There are several examples of Doyle's appreciation of Australian troops in World War 1. In Memories & Adventures, Doyle spent a number of pages describing his visit to the Australian front lines in 1918. Here are some excerpts:
They were great soldiers, these Australians. I think they would admit it themselves, but a spectator is bound to confirm it. There was a reckless dare-devilry, combined with a spice of cunning, which gave them a place of their own in the Imperial ranks. They had a great advantage too, in having a permanent organization, the same five divisions always in the same corps, under the same chief....
I think that now, in these after-war days, the whole world needs to be reminded of this fact as well as the Australians did. There has been, it seems to me, a systematic depreciation of what the glorious English, apart from the British, soldiers did. England is too big to be provincial, and smaller minds sometimes take advantage of it. At the time some of the Australian papers slanged me for having given this speech to their soldiers, but I felt that it needed saying, and several of their officers thanked me warmly, saying that as they never saw anything save their own front, they were all of them losing their sense of proportion. I shall not easily forget that speech, I standing on a mound in the rain, the Australian soldiers with cloaks swathed round them like brigands, and half a dozen aeroplanes, returning from the battle, circling overhead, evidently curious as to what was going on. It seems to me now like some extraordinary dream.
The Australian papers picked up on the very famous Doyle's interactions with the soldiers. Here's a contemporary report of the visit - Doyle was certainly extremely close to the battle:
Thu 3 Oct 1918
Sir Joseph Cook, Minister for the Navy, and Sir A. Conan Doyle visited the very centre of the battleground, within 250 yards of Bellicourt. and obtained probably the closest view of a battle it has ever been possible for a Minister of the Crown to see. The Australians were exceedingly interested in Sir A. Conan Doyle, whom all know as the author of "Sherlock Holmes." Both Sir Joseph Cook and Sir A. Conan Doyle addressed the troops later behind the battlefield. The Minister for the Navy gave them a message from the people" at home.
Here's an example that highlight's Doyle's meeting with the prominent official Australian war historian C.E.W. Bean, and touches on Doyle's non-official military dress when visiting the front:
Tue 22 Jul 1919
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of 'Sherlock Holmes,' and the official British historian of the war, impressed the Diggers, said Mr. Bean at the Journalists' Institute lunch in Sydney on Thursday, more than any other casual newspaperman. When he met Mr. Bean, Conan Doyle was wearing a uniform that looked like a field marshal's, and in answer to Mr. Bean's eager inquiry, said that it was the uniform of a deputy-lieutenant of an English county.
"But why do you wear it?" Mr. Bean risked.
"I thought it would be useful to get past sentries in," Conan Doyle naively replied.
"And it was," said Mr. Bean. "The Diggers took him for Haig ; and though the Digger does not take overmuch pains in saluting, he never missed Conan Doyle. The novelist blushed every time an Australian saluted.
"They're not saluting me, are they?'' he nervously asked.
"Well, what do you think, in those things?" So Conan Doyle had to return in-
numerable salutes.
"Well," he said, "this chap has deserved the salute, anyway."
Once the Diggers knew that he was Sherlock Holmes, he got a reception equalled only by that given to General Birdwood.
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