Beaten Down By Blood

by Michele Bomford

  The carnage in Gottlieb Trench made a deep impression, not just on Percy Smythe who described it in such detail, but on other Australians as well. Frank Brewer mentioned it, noting that 18 men had been killed by the one shell. Joe Maxwell of the 18th Battalion pondered his lucky escape. He had just left the trench, while other men from his company had not been so fortunate. B Company had indeed suffered heavy casualties. Maxwell heard ‘the screams and groans of the battered and dying’, and had to collect the ‘battered fragments of the dead’, bury them in a shallow grave, and mark ‘the spot with a simple deal board with their names on it’. His account lists 14 men as killed and 22 wounded, while the 24th battalion history records that two shells killed 18 men and wounded 25.6

  The attack, 1 September 1918.

  The situation prior to zero hour on the morning of 1 September was unclear. The 24th Battalion remained unsure of precisely where the Germans were, although machine-gun fire was coming from the battalion’s front and right, areas supposed to be clear of enemy. There were reports of German patrols further along the trench to the right and in trenches behind. The positions of the Australian troops, both the 5th and 6th brigades, were unclear and the drizzling rain and slippery conditions compounded their difficulties. The men endured a long wait in Gottlieb Trench — ‘the last hour seemed a day’.7 Every man understood the difficulty of the task that lay ahead — ‘the job was very big; tremendous front and Germans so strong’.8

  The 23rd Battalion, which would attack on the right, met heavy resistance from German machine-guns and trench mortars in the southern end of Gottlieb Trench — from where it tried to move to its start line in Save Trench — the enemy having penetrated parts of this trench and those trenches to the rear. Advanced B Company patrols were held up in Gottlieb Trench until Private Robert Mactier, acting as a runner, was sent to investigate the holdup and realised that a German machine-gun post behind a barricade of wire was causing the delay. Armed only with a revolver and several bombs, Mactier stormed forward, threw a bomb over the block and climbed over, killing six Germans. He continued on and 20 Germans surrendered. He then attacked another machine-gun crew, killing every man. As he was jumping into a trench after destroying a third post, he ‘lost his life in circumstances of extraordinary personal bravery’, killed by another machine-gun at close range. However, the route through this ‘hornet’s nest’ was now clear.

  Private ‘Mac’, a farmer from Tatura in Victoria, was ‘one of the boys’, a cheerful and obliging young man who played in the battalion football team. His comrades considered him a hero and the 23rd Battalion magazine stated that ‘the thoughts of his valour will remain when Time has effaced most other records from the tablet of battalion memories.‘9 Mactier was awarded a posthumous VC. The barrage was about to begin as the 23rd Battalion filed onto its jumping-off line, with only minutes to spare to zero hour.

  At 6.00 am on 1 September, the 6th Brigade, 2nd Division, and the 14th Brigade, 5th Division, moved forward simultaneously. To the north of the 6th, the 11th Brigade, 3rd Division, attacked at 5.30 am from just west of the Feuillaucourt–Bouchavesnes road with the aim of providing a left flank for the 24th Battalion. The leading troops from the 6th Brigade had to cover 1000 yards of open ground without close or substantial artillery support because they were unsure of the location of the 5th Brigade remnants.

  As soon as the men of the 23rd Battalion went over the top, they were subjected to ‘smothering’ machine-gun fire from the direction of St Denis and Péronne.

  According to the war diary, it ‘broke our formations and the advance had to be made in rushes’.10 The men experienced much discomfort ‘wriggling forward on the stomach, sweating under the load of the Lewis gun, and aching of neck and body in the necessity for keeping low’.11 Indeed, most of the 23rd’s fatalities in the front line had been shot through the head. In two of the companies all the officers and all but one sergeant became casualties, but the 23rd pushed on to Elsa Trench, where it found a remnant of the 5th Brigade, completely surrounded but still bravely holding on, and the trench crowded with its dead.12 The 23rd Battalion could advance no further.

  Second Lieutenant Percy Smythe, 24th Battalion. Percy was one of four brothers to enlist in the AIF. Three returned to Australia – Percy with the MC, Vernon with the MC and bar, Edward with the MC and bar – while Herbert was killed in action at 2nd Bullecourt in 1917. (AWM PO4642.001)

  Brigadier General James Robertson, 6th Brigade. (AWM ART02991)

  On the left, the 24th Battalion also encountered ‘terrific’ machine-gun fire. Percy Smythe described the whole atmosphere as reverberating ‘with an intense multiplicity of shrill biting reports’ reminiscent of ‘a mighty enlargement of the chorus of the Hawkesbury River cicadas in full blast’.13

  The 24th Battalion had to find a way through those same belts of wire encountered by the 20th the day before, but retook Feuillaucourt — picking up a company of the 20th which had laid low during the night — to reach a line east of the Péronne–Bouchavesnes road where it was forced to halt, unable to penetrate Mont St Quentin village. The men of two companies gathered on its north-western outskirts, crowded together and very mixed up. The Germans were in a ‘very strongly fortified and commanding tactical position’.14 Percy Smythe was hit by a small piece of ‘potato masher’ which lodged in his cheek when the bomb exploded nearby. For a time the Australians took shelter near the cemetery on the northern edge of the Mont, harassed by frontal fire and with both flanks exposed. Smythe gathered the remnants of the two companies ‘behind the battered remains of an old brick wall’, but the Germans continued to fire on them, the bullets cracking through the air or thudding into the crumbling brick wall, chipping off a few more bricks each time.

  Percy now only had some 30 men left with him and he decided to pull them back around 40 yards to a trench, probably Varna, where the Germans continued to fire on them from trees and some of ‘the higher fragments of the buildings’ which afforded good visibility along the trench. A number of men were wounded or killed here and ‘it was a wretched place to be in’. The position was so vulnerable that men had to crawl along the trench floor in order to stay under cover. Smythe decided to retire further to a sunken road and prepare for a counter-attack, which never came. Nonetheless, the men continued to come under ‘murderous’ fire, huddled into the bank of the road where they could not move about or stand up ‘without attracting a deadly shower of lead’. When a contact aircraft flew overhead they lit a flare to show their position, causing ‘another spasm of hate’ to erupt from a machine-gun across the valley and rain down on them.15 Percy Smythe finally moved his men into Elsa Trench where the exhausted troops were able to snatch ‘a little intermittent sleep’.16

  There was no sign of the 43rd Battalion, 11th Brigade, which had been held up by heavy machine-gun fire from Allaines and had not reached its objective. The 23rd was stalled on the right, with the 14th Brigade held up on its right. This was the end of the first stage of the 6th Brigade’s attack. It had failed to recapture Mont St Quentin on the morning of 1 September.

  Brigadier General James Robertson ordered an artillery bombardment of Mont St Quentin village and wood before any further advance could be contemplated. The 21st Battalion, now ordered to participate in what Cleve Potter referred to as an ‘orgy’ and not knowing what its objective was, was brought up from support to reinforce the 24th and the 23rd Battalion which was now at most only 120 strong.17 There was a rumour running through the 21st ‘that the 5th Brigade had been wiped off the face of the earth’ and as they moved up they passed the dead, so thick in some places that it was difficult to move without touching them.18 In this skilful redeployment of troops, the 22nd Battalion also came into the battle, moving into Uber Alles and Gott Mit Uns trenches on the right. At 1.00 pm the village was ‘bombarded by every gun and howitzer which could be made available’, an example of ‘fine shooting’, particularly by the 16th Royal Horse Artillery Brigade.19 The attack was renewed at 1.30 pm.r />
  This was probably when Frank Brewer’s ‘magnificent spectacle’ of the ‘daylight charge’ of the 6th Brigade occurred. In his imaginative telling of the story, ‘a line of bayonets shining brightly in the morning sunlight’ appeared across the battlefield and ‘lifted itself upon the heights of Mont St Quentin, swept over it and onward, dashing enemy posts to pieces, kicking screaming prisoners to the rear and compelling the main force to retire.’ The faces of the 5th Brigade boys, ‘unearthly’ and ‘hideous’ from ‘terrific nervous strain’ and hours of ‘staring into the face of death’, broke into smiles as they urged their comrades on.20

  Two companies of the 21st Battalion, in good order until they reached the old brick wall when organisation broke down, rushed the northern half of the village, facing machine-gun fire from the ruined tower of the church directly in front and from German positions in the trees and ruined houses. Charles Bean described Mont St Quentin village as ‘a regular redoubt — barbed wire, posts, over 100 machine guns, trenches full of dead.’21 Private Godfrey Dobson from 9 Platoon, C Company, described this as a scene he would never forget. Dead and wounded Germans lay everywhere, ‘huddled together in heaps, the wounded crying out for assistance.’ The Australians were in no mood to spare the defenders, wounded or not, shooting them indiscriminately.22 In fact, at this stage of the battle, no quarter was given by either side in the desperate fighting that ensued, the German volunteers determined to defend their position and prepared to die at their posts.

  After clearing the northern sector of the village and the wood, the left company of the 21st Battalion was held up by a nest of around 12 German machine-guns lining a crater or quarry — perhaps the same place where the 17th Battalion had found the maps the day before. This strong post was of great tactical value and the key to the German defences on the north side of the Mont, so the Australians had to take it or risk the whole attack breaking down. However, this involved crossing at least 60 yards of level, open ground under machine-gun fire and strafed by ‘potato mashers’.

  24th Battalion men in Elsa Trench just minutes before the attack on Mont St Quentin at 1.30 pm on 1 September 1918. (AWM EO3142)

  The 21st Battalion attacking towards the old brick wall, Mont St Quentin, 1.30 pm, 1 September 1918. (AWM EO3104)

  It is difficult to know how many men attacked in the first rush of the crater as the platoons were very mixed up and there may have been some 24th Battalion men among them. In Godfrey Dobson’s platoon, some ten men went forward, acting on ‘trained instinct’ and without an officer to lead them.23 Six of these men became casualties, including Private Frank Roberts — a 30-year-old orchardist from Upper Hawthorn in Victoria — who was killed either by a piece of bomb hitting his right side or a machine-gun bullet penetrating just above his heart. Dobson claimed that the Germans also fired with machine-guns or revolvers on wounded men lying helpless in the open.

  The surviving men were forced back to a nearby trench, Godfrey commenting that ‘things were looking real bad for us’. According to his account, there were only four men — all from 9 Platoon — in the trench until they were joined by three men from 10 Platoon, including Sergeant Albert Lowerson, who organised the tiny group to storm the crater from the flanks, rushing in and using effective bombing to inflict heavy casualties on the defenders.24 This may have been the action witnessed by the 43rd Battalion on the Bouchavesnes ridge, a major telling the story to Charles Bean, who had taken up a vantage point on the ridge in the afternoon. The major told Bean that there was no progress in the wake of the bombardment, then parties of Australians had appeared and he saw the Germans running back from the wood into the quarry. A bomb fight followed, one man crawling up, throwing his bomb and getting back as quickly as possible, while another man would crawl up, deliver his bomb and so on. The Germans retaliated but, some 20 minutes later, ran from the quarry with the Australians after them and harried by gunners firing shrapnel at them from the Bouchavesnes ridge.25 Lowerson, now with just four other men, captured the post, the machine-guns and 30 prisoners and consolidated the position despite being wounded in the right thigh. He was awarded the VC and the other four men were also decorated, Godfrey Dobson receiving the MM.

  On the south side of the Mont, where the remnants of the 23rd Battalion were working through the southern half of the village and the other companies of the 21st were moving around its eastern and south-eastern edges, Cleve Potter, hampered by his Lewis gun, was able to find shelter in an old chalk trench, although ‘to raise our heads an inch or two was to have our heads ventilated; to stay was to be blown to Hades; to go forward was to step off the earth.’ The men decided ‘to die going forward’.26 The impetus of the rush carried the advance through Mont St Quentin Wood, the units of the 21st and 23rd battalions linking together to consolidate a line 600 yards east along the ridge. They could not exploit further to take the original objective, 1000 yards in front, because the companies were too weak and exhausted and the Germans held the trenches now in front of them in strength. The position on the right flank was also unclear. On the left, the 24th Battalion advanced to the north towards Tortille Trench, 500 yards south-west of Allaines, but did not take this objective as it was still too strongly held by the Germans who had consolidated behind barbed wire blocks. Mont St Quentin itself, however, was now once again in Australian hands.

  The 6th Brigade met troops of the 94th and 96th Infantry Regiments from the 38th Division, the latter unit the garrison on Mont St Quentin but also reinforcing the line to the sugar factory to the south and Tortille Trench to the north, and the Alexander Regiment of the 2nd Guard Division. These men held the Australians until the 1.00 pm bombardment smothered preparations for a counter-attack by the 38th Division and wreaked havoc within the 94th and 96th. As their staffs were attempting to regroup their broken troops at a farm 500 yards east of Mont St Quentin Wood, they were fired on by their own artillery and all organisation was lost. To the north, the same thing happened to elements of the 96th and the remnants of the Alexander, who fell back to Allaines and Haut-Allaines.

  Pressure was relieved on the 14th Brigade attacking on the right. Indeed, the 6th Brigade had to succeed or the 54th Battalion, then in Péronne, would have been forced to withdraw and the capture of the town postponed. By 6.00 pm the 43rd Battalion on the left had established a post on the Canal du Nord some 500 yards west of Allaines to link with the 24th Battalion.

  The 6th Brigade remained in the line until the night of 4/5 September, although the 7th Brigade moved through it and continued the attack on 2 September. On 3 September they buried their dead. The 24th Battalion war diary records that they were buried on ‘the battlefield where they fought and fell … little clusters of graves’ with temporary crosses told a tale of heroic fighting against stubborn defence. Their graves were surrounded by those of the Germans, who had suffered severely.27 For the men of the 23rd Battalion, relief brought hot porridge and tea at the first halt, cocoa and biscuits at the brigade YMCA at the next, and stew, tea and a tot of rum to send the men ‘into a warm welcome sleep’ when they reached their billets.28

  Private Reynold Cleve Potter was 30 years old in 1918. Potter was a former school teacher who had turned his hand to building and carpentry and gave his occupation as carpenter when he enlisted in 1916. Born at Glen Innes, but living in Haberfield in Sydney when war broke out, he was the sixth son in a family of nine boys and two girls. He loved reading and writing and as a young man ‘would spend a lot of his time at night reading anything he could obtain by the light of the old kitchen fire.’29 Proficient in Latin, French and Greek, he was also skilled at mathematics, was a good pianist, could take efficient shorthand and played tennis and cricket. He was a member of the 17th Reinforcements of the 21st Battalion — all New South Wales men — who sailed from Sydney in November 1916.

  The diaries Cleve Potter kept during the war were written in four notebooks, the first of which has been lost; the original of the fourth, which covers his experiences at Mont St Qu
entin, is in the Mitchell Library in Sydney. He carried his notebooks with him through all his experiences and interspersed the entries with poems he wrote. In 1999 his sons edited these for publication and dedicated the book to ‘his lasting memory, his courage and his humanity’. Amid the death and destruction, Cleve Potter could still marvel at ‘the profusion of cornflowers and poppies that almost hide the ugly shell holes and uglier trenches’.30 He was deeply moved watching a young soldier, haggard and horrified, master his fear to go with the others in the attack on Mont St Quentin, only to see him return two minutes later on a stretcher. He wrote how important it was to send and receive mail, with a real compassion for those at home as well as the men fighting in France. Wounded once in April 1918, he returned to Australia in good health in 1919.

  Extraordinarily cool and game

  The 6th Brigade was supported by the 7th Machine Gun Company, 2nd Australian Machine Gun Battalion, for its attack on 1 September. Limbers were left behind the lines, the nature of the terrain making it necessary to carry guns, tripods, spare parts, water and seven boxes of ammunition for each gun up to the front line. The section working with the 23rd Battalion quickly ran into strife, with three of its guns damaged early in the attack, forcing the gunners to wait for two replacements. The section now only had sufficient men remaining to man three guns. On the front of the 21st Battalion, the guns were more effective during the afternoon, firing 1000 rounds into the retreating Germans, causing heavy casualties and silencing enemy machine-guns which had been holding up the attack, as well as directing fire on the open ground in the direction of the sugar factory near St Denis.