Pozieres

by Scott Bennett

  Douglas Haig was responsible for setting the broad strategy of the Somme offensive, which ultimately determined the nature and shape of the Anzacs’ fighting around Pozières. In response to changing circumstances on the battlefield — such as the setbacks of 23 July — Haig would, naturally enough, recast key elements of his approach. His reshaped stratagem would then be communicated to Gough’s Reserve Army staff, who would be responsible for converting it into high-level operational plans. Eventually, Haig’s strategy would cascade its way down through multiple operational layers — corps, divisions, brigades — to battalion commanders like Howell-Price and Mackay, who would be responsible for executing discrete sets of orders that would collectively deliver the outcome Haig desired.

  There were also factors beyond empirical measures of yards gained and lives lost that would influence Haig’s strategic decisions, including external pressure from the Allies and British politicians, and Haig’s inherent character traits (his bulldog-like tenacity meant that his natural inclination would always be to cling to his enemy’s throat).41 Haig’s response to these factors would determine the Anzacs’ role in the offensive over the next six weeks.

  Some time after the Australians captured Pozières, Haig penned a letter to Lady Haig, protesting that the War Office insisted he provide interviews to war correspondents for propaganda purposes.42 Yet although Haig did not approve of the practice, the outcome was, to his surprise, that British newspapers wrote favourable stories about him; they portrayed him as in possession of the infinite wisdom of Solomon and able to impose his will upon events — a chess master effortlessly moving his pieces about the board. These stories further strengthened the public’s belief in Haig, whom they seemed to trust as they trusted God.43 No one considered for a moment that he, too, might be overwhelmed by events.

  In reality, Haig did have complete responsibility and account-ability for the British Expeditionary Force, but this did not equate to complete control. His fate, and that of the Somme offensive, depended upon many things beyond his grasp. He relied on the home front to raise the requisite recruits and supply adequate munitions; he depended on his French ally to contribute divisions to the offensive; and he counted on his political leaders for backing, and to stop vacillating between an eastern and western strategy. On top of this, his enemy, the most technically advanced nation in Europe, refused to yield a single inch of French soil.

  Each day that his armies failed to break through, Haig’s political masters and Allies became increasingly concerned that his Somme strategy was flawed and his leadership unimaginative. The War Council sought reassurance from Haig that his heavy losses would be rewarded with significant gains. How could he promise this? His French ally goaded him to strike the enemy harder, in order to relieve the pressure upon Verdun.44 Would he have to destroy his own army to save theirs? The British public, who monitored the official communiqués in the newspapers that reported constant successes, expected Haig to deliver a swift and decisive victory.45 Haig dared not shatter their rising spirits.

  Haig’s biographers — both supporters and detractors — seemed to agree unanimously that he was single-minded and tenacious in his pursuit of a ‘victorious end’ to the Great War.46 Therefore, it is unsurprising that he decided to continue the Somme offensive, albeit on a lesser scale until adequate men and munitions were accumulated for a full-scale resumption in September.47 Despite the lack of British success on 23 July, he would drive at the enemy with all the endurance his armies could muster in order to wrest the advantage from his German adversary, chief of the great general staff General Erich von Falkenhayn. ‘The war must be continued until Germany is vanquished,’ Haig declared in his diary in late July.48 He wouldn’t shrink away from this goal in the face of horrific casualties.

  Haig had confronted von Falkenhayn in battle the previous year, when the German threw his armies at the Belgian city of Ypres in an effort to break through to the vital channel ports. Haig’s divisions initially inflicted massive casualties but, outnumbered, gradually buckled under the unrelenting pressure of the Germans. The important city seemed lost, but then, inexplicably, von Falkenhayn halted the offensive, believing that victory lay beyond his grasp. Alistair Horne speculated in The Price of Glory that von Falkenhayn, although ruthless, was at critical moments plagued by ‘indecision and excessive prudence’.49 Perhaps at Ypres, it was von Falkenhayn’s inherent cautiousness, rather than his misinterpretation of battlefield data, that turned a potential victory into a half-success. Had von Falkenhayn possessed more tenacity and persevered, he might have turned the tide of the war. Two of Haig’s biographers — Gerard De Groot and Andrew Wiest — believed that Haig learnt from the incident and would have been determined not to repeat von Falkenhayn’s mistake.50 John Charteris, Haig’s confidant, summed up the prevailing creed within Haig’s headquarters on the eve of the Somme battle: ‘If we face losses bravely we shall win quicker and it will be a final win.’51

  At 6.15 a.m. that morning, Haig instructed his army commanders to cease coordinated general attacks and, instead, commence local actions at selected points to improve their tactical position prior to launching another general attack in September. Although Haig wanted to maintain the pressure on the Germans, he couldn’t afford to expend troops and munitions at the rate he had in the first three weeks of July. Haig’s amended policy aimed to keep the Germans off balance while he accumulated men and munitions in the reserve areas. In response to this policy, I Anzac Corps and III British Corps would develop plans to capture the remainder of Pozières and the OG lines.52 With the cessation of general attacks, the Australians’ local attacks toward Pozières would undoubtedly attract greater attention and prominence, not only from Haig, but also from their German adversary.

  As it turned out, however, just as Haig was meeting with his army commanders, the Germans launched their retaliatory action against the Australians.

  Like the British, the Germans had formidable artillery on the Somme. Their standard tactic after losing a trench or village was to lay down a curtain of fire upon its approaches, to prevent their adversary from bringing forward fresh troops, food, water, and ammunition. This increased their chances of recapturing lost ground when they inevitably counterattacked.

  At 6.25 a.m., about an hour after their initial attack, German shelling began. Shells shrieked over the heads of those Anzacs sheltering in the village, exploding about a quarter of a mile back, on the village’s approaches. The ground shook and convulsed. Billowing clouds of acrid red dust hung in the air. The Germans had boxed Pozières off from the rest of the world — a tactic they had perfected after using it against the French at Verdun. Pozières’s approaches were soon littered with the bodies of Australian runners, pioneers, stretcher-bearers, ration parties, and engineers who couldn’t make it through the barrage.53

  Despite the danger, Bean noted that it became a matter of pride for men to carry food or ammunition to their mates waiting for them in the firing line; they understood that their ‘burden must be delivered, barrages notwithstanding’.54

  While German shells fell on the approaches to Pozières, Australian troops doggedly continued ‘ratting’ in northern Pozières. They worked their way through a series of German dugouts and cellars, throwing phosphorous bombs into them rather than inviting the occupants to surrender. Bean described this ‘grim sport’: Australians could be seen chasing terrified and shrieking Germans and bayoneting them, or shooting from the shoulder at those who got away. One German with a Red Cross insignia on each arm surrendered to Second-Lieutenant Fred Callaway of the 2nd Battalion. ‘He clung to me crying for mercy,’ Callaway explained in a letter to his sister and aunt. As a precaution, he felt beneath the prisoner’s coat and found a dagger and a revolver. ‘I pointed to his red cross and then the revolver. He only cried.’ Callaway raised the revolver to shoot him, but the German fell down and grabbed his knees, begging for mercy. ‘I hadn’t the heart to shoot him
in cold blood, but he deserved it,’ he wrote.

  Although the enemy soldier had gained a reprieve, Callaway still had to find a guard to escort him to the rear, through the bombardment, before he reached the relative safety of a large open-aired prisoners’ cage.

  Not all Australians were as forgiving as Callaway; many shot German soldiers as they left their dugouts to surrender. ‘I saw some awful cold blooded acts but you can’t blame the men, they must protect themselves,’ reasoned Callaway.55

  Lieutenant Elmer Laing, a farmer from Western Australia, whose platoon was clearing dugouts in northern Pozières, was involved in one such incident. A German in a wireless station tried to give himself up as soon as he saw Laing’s men upon him.

  ‘Come out, you ——,’ yelled one of Laing’s men.

  Laing heard him and rushed back, shouting at the soldier to shoot the ‘swine’ or else he would. The soldier shot dead the defenceless German.56

  This didn’t seem to be an isolated incident. Laing’s letter to his parents suggests that his platoon had a premeditated plan to kill surrendering Germans: ‘The Huns saw our chaps coming with bayonets fixed and cleared or tried to surrender, but it was too late.’57

  Killing prisoners was illegal under international law.58 The Allies understood the importance of appearing to fight fairly and not committing acts considered heinous, such as killing unarmed prisoners.59 But, on the Somme battlefield, the Australians faced a practical dilemma. By abiding with international laws that prohibited the killing or wounding of unarmed men, they risked their own lives. It seemed much more expedient to throw a bomb into a dugout than try to entice its occupants out when they might meet with resistance. Earlier that day, a German sniper had shot one of Laing’s fellow soldiers as he stood alongside him. Another German had fired at Laing three times.60 Perhaps Laing decided not to take further chances.

  Many Australians also became suspicious of surrendering Germans after hearing that 19-year-old Gallipoli veteran Lieutenant Walter ‘Tiny’ Host, a popular officer of the 2nd Battalion, had been killed by a prisoner.61 Accounts differed as to how he died. One eyewitness told the Australian Red Cross enquiry that Host had arrested nine Germans in a dugout. ‘His men wanted to finish them off, but the Lieut. stopped this,’ claimed this eyewitness. ‘Thereupon a severely wounded German picked up a bayonet and ran him through the body.’62 Another witness disputed this version of events, claiming that shrapnel struck Host as he escorted the prisoners out of Pozières. Whatever the case, the rumour conveyed a subtle message: when it comes to the enemy, don’t take any unnecessary chances.

  In a way, it is unsurprising that the Australians killed surrendering Germans. English instructional officers in training camps, such as the notorious ‘Bull Ring’ at Étaples on the French coast, conditioned them, through repeated bayonet practice drills, to kill without hesitation.63 It was difficult to switch off this instinct simply because an enemy soldier who was a threat a moment earlier had suddenly raised their hands in surrender. ‘They will fire at us right up to the time we hop into their trenches, and then they fling up their hands and cry, “Mercy, comrade,”’ explained one soldier. ‘How can we give them any mercy after seeing them shoot down our cobbers?’64 Even Bean, with his Victorian values and sense of fair play, reasoned that it was idle for men so caught to expect mercy.65 Fred Callaway feared that, in the confusion of battle, a prisoner might manoeuvre behind troops and shoot them in the back. ‘Our lads know this and take no chances,’ he explained in a letter home.66

  Sometimes, the sheer practicalities of the battlefield offered no alternative to killing prisoners, as Iven Mackay explained in his biography, Iven G. Mackay. ‘Many [German soldiers] remained in their dugouts, terrified, and had to be bombed and bayoneted out,’ he wrote, recounting an incident during the Pozières attack. ‘Some never came out. A number of the Germans taken prisoner would not, through pure fright cross No Man’s Land. They had to be killed.’67

  The killing of prisoners during that first morning of the Pozières battle sits uncomfortably with the Anzac legend that flourished after the war. It also posed a problem for correspondents like Bean, who asserted that the Anzacs were fierce fighters — brutal in the heat of battle — but also had a chivalrous side that meant they were fair to their vanquished enemies afterward. According to Alistair Thomson, who analysed Bean’s representation of Australian manhood during the Great War, Bean sometimes explained away these unsavoury incidents, claiming that soldiers of all nationalities committed them and that the war-mongers were ultimately to blame.68 On one occasion, when German prisoners told Bean that Australians had machine-gunned German stretcher-bearers and killed inmates in a hospital, he quickly discounted these events, claiming that the machine-gun fire must have been indirect and the Australians couldn’t have known that the Germans were wounded.69 Frenchman Marc Ferro, in The Great War: 1914–1918, claimed that there was also an element of self-censorship at play that suppressed the reporting of these incidents, as no one wanted to be seen as ‘doing down the side’. Rather, ‘responsible authorities’ focused on stimulating the nation’s will to fight, which meant that people had to be shown they were ‘fighting for the Right’.70

  Throughout the morning, many Germans, shaken by the previous night’s bombardment, gave themselves up and staggered in, ‘like drunken men’, according to Foxcroft.71 Australians began taking souvenirs from their prisoners — grabbing at their helmets, cutting buttons off their tunics, taking their watches, and unlooping their belt buckets. The Germans were given cigarettes and chocolates as compensation. Officers frowned on ‘prospecting’ and warned looters that the enemy shot prisoners on whom any German buttons or papers were found.72

  This prospecting was the first contact that many Australians had with German soldiers. At best, they may have observed prisoners working at the port at Marseilles when they had docked there in March; or perhaps they had glimpsed the fleeting, grey uniforms in the opposing trenches near Armentières. Yet many now saw their adversary up close, usually in compromised positions: Mackay observed them with their hands up, surrendering, and mumbling in a half-dazed way; Coates surveyed them scattered across the battlefield bearing horrific wounds, crying out for help; Foxcroft watched them shuffling like drunken men back through the lines; and 3rd Battalion troops caught sight of their pale and haggard faces, etched with signs of intense mental and physical strain.73 Did they see hulking beasts, half-ape and half–Neanderthal man, raping and pillaging their way across Europe, or dishevelled men in dirt-smattered grey uniforms? Perhaps these Australians caught the Germans’ downcast eyes and glimpsed something of themselves in them.

  Foxcroft’s diary provides an insight into his attitude toward the Germans after the Pozières attack. Foxcroft described how he entered a cellar, decorated with furniture and hanging pictures, knelt by the corpse of a German, and picked through his belongings for souvenirs. He came across some worn black-and-white photographs in the tunic pocket. One was a portrait of the dead man. He had a long, boyish face and a pencil-thin moustache, with black hair poking from underneath his cap. In another photograph, the soldier’s parents, young wife, and infant son posed in a sunlit garden. It was probably taken in the hot summer of 1914, just before he marched off to war.

  The third photograph, an intimate portrait of the soldier’s wife, showed dark eyes, a soft complexion, and thick black hair neatly gathered in a bun. The young woman would be unaware of her husband’s fate — unaware that he was a corpse on the dirty floor of a dugout in a foreign land, with an enemy soldier picking through his most intimate possessions. Foxcroft did not record his thoughts about the photographs, but it is hard to imagine that he was not affected by the personal nature of them. We do know that he mailed them home to his parents, writing: ‘I am sending some photos I got from a dead Hun and any card or anything I send home please keep for future reference.’ Did Foxcroft intend to return the photos to the soldie
r’s wife? Were they simply souvenirs? His diary does not reveal his motivation, but the photographs must have held some significance for him, as he kept them in his possession for the rest of his life.74

  Private John Bourke was more open with his thoughts. He recorded in his diary that, while sheltering in the lower chamber of a blockhouse, he found a heap of cake boxes made of cardboard and sewn in with calico. He had received similar parcels from Australia. The addresses were in a child’s handwriting, as were one or two of the letters. In another corner, he found a rolled-up coat. ‘I opened it out, and found it stained with blood, and there right between the shoulders was a burnt shrapnel hole,’ Bourke wrote in his diary. ‘The owner of the coat was a German, and, some might say, not entitled to much sympathy. Perhaps he was not, but I couldn’t help but feeling sadly of the little girl or boy who sent the cakes.’75

  Back at I Anzac Corps headquarters, John Treloar, who was responsible for processing documents taken from German prisoners, expressed similarly conflicting emotions: ‘Most [documents] seem to contain photos of people most wonderfully like ourselves. Often there are picture postcards of little children.’ But he couldn’t reconcile this image of Germans with that promoted by the press, as his diary entry indicated: ‘One’s thoughts go to the Lusitania outrage, and one wonders how it is that a nation who must have some love for children can be guilty of the atrocities they have committed.’76

  Foxcroft’s, Bourke’s, and Treloar’s diary entries suggest they understood that the Germans were not the ruthless barbarians they were often portrayed as in newspapers and recruitment posters. The Australians at Pozières did not, by and large, view the Germans with sympathy, but many of them perhaps saw that they had more in common with the enemy than they had first thought.