The First Anzacs

This is the unknown story of the combat engineers who kept World War I running. Although it has been repeatedly denied by the army, they were the first Australians to land at Anzac Cove: in any combat, even today, sappers are always the first in and last out.

They were airbrushed out of history. Official historian Charles Bean claimed the first Australian ashore at the Gallipoli landing on 25 April 1915 was an infantry officer. But Bean wasn’t there, and a bunch of Australian and New Zealand army engineers were. Even today, the army is reluctant to accept that sappers were among the very first Australian soldiers ashore.

This is the untold story of the Australian and New Zealand sappers—combat engineers—who fought in World War I. They were always in the vanguard, clearing defences, and building bridges, roads and walkways for the troops who followed, usually under fire. At Gallipoli, strafed by machine guns and targeted by snipers, they dug trenches and tunnels to advance on the Turkish defences. On the Western Front, they burrowed under the German lines to plant massive explosives, whose eruption could be heard in England. In Egypt they demolished a Turkish railway in a day.

From Gallipoli to the sands of the Middle East, to the blood-soaked battlefields of France and Belgium, engineers put down their tools to also fight as combat soldiers at every major battle and campaign, often with heroic feats of astonishing courage. Three sappers stole a giant field gun from under German noses at Amiens. Sappers were classic Aussie larrikins, indefatigably practical men who don’t take kindly to bureaucracy. Typically under-appreciated, two were cheated of their well-earned VCs by a British general after they, working alone, tricked a German platoon into surrendering.

“Sappers are the unsung heroes of the First World War and this book helps bring them back into the limelight where they belong.” WILL DAVIES, Beneath Hill 60

“It has taken 111 years for true stories to appear in a book adequately honouring Australian sappers in WW1—you will remember these heroes forever.” COLONEL SANDY MACGREGOR MC (rtd)