World War I

World War I was a global conflict centred in Europe that pitted the Allied Powers against the Central Powers.

World War I went from July 28th 1914 until November 11th 1918 (Armistice Day).

The trigger for this war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary by Gavrilo Princip on June 28th 1914.

Allied Powers: Great Britain, France, Russia (until 1917), Italy, Japan, and the United States (from 1917)

Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria

There was an estimated 15 to 22 million military and civilian deaths.

It involved Trench Warfare with prolonged stalemates along the Western Front fought from muddy, fortified ditch networks.

New military technology meant widespread use of machine guns, poison gas, tanks, military aircraft, and submarines (U-boats).

The aftermath was the collapse of four major dynasties (German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman) and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

Western Australia, as part of the Commonwealth of Australia, was officially committed to World War I on August 4, 1914.

When Britain declared war on Germany at 11 p.m. on 4 August 1914 (London time), all dominions of the British Empire, including Australia, were automatically at war.  The official enlistment age for the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) was generally 18 to 45 years. While volunteers could join at 18 with parental consent, the standard minimum age was often 21, and some younger men falsified their age to fight. Initial 1914 requirements were stricter, but upper age limits were raised to 45 by 1915.

A total of 32,231 individuals from Western Australia enlisted, representing 37.5% of males aged 18 to 44.

Nearly 6500 West Australians were killed as a result of their service in World War I, accounting for roughly 20 percent of those from the state who enlisted.  This number does not include those who died after returning from the war.

Many soldiers stayed on after Armistice Day to assist with clean up and demobilisation – the massive global process of returning millions of soldiers to civilian life, dismantling wartime economies, and shifting nations back to peacetime conditions.

By 1916, the pressure on the men of Subiaco to enlist was immense, with twice as many West Australians in favour of conscription as were against it as reflected in the 1916 and 1917 referendums.  Those who did not enlist were often harassed by the families of those who did with white feathers deposited in letter boxes to indicate cowardice.  At recruitment drives, they would sing “We Don’t Want to Lose You, but We Think You Ought to Go” and there was an unwritten consensus that at least one member of a family should enlist.  It is estimated that ten percent of Subiaco’s entire population enlisted and therefore absent from the district throughout the war years.

Spillman, Ken, Identity Prized: A History of Subiaco, (University of Western Australia Press for the City of Subiaco, 1985). p. 203

Many Senior Cadets or those turning 18 began enlisting.

Soldiers in WWI

William Edward Harrison

Gallipoli to Tripoli

Browning, Neville, Gill, Ian, Gallipoli to Tripoli, (Hesperian, 2012)

History of the 10th Light horse Regiment A.I.F. 1914 – 1919

ANZAC Mounted Division Band 1917

ANZAC Mounted Divison Band parading on donkeys 1917 Palestine – courtesy The Australian War Memorial

ANZAC Mounted Division Band Palestine

Person

DARGIE, Horrie

Horace Andrew (Horrie) Dargie (1917–1999)

by Ray Grieve

This article was published online in 2024

Horace Andrew (Horrie) Dargie (1917–1999), musician, entertainer, and production director, was born on 7 July 1917 at Footscray, Melbourne, younger son of Andrew Dargie, tally clerk, and his wife Adelaide Mary, née Sargent, both Victorian born. Horrie attended Footscray Technical School. At the age of ten his father had given him a basic diatonic mouth organ. The boy was inspired by the American entertainer Larry Adler who in the mid-1930s achieved worldwide renown through recordings and Hollywood films, playing a more sophisticated and versatile Hohner brand chromatic harmonica. Dargie acquired a chromatic and developed his own unique style. He also became a proficient clarinettist and saxophonist.

In 1937 Dargie won the P. and A. (Professional and Amateur) Parade competition on the Melbourne radio station 3KZ and began to work professionally in local dance bands. He toured for the Australian Broadcasting Commission as a soloist, and in May 1938 was a guest artist with the Jim Davidson ABC Dance Band. After the tour he moved to Sydney, where Davidson’s Dandies provided the accompaniment for Dargie’s first solo recording, ‘There’s a Goldmine in the Sky’ and ‘Rosalie’/’In the Still of the Night’ (Regal Zonophone). More solo performances followed in Brisbane before he toured New Zealand, then returned to Sydney where he established the Horrie Dargie Harmonica School. He continued to play and promote the Hohner brand harmonica in advertisements for the next twenty years through the company’s Australian agent, Kurt Jacob and Co. Pty Ltd.

On 5 February 1940 Dargie married New South Wales-born Julie Babette Cheffirs, a journalist, at the Wesley Chapel, Sydney. That year he also formed the Rocking Reeds, a six-piece band which achieved immediate success on stage and radio. Harmonica jazz ensembles were becoming popular in Europe, and the group was one of the pioneers of the genre in Australia. The Rocking Reeds released six recordings in 1940 and 1941.

With the outbreak of World War II, many in Dargie’s group joined the armed forces. He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 13 November 1942, serving with the 3rd Armoured Division Concert Party then, from April 1945, the 1st Australian Entertainment Unit as musical director and variety performer. His engagements included New Guinea (1943–44) where Adler, who was entertaining American troops, invited the Australian on stage to perform, the pair having met in Australia when Adler was touring in 1938. Dargie also served in Darwin (1945) and, as a warrant officer, class two (1946), with the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan (1946–47).

After his discharge in March 1947, Dargie returned to Melbourne where he formed the Horrie Dargie Harlequintet. The group became famous in Australia and Europe, their shows featuring a variety of harmonica types, as well as vocals, guitar, bass, and comedy sketches. Their performance at the Sydney Town Hall in November 1952 was recorded and released on a ten-inch album, Horrie Dargie Concert (Diaphon), which sold seventy-five thousand copies and was recognised as Australia’s first gold album. In 1952 the band embarked on a five-year tour of Europe, based in England under the management of the Lew Grade Organisation. They appeared on radio and television, toured the Moss Empire Group’s chain of theatres in Britain, and performed in Austria, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and West Germany. After his divorce from Julie, on 13 March 1955 he married Betty Winifred Glew, a Victorian-born variety artiste, in the Hitchin registry office, Hertfordshire, England. That year he also contracted a serious case of polio and was hospitalised for six months in England. He eventually recovered sufficiently to rejoin the tour.

Back in Australia from 1958, Dargie’s group, variously called the Horrie Dargie Quintet or Quartet, or The Dargies, resumed performing in concerts and on television. In all, the group released sixteen ten- and twelve-inch albums, two of which featured Dargie as a harmonica soloist. Their 1957 cover of ‘The Green Door’ (Festival) was the group’s biggest selling recording. Dargie also took on new roles at Melbourne television station GTV-9 as a performer and manager of the talent division. There, and later at HSV-7, he compered national series The BP Super Show (1959–61) and The Price Is Right (1963), and having formed the production company DYT Productions, served as the production director on The Price Is Right, The Delo and Daly Show, Daly at Night, and The Go!! Show. He also composed and arranged music for shows and advertisements.

Betty died from breast cancer in August 1972, and on 22 May 1975 Dargie married Victorian-born Catherine Agnes Pattinson, an accounts clerk, in a civil ceremony at Wynnum, Queensland. Moving again to Sydney, he performed regularly as a soloist in clubs and aboard cruise ships. On his final cruise in February 1986, the liner MS Mikhail Lermontov sank off the coast of New Zealand. All passengers survived.

A modest man who described his many recordings as ‘just a way to make a living’ (Jinman 1996, 5), Dargie was nevertheless an exceptional musician and performer. Adler regarded him as one of the best four harmonica players in the world, and by one local account he was ‘Australia’s wizard of the harmonica’ who possessed ‘an appreciation of melody and an understanding of style that gives his numbers quality as well as musical beauty’ (Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers’ Advocate 1939, 4). In 1996 he was inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association Hall of Fame for the Horrie Dargie Concert album. His daughters from his second marriage, Lynne and Anne, followed him into show business, performing as the Dargie Sisters. He died of pulmonary emphysema on 30 August 1999 at Campbelltown, and was cremated; he was survived by Catherine, and Anne. Lynne had predeceased him in August 1997.

Research edited by Peter Woodley

Select Bibliography

  • Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers’ Advocate (Parramatta, NSW). ‘Australia’s Wizard of the Harmonica.’ 22 February 1939, 4
  • Dargie, Horrie. Interview by Bill Stephens, 23 June 1992. Sound recording. National Library of Australia
  • Grieve, Ray. A Band in a Waistcoat Pocket: The Story of the Harmonica in Australia. Sydney: Currency Press, 1995
  • Grieve, Ray. Boomerangs and Crackajacks: The Harmonica in Australia, 1825 to 1960. Macgregor, ACT: Ray Grieve, 2019
  • Jinman, Richard. ‘Hall of Fame Beckons Horrie and His Harmonica.’ Australian, 21–22 September 1996, 5
  • Wireless Weekly (Sydney). ‘First Got Break in P. and A. Parade.’ 8 March 1941, 10

Citation details

Ray Grieve, ‘Dargie, Horace Andrew (Horrie) (1917–1999)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/dargie-horace-andrew-horrie-33979/text42586, published online 2024, accessed online 22 September 2026.

Instruments

Years

ANZAC Mounted Division Band Palestine

Hidden among the familiar stories of the battles, suffering and sacrifice of the Australian Light Horse lies an extraordinary story of 30 soldiers who could fight, ride—and make music. These were no part-time entertainers. The musicians of the Anzac Mounted Division were fully trained soldiers who were expected to put down their instruments, tie up their donkeys, sling rifles over their shoulders and fight alongside their brigades when called upon.

From 2 September 1917 in Palestine, these remarkably multi-disciplined ANZAC soldiers began to form what became the ANZAC Mounted Division Band. More than a century later, the story of this largely forgotten ensemble is being pieced together through a remarkable combination of a single band photograph and the wartime diaries of one of its members, the solitary Western Australian soldier and musician William Edward Harrison of Subiaco.

As is the case with Harrison’s diary, it details rather dull facts coupled with remarkable ones.  Detailed daily army grind eventually whittles away to single sentences as conditions and the sheer challenge of staying alive become challenging.  Life revolves around food, letters from home and not being killed by a mortar shell or disease.  Teenage morals give way to necessity and Harrison lies, steals and boasts about survival feats that his parents would no doubt have punished him for back home in Subiaco.

Previously uncharacteristic behaviour is displayed by most band members as the war dictates their dreadful living conditions and their fragile mortality becomes evident.  Brushing shoulders with highly esteemed officers and royalty is mentioned in the same sentence as how much alcohol was consumed after a performance.  Passionate care of their equine partners is interspersed with violent assaults for a few oranges and what trumpet part was being performed that day.

Thirty ordinary blokes aged from 18 to 40 left Australia to fight for King and Country and were in the right place at the right time to throw together a functional band in Palestine.  The joy of being able to play music together was clearly evident and the acknowledgment through financial assistance and permanent appointment to Chauvel’s headquarters placed this unlikely group at the front to provide much needed morale to send ANZAC soldiers to battle.

William Harrison’s diary details 140 performances over 20 months from their appointment until 28th May 1919.  Details of disease, disciplinary action and tactical circumstances swell and reduce the band numbers, with Harrison’s choice on discharge from hospital to stay two extra few weeks preferring “to go back to the Unit” indicative of the bond that was formed.