Pozieres

by Scott Bennett

  Others had no option but to return to the line. One man displayed a false bravado, claiming, ‘Two or three good feeds and sleeps, and I will be ready to have another go at the bastards.’31 Other soldiers would likely have laughed but no one would surely have believed him. The 1st Division troops had anticipated a long rest for reorganisation and re-equipping. However, in the coming days, their expectations would be shattered; as the rumours suggested, their spell from the trenches would be shortlived.32

  From his billet in a small French village, Alec Raws was still grappling with the sad outcomes of Legge’s failed 28 July attack upon the OG lines. His brother Goldy was still missing. On 12 August, the 23rd Battalion held a court of enquiry to ascertain Goldy’s fate. Private John McGuire and Sergeant James Alliston were called as witnesses. According to the transcripts, McGuire heard Goldy’s voice urging his men to remain in line during the attack; later, he saw him silhouetted in the light of a German flare. After digging in, McGuire asked after Goldy, but no one had seen him. This confirmed what Alec already knew, but what Sergeant Alliston had to say no doubt shocked him. In the aftermath of the attack, Alliston had suffered from shell shock. In hospital the day after Goldy disappeared, a medical officer asked Alliston about the officers of his battalion. Alliston said that Goldy was among the missing. The medical officer corrected him, saying that Goldy had passed through his hands with a wound to his head. Alliston couldn’t recall the officer’s name or where he had said Goldy was passed on to.33

  Based on this scant evidence, the court recorded Goldy as ‘missing’. For Alec, this offered some hope: ‘Goldy is posted missing, but may be possibly wounded and temporarily lost in some strange hospital,’ he wrote to his brother-in-law. ‘I’ve told mother and father that he is wounded, but I don’t know his whereabouts. I had to tell them something.’34

  The practical consequence of the high Australian casualty rate on the Somme was the pressing necessity to recruit fresh men to replenish the gaps. In Australia, the wheels of the massive production line that recruited, equipped, transported, trained, housed, and finally sent men into battle continued to turn in August, albeit at a slower rate than in late 1915. The newspapers played their part in persuading men to volunteer. The Melbourne Herald regularly devoted its front page to pocket portraits of brothers — sometimes up to five — who had enlisted together. In August 1916, the newspaper applauded Mrs Campbell of Warrnambool for selflessly offering up her five sons in service of the country.35

  In London, politicians such as Liberal member William Cowans contemplated whether the battered Australian divisions could replenish themselves. In the House of Commons on 10 August, he enquired if Australia would have any difficulty in keeping its forces at full strength, considering the lives they had lost on the Somme. ‘I am confident that Australia will take all necessary steps to provide drafts to make good the wastage,’ replied Lloyd George, then minister for war.36

  Australia’s war planners, plagued with falling voluntary enlistments, would not have shared Lloyd George’s confidence. The enormous losses of Legge’s division, coupled with those of Walker’s 1st Division and McCay’s 5th Division at Fromelles, had seriously depleted the Australian Imperial Force’s reserves. More sapping battles were anticipated. In Australia During the War, Ernest Scott explained that, in response to these casualties, the Army Council (the supreme board administering the army, based in London) threatened to break up the 3rd Australian Division that John Monash was training in Britain so that the existing Australian divisions could be maintained in the field. It appeared to be a calculated move, as the Army Council rightly anticipated that the Australian government, and Birdie, in particular, would strenuously oppose it, given that both had been pushing hard for an Australian corps or army.37

  Birdie and White thought it best to spell out to Australia their future manpower needs. Perhaps they could be supplied by voluntary enlistments. They requested 80,000 additional men over four months to replenish the five divisions.38 This was above the 11,790 men they were anticipated to receive each month. The War Council accepted the estimate and cabled Australia with the colossal demand in early August. ‘This is the only means of retaining the 3rd Division for service in the field,’ read the cable. These numbers would be impossible to fulfil through voluntary enlistments, which had fallen to 6500 per month by mid-1916.39 It appeared that the only way Australia could take the necessary steps to bolster its drafts was to introduce conscription. A crisis loomed on this issue; it would embroil the Australian Imperial Force and the Australian government and its people.

  Australian prime minister Billy Hughes had the opportunity to achieve great things on the back of his growing reputation, but only at the cost of thousands more young lives in many more attacks like Pozières. The only way he could drive his political agenda was to answer the call to introduce nationwide conscription. Hughes didn’t then realise it, but this would split the nation in two.

  Amputee Roy Smith represented the Australian wastage that Lloyd George referred to. After a series of operations, his mangled leg had been amputated at the thigh, and his raw stump was mending slowly. ‘It is a good cut and it takes a while to heal up,’ he wrote in a letter home.40 Shifted to the 2nd Australian Auxiliary Hospital in Southall, Middlesex, Smith noticed the deterioration in care, most likely due to the growing number of cases the hospital had to deal with in July and August. He wrote:

  My leg has not been dressed since Tuesday … one of the sisters must have woke up and came along to do my dressing; when she took it off it was green and smelt horrible. My dinner was stone cold and not very nice, I can tell you I never felt so homesick in all my life.

  The specialist hospital where Smith convalesced fitted artificial limbs to amputees coming back from the Western Front. The flood of incoming cases overwhelmed and saddened the nurses. ‘I have about 156 dressings to do for about 30 one-armed men,’ wrote Australian nurse Sister Edith Avenell during a busy period for the hospital.41

  ‘I was on duty with a ward of 15 patients who had three legs between them,’ wrote another nurse. ‘I felt a coward and shrank from meeting them at first, for they shamed me with the cheerfulness and independence.’42

  Over 3000 shattered men passed through the hospital in three years. ‘I am sorry for Australia but it will be nothing but broken-down men after the war,’ despaired Avenell in a letter home.43

  The newly designed high-explosive shells shattered the limbs of many soldiers apart from Smith. Geoffrey Noon explained in British Fighting Methods in the Great War that these shells broke up into jagged fragments, inflicting terrible damage by penetrating the skin and severing superficial veins and arteries before striking muscle, and possibly severing the nerves and large arteries and veins contained within it. If bone was struck, it would shatter into even smaller fragments. These fragments would eventually exit the same way, making a larger hole on the way out.44 These wounds were susceptible to gas gangrene because of the Somme’s high manure content, causing the tissue of the affected limb to swell as the cells gradually died off. Doctors had few options to address these injuries — as in the case of Roy Smith’s smashed femur — other than amputation.

  Like Smith, infantryman Private Dan O’Brien from Charlton, Victoria, also had his leg amputated. O’Brien’s 20th Battalion charged the Germans on 4 August, and just as he reached a German trench he was struck — ‘I thought I was gone,’ he wrote in a letter home.45 He managed to crawl back to safety after sheltering in a shell hole all night. ‘Next day two chaps carried me about two miles to the Dressing Station … I was on the point of death and they kept injecting me morphia to stop the pain.’ O’Brien was eventually transferred to Southall. ‘There were two operations and in the second one they took my leg off up near the thigh. So it will be “Old Uncle Dan and his Wooden Peg” when I come home.’

  Smith wasn’t sure what he would do when he returned home. He thought he could perh
aps do his old job as a mechanic, but worried that the walk might be too far. The hospital offered technical training opportunities, and he started working in a factory with other amputees. ‘All the other chaps have their wooden legs and when we are coming to work in the morning everyone knocks off work to watch us pass and they laugh at the others hobbling along on their legs,’ he noted in a letter.46

  Smith recovered slowly, returning to Australia in 1917. He must have wondered what his future would hold — would he be welcomed home, or would his pinned trouser leg be an uncomfortable reminder of a war that some Australians no doubt would prefer to forget?

  The 4th Division’s period of fighting concluded on 15 August, and its relieved units gradually withdrew from the front line. The Official History calculated that the 4th Division had conducted six successive night attacks over nine days, which had brought it within striking distance of Mouquet Farm. Correspondent Philip Gibbs described the fighting around the farm as ‘hard and grim’, as the enemy had ‘done his utmost to check every yard of our men’s advance by continual curtain-fire’.47 The 4th Division’s figure of 4649 casualties was marginally less than the 1st and 2nd Division’s losses.48

  Although the 4th Division had largely achieved its set objectives, its soldiers did not seem to be in a celebratory mood. Private Gilbert Jacob recalled looking back on the battlefield as he withdrew with a small group of walking wounded, one man out front carrying a white flag tied to a crooked stick. He saw an unbroken stretch of desolation, torn up a thousand times by the bursting of shells:

  It was worse than the desert, though, like in the desert, there was some tiny, yellow flowers. I stuck one in my coat and tried to whistle, but I felt so tearful that the third note stuck in my throat every time.49

  While soldiers such as Jacob trudged back, their naive enthusiasm for war crushed and replaced with shattered nerves, bone-weariness, and tears, divisional headquarters hatched plans for yet another attack upon Mouquet Farm.

  Birdie’s diary and battalion histories show that he, in a feat of considerable stamina, distributed medals to nearly every battalion in I Anzac Corps — a major undertaking, considering there were 39 battalions in the corps and that each ceremony lasted many hours.

  At a parade of 1st Division troops, Birdie announced, ‘I have some wonderful news … beautiful stirring news.’50 He then dropped what was likely an unexpected bombshell: ‘We will be in a serious action again within a few days.’ The soldiers on parade couldn’t believe it. ‘You could hear going down the line, “You old bastard,” ’ remembered Ben Champion of the 1st Battalion. ‘Birdwood must have heard it too, but he didn’t bat an eyelid.’ They had good reason to be angry: 50 per cent of the 1st Division troops had been killed or wounded in the first series of attacks, and subsequently they had only been reinforced to two-thirds of their original strength. Birdie tried to lift the troops’ spirits with trite platitudes — he told them they had ‘drubbed the Germans’ once, and that this was their chance to ‘kill some more’. The Official History said some men caught Birdie’s spirit, while the majority thought his praise was idle flattery.51

  Despite the loss of 5285 men from the division, the Official History explained that the brutal logistics of war, rather than Birdie’s desire for further honours, dictated the 1st Division’s return to the line. There simply wasn’t the reservoir of fresh divisions to continually call upon as replacements; they had to be recycled whether at full strength or not. British divisions with similar, and sometimes heavier, losses had also been shunted back to the Somme for a second stunt.52

  Birdie’s bombshell deepened the Anzacs’ growing bitterness toward the general staff. Some soldiers thought Birdie only used the Anzacs to make a name for himself. Bean noted in his diary that even Birdwood’s fellow British officers thought ‘he had come along too fast’.53 When General Smyth asked for the customary three cheers for Birdie after one of his pep talks, Iven Mackay noted that ‘the response was very ragged’.54 The singing, joking, and high-spirited antics that marked the troops’ mood in late July had faded, replaced by resignation to their pending fate in the mire and filth of the Somme battlefield.

  chapter fourteen

  Second Stunt

  ‘Our nerves are bad but the heads are keeping us hard at it.’

  — Corporal Arthur Thomas’s diary

  In mid-August, the 1st Division troops marched back toward Pozières. Birdie’s news no doubt doused their relaxed mood. As they put their packs and blankets back into storage, some probably wondered if they’d ever return to reclaim them, or whether they’d ever get another chance to spend their French francs.

  That night, the subdued troops slept in the remnants of a wheat field close to Albert. It rained and the fields turned into muddy clay, clinging to their boots and creating stagnant, foul-smelling puddles. Ground sheets prevented the men from sinking into it as they slept.1 Many probably suffered a fitful sleep due to the mud and the odd shell landing in nearby fields.

  The next day, they marched on to Bécourt Wood, just beyond Albert, and received water and iron rations — a tin of bully beef, two packets of plain biscuits, and a ration of tea and sugar —before continuing up the protective folds of Sausage Valley. They arrived at the Chalk Pit, the gateway between purgatory and hell. A quiet message was passed down the line instructing them to dump all supplies, equipment, and overcoats because they were going to attack Mouquet Farm.

  During the three weeks of the 1st Division’s rest, soldiers had rekitted, depleted ranks were replenished with reinforcements, platoons were drilled in modern warfare tactics, and soldiers were promoted to fill gaps in the officer ranks. The Official History recognised that within such a short time many of its troops were unlikely to have ‘entirely recovered from strain’ and may have, understandably, returned to the line determined to do their job but with ‘deep bitterness in their hearts’.2

  On a dreary Wednesday, 16 August, the troops tramped through the mud toward Pozières. Steady rain and thick mists had replaced summer sunshine. Major-General Hooky Walker assumed command of the front-line sector from Major-General Cox at 5.00 p.m. on 16 August. Hooky’s division was expected to make two attacks in the coming days: northward to reach Fabeck Graben and enclose Mouquet Farm, and eastward to capture the new German front line opposite the windmill.3 Gough told Hooky that his attack must coincide with the British and French offensive toward Guillemont on 18 August. Since the division’s last stunt, the front line had shifted forward about 500 or 600 yards. Hooky would soon discover whether the spirit of his troops was adequately repaired to continue the push toward Mouquet Farm.

  Hooky decided to tackle both objectives together on Friday 18 August by throwing the New South Wales 3rd Brigade at Fabeck Graben Trench and the Victorian 2nd Brigade at the strongpoints on the Pozières ridge, beyond the windmill. His immediate concern was, however, to ensure that his division — with its efficiency diminished from the last stunt — successfully navigated its way through the waterlogged approach trenches to the front line and then made the necessary preparation, such as digging jumping-off trenches and improving communications, prior to the attack two days later. Based at his Albert headquarters, Hooky wouldn’t have realised how challenging these tasks would be.

  The relieving troops trudged up the Bapaume road in drenching rain, occasionally slipping on the ground before entering First Avenue Trench, which the pioneers were busily repairing. In a trench that was only three feet deep and shell-damaged, they threaded their way past soldiers’ kit, mess tins, and discarded rifles.4 Arthur Thomas of the 6th Battalion worked his way through the bog toward the windmill line, passing some of the wounded on the way there. He noted, ‘so early in the morning, it has a bloody rotten effect on all of us’.5 Lieutenant Matthew Abson, also of the 6th Battalion, wrote in his diary that the trenches smelt very badly of the dead, while Arthur Foxcroft, who trudged with other Victorian 4th Battal
ion soldiers toward the farm, recorded that the battlefield had barely changed since the last stunt.6

  Eric Moorhead of the 5th Battalion moved into the reserve trenches, an area known as Death Valley. The name seemed deserved: ‘Here a leg clad in Australian trousers protruded from the ground, there a German’s hand, heads crawling with maggots and half eaten away protruding from the side of saps,’ Moorhead recounted in his diary.7 He wasn’t exaggerating: Bean, who had followed a similar path, noticed a dead man’s legs, a shoulder, and a half-buried body sticking out of the tumbled red soil. ‘Bodies in a sort of decay, some eaten away to the skull,’ he recorded.8

  Upon reaching the trenches, 4th Battalion commander Lieutenant-Colonel Iven Mackay discovered that the relieved battalions of the 4th Division had abandoned two Lewis guns and some of their wounded comrades. Even worse, there were no British troops in trenches on his left for 500 yards. A disgruntled Mackay believed that ‘a German battalion could walk through this vulnerable point and onto Pozières unmolested’.9

  By Wednesday evening, the wet and tired 1st Division troops had largely taken over the 4th Division’s trenches. The next day, 17 August, staff officers raised serious concerns about the location of the Australians’ front line. The 4th Division’s reported position before its relief seemed completely at odds with the position that the 1st Division now occupied. The 9th Battalion history, From Anzac to the Hindenburg Line, attributed the confusion to poor communication, claiming that exhausted 4th Division troops ‘could not give the relieving troops any information, but simply went out of the line as fast as they could’.10 With no defined trench line, had the fresh troops settled in the wrong positions? Hooky’s planned attack could not proceed until this problem was sorted out. Concerned, Brigadier-General Nevill Smyth personally reconnoitred the front line near a chalk pit called the quarry, which was about 250 yards from the farm. He believed the front line was not as far forward as the 4th Division had reported it to be, even though an aerial photograph showed a ‘beautifully clean line dug’ in the disputed location. Based on Smyth’s reconnaissance, Lieutenant-Colonel Howell-Price’s 3rd Battalion was ordered to withdraw from two advanced positions to allow the heavies to bombard in front of them.