And the Band Played On by Robert Holden: book review

And the Band Played On (2014) is subtitled “How music lifted the Anzac spirit in the battlefields of the First World War.”

ANZACs were the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps – soldiers in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) during World War I (July 1914 – November 1918). Music had been used in previous wars, but this is an account of the music during battles such as Gallipoli (Turkey) and the Western Front (France and Belgium).

Holden begins with “War is noise!” It is the noise of explosions, shots, men yelling, vehicles, aeroplanes, sirens, mortar, field guns, howitzers, and the like. Germans even coined a new word for this percussive barrage – trommelfeuer. Music in WWI was morale-building entertainment to uplift and overwhelm, to remember, a call for action, for psychological benefit, for leisure and pleasure, and for distraction – everything from the bugle reveille in the morning to hymns, ragtime, jazz, marches, piano recitals, patriotic songs, and poems, to the bugler’s last post.

Australia was a new country as it sent forces to the ‘theatre of war’ from July 1914. As early as October 1914, the Ballarat Courier reported on the entertainment available at the Broadmeadows training camp, the primary military training location in Australia. And in April 1915 one concert had an audience of 6,000 soldiers. It was when soldiers could “forget their rank” and take time out to be entertained. In Cairo before heading for the battlefields of Gallipoli the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) with support from the Red Cross and the Australian Comforts Fund entertained the forces away from home.

But the music was not only from external sources. It came from within the troops. “Within a few short weeks of Australia’s declaration of war, the need for army bands had also been addressed.” Army bands not only waved soldiers off to war and cheered them home they were also part of the war effort. However, band history was “among the least researched area” of military operations.

One of the soldiers’ favourites included Ivor Novello’s 1914 hit Keep the Home Fires Burning that became a touchstone song for allied forces because “their longings for home, comfort, loved ones and … normal life … could be expressed.” The early songs were British, which led to a demand for Australian music, such as the 1914 song, Australia Will Be There, by Walter William ‘Skipper’ Francis. But in the trenches at Gallipoli the Turks interpreted the Australian’s music making as “a prelude to an attack” and hence they hit the trenches with heavy machine-gun and rifle fire.

On December 17, 1915, the Australians undertook a silent evacuation of Gallipoli, which was “the only sustained time throughout four years of warfare when noise was muted across that entire battlefield.” From the Gallipoli peninsula after the evacuation it is said that Captain Cecil Rodwell Lucas put the marching record Turkish Patrol on the gramophone as a “graceful compliment to the chivalrous foe.” The gramophone became a most treasured item in hospitals and convalescent homes for wounded soldiers. On the Western Front Australian clownish Pierrot troupes, known as Anzac Pompoms, even performed for the soldiers.

Holden includes a section on the importance of poetry for soldiers in the battlefields. This included Australian bush poetry and collections from the Pocket Edition of Australian Poetry for the Trenches. The rhythmical narrative poems and ballads were thought to be nostalgic and emotive, but also comforting and soothing.

It is an interesting account of some of the most iconic war songs, and the importance of music in the lives of Australian soldiers far from home. Holden concludes with “music is to a city or nation’s spirit what ammunition is to their army.” But the book is more about the music than the band.