22/04/2026
Reposting to give you some background on Sir John Monash.
If you've been to Australia, or known someone who has, the face on the $100 note has passed through your hands. Portrait on the reverse. A man in uniform, strong gaze, three rows of medal ribbons. Most people complete the transaction and think nothing more of it.
In May 1918, Lieutenant General John Monash was given command of the Australian Corps: five divisions, the largest single corps on the Western Front. No Australian had ever commanded at this level. Every previous commander had been British.
He was planning the Battle of Hamel when he called his final coordination meeting. Two hundred and fifty officers attended. The agenda ran to 133 items. The meeting lasted four and a half hours. When the last item was resolved, no further change to the plan was permitted by anyone. The battle on 4 July 1918 lasted 93 minutes. Monash had calculated 90. Every objective taken. General Rawlinson distributed Monash's battle plans to every British divisional commander on the Western Front as the new operational standard. Field Marshal Montgomery wrote later that Monash was "the best general on the western front in Europe" and that the war might have ended sooner, with fewer casualties, had Haig been replaced by him.
What those plans contained was something even the men inside them couldn't see. In the days before the assault, Monash had ordered his artillery to fire a mixture of smoke and gas on the German line, repeatedly, until the pattern was fixed in the enemy's body. On the morning of the attack he ordered only smoke. The soldiers across the line reached for their masks and blinded themselves at the exact moment the Australian infantry crossed. The men advancing didn't know this had been designed for them. They just found the enemy unable to see.
Australia's Official War Correspondent Charles Bean recorded in his diary, as cited in official histories, that "we do not want Australia represented by men mainly because of their ability, natural and inborn in Jews, to push themselves," and then conspired with journalist Keith Murdoch to have Monash removed as corps commander before those battles were fought. Prime Minister Hughes came to the front, consulted senior officers, watched Monash work, and changed his mind. Monash knew about the plot. He didn't respond. He went back to his desk.
After the Armistice he accepted a role with no glory in it: Director-General of Repatriation and Demobilisation. He spent eight months in London bringing 160,000 men home, and while the ships were being loaded he designed an education scheme that sent soldiers to British universities and industrial placements while they waited. He called it reconstruction morale. Nobody had asked him to build it. When veterans urged him during the Depression to lead a political movement, he refused in writing: "The only hope for Australia is the ballot-box, and an educated electorate." He instructed that his tombstone bear only the words John Monash.
That face on the $100 note. You've held it without looking at it. Now you know whose it is
