Men rush to volunteer

West Australian men rushed to join up as soon as they could after the outbreak of war.

On August 5, 1914, Australia's prime minister Joseph Cook said the country was at war with Germany and voluntary recruitment for the Australian Imperial Force began just five days later.

Recruitment offices opened in Perth, Fremantle, Midland and across the State, including Kalgoorlie, Geraldton, Northam, Bunbury, Albany and Wagin.

Capt. Walter Belford, of the first battalion raised in WA, the 11th Battalion, later recalled the rush to recruit in a series of articles he wrote for The Western Mail newspaper in 1937 and 1938.

Among those to join in was an eager bunch of young men who had been working on the transcontinental railway, who caught the first train they could which was travelling westward and arrived in Kalgoorlie on August 15.

That same day, 13 of the 14 were accepted for duty and the next day they joined others who had volunteered in Kalgoorlie and boarded a special train for Perth.

"The inhabitants of Kalgoorlie gave the boys a right royal send-off," Capt. Belford wrote.

"Hampers of food and bottles of the best were pushed into the compartments. It was a wonderful journey. At all the stations on the journey down the train was greeted with cheers, and at every stop there were more refreshments.

"It says a great deal for this draft that the men were able to tumble out of the train at Bellevue Station and fall in."

The men then marched up to Blackboy Hill, which was officially started on August 17.

Capt. Belford wrote that there was no camp there at that time.

"The first thing the boys had to do was to draw tents for shelters and start to pitch camp," he wrote.

And so the men of the 11th began to train for war, "truly representatives of the whole State".

"No battalion ever consisted of a finer body of men," Capt. Belford wrote.

"Not only was the necessary physical standard for enlistment much higher in the early days of the war than that which was accepted later but the men themselves represented all the eager and adventurous spirits from every part of the State. There were bushmen and bank clerks, lumpers and shearers, teachers and miners, farmers and timber-getters, all being welded together into one splendid unit."

They started marching, drilling, carrying out mock attacks and generally learning the new skills which would be required by a fighting force.

By October they began to hear rumours of embarkation.

They were "by that time getting very tired of camp life, and longing to get to the front", Capt. Belford wrote.

Finally, after parading at 4am on the morning of October 31, they got the news that it was time to march out to the rail siding and board the train for Fremantle.

"There was much excitement and great rejoicing," Capt. Belford wrote.

"The troops were soon on the train, and amid great cheering were carried to Fremantle."

They boarded the transport vessels Medic and Ascanius, which already carried the 10th Battalion, from South Australia.

"There was a vast concourse of people down at the wharf to see the troops off," Capt. Belford wrote.

The Ascanius left the wharf at 4pm and steamed into Gage Roads to await the Medic.

"It was learnt that these two troop ships were to be picked up by the rest of the convoy," he wrote.

The rest of the convoy, carrying troops from the Eastern States and New Zealand, had assembled in King George Sound, Albany.

Official historian C.E.W. Bean wrote that at 6.25 on the morning of November 1, the Albany convoy began to move to sea and by 8.55am 36 transport ships and three escorting cruisers were on their way. Two days later it reached the transports waiting off Fremantle and their escorting warships.

The combined convoy of 38 transports carrying some 30,000 men and six naval escorts from Britain, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, presented what Belford described as "one of the most stirring sights in the whole history of the war". "As far as the eye could see, the ocean was dotted with the ships of the convoy, and a haze of smoke stretched away for miles."

For many of those on board, it was the last time they would see the shore they knew so well.