Second Division soldiers, returning to the line after a brief fortnights’ rest, harboured the same bitter feelings as those expressed by the 1st Division soldiers. Their first stunt had been the most gruelling of any of the three divisions, which was reflected in their high number (6848) of casualties. Now they had little room to manoeuvre, with their front line butting up against what had once been the front gate of Mouquet Farm.
Which of the Legge’s ragged brigades would renew the ‘battering ram’ attacks against the farm? Not Paton’s 7th Brigade; it had been smashed up twice in its first stunt. Holmes’s 5th Brigade hadn’t fared much better. The Official History noted that Gellibrand’s 6th Brigade was considered the strongest of the three, even though shelling had virtually wiped out his 23rd Battalion, and most of his other battalions, after reinforcing, could barely muster 600 men each.6
Gellibrand was informed that his 6th Brigade would resume the attacks and advance to the left and right of Mouquet Farm. The news infuriated him. At a corps conference on 22 August, he argued that such a large attack was beyond his men; they had suffered heavy casualties in their first stunt and had only been out of the line for 17 days. White, realising the futility of renewing a defeated attack without changing the method, agreed. He revised the battle plan, limiting the objective to capturing the trenches on the left-hand side of the farm and Zigzag Trench, which lay just beyond the farm. This would straighten the line for the 4th Division’s follow-up attack in late August.7
Gellibrand also harboured deep concerns about the rushed preparations for the attack. ‘So far as I can judge we have taken over an incompletely consolidated position without any communication worth speaking of,’ he wrote to divisional headquarters. His soldiers noted that the front-line trenches were very shallow. ‘Unless you crawled around on your hands and knees, you were in full view of the Germans,’ recorded Arthur Clifford.8 How would Gellibrand, whom Birdie once described as a ‘rather delicate man … prone to breakdown’, respond to what appeared to be the unrealistic expectations placed upon his worn brigade?9 The answer, as usual, was that he would focus on methodical planning and the careful management of his troops in the coming days to maximise the brigade’s chances of success. He would continue his practice of communicating face-to-face with his subordinates in the fighting line, which he thought was the best way to relay his expectations and plans; he would also push his platoon commanders to monitor the condition and morale of their troops, firmly believing that until they knew how much ‘beer or butter’ their men could hold, they wouldn’t get much value out of them in battle.10
Was Gellibrand prone to breakdown, as Birdie suggested? He was brittle under prolonged periods of strain, but so too were other officers, such as White — both men shared letters in 1917 confessing that their duties had exacted a toll upon their health. Gellibrand reasoned that few commanders could endure more than 48 hours of a raging battle. Bean’s diary supported Gellibrand’s assessment: he cited instances of commanders wilting under strain, including Major George Redburg of the 10th Battalion, who slept in his dugout on 21 August while the ‘whole operation outside hung on his battalion’, and his predecessor, 50-year-old Lieutenant-Colonel Stanley Price Weir, who asked for a return to Australia after suffering from exhaustion at Pozières. Gellibrand’s brittleness under strain revealed itself in prickly and tactless behaviour toward other officers, which resulted in spiteful clashes with Charles Brand, whom he ‘detested’, and Arthur Bridges, whom he called a ‘swine’. 11
Gellibrand would have understood that the odds of his brigade succeeding in the attack were small. He could protest to his superiors about the senseless operation, but this would almost certainly end his career as a field commander. Haig and Gough had already dismissed a number of ‘windy’ officers who lacked the right offensive spirit.12 Despite his misgivings, Gellibrand would rally his troops for the assault; although he cared for them deeply, he also possessed a quality essential to all commanders in battle — ruthlessness toward subordinates.
As expected, Gellibrand responded to White’s revisions by throwing himself into the planning of the attack. Concerned about his poor lines of communication, he moved his headquarters forward to a dugout near the Pozières cemetery. He also shifted the brigade supply dump forward to alleviate some of the supply problems experienced by other divisions. Gellibrand then selected his 21st Battalion, which could muster about 700 men, to lead the attack. He decided to attack at 4.45 a.m. on Saturday 26 August, reasoning that the murky light of dawn might provide some cover for the advancing troops.13
Gellibrand sent patrols out to ascertain the location and strength of the German defences, but their reports proved inconclusive.14 What the patrols failed to discover was that the Germans had evacuated their forward trenches to avoid heavy casualties from the British bombardment, but they aimed to reoccupy them at the exact moment the attack started. ‘If anything went wrong, we should look stupid,’ said the plan’s architect, Lieutenant Tschoeltsch. ‘If, on the other hand, we succeeded and we cleared this sector and reoccupied it at the right moment then the British would not get Mouquet Farm today.’15
As attack preparations intensified, Gellibrand sensed his men’s depressed spirits. Arthur Clifford, who, along with many fellow soldiers, had unearthed stinking corpses while digging a trench, was no doubt justified in feeling bitter about the looming fight over a few yards of ground.16 According to Gellibrand’s biographer, Peter Sadler, whenever he was in the trenches Gellibrand moved up and down the line in his shabby private’s uniform and tried to lift their sagging spirits by imploring them to ‘box on boys, stick it out’. His soldiers sensed that his encouragement was genuine and conveyed in the same manner that a father would inspire a son.17
In the grey dawn of 26 August, Gellibrand’s 21st Battalion, supported on its flanks by the 22nd and 23rd battalions, climbed from their trenches and advanced behind a barrage, which crept forward at 50 yards a minute. The troops’ objective was to advance forward on about a 1000-yard frontage and straighten the line by capturing the dugouts within the farm, as well as numerous strongpoints that surrounded it. But, confused by the flares and noise coming from the farm’s ruins, the troops inadvertently continued past their main objective, the ‘barely traceable’ Zigzag Trench. Captain Fred Sale realised the mistake and brought some men back, but the bombardment drowned out his shouts to the others. The main body of men advanced past the ruins of Mouquet Farm. They later tried to return, but inavertedly bunched up, offering themselves as easy targets to the German machine-gunners.18 At 7.00 a.m., a despatched pigeon reached battalion headquarters, informing them that the advance of the 21st had stalled and been driven back at various points. The news at 7.20 a.m. was just as grim: small parties of troops were still hanging on, but the carrying parties supporting them were dwindling due to shelling casualties.
German machine-gun crews, hidden in the ruins, spat bullets across the attack front continually, forcing the Australians to take cover in shell holes and ditches. Second-Lieutenant Alexander Beatty, a 27-year-old farmer from Yackandandah, Victoria, attempted to silence one of the machine guns so his platoon could advance. He told his batman, Private Stan Sedgman, to explain to his family if he was killed that he had died while trying to take a machine gun. As Beatty climbed from his shell hole, he was shot dead.19 Bombing teams also tried to suppress the fire, but the Germans shot them down before they could get close enough to throw their bombs. The Australians could neither move forward or backward; they had no options other than to withdraw from their exposed position or surrender.
By 10.30 a.m., the fighting had petered out. Toward noon, the German shelling intensified again. That afternoon, the Germans attacked the remnants of the 21st Battalion sheltering in the shell holes and ditches around the farm. Some Australians forfeited their precarious positions while others, unable to safely work their way back to their own lines, remained in their shell holes and planned to r
eturn at dusk. For two days, Lieutenant Norman Cumming, a 23-year-old schoolteacher from Victoria who was wounded in the head and side, tried to reach the Australian lines with two companions, but he was eventually captured. About 60 other Australians were also taken prisoner.20
That night, the incoming 14th Battalion launched a follow-up attack. They captured a stretch of trench, but were later chased out by the Germans. A padre justified the assault to Bean the next day, saying: ‘It was not successful as an attack but most successful as a raid.’ Bean was incredulous, noting in his diary: ‘That is simply meaningless to me and I am not going to write up as a successful raid what was a failure as an attack.’21 This incident illustrated that Bean’s enthusiasm for the Somme enterprise, so obvious on 26 July, had dampened, most likely because of Leo Butler’s death, not to mention viewing first-hand the desolation of Pozières and the results of five weeks of exhausting labour. Bean also seemed frustrated and somewhat constrained by his own strict standards of reporting, telling events truthfully and yet not writing anything that questioned military authority or strategy.
The objective of straightening the line had failed. Gellibrand’s 21st Battalion was relieved that night. For the second time in two weeks, it had been shot to pieces, losing 13 officers and 444 men; the brigade, out of a fighting strength of 2500, had lost 896 men.22 The front line remained unchanged. The Australians were unlikely to be beyond the farm before Gough launched his grand attack.
Some of those men had lost their lives before the attack had even commenced. Alec Raws had died during the changeover of the 1st and 2nd divisions. After the 23rd Battalion made its way through the bombardment and into its designated trenches, some men were reported missing. Later, three privates were found dead beside a junior officer, reported to be Alec Raws. His body had no wounds; concussion due to an exploding shell was probably what killed him. ‘He should never have gone back into the fighting so soon,’ reflected his friend and company commander Captain Lionel Short. ‘I had the feeling that he had known he would not come out safely.’23 He later wrote a letter of condolence to Raws’ family. After recounting their close friendship, Short wrote philosophically: ‘Well that is war. You go into a stunt and if you are lucky enough to keep your own life, [you] find that most of your friends are missing.’24
Between 27 and 29 August, the complexion of the battle changed. At a tactical level, Cox’s 4th Division replaced Legge’s 2nd Division. The 4th Division’s re-entry into the battle marked the last opportunity for I Anzac Corps to seize the farm before it was rested at Ypres in Belgium for the winter months. The Germans also made a significant change to their command structure on the Western Front, replacing General Erich von Falkenhayn with Field-Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, who immediately revised their ‘no retreat’ doctrine. And the deteriorating weather transformed the battlefield into a quagmire.
On 28 August, Cox took full control of the front, and command of the last remnants of Legge’s division. Despite two weeks’ rest, many of Cox’s troops, such as Sergeant Ted Rule of the 14th Battalion, were still rattled. ‘The thoughts of another gruelling [sic] were not very welcome,’ wrote Rule, and the thunder of the guns ‘put the wind up us a little more’.25 Dispiritingly, the line had hardly moved since their last stunt.26
As the 4th Division troops sheltered in their muddy trenches, White reflected on the Australians’ past attacks. It seemed that every variant had been attempted: daylight, twilight, and early-morning attacks; creeping, lifting, and machine-gun barrages; two-, two-and-a-half-, and three-battalion attacks; advances to the left, centre, and right. White sensed that the forces previously employed against the farm were ‘too light’.27 The 2nd Division’s last effort involved half a battalion. Also, unconfirmed reports from Australian soldiers and German prisoners suggested that the German positions within the farm were much stronger than first thought; apparently, their dugouts were capable of housing hundreds of soldiers. In response, White demanded that a whole brigade be thrown at the farm. Yet how would he shunt so many men forward without the Germans noticing them? And denser attacking formations would provide the German machine-gunners with splendidly uniform targets. Cox disagreed with White’s edict, and was only prepared to spare two battalions for the attack. He ordered his 13th and 16th battalions to advance on Fabeck Graben and to capture Mouquet Farm on the way through on 29 August, exactly the same objective that the 13th Battalion had tried to secure just two weeks earlier.
Unfortunately, one critical piece of information about the farm’s defences had eluded White, and it held the key to its capture. White and the divisional commanders thought Mouquet Farm was an uninhabitable pile of rubble. They assumed that the strength of the German position lay in its strong trench network and supporting dugouts located along the ridge line. Commanders remained baffled by the repeated reports of the Australians being fired on from behind after German positions had seemingly been cleared — how were the Germans infiltrating and outflanking them so easily? I Anzac Corps Intelligence headquarters’ routine interrogation of German prisoners on 26 August revealed the answer: beneath the farm’s rubble lay an extensive labyrinth of cellars, sometimes as deep as 30 feet and 28 steps down, reinforced with logs and linked by tunnels. The cellars held hundreds of men, and stores of munitions and food. Pulleys hauled machine guns up to firing platforms so that the farm’s approaches could be sprayed methodically with bullets, ‘even by a blind man’. Hidden entrances around the farm allowed the Germans to safely withdraw during bombardments and then suddenly reappear once the Australians attacked.28
In Thiepval, Michael Stedman attributed the farm’s strength to the meticulous Major von Fabeck, who, upon arriving on the Somme in April 1916, had fortified Mouquet Farm, converting it into an underground fortress by late June. It contained regimental battle headquarters, shelter for 300 men, a telephone exchange, water supplies, and pumping equipment, as well as medical and rest facilities. He also set up a pumping station that carried water all the way from the station at Courcelette.29
It was a major failure of I Anzac Corps Intelligence headquarters that the full extent of the farm’s fortifications remained unknown through most of August. The interrogation of German prisoners and French refugees on 5, 7, and 8 August disclosed information about the farm’s deep shafts and underground rooms. Yet, even as late as 25 August, intelligence furnished reports to the divisions indicating that the farm appeared to be unfortified.30 Hooky had previously criticised intelligence officers for staying cooped up at headquarters rather than visiting the front; perhaps this practice contributed to the oversight. The discovery demanded new tactics. White was right: a few companies of exhausted men couldn’t take this position.
On 28 August, while Cox and White planned their next attack upon the farm, the Germans simplified their command structure on the Somme. Von Gallwitz’s command responsibilities were trimmed; he forfeited control of von Below’s First Army to concentrate on his own Second Army. On the following day, 29 August, General Erich von Falkenhayn was sacked. Field-Marshal Paul von Hindenburg assumed his duties as chief of the Great General Staff, with General Erich Ludendorff as his assistant. The news reached John Treloar at I Anzac Corps headquarters a few days later, who wrote in his diary: ‘We also heard that von Falkenhayn had been dismissed and Hindenburg appointed in his place. The question then was, “who and what is Falkenhayn?”’31 Treloar’s diary entry suggests that the Anzacs, who were engrossed in their own affairs, paid little attention to the machinations of the German army supreme command. This was not surprising, considering that many Anzacs would not have even known the names of their British commander-in-chief or army commanders.
Von Falkenhayn’s apocalyptic promise of bleeding the French white at Verdun had turned out to be an empty one. In fact, he had almost bled his own armies out on the Somme by adhering to the decision not to forfeit a yard of ground. Packed front-line trenches provided easy targets for British gunners, and
doomed counterattacks resulted in sickening casualties. Upon coming to grips with the situation in the west, Hindenburg replaced the ‘no retreat policy’ with the concept of elastic defence: why not give up 1000 yards here or there of tactically unimportant ground if it meant conserving vital reserves? The attitude of German soldiers on this subject was summed up in a captured letter: ‘We [the Germans] may lose a little more ground … but we can afford to do that; it isn’t our ground.’32
What did the command change signal to the Allies? The Times believed that it indicated the most dramatic change of the war, an admission of German failure.33 Haig felt vindicated, citing it as clear evidence that his Somme campaign had worn the Germans down. ‘There can be no question as to the right course to follow,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘Our offensive must be continued without intermission as long as possible.’34 For the front-line soldier, this meant one thing: many more months in the Somme mud. One British officer caught in the mire surveyed his exhausted troops: ‘All around me are faces which sleep might not have visited for a week. They have dark shadows under eyes,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘Voices too are tired and the very gait of men has lost its spring. The sap has gone out of them, they are dried up.’35 These men, who had been reduced to husks, were incapable of continuing Haig’s offensive.
Light rain had fallen across the battlefield between 10 and 18 August. A week of fine weather followed. Then, between 25 and 30 August, dark storm clouds brewed and heavy rain drenched the ground. By 28 August, many of the trenches were ankle-deep in water. Although the Somme’s chalky soil drained well, the farming fields surrounding Pozières had an unusually high clay content. With little vegetation to bind the soil together, it became sticky ‘yellow-red paste’ that clung to the men’s boots, tunics, and weapons. Trenches crumbled under the constant soaking. ‘Talk about slush, it was up to your knees, and over in places, and just like glue,’ wrote Lance-Corporal Ivan Harrison of the 14th Battalion in a letter to a friend. ‘The chaps were continually getting bogged. Sometimes it took two or three of us to pull a man out of the mud.’36
Pozieres Page 27
