First Gas Attack - From The Story of the Great War Vol:5

This account of the first gas attack at St. Julien on 22nd April 1915, is an overview from 'The Story of the Great War, Volume:5' at Project Gutenberg.

It describes the opening sequence of events of the second battle of Ypres.

BEGINNING OF SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES

What is called the second battle of Ypres began with a bombardment of the little city on April 20, 1915. The rain of shells continued on through April 22, 1915, on the evening of which the British
artillery observers reported a strange green vapor moving over the French trenches. The wind was blowing steadily from the northeast. Soon the French troops were staggering back from the front, blinded and choking from the deadly German gas. Many of their comrades had been unable to leave the spot where they were overtaken by the fumes. Those who fled in terror rushed madly across the canal, choking the road to Vlamertinghe. A part of the Zouaves and Turcos ran south toward the Langemarck road, finally reaching the reserve battalions of the Canadians. Ere long the Canadians caught the deadly odor also.

But the work of the gas did a much more valuable thing for the German troops than causing the agonizing death of many hundreds and sending thousands in headlong flight. It made a four-mile-wide opening in the front of the Allies. And the Germans were quick to take advantage of that opening. They followed the gas, and were aided in their advance by artillery fire. The French were forced back on the canal from Steenstraate to Boesinghe. The Canadians had not suffered so much from the gas as the French soldiers, but their flank was too exposed for them to do much effective work against the onrushing Teutons. The attempt to rally the Turcos failed. The Third Brigade could not withstand the attack of four divisions, and was forced inward from a point south of Poelcappelle until its left rested on the wood east of St. Julien. There was a gap beyond it, and the Germans were forcing their way around its flank. Because the entire First Brigade of Canadians had been held in reserve it could not be brought up in time to save the situation. Two of the battalions, the Sixteenth and Tenth, were in the gap by midnight. They charged and recovered the northern edge, and the guns of the Second London Division, which had been supporting the French in the wood east of St. Julien. But the British could not hold all they retook, and were forced to abandon the guns because the artillery horses were miles away. So parts of the guns were made useless before the Germans had them again.

Then another counterattack was made by the First and Fourth Ontarios of General Mercer's First Brigade. The Fourth Ontario captured the German shelter trenches and held them for two days, when they were relieved. The Third Canadian Brigade held its position in spite of being opposed by many times their numbers and almost overcome by the gas fumes. The Forty-eighth Highlanders, who had had to withstand the gas, rallied after their retreat and regained their former place in the front. The Royal Highlanders kept their original position. Yet there was every indication of a rout. The roads were clogged by the night supply trains going forward and the rush of men trying to escape from the deadly gas. The staff officers found it impossible to straighten out the tangle, and the various regiments had to act almost as independent bodies, It was not until early the following morning, April 23, 1915, that the first reinforcements of British soldiers appeared to fill the breach. These men, for the most part, were from the Twenty-eighth Division, and had been east of Zonnebeke to the southeast corner of Polygon Wood. So great was the pressure at the section where the break had been made in the line that troops were taken from wherever available, so that the units in the gap varied from day to day. For the men had to be returned to their original positions, such as remained available, as soon as possible. This composite body of troops has been called Geddes's Detachment.

The Germans had captured Lizerne and Het Sas, and Steenstraate was threatened by them. They bombarded with heavy artillery, located on the Passchendaele ridge, the front held by the Canadians, the Twenty-eighth Division, and Geddes's Detachment, on April 23, 1915. The severest fighting was on that part of the front held by the Third Brigade of Canadians. Many men had been killed or wounded in this brigade, and those who survived were ill from the effects of the gas. Furthermore, no food could be taken to them for twenty-four hours. Moreover, they were subjected to a fire from three sides, with the result that they were forced to a new position on a line running through St. Julien. Finally the Germans forced their way around to the left of the Third Brigade, establishing their machine guns behind it.

A terrific artillery attack was started by the Germans on the morning of April 24, 1915, and this was followed by a second rush of gas from their trenches. It rose in a cloud seven feet high and was making its attack on the British in two minutes after it started. It was thickest near the ground, being pumped from cylinders. And it worked with the same deadly effect. The Third Brigade, receiving its second attack of this sort before it had recovered from the first, retreated to the southwest of St. Julien, but soon after regained most of their lost position. The Second Brigade had to bend its left south. Colonel Lipsett's Eighth Battalion, however, held fast on the Grafenstafel ridge, remaining in their position two days in spite of the gas of which they got a plentiful supply.

By noon of April 24, 1915, the Germans made an attack on the village of St. Julien and that part of the allied front to the east of the village. Thereupon the Third Brigade retreated about 700 yards to a new front south of the village and north of the hamlet of Fortuin. But what remained of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Battalions was forced by circumstances to remain in the St. Julien line until late that night. Colonel Lipsett's Eighth Battalion at Grafenstafel, in spite of its left being unsupported, held its position which was of great importance to the British front. For, had that part of the front been lost, the Germans in an hour could have worked their way back of the Twenty-eighth Division and the entire eastern sector.

In the meantime the French on the western section of the front made a counterattack from the canal with partial success; but were unable to drive the German troops from the sector entirely. The Teutons took Steenstraate; but their victory there was marred by the fact that the Belgian artillery smashed the bridge behind them. By this time the British reenforcements began to arrive in fairly large numbers. The Thirteenth Brigade of the Fifth Division was placed to the west of Geddes's Detachment, between the Pilkem road and the canal. Territorials who had arrived from England only three days before, the Durham and York Brigades of the Northumbrian Division, supported the Thirteenth Brigade. The Tenth Brigade of the Fourth
Division were rushed to support the Third Brigade of Canadians who were south of St. Julien. Other British troops were sent to relieve the tense situation at Grafenstafel.

An attempt to retake St. Julien was made early on Sunday morning, April 25, 1915, by General Hull's Tenth Brigade and two battalions of the Durham and York Brigade. The British worked their way to the few Canadians who had continued on the former front when the main British force had been driven back. There they were checked by the German machine gun fire. The British lost many men here and the efforts to save the day resulted in such a mixture of fighting
units that there were fifteen battalions under General Hull, as well as the Canadian artillery.

At Grafenstafel the Eighth Battalion of the Durham Brigade were bombarded with asphyxiating shells before the German infantry attack. The fighting on this section of the front was fierce throughout the afternoon, but finally the British were forced to retire. At Broodseinde, the extreme eastern point of the allied front, the Germans made a desperate attempt to take the salient, using asphyxiating and other bombs again and again on the men of the Twenty-eighth Division of the British. King George's men, however, repelled the attacks with severe loss to the Teutons, taking many prisoners.

The French on the left, beyond the Yperlee Canal, prevented the advance of the German troops; and, farther to the left, the Belgians checked three attacks in which asphyxiating gas was used, south of Dixmude. Thus it may be seen that the Germans had met with no success worth while, when Sunday, April 25, 1915, closed, so far as the ends of the salient were concerned; but in the center the British situation was so critical that the Second Canadian Brigade, reduced to less than 1,000 men, was once more called into action on the following day. On the same day, April 26, 1915, the Lahore Division of the Indian army was marched north of Ypres. The point of the salient was pushed in on that day at Broodseinde, but the German success there was short-lived. The brigade holding Grafenstafel was attacked fiercely by the Germans. The Durham Light Infantry was forced from Fortuin behind the Haanabeek River. The Teutons made several attacks from the St. Julien district against the section between the Yperlee Canal and the southern part of the village. By this time Geddes's Detachment was almost exhausted, they, with the Canadians, having withstood the heaviest fighting at the beginning of the battle; and most likely saved the Allies a most disastrous defeat. The detachment could stand no more, and the various units of which it was composed were returned to their respective commands.

But the salient was growing smaller as a result of the repeated hammering of the Germans; and that exposed the allied troops to a more deadly fire from three sides. It was evident that the Allies must make a counterattack. General Riddell's Brigade was sent to Fortuin and with the Lahore Division on its left was told to retake St. Julien and the woods to the west of the village. Beyond the Yperlee Canal, on the left, the French made an assault on Lizerne, supported by the Belgian artillery; while the French colonial soldiers poured on Pilkem from the sector about Boesinghe. On the right the allied troops were lined up as follows: the Connaught Rangers,
Fifty-seventh Wilde's Rifles, the Ferozepore Brigade, the 129th Baluchis, the Jullundur Brigade, and General Riddell's battalions. The Sirhind Brigade was held in reserve.

The German artillerymen apparently knew the distances and topography of the entire region and poured a leaden hail upon the allied troops. The Indians and the British in their immediate neighborhood charged in short rushes, losing many men in the attempt to reach the German
trenches. Before the Germans were in any danger of a hand-to-hand struggle, they sent one of their gas clouds from their trenches and the attack was abandoned, the British and Indians getting back to their trenches as best they could. In this action the British gave great praise to their comrades from India. Riddell's Brigade was stopped in its attack on St. Julien by wire entanglements; and, though the outlaying sections of St. Julien were captured, the brigade was unable to hold them; and the Germans continued to hold the woods west of the village. Nevertheless the British front had been pushed forward from 600 to 700 yards in some places.

By that night, the night of April 26, 1915, the allied front extended from the north of Zonnebeke to the eastern boundary of the Grafenstafel ridge; thence southwest along the southern side of the Haanabeek to a point a half mile east of St. Julien; thence, bending around that village, it ran to Vamhuele--called the "shell trap"--farm on the Ypres-Poelcappelle road. Next it proceeded to Boesinghe and crossed the Yperlee Canal, passing northward of Lizerne after which were the French and the Belgians.

The work of the allied aviators on April 26, 1915, deserves more than passing consideration in the record of that day's fighting. They dropped bombs on the stations of Courtrai, Roubaix, Thielt, and Staden. They discovered near Langemarck an armored train with the result that it was shelled and thus forced to return. And they forced a German aviator to the ground at Roulers.

The Lahore Division with the French on their left attacked the Germans on April 27, 1915, but they met with little success because of the gas which the Teutons sent into the ranks of the attacking party. But the German troops had lost so heavily that they did not seem to be inclined to follow up their apparent advantage. Incidentally the Allies needed a rest as well. Hence there was little fighting the next two days. On April 30, 1915, however, General Putz attacked the Germans with so much force that they were hurled back an appreciable distance near Pilkem. Seven machine guns and 200 prisoners were taken, and the 214th, 215th, and 216th German regiments lost more than 1,000 men. On the same day the London Rifle Brigade, further east, drove back a German forward movement from St. Julien.

West of the Yperlee Canal, however, it soon became known to the commanders of the allied forces that the Germans were in such a strong position that it would be impossible to dislodge their enemy until much greater preparations had been made. In the meantime the communications of the Allies were in danger. Hence Sir John French on May 1, 1915, ordered Sir Herbert Plumer to retreat. The wisdom of this order, the execution of which contracted the southern portion of the salient, was seen when the Germans again attempted to force their way through the allied front by the use of gas. The attempt this time was made between Zonnebeke, on the Ypres-Roulers railroad, and Boesinghe on the Yperlee Canal on Sunday, May 2, 1915. Though the British had been supplied with respirators of a sort, these means of defense were not as effective as they should have been nor as adequate as what was provided later. The Germans, however, suffered large losses in this attack because, as soon as the wall of gas began to approach the British trenches, the men there fired into it, well knowing from past experience that the Germans were following the gas. In this manner many of the Teutons were slain. The Allies adopted other tactics which were quite as effective. On seeing the gas approaching, the soldiers in some parts of the line proceeded to execute a flank movement, thereby getting away from the gas and subjecting the Germans to a deadly fire from a direction least expected.

Between Fortuin and Zonnebeke and south of St. Julien the allied line broke, but the supports with two cavalry regiments were rushed from Potijze, a mile and a half from Ypres on the Zonnebeke Road, and regained the lost ground. By night the Germans decided to discontinue their attempt to advance and left their dead and wounded on the field.

The Great Mine at La Boisselle in 1917.

Irish artist Major Sir William Newenham Montague Orpen, visited the Western Front in 1917. In his book ‘An Onlooker in France,’ he records his time on the Front together with some vivid painitings.

This extract is regarding his visit to the great mine at La Boisselle.

The Great Mine. La Boisselle

“The great mine at La Boisselle was a wonderful sight. One morning I was wandering about the old battlefield, and I came across a great wilderness of white chalk—not a tuft of grass, not a flower, nothing but blazing chalk; apparently a hill of chalk dotted thickly all over with bits of shrapnel. I walked up it, and suddenly found myself on the lip of the crater. I felt myself in another world. This enormous hole, 320 yards round at the top, with sides so steep one could not climb down them, was the vast, terrific work of man. Imagine burrowing all that way down in the belly of the earth, with Hell going on overhead, burrowing and listening till they got right under the German trenches—hundreds and hundreds of yards of burrowing. And here remained the result of their work, on the earth at least, if not on humanity. The latter had disappeared; but the great chasm, with one mound in the centre at the bottom, and one skull placed on top of it, remained. They had cut little steps down one of its sides, and had cleared up all the human remains and buried them in this mound. That one mound, with the little skull on the top, at the bottom of this enormous chasm, was the greatest monument I have ever seen to the handiwork of man.

There was another fairly large mine here, just by the Bapaume Road, and there was a large mine at Beaumont-Hamel, and also the "Cough-drop" at High Wood. These were wonderful, but they could not compare in dignity and grandeur with the great mine of La Boisselle.”

View from the Old English Trenches. Looking towards La Boisselle.

(Major Sir William Newenham Montague Orpen, KBE (27 November 1878 – 29 September 1931) was an Irish portrait painter. He studied art at the Metropolitan School and at the Slade School in London where, at the time, great emphasis was put on the study of old masters.

William Orpen was made an official war painter of the First World War and in 1917 he travelled to the Western Front. He produced drawings and paintings of privates, dead soldiers and German prisoners of war along with official portraits of generals and politicians. Most of these works, 138 in all, are in the collection of the Imperial War Museum in London.

He was deeply affected by the suffering he witnessed in the war and his 'To the Unknown British Soldier Killed in France first exhibited in 1923 showed a flag draped coffin flanked by a pair of ghostly and wretched soldiers clothed only in tattered blankets. Although widely admired by the public, this picture was attacked by the press and Orpen painted out the soldiers before the painting was accepted by the Imperial War Museum in 1927).

Gallipoli Landing as recalled by Corporal Nixon, 13th Battalion, AIF.

This article in the Eastbourne Gazette from 1915, gives a personal account of the landing at Gallipoli on 25th April 1915, by Corporal Nixon of the 13th Battalion. Corporal Nixon was convalescing at the Summerdown Camp in Eastbourne after a wound to his left shoulder.

This is a fascinating account for the Newspaper. It starts off with plausible information about the initial attack, but as you read on it gets more and more bizarre!

After reading it you are left with the impression that Corporal Nixon enjoyed telling a ‘tale or two’ and had a captive audience with the newspaper reporter who believed everything he recalled.

“How the Australians Routed the Turks

Colonial Wounded By Sniper

Corporal Nixon of the 13th New South Wales Battalion, who is a Sydney man, told a “Gazette” representative a thrilling story of the landing at the Dardanelles. He arrived there he said, on the memorable 25th April. They had been at the peaceful Greek island of Lemnos and while on their voyage to the scene of one battle they were watching another conflict in progress. It was an amazing spectacle. The landing of the Australians was unprecedented in any warfare. Men were landed in open boats in small parties, and when they reached the shore the positions was so difficult that there was no possibility of any military formation being attempted.

“We fixed bayonets and rushed the Turks over the hill in the most extraordinary manner,” he said. “It was never intended that we should land where we did; we were taken there by some strange current. There was barbed wire entanglement under and above the water and the sea was heavily mined.”

“There was also a sheer precipice in front of us. We hopped out and the Turks could not make much defence; they only had a few machine guns. It was a magnificent sight and I would not have missed it for the worlds. As the General said, ‘Our men fought with such wonderful cheerfulness and absolute fearlessness.’ We were without trenches for twenty-four hours. Our greatest source of trouble was the snipers. They had picked marksmen in every shrub and among the dead leaves. We had to take of our packs and leave them on the beach; we could not carry them up the hill.”

Corporal Nixon added that as night advanced they had orders to retreat, and they found there were German Officers in Australian uniforms in their trenches giving orders. These Germans could speak very good English with an accent which deceived the Colonials who had not travelled much. They also engaged one man as an interpreter. He said he was an Armenian, but at Alexandria he was found to be a spy and arrested.

The “Queen Elizabeth” is doing splendid work and Corporal Nixon saw one of her shells kill 300 Turkish cavalry. The Navy rendered wonderful assistance in the landing.

Corporal Nixon mentioned the case of a Turk who was a prisoner on board a British ship. The Turk had twenty-seven bayonet wounds and a broken thigh. He died eventually but it was remarkable that he should have lived so long. He had been taken out of goal (to which he had been confined for murdering his wife) to fight and this was not an isolated case. Turks had taken small farmers off their land with a threat to seize their holdings if they did not take up arms.

Corporal Nixon, who was wounded in the left shoulder by a sniper on April 28th, speaks very highly of the kindness shown them by a number of private residents of Eastbourne and remarked yesterday that they were having, ‘true Australian weather.”

(Corporal Rupert Charles Clive Wallace Nixon of Harriett Street, Neutral Bay, Sydney enlisted 24th September 1914 aged 22. (No. 663).
He embarked at Melbourne with the 13th Battalion on “HMS Ulysses”, on 22nd December 1914.)

The fighting at Pozieres descriped by Lieutenant J.A. Raws.

This is a famous extract from a letter by Melbourne journalist Lieutenant J. A. Raws, who in a very graphic account, describes a scene during the battle for Pozieres

"... we lay down terror-stricken along a bank. The shelling was awful ... we eventually found our way to the right spot out in no-man's-land. Our leader was shot before we arrived and the strain had sent two other officers mad. I and another new officer took charge and dug the trench. We were shot at all the time... the wounded and killed had to be thrown to one side ... I refused to let any sound man help a wounded man; the sound had to dig ... we dug on and finished amid a tornado of bursting shells ... I was buried once and thrown down several times ... buried with dead and dying. The ground was covered bodies in all stages of decay and mutilation and I would, after struggling from the earth, pick body by me to try and lift him out with me and find him a decayed corpse ... I went up again the night and stayed up there. We were shelled to hell ceaselessly. X- went mad and disappeared... there remained nothing but a charred mass of debris with bricks, stones, girders and bodies pounded to nothing ... we are lousy, stinking, unshaven, sleepless ... I have one puttee, a man's helmet, another dead man's protect dead man's bayonet. My tunic rotten with other men's blood and partly spattered with a comrade's brains".

2nd Lieutenant John Alexander Raws of the 23rd Battalion who was born in Manchester, England, enlisted at Adelaide, South Australia and was killed in action on 23rd August 1916 aged 33.

His younger brother, Lieutenant Robert Goldthorpe Raws, was also killed at Pozieres. He was also in 23rd Battalion, born in Manchester, enlisted at Adeleaide and was killed instantly by a shell on the 28th July 1916, 26 days before his brother, aged 30.

Also see - Pozieres - today

Pozieres an account by C.E.W. Bean

Pozieres as recalled by Phillip Gibbs, War Correspondent.

An Account of Pozieres by C.E.W. Bean

The Australian 1st Division attacked Pozieres early on July 23rd 1916 and captured the town after fierce fighting. The Germans who were not giving up launched several counter-attacks in a grave effort to wrest control from the Australians, but these were repulsed. The Germans eventually launched one of the heaviest artillery barrages of the war and shelled the Australians unremittingly - at the height of the bombardment the shells rained down at the rate of 20 a minute.

After three days the 1st Division had lost 5285 men and the rest were exhausted. The Division was withdrawn and replaced by the 2nd Division. German continued on relentless and after 10 days the 2nd Division had lost 6848 officers and men. It too was withdrawn and replaced by the 4th Division. This cycle continued until September 3rd - each Division fought until exhausted and was then replaced. When the replacement Division was itself exhausted, the original Division was rotated back into the line. The 1st, 2nd, and 4th Divisions were used as a battering ram against the German strong points at Pozieres until they were almost destroyed.More than 50% of the Australians who fought at Pozieres were killed, wounded or captured. Five Victoria Crosses were won by Australians during the relentless fighting.

(Rough sketch showing some of the German defences of Pozières and the direction of the Australian attacks between July 22 and September 4 1916. (From Pozières to Moquet Farm is just over a mile.)

This account of the action of 1st Australian Division around Pozieres for July 23rd – July 26th 1916 comes from the Letters from France, by C. E. W. Bean.



(Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean (November 18, 1879 – August 30, 1968), usually known during his career as C.E.W. Bean, was an Australian journalist, war correspondent and historian who is renowned as the editor of the 12-volume Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918.)



"POZIÈRES


France, July 26th.


I have been watching the units of a certain famous Australian force come out of action. They have fought such a fight that the famous division of British regular troops on their flank sent them a message to say that they were proud to fight by the side of them.


Conditions alter in a battle like this from day to day. But at the time when the British attack upon the second German line in Longueval and Bazentin ended, the farther village of Pozières was left as the hub of the battle for the time being. This point is the summit of the hill on which the German second line ran. And, probably for that reason, the new line which the Germans had dug across from their second line to their third line—so as to have a line still barring our way when we had broken through their second line—branched off near Pozières to meet the third line near Flers. The map of the situation at this stage of the battle will show better than a page of description why it was necessary that Pozières should next be captured.


There were several days' interval between the failure of the first attack on Pozières and the night on which the Australians were put at it. The Germans probably had little chance of improving their position in the meanwhile, for the village was kept under a slow bombardment with heavy shells and shrapnel which made movement there dangerous. Our troops could see occasional parties of Germans hurrying through the tattered wood and powdered, tumbled foundations. The garrison lost men steadily, and on about the night of Thursday or Friday, July 20th or 21st, the Second Guard Reserve Division, which had been mainly responsible for holding this part of the line, was relieved; and a fresh division, from the lines in front of Ypres, was put in. The new troops brought in several days' rations with them, and never lacked food or water. It was probably a belated party of these new-comers that our men noticed wandering through the village in daytime.


During the afternoon of Saturday our bombardment of Pozières became heavier. Most of these ruined villages are marked on this shell-swept country by the trees around them. It is not that they originally stood in a woodland; but when the village is a mere heap of foundations powdered white the only relic of it left standing erect, if you except a battered wall or two, is the shredded trunks and stumps of trees which once made the gardens or orchards or hedges behind the houses. Our troops had three obstacles before them—first a shallow, hastily dug trench in the open in front of the trees around the village; then certain trenches running generally through the trees and hedges and behind a trench railway; thirdly, such lines as existed in the village itself. The village is strung out along a stretch of the Albert-Bapaume road up which the battle has advanced from the first. Just beyond the village, near what remains of the Pozières Mill on the very top of the hill, is the German second line still (at time of writing) in possession of the Germans. Another line crossing the road in front of the village was then in their hands.


On Saturday afternoon our heavy shells were tearing at regular intervals into the rear of the brick heaps which once were houses, and flinging up branches of trees and great clouds of black earth from the woods. A German letter was found next day dated "In Hell's Trenches." It added: "It is not really a trench, but a little ditch, shattered with shells—not the slightest cover and no protection. We have lost 50 men in two days, and life is unendurable." White puffs of shrapnel from field guns were lathering the place persistently, so that when the German trenches were broken down it was difficult to repair them or move in them.


Our men in their trenches were cleaning rifles, packing away spare kit, yarning there much as they yarned of old over the stockyard fence or the gate of the horse paddock.


That night, shortly after dark, there broke out the most fearful bombardment I have ever seen. As one walked towards the battlefield, the weirdly shattered woods and battered houses stood out almost all the time against one continuous band of flickering light along the eastern skyline. Most of it was far away to the east of our part of the battlefield—in some French or British sector on the far right. There must have been fierce fire upon Pozières, too, for the Germans were replying to it, hailing the roads with shrapnel and trying to fill the hollows with gas shell. They must have suspected an attack upon this part of their line as well, and were trying to hamper the reserves from moving into position.


About midnight our field artillery lashed down its shrapnel upon the German front line in the open before the village. A few minutes later this fire lifted and the Australian attack was launched.


The Germans had opened in one part with a machine-gun before that final burst of shrapnel, and they opened again immediately after. But there would have been no possibility of stopping that charge with a fire twenty times as heavy. The difficulty was not to get the men forward, but to hold them. With a complicated night attack to be carried through it was necessary to keep the men well in hand.


The first trench was a wretchedly shallow affair in places. Most of the Germans in it were dead—some of them had been lying there for days. The artillery in the meantime had lifted on to the German trenches farther back. Later they lifted to a farther position yet. The Australian infantry dashed at once from the first position captured, across the intervening space over the tramway and into the trees.


It was here that the first real difficulty arose along parts of the line. Some sections found in front of them the trench which they were looking for—an excellent deep trench which had survived the bombardment. Other sections found no recognizable trench at all, but a maze of shell craters and tumbled rubbish, or a simple ditch reduced to white powder. Parties went on through the trees into the village, searching for the position, and pushed so close to the fringe of their own shell fire that some were wounded by it. However, where they found no trench they started to dig one as best they could. Shortly after the bombardment shifted a little farther, and a third attack came through and swept, in most parts, right up to the position which the troops had been ordered to take up.


As daylight gradually spread over that bleached surface Australians could occasionally be seen walking about in the trees and through the part of the village they had been ordered to take. The position was being rapidly "consolidated." German snipers in the north-east of the village and across the main road could see them, too. A patrol was sent across the main road to find a sniper. It bombed some dug-outs which it found there, and from one of them appeared a white flag, which was waved vigorously. Sixteen prisoners came out, including a regimental doctor. There were several other dug-outs in this part and various scraps of old trenches, probably the site of an old battery. The Germans, now that they had been driven from their main lines, were naturally fighting from the various scraps of isolated fortification which exist behind all positions. During the afternoon two patrols were sent to clear out other snipers from these half-hidden lurking places. But the garrison was sufficiently organised to summon up some sort of reserve, and the patrols had to come back after a short, sharp fight more or less in the open.


After dark, the Australians pushed across the road through the village. By morning the position had been improved, so that nearly the whole village was secure against sudden attack.
An official report would read: "The same progress continued on Tuesday night, and by Wednesday morning the whole of Pozières was consolidated." That is to say—in the heart of the village itself there was little more actual hand-to-hand fighting. All that happened there was that, from the time when the first day broke and found the Pozières position practically ours, the enemy turned his guns on to it. Hour after hour—day and night—with increasing intensity as the days went on, he rained heavy shell into the area. It was the sight of the battlefield for miles around—that reeking village. Now he would send them crashing in on a line south of the road—eight heavy shells at a time, minute after minute, followed up by burst upon burst of shrapnel. Now he would place a curtain, straight across this valley or that, till the sky and landscape were blotted out, except for fleeting glimpses seen as through a lift of fog. Gas shell, musty with chloroform; sweet-scented tear shell that made your eyes run with water; high bursting shrapnel with black smoke and a vicious high explosive rattle behind its heavy pellets; ugly green bursts the colour of a fat silkworm; huge black clouds from the high explosive of his 5.9's. Day and night the men worked through it, fighting this horrid machinery far over the horizon as if they were fighting Germans hand-to-hand—building up whatever it battered down; buried, some of them, not once but again and again and again.


What is a barrage against such troops! They went through it as you would go through a summer shower—too proud to bend their heads, many of them, because their mates were looking. I am telling you of things I have seen. As one of the best of their officers said to me, "I have to walk about as if I liked it—what else can you do when your own men teach you to?" The same thought struck me not once but twenty times.


On Tuesday morning the shelling of the day before rose to a crescendo, and then suddenly slackened. The German was attacking. It was only a few of the infantry who even saw him. The attack came in lines at fairly wide intervals up the reverse slope of the hill behind Pozières windmill. Before it reached the crest it came under the sudden barrage of our own guns' shrapnel. The German lines swerved away up the hill. The excited infantry on the extreme right could see Germans crawling over, as quickly as they might, from one shell crater to another, grey backs hopping from hole to hole. They blazed away hard; but most of our infantry never got the chance it was thirsting for. The artillery beat back that attack before it was over the crest, and the Germans broke and ran. Again the enemy's artillery was turned on. Pozières was pounded more furiously than before, until by four in the afternoon it seemed to onlookers scarcely possible that humanity could have endured such an ordeal. The place could be picked out for miles by pillars of red and black dust towering above it like a Broken Hill dust-storm. Then Germans were reported coming on again, as in the morning. Again our artillery descended upon them like a hailstorm, and nothing came of the attack.


During all this time, in spite of the shelling, the troops were slowly working forwards through Pozières; not backwards. Every day saw fresh ground gained. A great part of the men who were working through it had no more than two or three hours' sleep since Saturday—some of them none at all, only fierce, hard work all the time.


The only relief to this one-sided struggle against machinery was the hand-to-hand fighting that occurred in the two trenches before-mentioned—the second-line German trench behind Pozières and the similar trench in front of it. The story of it will be told some day—it would almost deserve a book to itself."

Also see - Pozieres - today

Pozieres as recalled by Phillip Gibbs, War Correspondent.

Pozieres described by Lieutenant J.A. Raws.

The Lochnagar Mine Crater, La Boisselle, France

The Lochnagar mine crater is one of several which remain visible on the Western Front today. In the Somme area, others may be seen at Hawthorn Ridge near Beaumont Hamel and on the edge of High Wood

It is the largest British mine crater on the Western Front, this was one of several mines exploded under the German front line positions on the Somme on 1st July 1916. A charge of 60,000 lbs (26.8 tons) of Ammonal explosive was blown at 7.28am resulting in a crater 90 feet deep and 300 feet across.

Lochnagar Crater, named after the trench from where the main tunnel was started, is now owned by Englishman Richard Dunning. He saved it from being filled in 1978, and now each year on the 1st July a ceremony is held here to remember men of all sides who fell on the Somme in 1916.

Units of the 34th Division attacked the area and the nearby village of La Boisselle on 1st July. This formation contained two whole brigades of ‘Pals’ battalions – the Tyneside Irish and the Tyneside Scottish. They suffered many casualties that day – five battalions losing over 500 men each. Indeed the whole division lost 6,380 that day.

The Dairy of Lieutenant William Pitt of the 8th Battalion, on being relieved after the 1st Australian Division had captured the town of Pozieres and had endured horrendous shelling.

"Thursday July 27th 1916.

We had heard rumours of being relieved today but did not think it was right. However we were agreeably confused when at 2 o/c the 24th battalion (a company) came in to relieve us and we moved out. Thankfully it was very dark and a good night for a relief and we went straight down to the battalion cookers and got a drink of hot tea, the first for some time. We then marched to the place where we first camped. Turned in and had a good sleep and then woke up to find a good meal awaiting us. The battalion has suffered very heavily there only being about 381 of us left after collecting all stragglers. We have had a very trying time and will want a good rest to reorganize before we are fit to fight again. Our CO is nowhere to be seen, I have not seen him since we went into the line. We got our overcoats on the way here last night. We are camped just close to the original Hun line and practically alongside the huge La Boiselle crater. It is 57 feet deep and was blown by 70 tons of ammonal. Perfectly marvellous. Things must have been very lively about here the 1st week in July. We left here about 6 o/c and picked up the rest of the brigade from then on. Arrived at our bivouac about 11 o/c. On the way I met Major Dexter. Issued with blankets and I slept like a log."

Cecil Lewis, then an officer in the Royal Flying Corps, witnessed the explosion of the mine on 1st July from his aircraft high above La Boisselle:

“The whole earth heaved and flared, a tremendous and magnificent column rose up into the sky. There was an ear-splitting roar, drowning all the guns, flinging the machine sideways in the repercussing air. The earth column rose higher and higher to almost 4,000 feet."

The site is now maintained by the Friends of Lochnagar. Their website is found at:
http://www.friendsoflochnagar.co.uk/


Photos: Roger Stoakley at: rjstoakley@btopenworld.com

Messines Ridge, Belgium.

The village of Messines was taken by troops from the New Zealand Division.

The New Zealand troops had to advance up a steep hill to reach Messines, from their front lines in the vicinity of the farm buildings in the valley below.

Walking up the road that curves up the hill, you realise what a steep climb this would have been for the attackers.

Near the top of the hill is the New Zealand Memorial Park.

The entrance to the New Zealand Memorial Park is semi-circular in shape, with a low hedged area.

The memorial itself is a tall obelisk, similar to other New Zealand memorials on the Western Front. The wording on the front is

'In honour of the men of the New Zealand Division. The Battle of Messines 7th to 14th of June 1917'.

The view from the Memorial looking south.

A closer view of the Memorial.

The memorial was unveiled by the Belgian King (Albert I) on the 1st of August 1924.

Looking towards the Memorial from the Pill-box.

The menacing Pill-box at the south end of the Memorial Park.

The View looking East, the British Front Line was in the far distance at the bottom of the valley.

The battle for Bullecourt, as reported at the time.

The following are two reports from the 'The War Illustrated' from 1917, regarding the Australians and the Battle for Bullecourt.

The articles are from 'The Great War in a Different Light.'

The War Illustrated, 26th May, 1917

The Great Battle of Arras - The Epic Story of Lievin and Lagnicourt

How the Australians Broke the Prussian Guard
The dominance of a hill is a possession of majesty at any time, but when war is raging in the fields below you it is a throne of opportunity beyond compare.
Fortunately for those who witnessed the last days of the first phase of the Battle of Arras there were thrones innumerable. The slopes of the Vimy Ridge, Notre Dame de Lorette, the heights above the valley of the Souchez were the tiers of so many amphitheatres from which the lucky observer could witness a pageant of war which has hardly been matched from the beginning.
Before him lay a grimy plain beneath which are some of the immense riches of France. About him and behind him were the once-glorious woods, the steep slopes down which the Germans had been driven headlong but a few days before, and the villages whose picturesqueness had defied even the dour enmity of coal. From here he could look at his case down into the very streets of Lens, the capital of this mighty coalfield ; here he could see far away this regiment advancing, that at rest ; could watch the bursting of the mighty shells and boast of his indifference — but, above all, could say that the city was doomed and must speedily be in our possession. It was tragic, too, for though Lens must fall, who should say what of its riches would be left to us ?

Inferno in Lens
Watching the city from a distance we saw ominous things. Now it would be the smoke of some great fire rolling up by the cathedral tower, suggesting for an instant that the church itself was burning — anon, a shattering explosion, the vomit of flame and black vapour from the mouth of a coal-pit, and perhaps upon tills the lingering thunder of sonic building which had come clattering down. In the streets themselves, bordered by the miners' houses with their picturesque red roofs, a human being was rarely to be seen. We pictured the townsfolk hiding in their cellars and listening to that crash of sounds which .said that the enemy was seeking to rob them of their poor riches and their bread. There were moments when scattered figures in the familiar grey-blue darted from street to street carrying neither muck-rake nor lantern, but the deadlier high explosive which should blast the pits and bring down the houses about the people's ears.
And all this, mind you, in a sudden and welcome blaze of the morning sunlight, come as an interlude to wind and wet and snow and misery. Men lifted, their eyes to it and declared it to be an omen. The week that ended on Sunday, April 15th, should go out as it had come in upon the crest of a mighty victory. It was actually on Saturday, April 14th, that the Boche was driven out of Lievin, the famous western suburb of Lens, and on the following day there came their great counter-attack at Lagnicourt, which is down south and not far from Queant, about which we are hearing so much these days. This was a bloody affair, and the Australians have never done a finer thing. By a. concentration of forces, which was astonishing, the Germans massed an army of between forty and fifty thousand bayonets and threw it along the Cambrai-Bapaume road between the villages of Lagnicourt and Hermies. For a moment, overwhelmed by the torrent, we lost some prisoners and machine-guns, but, mustering again behind. Lagnicourt, we reattacked with a ferocity wholly remarkable even in days when men are found dead with the teeth locked in each other's flesh.

Coursing the Prussian Guard
Now, this counter-attack was made by picked troops of no fewer than five regiments of the Guard, and the barrage which heralded it was the best the Boche had put up since the Battle of Arras began. That our own casualties were relatively so few is not a little consoling, but our men took cover with a cleverness which was noteworthy, and, although the impetuosity of the attack overwhelmed them for the moment, they were never, in any sense, demoralised. And everybody agrees that their counter-thrust was superb. They charged with bayonets lowered and the wild. war-whoop of "Down Under."
Inch by inch they recovered the lost ground and drove the Hun back upon the famous Queant switch. What his feelings were when he found himself driven thus, not to the openings he had prepared, but actually back upon his own barbs, we must leave him to relate. This was the cold fact, nevertheless. He retreated in disorder, and then came up against that very entanglement he had prepared for our undoing. Screaming and shouting, he now ran to and fro like a rabbit that is coursed, seeking vainly for a burrow to shelter him. And the Australians watched him, and, seeing, they did not wait.

Australians' Battle Shooting
It was a veritable holocaust. Our men, kneeling down in the open, enjoyed sport of a kind they had hardly known during the war. Aiming carefully, they picked off their men one by one, and were unmoved by the shrieks of the wounded, whose dreadful cries were heard even above the rattle of the machine-guns. Fifteen hundred dead and three hundred prisoners were the fruits of this surprising victory. Lagnicourt has remained in our undisputed possession since this memorable Sunday, and the famous Prussian Guard has long since ceased to be a name with which Hindenburg can conjure. This was a fine finish to the first week's fighting in this titanic battle. Of it all, perhaps, the most deadly work had been done in the neighbourhood of Lievin, which fell finally to us on the Saturday morning. Some of our men who fought at Vimy and in the Souchez valley had but four hours' sleep between the Sunday morning and the Friday night.
They had to prod each other to keep awake in the trenches, but they stuck to it to the end, often advancing up to their knees in mud, meeting every kind of trap that could be set for them, and facing perils whose shape was changed with every hour that passed.
Sometimes their work was almost that of scouts. One officer of a Shire regiment, with half a dozen lusty fellows at his back, found his way into the suburbs and up to the roof of a house, whereupon he sniped a machine-gun party that was holding up our advance four hundred yards away. Others wandered around, discovering a gun emplacement here, or there a heave of the black earth which said that Bodies were buried beneath, and that a spade might find them living.
The Bois de Riaumont, the one prominent green hill between the Vimy Ridge and Lievin, had been fortified upon its western front until it resembled the glacis of an impregnable fortress.

Cunning and Courage
We flanked it cunningly, brave men creeping from ridge to ridge, here ducking into shell-holes, there sheltering a moment behind shattered walls and broken trees, until at last the Boche perceived the glitter of our bayonets and fled incontinently. So was it also with the machine-gun posts we named the Crook and the Crazy line. Their gunners shot by adventurers upon the wings, the posts could be held no longer, and once again the Boche bolted and left his equipment in our hands.
It was a great scene of battle this of the Saturday. Far up and down that valley of the black pits the smoke of the heavy artillery and of tlie light loomed and drifted. A fitful sun shone upon once- green fields and red-roofed houses and the shattered walls of ancient churches. Everywhere there moved the grey figures, leaping to the assault, here a regiment, there a platoon — again but a handful of men in quest of an adventure.

An Old Score Paid
And death was everywhere, and the roar of the great guns, and the aeroplanes soaring like monstrous hawks above, and the ambulances on their grim errands, and the prisoners who laughed or cried, or were silent in their black defiance.
"I knew you would come back to us," said an old Frenchwoman, spitting in the face of an insolent officer. "You always said you would." Others, men; crazy lads, lighted cigarettes with trembling fingers and declared that we had made "hell over yonder." All, perhaps, at heart were thankful to have been dragged from that inferno whose very fons et origo was the line Hindenburg had declared to be impregnable.
We had smashed it, indeed, when Sunday, April 15th, came. By the Friday night there had been 13,000 prisoners taken, including 285 officers. We got 166 guns, among which there were eight 8 in. howitzers and 130 field-guns and ordinary howitzers. Lens was still held, but only upon sufferance. Lievin and the villages round about were in our hands, and northward we had fought successfully over the very ground about Loos where we had suffered so many disappointments in the days which will never be forgotten.
The greatest military operation in the history of the British Army it has been called. Perhaps it is truer to say the greatest in the story of any army.


The War Illustrated 9th June, 1917

The Great Battle of Arras

How Bullecourt Was Won

"Busy scene behind the British advance on the Arras front, showing the heavy guns being placed in position and fired while the Lorries were bringing up the ammunition and materials for the dug-outs in course of construction. To the left the field telephone was already at work."

This already historic Bullecourt ! What immortality has been won amid its ghastly ruins ! What a month it will make of this May in the year of grace, 1917, when the whole record of the war is before us I
Not, be it observed, that we did not hear the name of Bullecourt before May set in. There was fighting, hard fighting, there on April 14th, at the end of the first week of the Battle of Arras, when Hindenburg flung the Prussian Guard upon the Australians between Lagnicourt and the village, and for the day averted the peril to his famous switch — -the new line of trenches running from Queant in the south to Drocourt in the north. That was the only set-back we met with during the famous week, and its memory was soon to be wiped out by achievements as magnificent as any the great battle has shown us.
It was natural that the German Higher Command should realise the importance of Bullecourt. Here ran the famous Hindenburg line, long spoken of as impregnable. Behind it was the switch, but the switch was not yet ready, and our airmen reported the feverish haste with which the wire was being set up and the concrete laid down. To gain time for the completion of this work Bullecourt must be held at all costs, the precious Guard hurled upon the Colonials, and on the battered fields about strewn with the German dead.

Fighting Amid the Ruins
This must once have been a pretty village, as pretty villages go in the river valley of the great coal-fields. It lay at the foot of a gentle declivity, was not remote from the vicinity of trees, and had a church and cemetery with some pretence to the picturesque. Red roots there were and pretty little houses, and main streets with byways, winding and tortuous in the best French manner. Now it 'is a blur of brick and timber upon a fair prospect. Not levelled utterly to the ground as were Thiepval, Combtes, and the villages of the Somme in the threat battles of last year, it was yet so destroyed that the oldest inhabitant might have been hard put to it to say, which had been the Grande Rue and which the Petite. The very fact added to the difficulties of the English, the Scots, and the Australians who took it so gallantly.
What fighting was this amid the desolation ! Look at those fellows creeping across the beams of a roof which once covered a house but is now a mass of dust and timber upon a shattered floor. They are figures from a new inferno, surely — powdered to the very helmets, their faces begrimed, their boots caked with the muck, their beards unkempt, their eyes alight to the joy of it. Somewhere below them, they are saying, in a Labyrinth of linked cellars running beneath the houses, are the Germans who have been holding on to Bullecourt these many days. We know of their presence by the witness of our splendid dead who lie, white and still, amid the debris. They hide there in the depths to leap up when the opportunity comes and sweep that desolation with their emplaced machine-guns. And the work done, they go down to their burrows again and listen for British steps on the roof above, or wait shivering for the grenade which shall come with a flash and a roar and strew these sorry caverns with the. corpses of them or their fellows.
Now, this kind of fighting has been going on in Bullecourt since the third day of May. It was then that the Australians broke with magnificent dash into the Hindenburg line upon the right of the village, and, despite the fact that they had formed a most dangerous salient for themselves, held on tenaciously for ten days.

"Corner of the battlefield near Arras, showing a “Tank” about to set forth on its ponderous progress over German trenches and entanglements. The “Tank” did wonders in the battle and were little affected by the new anti “tank” guns devised by the Germans to combat them. "

Heroism of the Australians
Nothing could fetch these fine fellows out. Digging themselves in as they could, cunningly taking advantage of every bit of broken wall or shattered ruin that the wilderness afforded, they lay down and waited for their fellows to come on. There were English and Scottish later on upon the south-west and the west, and in these there rested the hopes of these undaunted pioneers.
"Tommy will stick it all right," they said, when told that he had already deserted the village. "And there are some Scotties who will hold on till all's blue," they added, with a conviction which is as fine a compliment as any paid to the matchless troops from across the border.
Well, the men did hold on, and long days of a swaying conflict resulted. Throughout, there was the ceaseless booming of the rival artillery ; now the Germans shelling those trenches of the Hindenburg line they had lost, now our fellows feeling far and wide upon the horizon for the guns which were doing the mischief. Overhead there soared the "planes," the great birds in a cloudless sky who told us of this concentration or of that, of feverish work by Germans to prepare the Queant switch, of men and machine-guns in the labyrinth of the village, and of the plight of the plucky Anzacs who endured ten days of hell that Bullecourt might be ours.
The latter story has been told us by some of them, but it must ultimately make an epic. From the north, from the east, even from the west, the attacks upon them came. Snipers to the south found open trenches and enfiladed them with bullets. There were rushes of Germans perpetually; the grey waves appearing suddenly from the bowels of the earth and leaping to the attack with savage cries. It was "Stand by !" and again "Stand by !" Their machine-guns rattled like sticks upon a railing ; their rifles were always in their hands. And when night came the whole heaven would be lit up with the blue-white- light of the flaming star-shells and the whirlwind barrage would open, and men would wait for dawn with eyes that had forgotten how to sleep.
Yet this was but the preliminary to the fierce fighting of Sunday, May 13th, by which Bullecourt finally was won for us.
We came in practically from three sides of it upon that great day. There were Scots upon the west and English cheek by jowl with them. Dust-begrimed men with sweat upon their faces, they fought from the early hours as demons possessed. Here were things done and seen which shall not be surpassed in the story of the war. Men fought with men as animals in some ruined arena. You saw Germans upon one side of a shattered barn and British upon the other, and their grenades went over the wreck of the roof and men trod upon their own dead to get at the enemy. Every cellar was a possible refuge for the Boche and his machine-gun. And we must hunt amid the brick and the mortar, turn every stone, lift every beam, that the bomb may go down and the dead be garnered.

Guns in Graveyard Vaults
There was no village now, nor any thought of church or market-place or street that Bullecourt had marked upon its map — only this ruin and the blackened figures leaping from stone to stone of it, and the bayonets flashing in the sunshine, and the cries going up of despair or of appeal as the steel went home and the life's blood gushed out. A fight to the bitter end, beyond all description horrible — yet for us a triumph beyond all expectation magnificent.
Perhaps the climax of all this deadly business came in the cemetery, where the graves were opened and the dead flung out. Here the Boche found in the vaults an emplacement for his machine-guns which could not have been bettered. And he fought to the very death amid the bodies and the bones of those who had lived their humble lives in this once pretty village, and had known, perhaps, the greatness and the glory of France, and had believed .that civilisation would leave those white crosses standing until the end. So little did he know of the German, the corpses of whose proud Foot Guards now he amid the broken coffins, and whose blackened faces send even strong men shuddering from this hallowed acre.
We had taken Bullecourt by the 14th, but there were counter-attacks, of course. We broke them up with a barrage which did great credit to our gunners, and but twenty of many hundreds reached our trenches at the first attempt. These were shot or bayoneted to a man, while a later effort resulted in one wretched Boche arriving at the parapet — to ask himself, it may be, if he were really alive, and to find the question answered immediately in the negative.

"transportation before and behind the Hindenburg Line "

Bullecourt, France

The 4th Division Memorial stands on high ground where the Hindenburg Line once barred the Allied approach. The memorial is located on a farm road at the hamlet of le Petit Arbre, which is situated beyond the town of Vandancourt.

4th Divison Memorial

The descriptive plaque reads:

"In the allied offensive of April 1917 around Arras and Vimy, the German line was broken but in the south it held, particularly around Bullecourt in the main section of the formidable German "Hindenburg Line". To pressure the Germans the British high command ordered an Australian advance here across open, snow-covered ground. In the dark on the morning of 11 April, without artillery or tank support the Australians took the forward German lines. The Germans counter-attacked from three sides and forced a desperate retreat. The 5,000 Australians incurred 3,300 casualties including 1,170 prisoners.


A second better planned assault occurred on 8 may. this time a heavy pre-dawn bombardment preceded the assault and, as before, the Australians captured the Bullecourt trenches and held firm on a narrow front near' where the plaque stands today. In a fierce battle they gradually expanded their perimeter despite courageous German counter-attacks. Both sides fought to a stand-still and finally the Germans abandoned the area on 20 may. These allied gains were lost in the German advances of 1918. The second battle caused 7.000 Australian, 2,700 British and 6,000 German casualties."

Bullecourt in 1920.

"The Hindenberg Line at Bullecourt. Three trench lines and communications are here shown, with acres of wire entanglements in the left foreground protecting first-line positions. Beyond Bullecourt runs the St. Quentin Canal and tunnel, which was taken late in September by the Twenty-seventh and Thirtieth American divisions."

The Literary Digest History of the World War", volume V, p. 384

Mont St Quentin, Peronne, France.

The 2nd Australian Division memorial is located at the side of the Bapaume-Peronne road in the village of Mont St. Quentin. The occupying German army removed the original memorial, depicting a Digger about to bayonet a German eagle, in 1940. It was replaced with a 2.5 metre tall slouch-hatted Digger in battle dress.

2nd Australian Division Memorial

"Battle Honours 2nd Australian Division, August 8th 1918: Bullecourt, Menin Road , Broodseinde, Passchendaele, Ville sur Ancre, Morlancourt, Hamel, Villers Bretonneux, Herleville, Herbecourt, Biache, Mont St Quentin, Beaurevoir Line, Montbrehain".

The Plaque to the side gives the following information : Mont St. Quentin

"The great German offensive of March 1918 was halted near Amiens and by august the allies has forced the Germans back to a major defence line on the east bank of the Somme river.

This hill, Mont St. Quentin, although only 100 metres high was a key position in this line and with a maze of interconnecting trenches and barbed wire was considered impregnable. It provided imposing westerly views over the allied lines across the Somme River and was protected by Peronne 1.5 kilometres to the south.

A small force of 1,300 Australian troops "yelling like bushrangers" attacked up the rise before you at dawn on 31 august and completely overran the Germans. The summit was held briefly in the region of today's road (n37) but the Germans with numbers forced the Australians back.

Early next morning Australian reinforcements renewed the assault capturing the summit and beyond. At the same time Peronne was captured by the Australians. The loss of these positions and defeats by the British and Canadians near Cambrai forced the Germans to rapidly withdraw along much of their front. Their last and most formidable defence position, lay 22 kilometres to the east the Hindenburg line. "

Hill 60 - Helping the Tunnelling Company

A few posts ago i showed a photo that i had taken of the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company Memorial at Hill 60.

I was reading Norman Gladden's YPRES 1917 on another subject when i came across his account of his dealings with the very same Australian Company on Hill 60. Although the account is not specifically about tunnelling, i found it fascinating of how one night on 5th June 1917 was spent assisting them.


"The next morning, immediately after I had drawn my fried bacon, I was unfortunate enough to be detailed to assist the Australian Tunnelling Company, who had been carrying out mining operations towards the enemy positions for months on end, working day and night in six-hour shifts. This had been a war of wits. At times the Germans counter-mining had brought the enemy so close to the saps that galleries had been blown. There had been hand-to-hand fighting underground, and new galleries had had to be made, each side striving to get beneath the other. We had retained the ascendancy and a vast mine was now approaching completion. Immense quantities of ammonal had been buried and arrangements were already in hand for blowing the charge by electric ignition from behind the line. One job on this particular morning was to help with the construction of sandbagged barriers to tamp the charge and prevent blow-back along the galleries.
We were conducted by the free-and-easy Australian sergeant through a wonderful labyrinth of passages until we reached an opening into a sort of calm cul-de-sac outside the hill, where the air was fresh and the light seemed brilliant after being so long below ground. A high and considerable breastwork of sandbags zigzagged away to our right. The ground beyond rose to a low ridge in the middle distance. There was nothing the least ominous about the desolate scene: nothing moved and there was unusually little noise. We were pleased to be enjoying the sweet spring air even in such a setting. The working party spread out round a bend in the breastwork, forming tamping operation.
As it happened I was the end man in the chain and was standing at the corner of a traverse where the breastwork turned abruptly leftwards and quickly petered out in the waste. We worked with a will, for the task was a light one and the fresh air filled us with new vigour. We were pleased, too, by the novelty of the work and the friendly attitude of the N.C.O in charge. For once we quite forgot to grumble.
Indeed, there was poised just above the horizon the black speck of an observation balloon, though our sense of direction gave us no indication whether it was friend or foe. It was a characteristic of the Salient that one could never be certain.
A little later an enemy battery began firing and shells burst along the ridge, not much more than a hundred yards away. Another salvo passed over and crashed on to the hill behind us. In the shelter of the breastwork we felt secure and it certainly did not occur to us that we might be the real target. We seemed to harbour a trustful feeling that we should not have been brought out there had there been any special danger. Against all experience and reason, we continued to have childlike trust in the omniscience of those in command, and on this occasion everything had so clearly been well planned that no question had entered our minds. By this time the work had progressed so well that the sergeant decided to lengthen the chain. Three of us moved round the corner.
Suddenly the battery began firing again and there was something in the approaching scream that marked us as the target.
I cringed low as the first shell burst somewhere near the corner. Then we all began running like frightened rabbits back to the burrow, which now seemed so far away. As I turned the last bend a man a few yards ahead crashed to the ground. I recognised him as one of the youngsters of the recent draft and the very man who had just taken my place at the corner I had vacated. Aided by the man ahead, I attempted to lift our stricken comrade, but he was too stiff and heavy and we were now out there alone, some fifty yards or so from the sap entrance. A second salvo left the guns and terror took control of my senses. The next thing I knew I was leaning breathlessly against the timbers of the opening, panting and frightened. The rest of the party bunched undecidedly in the entrance. Shells were now lashing the breastwork but a little way from the opening which, however, was out of the line of fire. Here was safety; out there, but a few yards away, pain and sudden death. Our Australian N.C.O decided to report back to his headquarters for instructions.
Corporal Bell of our company, a quietly-spoken Londoner and commercial clerk in civil life, now appeared on the scene, elbowing his way through the indecisive crowd. On learning what had happened, which was not an easy matter for we were all talking at once, he demanded why we had not brought the casualty in. Our assertion that he was dead did not satisfy the corporal. “Come on, one of you men,” he said; “we must bring him in.” No one budged. I felt ashamed, but had no intention of going out there again unless I was directly ordered. Why shouldn’t someone else go?
Time seemed to stand still. The corporal lost patience: a last appeal and he started off alone. He dozen’t know what it was like, I thought. Then something stirred to override my fears. He couldn’t possibly be allowed to go alone. Against all reason I followed him. We raced along the breastwork. All was again quiet. We bent to raise the prostrate figure, but death had rendered the task of moving such a rigid corpse beyond our united strength, weakened no doubt by the stress and excitement of the moment. Shelling recommenced, scattering bags from the breastwork all around us. “Run!” shouted Corporal Bell, and with my remaining energies I ran as I never run before, as a tornado of bursts smashed down the breastworks under the shadow of which we had just been stooping. The enemy had really found the target and we two were lucky to survive.
Later on it was reported that the stretcher-bearers, who eventually retrieved the body, were of the opinion that the dead man had been immediately, for hr had shrapnel in his brain and in his heart. Yet I knew that he had run a number of yards before he fell!
We were relieved to hear that the outside work had been abandoned and we completed our spell moving the accumulated bags along the galleries in trolleys. As the shift ended at 2 p.m. the Australians issued us with a tot of rum, so large compared with our normal issue that I dropped into deep sleep as soon as I reached the dug-out."

Later on in the book Norman Gladden gives this explaination:

"The mine under Hill 60 mentioned in the text was the most northerly of the nineteen, but there was a second nearby on the other side of the Railway Cutting. Although by no means the largest of the mines, this was a considerable detonation, containing a charge of some 35,000 lb. of high explosive, mainly ammonal. The other mine just mentioned (of which the author was not at the time aware, although it was comparatively near) had a charge of 70,000 lb."

I think the whole section is excellent.

Hill 60, Belgium

Hill 60, located around three miles south-east of Ypres, is not a natural feature, but was made from the spoil removed during the construction of the railway line nearby. Because it was a small area of elevated land in a flat landscape, it obviously had strategic importance in the battles in the Salient.

Following the end of the War, the land was left relatively undisturbed. Because of the large amount of tunneling and mining that went on here, and the fact that during fierce fighting the hill changed hands between the Germans and the Allies several times, the remains of many soldiers from both the Allied and German forces still lie here.

1st Australian Tunneling Company Memorial

At the front of the site there is a memorial to the 1st Australian Tunneling Company, and the plaque on this contains bullet holes These date from the Second World War, when this area was once again fought over, although much more briefly. The plaque explains that this permanent memorial replaces one erected in 1919 by comrades of those who fell here.

Queens Victorias Rifles Memorial

Also on top of the Hill, near the front of the site, is another memorial, this one to Queen Victorias Rifles, commemorating where the regiment fought their first open engagement, in which they lost 12 officers and 180 men in casualties. However, this is not the original memorial. That was erected in 1923, commemorating all ranks of the QVR who gave their lives for their country in the First World War. It was unveiled by General Sir Charles Fergusson, at a ceremony at which Captain G.H. Woolley VC was the clergyman. Woolley, then serving as a Second Lieutenant in the QVR had woin the Victoria Cross here at Hill 60 on the night of the 20th-21st of April, 1915.
However this original memorial was destroyed in 1940 by the Germans, and the plaque on the current memorial was placed by the Regiment on some of the stones of that original memorial.

German Pillbox

Towards the rear of the site on elevated ground is a pillbox which is still largely intact. This was originally German, but modified by the Australians in 1918. It's appearance is somehow macabre and the marks of bullets/shells can still be seen in the concrete

Closer inspection reveals just how massive was the construction of this pill-box. The walls are at least three feet thick, with metal reinforcing bars protruding. This can be seen in the picture below; the view through the pillbox in the centre of the picture shows the width of the walls. No wonder this pill-box withstood several assaults and is still there nearly 90 years later.

Of all the sites i have seen on the Western Front standing in front of this Pillbox was one of the most amazing and bone-chilling experiences. I am truly in awe of the men who through themselves at this type of defence trying to capture it.

It was a moment in time that i will never forget!

Pozieres as recalled by Phillip Gibbs, War Correspondent.

This except is from the book 'Now it Can be Told' by Phillip Gibbs.

Phillips Gibbs was a newspaper correspondent sent out from London to report the proceedings.

He was at the Somme in 1916 and he graphically describes the action involving the Australian Divisions.

"The struggle for the Pozieres ridge and High Wood lasted from the beginning of August until the middle of September--six weeks of fighting as desperate as any in the history of the world until that time. The Australians dealt with Pozieres itself, working round Moquet Farm, where the Germans refused to be routed from their tunnels, and up to the Windmill on the high ground of Pozieres, for which there was unceasing slaughter on both sides because the Germans counter-attacked again and again, and waves of men surged up and fell around that mound of forsaken brick, which I saw as a reddish cone through flame and smoke. Those Australians whom I had seen arrive in France had proved their quality. They had come believing that nothing could be worse than their ordeal in the Dardanelles. Now they knew that Pozieres was the last word in frightfulness.
The intensity of the shell-fire underwhich they lay shook them, if it did not kill them. Many of their wounded told me that it had broken their nerve. They would never fight again without a sense of horror.
"Our men are more highly strung than the English," said one Australian officer, and I was astonished to hear these words, because those Australians seemed to me without nerves, and as tough as gristle in their fiber.
They fought stubbornly, grimly, in ground so ravaged with fire that the earth was finely powdered. They stormed the Pozieres ridge yard by yard, and held its crest under sweeping barrages which tore up their trenches as soon as they were dug and buried and mangled their living flesh. In six weeks they suffered twenty thousand casualties, and Pozieres now is an Australian graveyard, and the memorial that stands there is to the ghosts of that splendid youth which fell in heaps about that plateau and the slopes below.
Many English boys of the Sussex, West Kents, Surrey, and Warwick regiments, in the 18th Division, died at their side, not less patient in sacrifice, not liking it better. Many Scots of the 15th and 9th Divisions, many New-Zealanders, many London men of the 47th and 56th Divisions, fell, killed or wounded, to the right of them, on the way to Martinpuich, and Eaucourt l'Abbaye and Flers, from High Wood and Longueval, and Bazentin.
The 3d Division of Yorkshires and Northumberland Fusiliers, Royal Scots and Gordons, were earning that name of the Iron Division, and not by any easy heroism. Every division in the British army took its turn in the blood-bath of the Somme and was duly blooded, at a cost of 25 per cent. and sometimes 50 per cent. of their fighting strength.
The Canadians took up the struggle at Courcelette and captured it in a fierce and bloody battle. The Australians worked upon the right of the Albert-Bapaume road to Thilloy and Ligny Thilloy. On the far left the fortress of Thiepval had fallen at last after repeated and frightful assaults, which I watched from ditches close enough to see our infantry--Wiltshires and Worcesters of the 25thDivision--trudging through infernal fire. And then at last, after five months of superhuman effort, enormous sacrifice, mass-heroism, desperate will-power, and the tenacity of each individual human ant inthis wild ant-heap, the German lines were smashed, the Australians surged into Bapaume, and the enemy, stricken by the prolonged fury of our attack, fell back in a far and wide retreat across a country whichhe laid waste, to the shelter of his Hindenburg line, from Bullecourt to St.-Quentin.

The goal of our desire seemed attained when at last we reached Bapaume after these terrific battles in which all our divisions, numbering nearly a million men, took part, with not much difference in courage, not much difference in average of loss. By the end of that year's fighting our casualties had mounted up to the frightful total of fourhundred thousand men. Those fields were strewn with our dead. Our graveyards were growing forests of little white crosses. The German dead lay in heaps. There were twelve hundred corpses littered over theearth below Loupart Wood, in one mass, and eight hundred of them were German. I could not walk without treading on them there. When I fellin the slime I clutched arms and legs. The stench of death was strongand awful. But our men who had escaped death and shell-shock kept their sanitythrough all this wilderness of slaughter, kept--oh, marvelous!--their spirit of humor, their faith in some kind of victory.
I was with theAustralians on that day when they swarmed into Bapaume, and they brought out trophies like men at a country fair . . . I remember an Australian colonel who came riding with a German beer-mug at his saddle . . . Next day, though shells were still bursting in the ruins, some Australian boys set up some painted scenery which they had found among the rubbish, and chalked up the name of the "Coo-ee Theater."
The enemy was in retreat to his Hindenburg line, over a wide stretchof country which he laid waste behind him, making a desert of French villages and orchards and parks, so that even the fruit-trees were cut down, and the churches blown up, and the graves ransacked for their lead. It was the enemy's first retreat on the western front, and that ferocious fighting of the British troops had smashed the strongest defenses ever built in war, and our raw recruits had broken the most famous regiments of the German army, so in spite of all tragedy and all agony our men were not downcast, but followed up their enemy with a sense of excitement because it seemed so much like victory and theend of war.
When the Germans retreated from Gommecourt, where so many boys of the 56th (London) Division had fallen on the 1st of July, I went through that evil place by way of Fonquevillers (which we called "FunkyVillas"), and, stumbling over the shell-craters and broken trenches and dead bodies between the dead masts of slashed and branchless trees, came into the open country to our outpost line. "

For details and Photos of Pozieres -
http://outofbattle.blogspot.com/2007/06/pozieres-france-today.html

Also see : Pozieres an account by C.E.W. Bean

Pozieres described by Lieutenant J.A. Raws.

Polygon Wood, Belgium

Polygon Wood, near Ypres in Belgium, before 1914 the Ypres Military Riding School – the Polygon- was situated here and also the Belgian Army’s old firing range which ceased to be used in 1870.

The wood was captured by the Australian 5th Division on September 26, 1917 during the Battle of Menin Road. The wood had changed hands several times during the early stages of the war and had been devastated by shell fire. In 1917 shelling had reduced the wood to a forest of shattered tree stumps and saplings “no more than waist high”, according to one soldier.

The 5th Division Memorial today.

Australian War Memorial Negative Number C04777

This Photograph from 1919 shows the 'Pimple' where the memorial now stands

Source - Australian War Museum

The attack on Polygon Wood was the 5th Division’s first major battle since it was savaged at the disastrous attack at Fromelles in July 1916 (although parts of the Division had been present at Bullecourt in April 1917). It would attack with the Australian 4th Division on its left and five British Divisions also taking part.

The troops advanced in the early hours of September 26, close behind a creeping artillery barrage. The barrage was, in the words of C. E. W. Bean, Australia’s Official War Historian, “the most perfect that ever protected Australian troops”. Under the protection of this barrage, the Australians advanced in several stages. The concrete pillboxes were manned by German machine gun teams who resisted fiercely and almost all had to be captured by acts of individual bravery. The Australians captured the pillboxes in what later became the classic style: a Lewis gun would fire on the pillbox, supported by fire from rifle grenades, while an assault team would manoeuvre around to the back of the pillbox, rather than attacking it head on. The technique worked effectively in most cases, but attacking pillboxes was never an easy task and casualties were seldom small.

By nightfall on September 26 the 5th Division occupied the wood. The final objective, beyond the wood, was secured by the afternoon of the 27th.

5th Division Memorial

After the war the 5th Division placed their memorial obelisk on the summit of the Buttes and many of the men who fell in the battle are buried in Buttes New British Cemetery.

Buttes New British Cemetry - View from the 5th Division Memorial.

Polygon Wood Cemetery

This is a battlefield cemetery and there is a sense of urgency about the burials, with the headstones laid out irregularly. The cemetery was begun during 1917 and used by the New Zealanders during their occupation of this sector until early 1918. It was briefly reused in September 1918.