Beaten Down By Blood

by Michele Bomford

  Headstone of Second Lieutenant Albert Napper, 19th Battalion, in Péronne Community Cemetery Extension. Napper was killed in action on 31 August near the old brick wall on Mont St Quentin. Photo by the author, May 2010.

  German bullets found by Stephen Bomford near the old brick wall, Mont St Quentin, May 2010, photo by the author.

  For the 6th Machine Gun Company, which advanced with the 5th Brigade, conditions were difficult and the company initially lost touch with the infantry because of the heavy loads its gunners had to carry, the broken ground and the speed of the advance. The company had been forced to unload its limbers near Cléry, manhandling its load, including rations and water, for the remainder of the operation. Section 1, attached to the 19th Battalion, combined with infantry bombs and rifle fire to stop a German raid on the battalion positions in the morning and was kept busy all day. Private Victor Esmond, with only two men left unwounded in his team, brought his machine-gun to bear on the enemy from a trench without even mounting it on its tripod, and successfully silenced the opposition. The infantry was then able to barricade the trench. In the afternoon, Esmond moved his gun into a shell hole from which he fired on a field gun some 800 yards away which was enfilading the right flank. He also succeeded in silencing it, possibly killing the crew, as the German gun remained inactive and unattended. By evening, Esmond and just one other man were left manning their gun and remained vigilant during the night.

  The 20th Battalion faced a determined counter-attack, reportedly by 1000 Germans, along its exposed left flank in the afternoon. This probably occurred around 4.00 pm when John McDonald sent a message to Frederick Forbes that help was required immediately on the flanks as the Germans were working around through the trenches and firing into the back of the 20th, which was also under enfilade fire from the north. Casualties were mounting and the men were exhausted.55

  At around 5.00 pm, however, the 20th Battalion was forced to withdraw, initially to a position 250 yards to the rear of the Péronne–Feuillaucourt road and then further back to Oder or Gottlieb Trenches. Some of those wounded in capturing Feuillaucourt were left in dugouts lining the road. Percy Morris was tending the men in one dugout when the 20th pulled back. He had no rifle, as it had been blown to pieces. When he emerged, he found that everyone had left the bank on the side of the road. His equipment was destroyed when a sniper’s bullet ripped into his tunic pocket. In making for Halle, he found Daniel Anthon in a trench, probably Gottlieb, with the remaining men of his platoon. Anthon had used a machine-gun to keep the enemy at bay so his men could withdraw safely, and was one of the last men to retire as the 20th Battalion pulled back, firing at the Germans as he went. He thought Morris had been killed just before he tumbled into the trench. On 1 September, once the 6th Brigade had passed through, a few of the men went back to Percy’s dugout and tended the wounded. They found six Germans there who had treated the Australians well, giving them hot coffee.56

  Remains of the old brick wall, Mont St Quentin, May 2010, photo by the author.

  Morris, who had faced court martial for being several months absent without leave earlier in 1918, was awarded the MM for acting as a runner, carrying dispatches to battalion headquarters throughout the day under very heavy machine-gun fire and tending the wounded despite being in considerable danger himself. Although wounded in the withdrawal, a point he overlooks in his account, he remained on duty until the battalion moved back in relief.

  Anthon was also honoured for his actions on 30/31 August, receiving the DSO, quite an achievement for a lieutenant. He had previously won the MC at the Battle of the Menin Road in 1917 and was to receive a bar to the MC for actions on the Hindenburg Line in October 1918. His final honour was a mention in Haig’s despatches. ‘Tubby’ Anthon began his service with the AIF as a 24-year-old private in 1915, sailed with John McDonald on the Berrima in June 1915, served at Gallipoli and was wounded three times on the Western Front. He remained with the 20th Battalion throughout.

  In all, there were at least ten counter-attacks against the 5th Brigade on 31 August. Despite these continued assaults, the brigade maintained its grip on Mont St Quentin with what was, by the evening, a tiny force of fewer than 600 men. These remnants were spread unevenly along Uber Alles, Elsa, Moineville, Oder and Gottlieb Trenches to the Canal du Nord, with posts in Gott Mit Uns and Save Trenches. Some members of the 17th Battalion may have been even further forward in newly dug trenches not marked on the maps. At 3.00 am on 1 September the men in Gottlieb knew there was a company ‘out ahead there somewhere’, perhaps referring to the men who sheltered in Feuillaucourt throughout the night.57

  In reality, the 5th Brigade had not given a great deal of ground. The men’s greatest concern was envelopment, so their Vickers and Lewis guns had been well sited to deal with this threat. Artillery support was very sporadic. The Germans, mostly troops of the 2nd Guard Division which enjoyed a formidable reputation as an assault unit, had pierced the line in many places, but the line had not broken, causing them to be greatly dispirited. What is even more remarkable is that the Australians held on through the night of August 31, which was, fortunately, fairly quiet, and the morning of 1 September. The men of the 20th, at least, were tired but ‘extraordinarily cheerful’.58

  The 20th Battalion was officially left with six officers and 125 other ranks, although Frank Brewer attested that, following the battle, only 96 men answered the roll and the 5th Brigade itself was only 300 strong.59 If Percy Morris is to be believed, A Company had dwindled from 82 men of all ranks to one officer and 17 other ranks.60 Monash was pleased with the 5th Brigade’s achievements; it had done untold damage to the Germans and established positions from which further attacks could be launched against them. In the aftermath of the battle, he singled the brigade out for special commendation.

  The 19th Battalion remained in the line until 4.00 pm on 1 September to assist the advance of the 6th Brigade — the 6th Machine Gun Company continued in support. On the morning of 1 September, Victor Esmond sighted an enemy machine-gun some 400 yards away. He kept it busy while the infantry worked around the flanks, then stopped firing at a prearranged point so the men could rush and capture the gun. Esmond, a 32-year-old baker from Footscray in Victoria, received no recognition for his work on 31 August and 1 September. By 2 September the 6th Machine Gun Company, with the 5th Brigade, was in relief. The men were tired and sore from carrying tripods and other gear. However, they netted some huge eels in the Somme River and the men prepared for a feast, only to be disappointed. Without salt, the eels were unpalatable, ‘like eating “vitalised mud”’.61

  Frank Brewer, both before and after the war, was a journalist from Brisbane. In 1917, just before embarking for France, the 33 year old married Murielle Jamieson and received news on 16 January 1918 that she had given birth to a baby girl. Frank, a private in the 20th Battalion, kept notes and a diary. Preserving them was often difficult in France, so he would send some notes home, send others to friends in England and would always lodge the remaining notes with the chaplain before going into action. Brewer was not at Mont St Quentin, but his diary reveals that he devoted weeks to investigating the battle, including ‘walking the ground’ with Mark Lowndes on 15 September, as the men who were there were so proud of their achievement.

  On his return to ‘the gallant 20th’ on 6 September, Frank ‘learned of the death of many of my comrades, some of whom had been my personal friends’ and sought some means to honour them.62 The result was a series of superb accounts related to him by the men who fought —most initially recorded in Pitman script (shorthand) to be transcribed later. Frank then synthesised the material in order to write his own ‘story’ in 1919. It is doubtlessly coloured by his particular perspective on events and the use of journalistic licence, but nonetheless brings the action of those days at the end of August 1918 alive in an incomparable way. Brewer was adamant that ‘the spirit should not be forgotten’ and the stories he recorded embody that spirit and the ‘heroic’ and ‘legendary�
� aspects of this battle.63

  I would not lose it for all the world

  The 24th Battalion RAP, the front-line medical service and part of the 6th Australian Field Ambulance attached to the 6th Brigade, moved up with the 24th Battalion under heavy shellfire on 31 August. Major Donald Coutts, a young doctor from Boort in Victoria and the 24th Battalion’s RMO, wrote of the difficulties getting carts through shell holes and across trenches, forcing them to abandon the cart and the wheeled stretcher at Cléry and carry as much as they could. Coutts set up the RAP in Lost Ravine — the deep cutting made for the unfinished Canal du Nord just to the south-east of Cléry — in a tunnel around 15 feet long with two entrances connected by a passage which lacked any form of joist or supporting beam. The tunnel had recently been evacuated by the Germans and was in a filthy state. After cleaning it up, Coutts treated the wounded continuously for 52 hours under shellfire, wearing a gas mask for about five hours, with the tunnel full of dust and phosphorous fumes and dodging stones falling from the roof.

  Captain Robert Crawford, the 20th Battalion’s chaplain, conducting a burial service at Herbecourt, 31 August 1918. (AWM EO3092)

  The night of 31 August saw some severe wounds — broken limbs, head wounds, abdominal wounds — mostly caused by 5.9-inch shells. During the night, Coutts attached as many as 20 splints to damaged limbs. Around 10.30 pm he operated on two men, amputating one man’s arm at the shoulder and using a razor to amputate the second man’s leg through the right thigh and putting his other leg, almost severed at the knee joint, in a splint. On 1 September, however, wounds were less severe, most caused by machine-gun fire; a number of the wounded were German.64 The war diary of the 6th Australian Field Ambulance, based at Cappy, specified the increase in the number of wounded it treated during the battle: five officers, 63 other ranks, six prisoners on 30/31 August; to 19 officers, 169 other ranks, 77 prisoners on 31 August /1 September; to 19 officers, 282 other ranks and 40 prisoners on 1/2 September, figures indicative of the nature of the fighting.65

  Coutts praised the work of the stretcher-bearers who went out in the open, often under machine-gun or shellfire, to dress wounds and bring in the wounded. For his work, and one particular act of bravery when he rescued several men from a dugout on which a shell had burst, Coutts was awarded the DSO.

  On 1 September, a 5th Brigade man, a Lewis gunner from C Company, 19 Battalion, came through the 6th Field Ambulance. He was suffering from a gunshot or shell wound to his left thigh. On 31 August the man had been holding a post against heavy German minenwerfer and shellfire and inflicted severe casualties on them, despite having his post blown out twice and being slightly wounded and badly shaken. He carried on, regardless of personal danger and the wounding of his comrades around him, until wounded more severely.66 After preliminary treatment, he was transferred to the 20th Casualty Clearing Station at Heilly where he died of his wounds on 5 September. He was awarded the MM for his bravery.

  The Lewis gunner’s name was Roy Brewer. He was born at Gunning but, in 1916 when he enlisted, he was living near Forbes in western New South Wales. Frank and Martha, Roy’s parents, were required to give their permission for their son to enlist in 1916, as he was just 18 years old. He was of average height, with a fresh complexion, hazel eyes and dark brown hair. He had worked as a labourer before the war and had two brothers — one only three years old — and two sisters. Roy joined his unit on the Western Front in December 1916 and from then until his death wrote regularly to ‘my dear parents’, ‘with best love to all from your loving son’. He had been wounded twice previously, suffering a gunshot wound to the thigh at Bullecourt in May 1917 and a severe gassing near Villers-Bretonneux in April 1918, which saw him hospitalised in England. He rejoined his unit on 15 August and in his last letter home on August 18, mentioned the good work ‘the boys’ had done and how far they had advanced in his absence.67 When Roy Brewer died of the wounds he received at Mont St Quentin he was just 20.

  The pain suffered by Roy’s family was palpable. By April 1919 they had moved to a property, tellingly called ‘Péronne’, near West Wyalong in New South Wales. It took a long time and much correspondence for them to receive his MM, Frank refusing to send the authorities the original notification ‘for I would not lose it for all the world, even if we never receive the medal’. In addition to the three photographs of the grave sent free of charge to next-of-kin, Frank requested three more at his own expense and was distressed when, in 1929, he was told that it was not the policy of the government to supply relatives with photographs of the permanent headstones and it would take a lengthy administrative process to buy them. Roy was buried in a shared grave at Heilly Station Cemetery near Corbie. His family’s grief must have been compounded in 1918 when his personal effects were returned to them — his identity disc, photos, notebook, testament, safety razor and blades, a damaged metal watch and letters among them.68

  CHAPTER 5:

  TO DIE GOING FORWARD –1 SEPTEMBER 1918

  The charge of the 6th Brigade

  The 6th Brigade did not simply materialise from the marshes of the Somme on the first day of autumn to retake Mont St Quentin. At 8.00 am on 31 August, Rosenthal ordered the exploitation of the 5th Brigade’s success and the 6th was instructed to cross the Somme, pass through the 5th Brigade and continue the attack. The 6th crossed the river by a pontoon bridge and footway constructed by the 6th Field Company, Australian Engineers, at Buscourt, between Ommiécourt and Feuillères, and then proceeded through Cléry, following in the footsteps of the 5th Brigade the day before.

  There were so many troops gathering near Cléry — the 14th and 7th brigades were also crossing the river — that there was a ‘troop jam’, a dangerous bottleneck in an area subject to heavy shelling by the Germans. Private Cleve Potter of the 21st Battalion considered it ‘a bewilderment, a marvel and a miracle’ that anyone could survive in ‘this shell-swept area.’ As he watched ‘platoon after platoon, company after company, battalion after battalion’ cross the river and saunter along ‘the shell-torn road’, the 21st huddled for eight hours in a railway cutting under the ‘most merciless bombardment’.1 Indeed, Potter’s account of the shelling near Cléry was not unique. Obviously the Germans realised that there was a troop concentration there and launched ‘a murderous and destructive barrage’.2 However, this did not prevent the diggers playing cards on the bank of the Somme, exchanging news, telling jokes and commenting on the ‘distasteful odour’ floating about the old German trenches as the shells burst above them.3

  The 6th Brigade was to deploy that afternoon to pass through the 5th Brigade and exploit forward. The 14th Brigade would follow it to capture the high ground beyond, thus providing a right flank for the 5th Brigade. However, the 23rd, the lead battalion of the 6th Brigade, was held up by strong German resistance. No-one else could advance until the 23rd’s ‘mopping up’ was complete. Doubt also surrounded the precise whereabouts of the 14th Brigade. By evening, any attempt to exploit the 5th Brigade gains had ground to a halt, the offensive to be resumed at 6.00 am on 1 September, ‘an hour too late’ for the Australians who preferred a dawn attack at around 5.00 am. In this adjustment to the plan, troops of the 14th Brigade would mop up all the ground between the Mont and Péronne and capture the town itself, while the 6th Brigade battalions would retake Mont St Quentin. For the men of the 5th Brigade, clinging grimly to their hard-won positions, this was ‘too late to do good’ and it was certainly too late to ‘push on’ — something they might have considered had reinforcements been forthcoming.4

  The 24th Battalion, which was to attack on the left on 1 September, was in Gottlieb Trench by 6.30 pm on 31 August, intensely crowded and under fire. Second Lieutenant Percy Smythe, who won the MC for his actions in this battle, recorded in his diary that he had just settled his platoon in the trench when word came of a heap of dead and wounded men to the left. Percy considered that these men had suffered a direct hit, probably from a heavy 9.2-inch shell and ‘the carnage was awful. Dead
, wounded, and dying, all lay huddled and twisted together in grotesque little heaps, a mass of mangled flesh.’ Percy knelt by one man whose ‘right arm was hanging to his shoulder by a small strip of skin and flesh.’ He tried to cut the useless limb off using a blunt jack-knife, but couldn’t manage it. A couple of stretcher-bearers took the wounded man out. Percy then found another man with ‘both knees completely shattered’ and ‘another poor fellow’ lying across the trench ‘with one arm badly wounded and a leg broken in two places’. Beside him was a man ‘literally covered in wounds’, but quite cheerful. Another ‘poor wretch’ lay against the side of the trench, ‘the raw torn flesh’ showing ‘where both legs had been blown off at the knees. His right arm was shattered from wrist to shoulder, a mass of bloody pulp.’ The man’s ‘mouth was badly broken and his head and body were covered with blood.’

  As Smythe looked for the identity discs and personal effects of the dead, some of whom he subsequently identified as 24th Battalion men, he came across a man he thought may have been alive but unconscious. When he looked closer he saw ‘a great gaping hole from forehead to crown of his head’, with the skull completely split, ‘empty and hollow’. The man’s brains had literally been blown out. Although Percy had grown ‘rather callous to such things’, this case in particular horrified him and caused him to shudder.5