Our Darkest Day

by Patrick Lindsay

  At this stage, the Australian 5th Division troops had not yet even reached their lines opposite the Sugar Loaf. But in any event, events elsewhere would change these priorities and the raiding was left to the New Zealand Division. They met with very strong resistance from the German defences which culminated in a bloody rebuff on 13 July when a reinforced company of the 1st Otago Battalion forced its way through the German wires but was thrown back with heavy losses – 52 killed or missing, 123 wounded – only six of the party returning without wounds.

  Clearly, far stronger measures were needed to prevent any further German units being moved to the Somme.

  The Germans defending the Fromelles area knew they now faced a new combination of British and Anzac units. From right to left across the Allied front line – facing the Germans – the British 61st Division held the position immediately to the right of the Sugar Loaf and then from the left side of the Sugar Loaf the Australian 5th Division lined up as follows: the 15th Brigade, the 14th Brigade and the 8th Brigade. On the far left, the New Zealand Division held the line.

  Each of the Australian brigades held back two of its four 1000-man battalions in reserve and moved the other two into its front-line position. The 15th Brigade initially moved the 59th and 60th Battalions into the line. Alongside them, the 14th Brigade moved up the 53rd and 54th Battalions and, next to them, the 8th Brigade brought forward its 31st and 32nd Battalions.

  On the morning of 12 July 1916, Brigadier-General Harold ‘Pompey’ Elliott, the commander of the 15th Brigade, formally took charge of almost 2 kilometres of the front line, starting from the Sugar Loaf salient where his troops butted up against the British 61st Division. Almost immediately, Elliott received bewildering news. The 5th Australian Division was to take part in an urgent full-scale assault along with the British division. The 61st was a Territorial division raised in the South Midlands of England, with no previous operational experience as a unit and which had only sailed from England on 24 May.

  The Australians were stunned to be called into action at such short notice, as Hugh Knyvett wrote:

  We had not been two days in the trenches before we knew that we were destined for an attack on the trenches opposite and we had not had time even to know the way about our own lines. Few of us had even had a glimpse of no-man’s land, or sight of the fellow across the street whom we were to fight.

  7

  LOOSE THINKING

  Take calculated risks. That is quite different to being rash.

  GENERAL GEORGE S. PATTON, US SOLDIER

  As the Australians checked out the terrain they had inherited, the grim reality of their situation struck home. The flat, featureless no-man’s land varied in width from more than 350 metres in front of 15th Brigade on their right to around 100 metres on the Australian left flank in front of the 8th Brigade. Behind them, they were connected to their rear by their five avenues – communication trenches that were the source of their ammunition, supplies and reinforcements. But a number of these were virtually impassable because they were flooded or knee-deep in mud. The 15th Brigade was served by Pinney’s Avenue and VC Avenue and both were accessible. The 14th Brigade only had Brompton Road and it was severely hampered by flooding while the 8th had Cellar Farm Avenue, which was clear, and Mine Avenue which was substantially blocked.

  On the other side of no-man’s land the Diggers could see the foreboding German defensive line – all concrete and bristling barbed wire – and beyond that they looked up at the German high ground along the horizon. The Australians knew that, behind the ridgeline, German artillery nestled out of sight and out of reach and was able to pour its lethal fire into their lines.

  What they didn’t know at the time was that the Germans could see every movement in the Allied lines opposite them. Pompey Elliott wrote after the war that the Fromelles church had been transformed into a perfect observation post. (In fact he must have been describing another church in the region, perhaps at Aubers, but Elliott’s point is still well made):

  In the village of Fromelles the church as I saw from personal observation later on, had been turned into a solid cube of concrete, except for a stair so narrow that only with difficulty could a normallybuilt man ascend it. At its head near the ridge pole it terminated in a loophole for an observer, who, with a telescope could, with perfect safety to himself, count every sentry in our lines. He had also an extensive view across our back areas, and could at once detect any preparation for attack.

  Pompey Elliott was one of the dominant characters in the Fromelles tragedy. The others were General Richard Haking, the relentless proponent of the attack, and Major General James McCay, the commanding officer of the Australian 5th Division. The three men were strikingly different characters.

  Harold Edward Elliott was known to all as ‘Pompey’ (a nickname he acquired pre-war after a noted Carlton Australian Rules footballer, Fred ‘Pompey’ Elliott). He was a genuine eccentric. Widely read, with an acute mind, he was physically imposing and revelled in his rough-diamond appearance. He was instantly recognised by his men as a soldier’s soldier – a man with the ability to lead by example, sometimes a little too instinctively, but at the same time a man with the capacity to speak as an equal to his men. He was one of those rare characters who won and retained his men’s affection and loyalty throughout their service.

  A fine scholar, Elliott matriculated to university but left after a few weeks to serve with the Victorian Imperial Bushmen in the Boer War from 1899 to 1902. There he won the Distinguished Conduct Medal for ‘particularly daring’ gallantry and came home as a lieutenant aged 23. He then returned to his arts-law studies at Melbourne University, graduating with a Masters in Law and later forming the law firm, H. E. Elliott and Co. He joined the militia and was a lieutenant colonel when war was declared. He led the 7th Battalion AIF in the landings at Gallipoli, where he was wounded and had to be evacuated. He rejoined his battalion two months later in time to take part in the heroic struggles at Steele’s Post and Lone Pine. Elliott wrote later about it to his wife, Kate:

  Brigadier General Harold Edward ‘Pompey’ Elliott, commanding officer of the Australian 15th Brigade. A soldier’s soldier who led by example, Elliott won a Distinguished Conduct Medal for bravery during the Boer War before leading the 7th Battalion at the Gallipoli landings. His misgivings before the Battle of Fromelles were prescient as his 15th Brigade lost more than 800 men killed in the action. (AWM PHOTO A02607)

  we had over 3000 Turks against us in those attacks. I never had more than 600 and finished with only about 200, but we held the trenches. Consequently the 7th and your old man would be apt to get swelled heads for all the nice things said about them.

  The intensity of the fighting endured by Elliott’s battalion is exemplified by the fact that four of his men won the Victoria Cross at Lone Pine and four more won the next best decoration for gallantry, the Distinguished Conduct Medal. Not long afterwards Elliott was struck down with pleurisy and was once again evacuated, this time to England where he recuperated for three months, returning to his battalion on Gallipoli just weeks before the evacuation. As it happened, Elliott badly wrenched his ankle the day before the evacuation and had to leave early. He rejoined his men at their Egyptian base camp at Tel-el-Kebir three weeks later.

  Early in 1916, Elliott was promoted to brigadier and given command of the 15th Brigade, under Major General McCay.

  James Whiteside McCay was an enigma. In 1916 he was 51, tall, straight-backed, moustachioed, with the bearing of a man used to giving commands. He was undoubtedly a brave soldier. But his manner and his temper often got the better of him. He had landed with the 1st Division at Anzac Cove, Gallipoli and had been appalled by the chaos. He momentarily lost control of himself, waving his pistol and blaming all around him, before regaining his composure when challenged by his divisional commander Major General William Bridges. He managed to take control and despite many close shaves – two bullets passed harmlessly through his cap and another through his tunic �
� he rallied his men and continued the assault. Unfortunately, by all accounts, he led by bluster and fear rather than by inspiration.

  Perhaps the most remarkable thing about McCay being in the front line is that he should have been there at all. Before the war he was a prominent politician, having served in the Victorian parliament before being elected to the new Federal parliament and even briefly serving as the Minister for Defence. It’s hard to imagine any modern politician stepping off the gravy train to join his soldiers on active service. McCay was born in Ireland but came with his family to Australia as a baby. An outstanding student, he was dux at Melbourne’s Scotch College and then earned masters degrees in arts and law before taking up schoolteaching, even buying his own school, Castlemaine Grammar. He joined the militia and rose to lieutenant colonel before entering politics.

  He appears to have been one of those people who manage to tick all the boxes in their career path but who rise to the top with evident personality flaws. The Bulletin wrote of McCay in his obituary in 1930 that while he was a ‘bold soldier and a brave man’, he was ‘about the most detested officer in the AIF at an early stage of the war and remained so to the end’.

  A more balanced view of McCay reveals that some of the events for which he was despised were beyond his control. For example, on Gallipoli McCay’s 2nd Brigade was seconded to help the erratic British General Hunter-Weston in the attack on Krithia. Hunter-Weston ordered McCay to launch an attack without giving him any time for proper reconnaissance or preparation. It was a mad and desperate act and the Australians suffered 1000 casualties, half their number, for no gain. Despite the fact that McCay showed his courage by moving so close to the action that he was shot in the leg, breaking it, his men blamed him for the disaster. In reality, McCay had few options: Hunter-Weston was in command and he issued the order. McCay was sent home to recuperate.

  (Incidentally, Sir Aylmer Gould Hunter-Weston, or ‘Hunter-Bunter’ as he was known, was another politician-soldier and another bizarre eccentric. After being sent home from Gallipoli suffering from ‘sunstroke and nervous exhaustion’, he was knighted and then elected to the British parliament in October 1916. In between time, he had the dubious honour of leading his corps at the Somme, in July 1916, where it suffered the highest casualties of all the British units and achieved none of its objectives.)

  McCay returned to Egypt in March 1916 and was given command of the newly formed 5th Division, largely on the strength of the support of his former political colleague, the then Minister for Defence, Senator George Pearce, who said that the division should be commanded by an Australian – and that McCay was the right man for the job. As we have seen, McCay immediately turned his men against him by ordering them on the crazy forced march through the burning desert to the Suez Canal. His standing had not risen by the time the division took over the trenches in Fromelles.

  The architect of the Battle of Fromelles, Sir Richard Cyril Byrne Haking, CBE, KCB, KCMG, was 54 in 1916. He was one of many professional soldiers in the British army who were promoted rapidly because of the massive losses in the war. Many would say he had risen beyond his ability and, worse, he lacked the wit to learn and adapt to the changing face of war. He doggedly held on to his pre-war view that attack was the key to victory under any circumstances and he had even published a number of books on military tactics based on this untenable theory. Haking was one of those peculiar British commanders who believed that individual ‘character’, or the possession of an unshakeable ‘offensive spirit’, could overcome physical obstacles such as an enemy with markedly superior numbers, in massive entrenched positions, equipped with overwhelming firepower. He ignored what would become an accepted military reality: that a properly equipped and entrenched defensive force with good morale and command could only be defeated by an attacking force with substantially superior numbers and firepower.

  Haking had met and befriended the Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, Sir Douglas Haig, during their time at the British Staff College, where Haking was a lecturer. At the outbreak of war, he was given command of the British 5th Brigade. After recovering from a head wound on the Western Front, he was given command of the 1st Division and then, in December 1915, he was appointed commander of the XI Corps. While Haking won and retained Haig’s support, many others saw through him. Lieutenant Colonel Philip Game (later, as NSW Governor, Sir Philip Game, the man who dismissed the Labor Premier Jack Lang in 1932) observed Haking closely as a staff officer. He described Haking as ‘really impossible, untruthful and a bully and not to be trusted’.

  Haking’s proposed assault at Fromelles was his response to the British High Command’s calls for diversionary action to make sure no more German forces were transferred to the Somme. But, as Pompey Elliott later explained in 1929, and then in a celebrated lecture he gave to the United Services Institution in Melbourne in October 1930, the planning for the Battle of Fromelles bordered on the absurd:

  The result of the action was to cripple the 5th Division for months to come, and the loss was not in numbers only, for our very finest officers, NCOs and men, many of them Gallipoli veterans, perished there. And what did it accomplish?

  In its final form it was intended as a feint to distract the attention of the German staff from Pozières, and inasmuch as German records show that for a few days afterwards the Germans expected a renewal of the attack, the feint cannot with certainty be judged to have been completely ineffective. Yet the value of the result (if any) it can be said with certainty was tragically disproportionate to the cost.

  Elliott is crystal clear about the reasons for the failure: ‘loose thinking’ and ‘somewhat reckless’ decision-making by the higher (British) staff.

  The driving force behind these unformed plans was the same British general who had previously twice tried to take the Aubers Ridge – both at enormous cost and both without success – Haking. Apparently, he had learned nothing from his previous disasters. He maintained his mindless and unjustified belief that an attacking force could overcome even the most entrenched defences provided it had the necessary ‘will to succeed’.

  If Haking learned nothing, neither did the committee of other commanders who debated, rejected, reconsidered, reconstituted, revamped and finally approved Haking’s suggested plan. Charles Bean described the flawed genesis of the battle for Fromelles:

  Suggested first by Haking as a feint attack; then by [British General] Plumer as part of a victorious advance; rejected by [British General] Monro in favour of attack elsewhere; put forward again by GHQ as a ‘purely artillery’ demonstration; ordered as a demonstration, but with an infantry operation added, according to Haking’s plan and through his emphatic advocacy; almost cancelled … and finally reinstated by Haig, apparently as an urgent demonstration – such were the changes of form through which the plans of this ill-fated operation had successively passed.

  Haking’s original plan was for a gas attack followed by an infantry attack to capture the Sugar Loaf. He suggested this while the I Anzac Corps was in the line at Fromelles but it was knocked back. It was revitalised after Haig initially called on the commanders of the 1st and 2nd British Armies, Generals Munro and Plumer, to create an attack that would break through and join up with the Somme offensive – an optimistic concept aimed at crushing the Germans in a pincer movement.

  According to Elliott, General Plumer subsequently told Haking to prepare a plan for an attack by Haking’s XI Corps, reinforced by a division and artillery from Plumer’s Army. Haking came back – yet again – with a wildly ambitious plan to take Aubers Ridge. He was again knocked back. But soon after, when Haig saw progress on the Somme was stalling, he told his staff to look for a diversion to distract the Germans. After reconsidering Haking’s plan, Haig’s staff decided that a

  pretended attack or feint on the Aubers–Fromelles Ridge, undertaken as an artillery demonstration only, might help the Somme operations to some extent by pinning the enemy reserves in this area to their ground. />
  So, at that stage, the attack was ‘an artillery demonstration’ possibly combined with a ‘few infantry raids’ aimed at convincing the enemy that an important offensive was imminent. It was a far cry from Haking’s original plan, but somehow Haking was also asked to prepare a plan for an infantry attack on Aubers Ridge in case this ‘became advisable at a later stage’.

  Elliott believes that it was at a meeting at Haig’s General Headquarters on 13 July that the alternative plans were somehow blended into what he called

  a wretched, hybrid scheme, which might well be termed a tactical abortion.

  The conference decided where the attack should take place: at the junction of the two armies, the British XI Corps and the Australians, around the Sugar Loaf. It appointed Haking to command the attack and it also agreed on another amendment: now ‘some infantry’ would take part – three divisions, two from the 1st Army and one from the 2nd. Finally, the commanders decided that the attack would be presaged by a three-day artillery bombardment.

  The more the plan was changed, the more mistakes were made.

  According to the order published by the 1st British Army on 15 July, the aim of the attack was:

  To prevent the enemy from moving southward to take part in the main battle. For this purpose the preliminary operations, as far as possible, will give the impression of an impending offensive on a large scale, and the bombardment, which commenced on the morning of the 14th instant, will be continued with increasing intensity up to the moment of the assault.

  The Allied Commander in Chief, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, departing after a visit to Canadian Divisional Headquarters on the Western Front in 1916. Born into the Haig whisky family, he became a professional soldier, serving in India, Egypt and the Boer War prior to World War I. Haig directed the Battle of the Somme and approved the disastrous Battle of Fromelles as a feint to hold German defenders away from the Somme front. (AWM PHOTO H06963)