Pozieres

by Scott Bennett

  Fresh German troops rushed forward in preparation for the coming attack. A captured letter described the experience of a German officer caught up in the preparations. He recorded that, upon reaching Courcelette, an impenetrable cloud of dust enveloped the soldiers. Despite this, his company continued forward and relieved a full battalion. His men had to lie, crammed together, in shell holes in part of an old demolished trench:

  The hundreds of dead bodies make the air terrible and there are flies in the thousands … We have no dugouts, we dig a hole in the side of a shell hole and lie and get rheumatism. We get nothing to eat or drink … The ceaseless roar of the guns is driving us mad.45

  The Australians’ conditions in the opposing trenches weren’t much better. ‘We all sat huddled in the bottom of the trench resting against each other’s knees,’ Ted Rule wrote in his memoirs, ‘constantly showered with falling earth from the bursts.’ He thought it strange that all the shells were bursting further back from the front line; he pulled his rifle a little closer.46

  In the early hours of Monday 7 August, masses of German soldiers trudged toward the Australian lines; through the morning mist, Australian forward scouts could see them advancing up the ridge from Courcelette. General Fritz von Below had mustered all available troops for the attack, about 1500 in all: machine-gunners, pioneers, and flammenwerfer squads, all wearing their newly issued steel helmets, surged forward at about 5.50 a.m. in two extended waves. They reached the first trench almost without loss. ‘We opened fire but we could not shoot them all,’ remembered one Australian.47

  The Australians fired SOS rockets, calling for artillery support. No support came because the rockets couldn’t be seen through the heavy fog. In desperation, Ray Leane’s battalion headquarters released a pigeon with a request for support.48 Men in the advance posts, about to be overrun, panicked and ran back to OG1. The shadows of dawn partly obscured the Germans, who swept through the OG lines and made for Pozières. It seemed the tactic of thinning out the trench garrison would cost the Australians dearly.

  Australians positioned in the support trenches further back at Centre Way and Tom’s Cut braced themselves as the grey wave swept forward. ‘Right in front of us we made out fleeing figures,’ remembered one German soldier. ‘Just then we came under a furious storm of concentrated fire from right and left.’49

  Fortuitously, the pigeon had made it back to the corps cage in about 13 minutes, and the artillery was soon provided. The British barrage opened up and machine guns fired into the Germans. According to Leane, the barrage ‘smashed’ the German reserves advancing in close formation onto the OG lines, but those who had already advanced past it were now intermingled with the Australians.50

  For Rule, the ensuing fighting presented a surreal scene: Germans and Australians scattered in ones and twos all along the side of the ridge were shooting point-blank at each other’s faces: ‘Others were fighting with the bayonet, this being one of the few occasions when bayonets were really crossed. Others were on their knees in front of standing figures, praying for their lives.’51

  Gradually, the Australians wrestled the advantage back from the Germans, and after an hour the fighting subsided.

  Rule left his support trench later that day to see the carnage. He claimed that the sights were enough to haunt a man for the rest of his days. The area contained more dead than he had ever hoped to see. Every shell hole had one or two men in it. ‘Many of our boys who had been wounded in the German counter-attack were still lying about in the trenches … Lots of the boys that were being found at this time had their wounds all fly-blown,’ he recounted in his memoirs.52

  The heavy German losses must have shocked General von Gallwitz. He castigated von Below for having inflicted another bloodbath, even though von Below had simply adhered to the German doctrine of recapturing lost territory at all costs. The counterattack represented the last concerted effort by the Germans to recapture the ridge and Pozières.53

  The 4th Division’s fighting strength had diminished before it had even started toward Mouquet Farm. In one day and two nights, Ray Leane’s 48th Battalion had lost over half its strength: 20 officers and 578 men. The 45th Battalion had lost five officers and 340 men.54 Despite the casualties, the 4th Division would push toward Mouquet Farm in the next few days. The Australians had secured the fortified village of Pozières and the OG lines on the ridge; they thought that capturing an isolated and ruined farmhouse would be a relatively straightforward and inexpensive task.

  Map 5. I Anzac Corps’ Advance on Mouquet Farm,

  August to September 1916

  chapter twelve

  La Ferme du Mouquet

  ‘The earth grew nothing, although watered with a rain more precious than any other it had known.’

  — Captain E. Gorman, With the Twenty-second

  On the misty morning of 5 August, I Anzac Corps staff turned their attention to Gough’s order requiring them, at the earliest moment, to advance northward to Mouquet Farm and Thiepval. Cox’s 4th Division would be responsible for pushing past the farm and on to Thiepval. John Masefield wrote that the Australians’ push through the markless mud toward Thiepval marked the third sombre stage of their Somme battle.1

  Mouquet Farm — known as ‘Moo Cow Farm’, ‘Mucky Farm’, or ‘Muckety Farm’ to those who struggled with the subtleties of the French language — was about 2000 yards from Pozières. In better times, if you had stood in the main street of Pozières and walked away from the village in a north-westerly direction, you would have passed some cottages, an orchard, a light-rail track, and a cemetery, and then dipped into a shallow valley. You would have crossed the Ovillers–Courcelette road that Gellibrand’s 23rd fought so hard to secure, on to an 800-yard dirt track that would take you through a second valley and up a gentle rise to the doorstep of Mouquet Farm. Gough believed that the farm had to be captured before Thiepval — 1500 yards away — could be threatened. Once the farm was captured, he would thrust his five divisions to the rear of Thiepval, and silence it once and for all.

  After the momentous events at Pozières, capturing a ruined farm should have been a mere formality, but this was not the case. As the Australians advanced toward the farm, the Pozières ridge on the right and a dominating spur on the left hemmed them in. The German-held ridges either side gradually closed in on Mouquet Farm, funnelling the Australians into a narrow front. The restricted area meant the Australians could only attack with one or two battalions, while the Germans could respond with a concentrated bombardment from three directions.2

  I Anzac Corps Intelligence didn’t know much about la ferme du Mouquet, other than that it had once been a large brick farmstead owned by a wealthy farmer, with a dairy and stables attached. As a result of the previous six weeks of fighting, only smashed brickwork, twisted wrought-iron gates, caved-in cellars, and broken roof beams remained. When the Germans swept through the Somme Valley in 1914, Monsieur Vandendriessche, the farm’s tenant, had probably shared the concerns of other French residents, but must have felt sure that his isolated farm would escape their interest. Yet the Germans started poking around the farm in early 1916 and immediately earmarked the farm as an important stronghold. For Major Hans von Fabeck, who was responsible for converting the neighbouring Thiepval into an impregnable fortress in April 1916, Mouquet Farm’s deep cellars and elevated location meant that it was ideally suited, along with the nearby Goat and Stuff redoubts, to protect the village. He carefully engineered the Thiepval sector into an integrated defensive zone.3

  The Australians, according to the Official History, had first to capture three lines of trenches before taking Mouquet Farm. The first, Park Lane, sat on the rise north of Pozières. The second, Skyline Trench, ran from a high spur, past a chalk quarry and into a shallow gully. The third and most important, Fabeck Graben, snaked along the second rise. The Australians assumed Park Lane and Skyline Trench, which appeared roug
h and disconnected from other trenches, to be only weakly held by German troops. The Australians expected a prompt advance and then greater resistance from Mouquet Farm, which lay beyond the second rise and would only be seen in the last 100 yards of their advance.4 The Germans were determined to hold the farm no matter the cost, understanding that if it fell, so too would Thiepval.

  Shell craters carpeted the path to Mouquet Farm. Some soldiers thought its approaches resembled a rough sea as seen from the beach.5 The odd shattered tree stump and a lone upturned wagon broke up the brown expanse. It would have been impossible for those soldiers stumbling over the cratered ground to make out their objectives. Trenches were, in most cases, only a series of linked shell craters or shallow furrows. The loose dirt had been so churned up that a trench couldn’t be dug without its walls caving in. Maps became useless because trenches were obliterated and then reconstructed elsewhere within hours.6

  I Anzac Corps encountered significant logistical problems in its efforts to capture the farm. It was becoming increasingly difficult to keep the supply lines open so that the front-line soldiers could receive ammunition, water, food rations, and medical help.7 As the Australians punched deeper into the German lines, they created a dangerous salient that allowed the Germans to observe their vulnerable supply routes from three vantage points.

  As a result, rations parties stopped carrying food up from the field kitchens to the trenches in broad daylight, rather bringing breakfast, lunch, and dinner up together before daylight. Ration carriers, sometimes with hot boxes strapped to their backs, worked their way through crowded communication trenches in the early morning to ensure the soldiers received their rations. The soldiers typically blasphemed the cooks for the meagre rations, probably unaware that the carriers had spilt most of it on the way up.8 A reserve of 250 tins of water and a canteen selling tinned fruit, cakes, tobacco, and biscuits had also been set up close to the front line. Unfortunately, the tins, previously used for petrol, were often tainted with a faint residue of the fuel, prompting one soldier to comment that after taking a drink he ‘was afraid if I put a cigarette in my mouth I should blow up’. 9

  The Germans typically shelled at meal times in order to interrupt the delivery of rations, and heavy casualties resulted. Captain Allan Leane’s company of 55 men was responsible for feeding the 48th Battalion troops.10 When Leane’s company came out of the line, he only had 30 men left. ‘We certainly got our share of it, maybe I put my cookers too close … The casualties were very heavy but the regiment was looked after,’ Leane explained in a letter. 11

  The front line lurched forward continuously, stretching medical arrangements to breaking point. The battalion stretcher-bearers struggled to cope with the flood of casualties, the ‘lengthy and formidable’ transports, and the constant shelling. In response, the number of regimental stretcher-bearers was increased, sometimes supplemented by bandsmen, who were adept at entertaining the troops out of the line; pioneers; and field-ambulance bearers. Field-ambulance bearers also remained behind to continue helping after their division was relieved, and relays were organised to ease the stretcher-bearers’ workload.

  With the front line fitfully moving forward, aid posts were soon too far back from the trenches, delaying the treatment of the wounded and exhausting the stretcher-bearers. In response, medical staff set up forward posts that shortened the carry distance. It sped up treatment, but exposed the wounded to shelling; in some cases, these aid posts were even set up in old German dugouts, with their entrances facing the German guns. Shells sometimes exploded in the dugout’s mouth, killing or trapping those inside.12 In an incident that Sergeant John Edey recorded in his diary, a doctor and his army medical sergeant were entombed in a dugout. Sensing that their chance of rescue was slim, they were considering taking an overdose of morphine when, at the last moment, they were dug out.13

  From 8 August, the Australians would extend their advance northward from the Pozières summit into the shallow valley in front of the farm. This advance would result in the Australians losing visual communication with their brigade headquarters and artillery, which, in some cases, was over 2000 yards away in Mash Valley.14 Signallers such as Private Harold Hinckfuss would have to adapt quickly to this new situation. Despite the difficulties, he understood that his duty was to ‘get the message through at all costs’. According to Hinckfuss, most commanders had a magneto telephone. Shellfire constantly severed connections to these telephones, forcing signallers to spend hours listening in to conversations over a wire; that way, they knew when a connection was cut and could immediately repair it. Multiple trunk cables with numerous test points were also buried in trenches in an attempt to restore uninterrupted communication. Surface lines were laid when and where needed, then duplicated and laddered, which created a network of alternative electrical paths.15 Despite these improvements, the wires rarely survived a heavy bombardment. In response, some signallers used large French electric lamps, which could send up to 30 messages a day, although they had the unfortunate side-effect of attracting German fire at night.16 Others reverted to using carrier pigeons; signallers attached a small cylinder to the pigeon’s leg, and filled it with messages written on custom lightweight paper. Pigeons were surprisingly reliable, but could only be released in daylight hours and calm weather. If mistakenly released into a westerly wind, they were sometimes blown over into the German lines. Soldiers often came across dead pigeons that shellfire had shredded.17

  Despite these measures, commanders still relied on runners to relay messages. Unfortunately, runners’ lives were sometimes risked to deliver trivial information. Iven Mackay recalled, when crouched over a map amid dozens of corpses and moaning wounded, a panting runner arriving with an envelope marked ‘urgent and secret’. The note from Gough, presumably forwarded by brigade or divisional staff, said that a number of men had recently failed to salute his car, despite the general’s flag being prominently displayed on the bonnet.18

  This new phase of fighting along an exceedingly narrow salient was also characterised by German barrages that repeatedly destroyed freshly dug trenches. It would cause massive confusion: orders referred to trenches that ceased to exist or were not recorded on maps.19 New maps were needed almost daily to cope with the ever-changing situation. The most reliable and important source of information for maps came from aerial photographs taken by the 7 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, which were attached to the Anzac Corps.20 Photographs taken in the early morning were developed and printed at the aerodrome, and then rushed by motorcycle to reach the corps, and later, the divisional headquarters, by late afternoon. The maps clearly showed new trenches, and helped officers set their objectives and accurately measure their troops’ advances.

  White and Cox would have hoped that these revised arrangements would keep the vital supply routes open and soldiers adequately supplied long enough for them to execute their next attack upon the farm. Time would tell whether the arrangements would hold.

  On Tuesday 8 August, Birdie and White met with Cox to devise a strategy for the capture of the farm. In plans drawn up on 6 August, White had suggested the first two trenches as successive targets, but Cox now favoured only one, as he didn’t want to end his first thrust at the bottom of the gully. The officers agreed that the attack’s objective for that evening would be Park Lane Trench.

  Although agreeing on the plan, White still harboured grave concerns that the isolated attacks across the entire line were uncoordinated and, in the case of the Australians, conducted on a much narrower front.21 The value of decisive and coordinated attacks seemed to have been forgotten: Rawlinson’s Fourth Army, Gough’s Reserve Army, and General Marie Émile Fayolle’s French Sixth Army were each doing their own thing. ‘They seem content to let each little lot plan its own attacks,’ White remarked.22 White’s opinion was accurate: the Reserve and Fourth armies seemed incapable of launching coordinated attacks and despite the best-laid plans, the French and British had
to postpone joint attacks on 7 and 11 August.23 On 11 August, Haig’s ally, General Joffre, vented his displeasure with the situation, stating that he wanted to move away from small-scale battles to broad-front, multi-division affairs.24

  White also realised that he had to act quickly, as Gough wanted to launch his five-division attack on Thiepval by the end of the month. Railway timetables — of all things — dictated this timeline. The Official History noted that the generals speculated as to the exact date that a division would be worn out, and railway timetables were developed accordingly. The dates for transporting the Australian divisions from the Somme had already been decided. The Australian commanders had to speculate which vital points would be captured prior to their division’s relief. Based on their forecasts, high command had expected the Australians to capture Mouquet Farm by mid-month.25 Unfortunately, the chaos thrown up by battle rarely conforms to railway timetables.

  White and Cox decided to capture Park Lane Trench using Digger Brand’s 15th Battalion, supported by the 7th British Suffolk Battalion. They hoped that Park Lane would be lightly held. ‘We go over the parapet and then our fate is sealed,’ an officer wrote to his wife, upon learning that his battalion would lead the attack. ‘I’ll try for your sake to do well and come through … God be with you Love for all Time.’26

  Just on dusk on 8 August, the 15th Battalion left its shallow trenches, traversed 200 yards of no-man’s-land, and secured a section of Park Lane Trench. The 7th Suffolk Battalion on its left failed to capture a knot of trenches known as points 78 and 96.27 Casualties were relatively light, thanks to inexperienced German soldiers initially mistaking the attackers for their own troops. Some Australians, unable to make out the shallow trench, settled 50 yards beyond it.

  Charles Bean, who sheltered in Brand’s 4th Brigade headquarters — a dugout in Sausage Valley — during the attack, was less enthusiastic about its supposed success. ‘And so ends another expensive petty operation,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘With all the will in the world one cannot see a spark of the genius or imagination which one would like to see in the British plans. Have they a plan? At present it looks as [they] leave each division to think out its petty “stunt” and act on its own as it likes.’28 At a tactical level, Bean’s criticism of seemingly valueless advances was understandable. However, at a strategic level, Haig’s plan was comprehensible: to secure favourable positions, such as Mouquet Farm and Thiepval, prior to the September general assault. Historian Peter Simkins recognised the differing perspectives of soldiers and generals on this matter, noting that ‘the broader tactical benefits were not always instantly apparent to the officers and men who saw the strength of their battalions eroded by minor yet costly “line straightening” operations’.29