onto the moat while German shells splashed into the water nearby. 'A great game, isn't it!' said 'Pompey', smiling at his anxious companion.
It has been said of Elliott that he could do some things with Australian troops no other commander could do. Elliott knew it and was humble about it. After Polygon Wood he wrote to his wife: 'It is all due to the boys and the officers like Norman Marshall … It is wonderful the loyalty and bravery that is shown, their absolute confidence in me is touching-I can order them to take on the most hopeless looking jobs and they throw their hearts and souls not to speak of their lives and bodies into the job without thought. You must pray more than ever that I shall be worthy of this trust, Katie, and have wisdom and courage given me worthy of my job'.
Part of Elliott's success lay in his careful selection of officers, but it was over the appointment of his battalion commanders that he first clashed with Lieutenant-General Sir William Birdwood and Brigadier General (Sir) Brudenell White in March 1916. Elliott was given officers who were obviously, to him, unsuitable. When told that they must remain and that their reputations were sacred he replied that the lives of his men were more sacred. His frankness was understood within his brigade and provided countless anecdotes but it was little relished at higher headquarters. Worse still, he sometimes wrote reports sharply critical of senior commanders and the failures of troops on his flanks. One, after Polygon Wood, was so outrageous and inaccurate in its strictures on a neighbouring British division that Birdwood ordered all copies to be destroyed.
'Pompey' could be a difficult subordinate especially when the safety of his men was involved. At least twice after Fromelles he protested so vehemently against attacks ordered by 5th Division headquarters that the operations were cancelled. His objections were always based on knowledge of the ground obtained from personal reconnaissance and on a profound grasp of the tactical possibilities.
In the brief period of open warfare which marked the advance to the Hindenburg line in March 1917, Elliott was in his element as commander of one of the Australian advanced guards. With a small force of all arms and a degree of independence impossible in trench warfare, he probed for weak spots and turned the German rearguards out of their positions by encircling movements. It was during this phase that he made a rash misjudgment when he ordered an attack in daylight in retaliation for a German counter-attack. His instruction that 5th Division headquarters was not to be notified was resisted by his brigade major, George Wieck, and Elliott gave way. Major-General (Sir) Joseph Hobbs cancelled the attack and hurried forward to Elliott's headquarters. He could hardly have survived this affair had word of it reached Birdwood who had already reprimanded him for occupying a village outside his boundaries.
No impulsive actions marred his tactics in the battle of Polygon Wood on 25-26 September 1917, when his grasp of the situation and capacity for quick, decisive action was supreme. As usual, Elliott was up with his foremost battalions soon after dawn. Bean attributes the outcome to the way in which Elliott's troops 'snatched complete success from an almost desperate situation … the driving force of this stout-hearted leader in his inferno at Hooge … was in a large measure responsible for this victory'. During this battle his brother Captain G. S. Elliott, a Military Cross winner, was killed, and a letter from home revealed the collapse of his firm leaving him with a debt of £5000.
After Polygon Wood, Elliott was confident that if a divisional command became vacant he would get it. Ambitious and utterly self-reliant, it was a hope he had long cherished. His work in the defensive battles of March 1918 and his part in the famous counter-attack at Villers-Bretonneux in April must have reinforced his optimism.
On 16 and 17 April 1918 the Germans landed tens of thousands of mustard and phosgene gas shells of the town of Villers-Bretonneux and surrounding defences, something was afoot. The front was reorganised, and fresh British troops were sent in to defend the town, III Corps commanded by Lieutenant General Richard Butler.
Pompey Elliot's 15th Brigade had been moved into reserve near Corbie to the north of Villers-Bretonneux. Elliot was not impressed with the boy soldiers of the British 8th Division now entrusted with its defence, and was hatching a plan to counter attack should the town be lost.
General Elliot's plan was brilliant, a double envelopment by his 15th, and Glasgow's 13th brigades to trap and destroy the attacking forces. It also used the Light Horse in aggressive ground reconnaissance in the way we would now use SAS.
Villers Bretonneux was vital to the German Army's plan. From the plateaux on which the village stood Amiens, the most important supply and transportation centre on the British front could be shelled. At 04:45 on 24 April the Germans attacked. The assault was led by German Tanks, huge lumbering monsters with a crew of 16; it fell upon the 8th Division who were soon driven from the town formed a defensive line 2 kilometres to the west. Near Cachy, a Royal Tank Regiment patrol, two females and a male MK Vs commanded by Captain E Mitchell MC were moving up to assist the beleaguered infantry. "Opening a loophole, I looked out. There some three hundred metres away, a round squat looking monster was advancing; behind it came waves of infantry, and farther away to the left and right crawled two more of these armed tortoises. … For the first time in history tank was encountering tank!" (Tank Warfare, E Mitchell MC). The Panzers fought well, destroying the two females, the male, however, with its six pounders was victorious (female tanks were armed with Vickers machine-guns only).
Elliot proposed to counter attack at 10:00 on 24th, however, the GOC III Corps considered the 8th Division was fully capable of restoring the situation Elliot did not believe this at all. He placed a troop of the 13th Light Horse under Lieutenant LV Reid that was to be used as flank guard for the counter attack under the command of Lieutenant Colonel CV Watson, the "special intelligence officer". A report centre was set-up close to the front line from where patrols were despatched "to keep in touch with our own infantry and report changes to the front". The patrols after many skirmishes came back with valuable information, as night fell Brigadier General Elliott knew exactly the disposition of the forces friendly and enemy.
In contrast in the late afternoon Major General Heneker GOC of the British 8t Division telephoned corps headquarters stating that he could not organise a counter attack because "we don't know where we or and where the enemy is" (reputed to be his words). Eventually Elliot prevailed; two Australian brigades were to be placed nominally under the command of the 8th Div. The plan was for Elliot's 15th Brigade to attack on the northern side of the town, pushing east then turning south. Glasgow's 13th Brigade would attack south of the town, then move north to link up with the 15th and envelop the Germans.
General Glasgow also made certain he knew exactly the location of the troops on his front. He was not impressed with the level of knowledge when he was "briefed" at 8 Div HQ, so he simply went to the front line himself and found out. There were then disputes between General's Heneker and Glasgow as to the start line and timing. Heneker stated that the attack would start from Cachy at 20:00 because "the corps commander wanted it that way". Glasgow convinced that a daylight attack would fail prevailed; the attack went in at 22:00 from a line between Cachy and Villers Bretonneux.
The fighting in the darkness was bitter there were Dantean scenes as Lieutenant Sadlier (awarded the VC for his efforts) and Sergeant Stokes (awarded the DCM for his efforts) with a bag of bombs led their platoon against machine-gun nests bright streams of tracer, crump of bombs, screams and shouts. By early morning the village was enveloped and the position of the defenders made untenable. The attackers, however, had not fully encircled the defence. At this point the Light Horse resumed their SAS role patrolling the gap to trap the Germans.
Brigadier General Brogan, commanding a brigade in the 8th Division witnessed the attack, he wrote of the it in 1936. He said: "Villers Bretonneux will ever be remembered for perhaps the greatest feat of the war - a successful attack by night over unknown and difficult ground by Australian soldiers."
It had been a desperate time in which Elliott's measures were not always approved by his superiors. Under his orders, a British staff officer had been arrested for looting wine at Corbie after which Elliott made it known that looters would be publicly hanged. The looting stopped but the aggrieved officer complained to General Headquarters. In another written instruction, officers rallying British stragglers in his sector were ordered to shoot any who hesitated. This was quickly withdrawn on the orders of Hobbs.
In May 1918 the promotion of Brigadier Generals (Sir) John Gellibrand and (Sir) Thomas Glasgow to major general and to command divisions was a shattering blow to Elliott. In an intemperate letter to White he complained, inter alia, of being superseded which, as an experienced officer, he knew was fallacious, for such promotions were by selection. White gave him the opportunity of withdrawing his letter so that it did not reach Birdwood. For the rest of the war Elliott nursed his grievance while leading his brigade with all his old fire. He was wounded again in August but remained on duty. When, owing to lack of reinforcement, seven battalions were to be disbanded in September, all refused. Only the 60th obeyed after Elliott had addressed them.
Elliott spoke to his brigade for the last time to thank them in January 1919. Afterwards all the battalions paraded voluntarily and marched around his headquarters cheering him. 'So I had to go out and give them one more speech and then they cheered again'. Since 1915 he had been appointed C.B. and C.M.G. and had been awarded the Distinguished Service Order, the Russian Order of St Anne and the French Croix de Guerre. He was mentioned in dispatches seven times and in a special order of the day by the commander of the French 31st Corps.
When he returned to Melbourne in June 1919 Elliott began to rebuild his firm but by September he was back in the militia as commander of the 15th Brigade. In the elections of 1919 he stood for the Senate as a Nationalist and topped the Victorian poll; he was re-elected in 1925. Elliott never attained office but he spoke on a wide range of topics especially on the Federal capital and defence. He made full use of his position to publicize and seek redress of his wartime grievances.
In February 1921 he asked to be placed on the unattached list and for his alleged supersession to be placed before the minister for defence. Besides, he disliked serving under White who was now chief of the General Staff. His position was aggravated by reports that Gellibrand and Glasgow would become divisional commanders in the new organization. This, he claimed, was a further supersession. The Military Board rejected his claims and refused, as it was bound to do, his request for a judicial enquiry. When his grievances were debated in the Senate, his arguments were firmly rebutted by the minister for defence, (Sir) George Pearce.
Elliott engaged in a sporadic campaign in the press in which he aired his grievances, attacked Birdwood and White and was contemptuous of the British high command whom he blamed for the grievous casualties amongst the Australian infantry. This attracted little sympathy and some sharp criticism. Fortunately he had much to occupy him. He had become city solicitor for Melbourne and a director of the National Trustees, Executors & Agency Co. in 1919. He was involved in the affairs of returned soldiers and was chiefly responsible for redrafting the constitution of the Returned Sailors' and Soldiers' Imperial League of Australia. For his help during the police strike in 1923 he was specially thanked by the premier of Victoria, (Sir) Harry Lawson.
In 1926, under Sir Harry Chauvel as C.G.S., Elliott again commanded the 15th Brigade and next year the 3rd Division. He was promoted major general in August 1927, but, in a sense, this was too late. Although he threw himself into training with the old enthusiasm, his disappointments still gnawed at him. In 1929 he corresponded with Generals Sir James McCay, Hobbs and Sir John Monash about his 'supersession' and the reasons for it. To Hobbs he admitted: 'The injustice of the position as I conceive it has actually coloured all my post war life'. Neither the generosity nor the wise advice of the replies he received mitigated his frustration. He turned to White in 1930 but White refused to discuss the past and a second unfortunate attempt to obtain his views was curtly rejected.
Elliott's deep and abiding sense of injustice combined with the strain of his war service and his ceaseless activity to undermine his health. Early in 1931 he was in hospital under treament for blood pressure. When discharged he did not return to the Senate. Soon afterwards he was found with a wound in the arm and was rushed to hospital where he died on 23 March. An inquest returned a verdict of suicide. 'Pompey' Elliott was buried with full military honours in Burwood cemetery. His wife and children survived him. His portrait by William McInnes hangs in the Australian War Memorial.
Select Bibliography
Australian Defence Department, Official Records of the Australian Military Contingents to the War in South Africa, P. L. Murray ed (Melb, 1911); C. E. W. Bean, The Story of Anzac, vols 1, 2 (Syd, 1921, 1924), and The Australian Imperial Force in France, 1916-18 (Syd, 1929, 1933, 1937, 1942), and Two Men I Knew (Syd, 1957); G. Blaikie, Remember Smith's Weekly? (Adel, 1975); Parliamentary Debates (Commonwealth), 1921, p 7727; Reveille (Sydney), Mar 1931, Aug 1937; Punch (Melbourne), 13 Nov 1919, 6 Aug 1925; Age (Melbourne), 28 May 1921, 24 Mar 1931; Argus (Melbourne), 24 Mar 1931; Herald (Melbourne), 24 Mar 1931; Sydney Morning Herald, 24 Mar 1931; H. E. Elliott papers and second photo (Australian War Memorial);Douglas J Hunter, My Corps Cavalry, Melbourne 1999, Les Carlyon, The Great War, Sydney 2006, PR Carey, The German Offensive on the Somme - 1918, RUSI of NSW Journal 2008, Douglas J Hunter, My Corps Cavalry, Melbourne 1999. Pompey Elliott - Ross McMullan, Carlton North 2008, That Ragged Mob-Robin Droogleaver, Melbourne 2009.
Authors: AJ Hill; DJ Deasey and J Howells
