Beaten Down By Blood

by Michele Bomford

  Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Morshead, 33rd Battalion. (AWM H19231)

  Orders were constantly amended. The men at some stage reached their objective on the Feuillaucourt–Bouchavesnes road, but in the confusion and disorganisation they could not hold on. At 6.00 pm they were meant to push and capture this objective before being relieved by the 11th Brigade and the message came through that ‘we will not be able to bother about rations’. The men were to have a hot meal when the long and painstaking relief was finally carried out. However, the brigadier relented and the attack was cancelled. The 38th had no idea whether the 43rd Battalion had passed through it or not. The 38th Battalion sources could only write of the ‘miscarriage of this attack’, an understatement to say the least.33

  The 40th Battalion appears to have ‘carried’ the 38th to a large extent, taking the strong point of Cléry Copse and pushing ahead from shell hole to shell hole, from ridge to gully, reaching the road in advance of the 38th —the battalion it was meant to support. In one case a party of the 40th came across a German and took a shot at him, at the sound of which ‘a row of heads appeared above the bank in the road’. A Lewis gun ‘swept the top of the bank, and all the heads disappeared, some undoubtedly damaged’.

  However, the 40th, too, was unable to hold the position and when the 11th Brigade finally moved up, it found that its start line for operations on 1 September had not been secured. On coming out of the line, every man in the 10th Brigade welcomed the excellent meal, warm blankets, cigarettes and biscuits that awaited him, and the men of the 40th, at least, were very pleased with themselves. The 40th’s battalion history attests that the men had not rested or slept for four days and on the night of August 31 some men ‘fell forward asleep half out of their trenches and shell-holes, with their rifles still in their hands’, while others looked towards the enemy ‘with eyes red and sore from lack of sleep’.34

  The attack had driven the Germans from the crest of the Bouchavesnes ridge, but there was still work to be done before it could be declared captured. The Australians had met tenacious opponents who intended to hold the ground as long as possible; field guns distributed singly were only put out of action by bayoneting the gunners and numerous machine-guns had made the advance difficult and dangerous.

  All kinds of war cries

  At 11.10 pm on the night of 30 August the final plan for the attack on Mont St Quentin reached the 5th Brigade battalion commanders at Cléry, to be scribbled down over a crackly telephone line on a torn piece of envelope ‘in the flickering light of a candle’.35 The company commanders did not receive their orders until the early hours of 31 August. The attack would go in at 5.00 am — Australians always preferred to attack just before dawn and indeed this had become common practice throughout the BEF by 1918. Troops could be assembled in battle order under the cover of darkness but there would be some light when the attack went in, avoiding confusion and loss of direction. There would be no creeping barrage but rather an artillery bombardment of key points in three stages.

  The 20th Battalion, on the left and in position with time to take a short rest, would seize the line of the Péronne–Bapaume road down the northern slope of the Mont and take Feuillaucourt. In the centre, the 17th Battalion would swing south from its assembly position to hug the river, wheel left and face Mont St Quentin straight on. The 17th was to seize the village and the woods close to the summit. The 19th Battalion, unaware until 1.30 am that it would be involved in the attack and considering it ‘a pretty hopeless job’, crossed the river at Ommiécourt in ‘single file over planks’ and under adverse conditions.36 The railway embankment along the river, the quarries and the steep hill facings were shelled by heavy artillery and the exact positions of German posts were unknown. The 19th experienced great difficulty getting through thick barbed wire entanglements, but was in position on time to support the right of the 17th which had only arrived at its assembly position with an hour or so to spare. The 18th Battalion was in reserve.

  The men gathered at their assembly points in the early hours of the morning of 31 August waiting for zero hour on what promised to be a dull and drizzly day. Bean writes that ‘the task ahead was in some ways the most formidable ever faced by Australian infantry.’37 But their spirits were high. While the men had not had a hot meal, at 3.00 am an issue of ‘Black Charlie’ (rum) arrived. Rum was not usually issued until after an attack, but on this occasion no effort had been spared — particularly by the 17th Battalion’s commander Major Leslie Fussell — with runners sent to ‘anybody’s’ headquarters to find the rum which Fussell deemed necessary just to keep the men awake. Constantly on the move since 28 August, the men of the 17th ‘were so fatigued and sleepy that even officers almost fell asleep standing up’ and one officer actually did fall asleep while the operation orders were being read.38

  At about 4.00 am the 20th Battalion left the assembly trench and moved along the Péronne road until it passed the wire. The battalion then filed across the open ground in front of Mont St Quentin reaching its allotted position on the tape. It extended its formation to link with the 3rd Division on its left and the 17th Battalion, also moving into position towards the railway and the Somme marshes, on its right, a precise and disciplined movement. The men had 2500 yards of open ground to cross in order to reach their objective.

  Just as dawn was breaking behind Mont St Quentin, the barrage commenced, ‘something terrible and a beautiful sight to see’ according to Percy Morris, but not forming ‘a mark in time or place’ for Captain Ernest Manefield of the 17th, who was to win the MC for his part in this battle. Using the Mont as its landmark and guide, the ‘fleet-footed, invincible warriors’ of the 5th Brigade stood straight up and charged forward in one line, meeting strong resistance and fierce machine-gun fire, but suffering few casualties. The men descended into a dip with a few rows of trees and some marshy ground, probably the bed of the Tortille River. In Mark Lowndes’ words, they ‘quickly dislodged the enemy from a trench in front of this marsh, and at this place the boys advanced shouting and yelling all kinds of war cries.’ Percy Morris recalled that ‘the boys started off like a lot of squealing, yelling hounds; one would have thought it was a stock yard broke loose.’ The 17th, astride the Cléry–Péronne road, went into the attack ‘yelling like bushrangers’. This tactic, ‘an old man’ with the 5th Brigade, was sheer bluff designed to disguise the fact that its numbers were in reality very small — the force that attacked at 5.00 am on 31 August numbered fewer than 1000 men.

  The surprised and terrified Germans, believing they were being assaulted by a larger force, ran ‘until they could not run any more’ although their artillery responded with a furious 5.9-inch barrage which the Australians passed through before encountering more machine-gun fire and whizz-bangs from a battery hidden in the trees, which was quickly put out of action. The 20th suffered some casualties but, ‘with marvellous daring’, the men advanced up the gentle slope. The 17th and 20th battalions faced thick belts of wire and Percy Morris declared that ‘of course there was some small talk [cursing and swearing] being used amongst the lads’. Boots were ribboned and trousers and tunics torn to shreds.

  The Australians had advanced so fast that they caught up with their own barrage and had to wait on the edge of Gottlieb Trench for it to lift. According to Percy, they sat on the parados ‘shaking hands, smoking cigarettes, the boys from the 17th, 19th and 20th, all old comrades in arms. They greeted one another to such an extent that you would have thought they were having a brothers’ meeting.’ Some went chasing after Germans with their bayonets, ‘souveniring’ them and sending them back to the rear.39

  At about 6.00 am the advance resumed. Rushing the trenches with bombs, rifles, bayonets and Lewis guns, yelling and cheering, the Australians pressed on, the defenders running before them ‘like sheep’. The Germans on the Mont could be seen scurrying backwards and forwards mounting their guns like ‘a regular beehive disturbed’.40 The headquarters of the 94th Infantry Regiment barely escaped to
the southern edge of the wood and a young prisoner from the Alexander Regiment captured by the 20th Battalion remarked that he and his comrades were taken completely by surprise and did not even have time to man their machine-guns before being surrounded on three sides.41 One man from the 94th Infantry Regiment defending the Mont described how his men were woken up when the attackers were within 150 yards and just had time to take up their rifles and line the edge of the village.42 The 20th Battalion reportedly walked to its objective and sent a patrol 200 yards in advance towards the Tortille River. They captured Feuillaucourt and some parties engaged in hand-to-hand fighting to push the defenders back into the ruins of Mont St Quentin village. By 8.15 am the 5th Brigade had suffered only 80 casualties.

  Morris, the laconic Aussie digger, told a wonderful tale of capturing a German doctor, eight stretcher-bearers and a cook ‘all huddled up in a dugout’ in a tunnel under the road, which was about 30 feet high. The doctor came out, somewhat unwillingly, holding a dixie of hot German coffee and Morris ‘being parched for something to wet my lips’ took it from him with a ‘thanks’. He soon had Australians gathered around him thinking it was rum. This may have been the same doctor who later worked tirelessly at the 17th Battalion’s regimental aid post (RAP), tending the wounded from both sides and acquiring the ‘wholesome respect’ of his Australian counterpart.43

  The 17th Battalion headed straight for the village, working in small parties to rout the Germans from holes and the corners of ruins. Its instructions were to leave mopping up until later and ‘simply go for Mont St Quentin and get there’, but Captain Herbert Allan of A Company considered Halle and Park Wood too dangerous to leave, the latter ‘simply populated by machine gunners’. As his men worked in small groups to clear these strongpoints, he saw the other three companies assaulting the Mont in what he described as ‘a regular old-fashioned charge’. He saw the village taken at about 6.30 am, his own company now suffering heavy casualties from machine-gun fire from Prague and Florina Trenches. The Germans also began to shell Park Wood. Allan established a post at the corner of Agram and Save Trenches which he held with 15 men, two Lewis guns and one German machine-gun until reinforced by a platoon from the 18th Battalion in the afternoon. The enemy believed the post to be stronger than it was and came ‘creeping up on all sides’ but failed to take it.44

  Private Charlie Skinner, from the vineyards of South Australia, described his experience of the battle in an interview recorded when he was 89. Charlie was in the Lewis gun section of 1 Platoon, A Company, 17 Battalion and was number 1 on the gun but, in the general disorganisation on 31 August, he lost touch with most of his section. As it grew light he realised that there was very little cover and plenty of wire in front, so he and two mates made for a ruined building under intense machine-gun fire. He worked round the flank of an enemy machine-gun post which was holding up a platoon, putting the gun out of action and then, using his Lewis gun to protect the left flank, remained in place until the position became secure. Charlie was hit in the chest, but the bullet struck a Mills bomb in his left top pocket cracking it from top to bottom — fortunately, the bomb didn’t explode. Only his arm was wounded and his mates tied it up with a yard of gun cleaner. He believed that he and the two men with him were the first to reach the Mont, but he had to go out because his arm was bleeding badly. Some Prussian Guard prisoners went back with him and ‘we were told afterwards that this Prussian Guard mob had volunteered to stop us. Anyhow I had four who didn’t.’ Charlie was awarded the MM for his actions on Mont St Quentin.45

  Portrait of the officers of the 20th Battalion taken on 26 June 1918. Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Forbes is fourth from left front row and Major John McDonald is fourth from right front row. Captain John Broadbent (second from left front row) and Lieutenant William Guard (third from right front row) were both company commanders at Mont St Quentin. Chaplain Robert Crawford is front row right and Lieutenant Daniel Anthon stands second from right back row. (AWM EO2594)

  Reports included in Fourth Army and Australian Corps records assert that the Australian flag was hoisted on the Mont, and this became part of the legend, if not the fact, of the battle.46 The Australians took hundreds of prisoners — the 20th Battalion alone claimed 800 — Herbert Allan remarking that it was like ‘the mob leaving the Sydney Cricket Ground after a football final’.47 According to Percy Morris, prisoners were treated fairly, although this was not always true for every stage of the battle.48 Men behind the lines kept accurate tallies of prisoners and captured materiel, both considered the ‘trophies’ of battle.

  At around 8.00 am the 17th Battalion linked up with the 20th. The line ran through the closest trenches to the main road, perhaps forward of Elsa Trench. However, the parties were isolated and disconnected because they lacked sufficient men to form a continuous line. In a quarry on the northern side of the Mont, men from the 17th Battalion captured 12 Germans from a cartography section and a number of valuable maps. There were frequent unsuccessful German raids against 5th Brigade positions in the morning —Private William Miller from the 17th Battalion recorded three raids before 9.00 am.49

  The 17th Battalion never regarded its position in the village as secure, particularly once the Germans began to shell it at around 11.30 am. Around this time the defenders launched a serious counter-attack against the 17th and the 19th battalions on the right, working round the flank of the 19th Battalion and attempting to create a gap between the 17th and the 20th battalions. Hundreds of Germans advanced under an enormous barrage of every type of missile including minenwerfers and whizz-bangs, heavy artillery and two anti-tank guns. Frank Brewer commented that there was a hostile machine-gun to every 100 square yards of ground and that ‘their bullets swept across the field like a hailstorm’. Frederick Forbes, commanding the 20th Battalion, deployed the companies of the 18th Battalion and Brewer described the action in stirring Homeric style, writing that

  … the enemy was detected creeping down through the long grass from the northern side of the hill. Well in the rear a dense column of Germans, four deep, could be seen coming into action. They marched up a main road, using the Mont St Quentin wood as a screen. As the grey column approached our front line, it split into three waves. …The annihilation of the 5th Brigade seemed inevitable. The reserve Battalion now came into the fray … Undeterred by hosts of machine guns, rattling in their mad minstrelsy, the gallant 18th Battalion flung itself against the German ranks and lashed them with bombs and bayonets while the Lewis gunners, with inimitable bravery and great resolution, sprayed the enemy without intermission. They shattered the line of tall German Guardsmen, dashing across the bodies of the slain, the 18th Battalion swept up the slope and bridged the gap, which movements cut off the attacking force.50

  Nonetheless, the 17th Battalion suffered heavy losses, with one company losing all its officers, and was forced to give ground, withdrawing to the area of Elsa Trench, 80 yards from the Mont St Quentin–Péronne road. Here it gallantly defended the position against five attempts by the Germans to take it, with two machine-guns and eight Lewis guns, desperately short of all types of ammunition including rifle grenades and bombs and, for a short time, forced to wear gas masks.

  Whether the 17th Battalion continued to hold the village is unclear, although Edward Martin believed it still held the western edge. The Australians were convinced that, had the Alexander Regiment of the 2nd Guard Division been in the line longer than a few hours they would not have allowed ‘a man to get across the slopes north of Halle wood’. The 17th Battalion shared the view of the 19th and 20th that ‘no one at the start thought there was a ghost of a chance’.51 Now they were determined to hold on.

  On the right, the 19th Battalion, short of its objective in Uber Alles and Gott Mit Uns Trenches, had established itself in trenches facing the village. These were shallow in many parts and under fire from the ruined houses. There were machine-guns in breaches in the long brick wall running parallel with the road in front of Elsa Trench. A big mine wa
s hit by an Australian shell, causing a huge explosion on the right. The position of the 19th Battalion was also precarious, ‘as there were no troops on the right flank’.52 At around 3.00 pm, Forbes deployed two companies of the 18th Battalion in Galatz and Agram Alleys to bolster the 19th and attempt to clear Anvil Wood —the attempt failed. The 10th Brigade had not moved up on the left of the attack, creating a gap of 1000 yards along the Canal du Nord between the 38th Battalion and the 20th Battalion.

  Incredibly, Rosenthal extended the 5th Brigade objectives during the morning, admittedly in the belief that the Mont was firmly in Australian hands. The men of the 18th and 19th battalions were expected to advance a further 2500 yards and form a line from St Denis Wood to Cardinal Wood, the former so strongly defended that it was not captured until 5 September. Even more remarkably, the 19th Battalion was reprimanded in the afternoon for not having achieved this objective. Finally a runner delivered Brigade Order 149 — written on a piece of cardboard and considered an excellent souvenir by men from the 18th Battalion — instructing the 5th Brigade to hold its positions and wait for an attack by the 6th Brigade that night.53

  A 1915 photograph of Edward Martin (second from left), the 5th Brigade commander at Mont St Quentin and Henry Goddard (centre) who commanded the 9th Brigade on the Bouchavesnes ridge. In this photograph Goddard is a lieutenant colonel commanding the 17th Battalion with Martin, a major, his second-in-command. (AWM PO5367.010)

  At 3.15 pm, Second Lieutenant Albert Napper wrote on a scrap of paper that D Company, 19 Battalion, was in a desperate situation on the right flank. It was being heavily strafed with ‘pineapple’ bombs by Germans immediately to its front. By 4.00 pm Napper was dead, shot by a sniper, to be buried where he fell near the old brick wall at the head of Uber Alles Trench. At around 5.00 pm Lieutenant Edwin Hall of B Company warned of the danger of encirclement, having seen Germans moving from Anvil Wood into the trenches behind the Australians. Close to the aerodrome, a 77-mm gun was firing point-blank in enfilade on the 19th’s position, doing a great deal of damage, while Mont St Quentin village and wood, which seemed to have fallen into German hands by about 4.40 pm, were causing trouble. Ammunition was urgently required and the battalion was calling for artillery support against Anvil Wood, the aerodrome and Mont St Quentin itself. At 7.00 pm D Company sent a desperate message for medical assistance and stretcher-bearers as it had six stretcher cases and four others requiring assistance. Obviously this was not forthcoming for, at 8.00 am on 1 September, D Company repeated its plea to help men who had ‘been lying here since yesterday afternoon [underlining in original]’.54