Pozieres

by Scott Bennett

  Paton’s 25th and 26th battalions fared marginally better than the 28th. They came across tracts of cut wire and broke through, securing a section of OG1. Some continued on, storming OG2, but uncut wire and machine-gun fire thwarted their advance. At 12.50 a.m. the situation was considered hopeless and the troops withdrew.

  The 23rd Battalion, on the northern edge of the attack, initially advanced unimpeded by the firing that slowed Paton’s battalions; however, within minutes they encountered another problem: they got caught in their own bombardment and became hopelessly mixed with Paton’s men. Fred Hocking, caught in the shelling, recalled an officer shouting, ‘Come on 23rd’, even though he and the others, who were ‘loaded up [like] pack horses’, were already going as fast as they could across the shell-churned ground.29 Second-Lieutenant Goldy Raws tried to settle his men, urging them to keep their line. His advancing troops could not find the dirt track to Courcelette. Raws must have realised that in the darkness they had passed over their objective — he urged those within earshot to double back.30 Eventually, the troops made their way back to the shell-damaged track and began digging a new trench to protect Paton’s right flank. Fred Hocking wasn’t among them; a shell had exploded a few yards in front of him, taking off his commanding officer’s head and wounding him. Hocking lay in no-man’s-land, blood spurting from his wounded leg. ‘I’m done for,’ he thought, as he later recounted in a letter.31

  As Gellibrand’s 23rd Battalion troops dug in, word came that Paton’s 26th Battalion, to their right, had withdrawn, leaving their flank exposed.32 To address this danger, Gellibrand’s troops hastily dug a new section of trench that connected with the old Pozières Trench. It was complete by 9.00 a.m.

  The attack across the entire front had stalled. Some officers considered the situation hopeless and withdrew their troops. A few tried to rally them for another attack, but no men seemed interested.33 Survivors pulled comrades from the wire into shell holes. Even though he had a badly shattered jaw, Private Thomas Jackson dragged Sergeant Lewis Marshall, whose shoulder blade had been practically blown away, into a shell hole. ‘He offered to bandage me up and did his best to try and persuade me to make for our lives. I would not go,’ recorded Marshall, who perhaps preferred the temporary safety of a shell hole to the risk of running across open ground swept with explosions and gunfire.34

  Australians sheltering further back in reserve at the Pozières Cemetery watched as a steady stream of wounded men returned from the front line. Later, unwounded men began to stream back as well. ‘Where are you going?’ asked one man.

  ‘Back to Sausage Valley to reorganise,’ they were said to have replied.35

  Private Walter Elkington was one of the 20th Battalion soldiers in reserve, responsible for carrying loads of bombs forward to the attacking troops. He was just about to race through the barrage to the front line when an officer staggered into the trench and announced that the attack had ended in failure.36

  The 6th and 7th Brigade headquarters were virtually cut off from their crippled battalions because shelling had severed nearly all telephone wires. Gellibrand slept on in his dugout bunkroom, only waking occasionally to receive messages from runners or signallers. An anxious Paton, also cut off from his troops, repeatedly phoned Gellibrand, alarmed about the uninterrupted machine-gun fire and the lack of news on the battle’s progress. At around 2.00 a.m., the first uncertain reports filtered through to Gellibrand that the attack ‘didn’t come off’. By dawn, which came at 4.45 a.m., he had enough snippets of information to realise that the attack had failed.37

  In the half-light of dawn, a heavy mist shrouded the battlefield, hiding the horrors of the previous night. Under its veil, stretcher-bearers collected the injured. The wounded and the lost tried to work their way back to their own lines. As the light increased, the Germans could see the countless Australians lying on their wire entanglements ‘in a carpet’ — in some places two or three men deep. One German regimental history described it as ‘an appalling sight’.38

  The Germans tended to the wounded Australians close by and refrained from firing on the stretcher-bearers. The seriously wounded, who couldn’t be moved, were left to die. Sometimes the German soldiers gave them comforting a drink of spirits to help with the pain, but mostly they ignored them, instead rifling through their belongings for rations and souvenirs. Private Wisbey Sinclair lay near the wire all night while German soldiers diligently foraged through the pockets of the dead and helpless. He heard a German walking toward him so he ‘played possum’; another German later attempted to take his watch. When the soldier discovered that Sinclair was alive, he called his comrades. ‘They got my groundsheet from my pack, spread it on the ground, lifted me on it and carried me into their front line trench,’ wrote Sinclair.39

  Lewis Marshall was hiding in a shell hole when dawn broke. A few Germans ‘came over and spoke’, and two picked him up. They accidentally wrenched his shoulder; Marshall lost consciousness. ‘When I came to, I found myself in a deep dugout,’ he later wrote. He was treated there and then transported away on a makeshift stretcher. He spent the rest of the war as a prisoner.40

  German intelligence officers interrogated their Australian prisoners, including Marshall and Sinclair. According to German records of interviews, some distraught prisoners divulged nearly every detail of the attack. Others said that they were sick of the war and happy to be taken prisoner.41 A German officer observed that a few prisoners who had already fought on Gallipoli were of good military bearing, although the majority, who had arrived as reinforcements, left a rather lamentable impression: ‘Apparently they only volunteered for military service because it offered a cheap way to see something of the world and a chance to play at soldiering on the side.’42

  Some prisoners did not make it back for interrogation. Sergeant Bruce Drayton recounted an exchange between 20-year-old Private Noel Sainsbury and a German officer. ‘Are you a machine-gunner?’ the German officer asked the wounded Sainsbury.

  ‘Yes sir,’ replied Sainsbury.

  The officer drew his pistol and shot him through the chest and head. ‘That is the way I deal with English swine.’43

  It seemed machine-gunners received rough handling in both German and Australian hands.

  The heavy German shelling slackened about mid-morning, by which time a shimmering heat had burnt off the morning mist, revealing iridescent blue skies. The battlefield remained strangely quiet. Fred Hocking, who had been stranded in no-man’s-land since just after midnight, was one of the few wounded to make it back. He explained in a letter to his father how he bound his wound with a mud-stained puttee and crawled toward his own lines: ‘I’d gone what must have been 100 yards but what seemed a life time journey when I found one of my sergeants in a shell hole … We hailed each other with delight and started afresh.’44 By late afternoon, the cries from the wounded in no-man’s-land became weaker and less frequent; fewer men returned to the lines. Over the next two days, the odd man made it back, but most of the remaining wounded were either captured or died from their wounds.

  Survivors assembled in Sausage Valley. Officers and soldiers reflected quietly on the wretched attack. ‘Our Colonel stood on the side of the road as we passed and he was not ashamed of the tears that were plainly visible on his face,’ remembered 22-year-old Private Edgar Morrow, 28th Battalion.45

  At the 23rd Battalion’s rollcall, Lieutenant Goldy Raws, along with 325 other men, did not answer. Raws was posted as missing. ‘I heard that he was seen badly wounded but cannot vouch for that,’ speculated a soldier some time later. ‘As a rule if anyone goes beyond the objective and heavy artillery fire is on, it is unlikely that they will come through alive.’46

  Alec Raws heard of Goldy’s disappearance, but he was unsure of what had happened. ‘He could not have died in agony because our stretcher-bearers were out in no-man’s-land that same night, and then next day, and he could not have been m
issed,’ he wrote reassuringly in a letter to his older brother, Lennon. ‘Possibly too, he may have been taken away wounded by a British brigade on our left.’47

  Goldy was merely one of over 1000 soldiers killed, missing, or wounded in the failed assault. The attack had shattered Paton’s brigade: his 28th Battalion suffered over 470 casualties; its four company commanders were dead or wounded. Paton’s 25th Battalion suffered 343 casualties; the 26th Battalion, 297.48 Edgar Morrow remembered the survivors of Paton’s brigade gathering around the cookers for a warm meal. ‘Normally it’s three to a loaf and a scarcity of bacon,’ he noted. ‘But that morning we could have two loaves and as much bacon as we could eat.’49

  The Australians’ fight for Pozières had been raging for a week. In the battle’s first days, Hooky Walker had captured Pozières with light casualties. In the following days, the front line had barely moved forward. Instead, soldiers such as Arthur Foxcroft and John Harris had suffered under an unrelenting German bombardment, which eventually broke Harris’s spirit and destroyed Foxcroft’s platoon. When Legge’s troops took over the line mid-week, the same bombardment killed Goldy Raws. It seemed that the second week of fighting would be more of the same: the remorseless Gough would continue to thrust Legge’s division at the ridge-top trenches in a piecemeal fashion and, once the 2nd Division was totally spent, the 4th Division would be shunted forward to take its place. It appeared that Gough’s and Haig’s objectives were at odds: Haig wanted to conserve troops prior to his September offensive while Gough could only seize the ridge by employing more troops. In the meantime, the Australian troops, who had previously harboured dreams of victory and glory, were being ground to ash. What would August bring?

  chapter ten

  Promised Land

  ‘You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.’

  — attributed to Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to the United States Congress

  That morning at divisional headquarters, Legge attempted to piece together what had happened. In his report on the operation, he tried unconvincingly to present the capture and holding of a small stretch of trench that Gellibrand’s 23rd Battalion had dug as some kind of minor victory. He also vigorously defended the 7th Brigade’s performance, stating that the troops had conducted themselves excellently: ‘And the advance of the three battalions … in the centre particularly well carried out as on an ordinary parade.’1 Legge’s praise couldn’t hide the facts: his division had failed miserably in its attack, casualties were severe, and his shattered battalions were now vulnerable to counterattack. His division had suffered 1500 casualties in the two-day bombardment and, according to his report, another 1372 in the attack. Charles Bean concluded that the attack had been a ‘wholesale failure’, partly due to the short, ‘ineffective’ bombardment.2

  While many commanders basked in the glory of the 1st Division’s success — Walker, Birdie, White, Haig, and Gough — Legge’s failure would be shunned. Over the next days Birdie, Gough, and White would carefully distance themselves from Legge. Gough’s staff would subtly plant the seed with Haig that Legge was to blame for the failure.3 Birdie would have no doubt reminded everyone that Legge had decided the attack’s timing. Someone had to be blamed for the wanton waste of men, and Legge seemed a convenient scapegoat.

  Had Birdie and White contributed to the disaster? The straight-shooting Gellibrand blamed them, saying that Birdie and his staff should have provided Legge with a really good team; he said that everyone knew the 2nd Division’s staff was of poor quality.4 It was a fair criticism: White should have worked more closely with Legge in checking the plan, making sure that it had every chance of success, and Birdie should have shielded Legge from Gough’s pressuring.5 (Admittedly, no one ever wanted to take on the prickly Gough, who had a reputation for dealing ruthlessly with over-cautious commanders — and Birdie would have known that corps commanders were not a protected species, as Gough had recently sacked Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Morland, X British Corps commander.)6

  Although White should probably have shared some of the blame for the failure, Birdie already seemed to have his scapegoat, and White was too valuable to lose. In his Official History, Bean largely absolved White of blame, claiming that he was ‘full of misgiving’ prior to the attack, but had for once allowed the confidence of others to bear down on his judgement.7 White later admitted in a candid conversation with Bean: ‘I was sure it was wrong, I was sure things were not ready but everyone was so eager. I gave my consent — through weakness I suppose.’8

  News of Legge’s failure soon reached Haig. ‘I think the cause was due to want of thorough preparation,’ he concluded in his diary. He cited four shortcomings: the attacking troops were not formed square to the objective, the advance was made over 700 yards, one brigade arrived late and didn’t have a chance to reconnoitre, and the hurricane artillery bombardment lasted for only one minute before the attack. After lunch on Saturday 29 July, Haig motored out to Gough’s Reserve Army Headquarters in the hamlet of Toutencourt. He impressed upon Gough and his general staff officer, General Neill Malcolm, that they must supervise the plans of the I Anzac Corps more closely. ‘Some of their Divisional Generals are so ignorant and (like many Colonials) so conceited, they cannot be trusted to work out unaided the plan of attack.’9

  Haig then travelled to I Anzac Corps headquarters at Contay and summoned Birdie and White for an impromptu meeting. Haig didn’t like Birdie — he considered him a shameless self-promoter who put popularity ahead of discipline, an amateur who thought he knew all about war on the Western Front because he’d been on Gallipoli. Birdie may have been the Australian Imperial Force’s ‘kingmaker’,10 but in Haig’s world he was an outsider — an Anglo-Indian officer, a relic of the Kitchener era who didn’t have the brains to attend Staff College.

  Haig rarely showed emotion, but when he did, according to Charteris, there was a telltale broadening of his accent toward Doric.11 That afternoon, it must have been broad. The private conversation — reconstructed from Haig’s diary entries, Bean’s notes, and White’s correspondence with Bean in 1928 — was brutally frank. Haig launched into Birdie:

  You can’t come here, as you do, after your victories at Gallipoli and imagine you can tackle this enemy as you were fighting the filthy Bashi-bazouks! You’re not fighting the Bashi-bazouks now! This is serious scientific war and you are up against the most scientific and military nation in Europe.

  Pointing to a map, Haig recounted the attack’s shortcomings. Pozières, he said, had been captured thanks to ‘very thorough artillery preparation’ and the French had often spent up to a fortnight in taking such villages. An artillery bombardment of only a minute was simply inadequate. As for Legge, he was overconfident and had rough-and-ready methods. Haig disparagingly referred to Legge as a ‘buck-stick’ (an Anglo-Indian colloquialism meaning a chatterer or braggart), who was ‘quite confident upon no foundation of knowledge or experience’. White tried to interject on two occasions, but an angry Haig wouldn’t let him speak, lecturing him: ‘Listen to what I say young man, I am giving you the benefit of my experience.’ The usually dutiful White bristled at what he perceived to be a severe dressing-down.

  When the lecture ended, Haig walked to the door. White cleared his throat and, ignoring a warning headshake from one of Haig’s staff, said, ‘I can’t let you go sir.’12 He then went to a map and defended the 2nd Division point by point. He told Haig how Gough had pushed Legge into action without any regard for adequate preparations; he intimated that what the British staff officer had told him about the attack was untrue. He defended Legge, saying that, despite his casual demeanour, he ‘had not undertaken the task in a light hearted spirit’.

  Haig was known for bringing meetings to an abrupt end — Charteris recorded in his biography of Haig that the general had once ordered an officer who had vigorously defended his own point of view to leave the room. However, Haig heard
White through. He then placed a kindly hand on White’s shoulder and uttered approvingly: ‘I dare say you are right young man.’13

  White had taken a grave risk in challenging Haig. Why did he do it? Perhaps he did not want to see an injustice done to the Australians. Perhaps he sensed Haig’s contempt for Birdie and feared that his own career could be affected; after all, he was the one who should have been supervising Legge’s plans. Or perhaps White thought it was a good time to come out from behind Birdie’s shadow — his private letters reveal that his relationship with Birdie may not have been completely harmonious. In September 1916 he would write to Ethel that Birdie had ‘very little idea of the machinery which gets done all the things he wants’. Months later, he would criticise Birdie for not rewarding him with the honours he felt he deserved. His disapproval would peak in mid-1917, when he referred to Birdie as ‘a man of no quality’ in a letter to Jack Gellibrand.14 No doubt White was loyal to Birdie, but perhaps even his loyalty knew some bounds.

  The politically astute Birdie, who had said nothing during the meeting — Bean speculated that he was probably a little out of his depth — would have sensed Haig’s contempt and realised that he could not afford to fail again. He believed there would one day be an official Australian army fighting in this war, with all the Australian corps in Europe consolidated into it, and he wanted to command it. Yet White seemed to be firming as a rival, even though he lacked divisional command experience.