Beaten Down By Blood

by Michele Bomford

  The 14th Brigade had been given an exceptionally difficult task. Divided into two phases, the attack had to clear the daunting strongpoints of Anvil Wood, St Radegonde, Péronne, St Denis and the sugar factory before swinging south to capture the high ground. There was insufficient artillery support and the men faced converging fire from these strongpoints as well as Mont St Quentin as they attempted to achieve these highly ambitious objectives. Stewart could be criticised for not understanding the ground his men would cover — in particular, he was unaware of the wire in front of the 53rd Battalion on 1 September — but he had not had time for reconnaissance.38 The Germans knew the ground and had every inch covered with machine-guns, with clear observation over the Australian positions.

  When he ordered the men to attack again at 1.00 pm on 1 September, Stewart was unaware that the 6th Brigade was advancing at 1.30, a consequence of the difficulties in liaising with flank units. He discovered this at 12.50 pm, but it was too late to stop his own attack and the 14th Brigade suffered more casualties. At 5.00 pm, yet another attack was launched against St Denis with feeble artillery support and German machine-guns firing from windows, culverts and loopholes. No-one knew how they were meant to take their objectives and men of the 53rd Battalion described the attack as ‘impossible and murderous’ and ‘a flash bloody way of committing suicide’.39 There was no frivolity as there had been when the men ‘hopped the bags’ in the morning; they were now set and determined. Stewart admitted in his after action report that he was not absolutely clear on the situation on the afternoon of 1 September, yet he had still ordered the attacks to go in.40

  Stewart gave his men little direction for the clearing of Péronne, two captains making the decision not to hold Bretagne, with dire consequences. Monash and Blamey were scathing of Stewart’s leadership, accusing him of having no idea what was happening in Péronne, which they felt could have been captured much sooner. Monash believed that the Germans had been unsettled by the attack, but the 14th Brigade had failed to take risks to exploit this, doing very little fighting in the town itself.41

  The Brigadier did not go forward to see the situation for himself; perhaps he should have moved his headquarters (south of the Somme Canal at Ommiécourt) forward to relieve the stress on communications and facilitate clearer intelligence. He had little idea what was going on; no less, though, than Edward Martin on 31 August. The nature of the battle and the battlefield itself meant that, like Martin, he had to rely on the skill of subordinate commanders, NCOs and the men themselves. Pompey Elliott commented on the importance of personal reconnaissance and stressed that ‘those unable or unwilling to do this must in the alternative leave all initiative to the officer on the spot’, thereby sacrificing control of the battle to some degree.42

  For Hobbs the battle for Péronne was a nightmare because its ‘rapidly varying phases’ placed such high demands on his commanders and his men whose welfare was always at the forefront of his mind.43 He also moved his headquarters on 31 August, but was in touch with Monash several times during the day, particularly in the late afternoon when he was concerned about the stress on the 5th Division troops. Every day from 31 August to 2 September was ‘a very hard, difficult and trying day’ for him as he attempted to conduct the battle. He was short-staffed throughout the operation and consequently staff work was not as thorough as it should have been. On 3 September he was at his headquarters catching up on paperwork and ‘not feeling at all well’.44

  Hobbs was caught between a rock and a hard place. His personal diary reveals that on the evening of 1 September, when the situation was reportedly very serious on the fronts of both the 14th and 15th brigades, Monash was ‘rather upset’ and ordered him to ‘take immediate action to clear up the situation’. On the other hand, Elliott and Stewart were concerned about casualties — Hobbs comments that they overstated these — and the condition of their troops. Twice in his diary Hobbs mentions his dilemma of fulfilling the expectations of the corps commander or considering the welfare of his men:

  I have been up against many trials, difficulties and problems in my life, but never have I had to face such an awful responsibility and danger as the position I had to deal with last night … I shall never think I have a tougher problem to solve. My position was difficult indeed on Sunday night when Gen Elliott told me his men were practically done (1/2 September).45

  The conference at Herbecourt on the night of 1/2 September revealed the time pressures and difficult circumstances under which Hobbs was operating. It was a fiasco, a confused muddle of contradictory orders and misunderstandings. Monash used the concept of the conference as a means to create unity of thought and unity of administrative and tactical policy among his commanders. However, when Hobbs arrived at Herbecourt at around 9.45 pm having travelled many miles from Fontaine-les-Cappy over bad roads, broken country, old trenches, wire, in the pitch black with enemy planes active overhead, he had to issue ‘orders and instructions for a most complicated operation which had to be carried out in a few hours by my tired troops.’46 Hobbs, justifiably, doubted the wisdom of the quick attack under the circumstances in which it was launched, but he had consulted with both Monash and Rosenthal prior to the conference and was committed to the operation and protecting the flank of the 2nd Division. This left him with few alternatives.

  Stewart was concerned about the plan of attack, but according to his diary he was overruled.47 It would be interesting to know what alternative he proposed and whether this involved a delay in the 14th Brigade’s start time until the Mont St Quentin ridge and the ramparts of Péronne had been cleared, but the sources are silent. He may have ordered the bombardment of the ramparts, but did not believe that the artillery could wipe out the German machine-guns. Thus, the proposal was ‘impossible’ and he felt that his troops would again be mauled in the amphitheatre as the 53rd had been on 1 September. Inexplicably, as a representative of the 7th Brigade was present, Stewart left the conference to make his preparations, but was somehow unaware that zero hour for the 7th Brigade on his left was 5.30 am, not 6.00 am when his own troops would advance, and that the barrage would commence to coincide with the attack of the 2nd Division. The results were catastrophic, particularly for the 56th Battalion.

  Another problem arose of which Stewart was completely unaware when he left the conference to plan his attack and redeploy his troops with very little time at his disposal. Pompey Elliott, one of the key players in the attack on 2 September, did not arrive at Herbecourt until 2.30 am because he became lost trying to find his way there. Stewart had already left, but now the exhausted Hobbs had to explain the plan to his other brigadier and there would be no opportunity for Stewart and Elliott to liaise. It would be difficult indeed to achieve unity of thought and tactical policy for this crucial operation.

  In addition, Elliott presented Hobbs with an alternative which, somewhat surprisingly, the divisional commander had not considered himself. Sometime after 4.30 pm on 1 September Elliott had spoken to Hobbs, arguing that the crossings south of Péronne were impassable. He had withdrawn all but two companies of the 58th and 59th battalions to the western bank by 8.00 pm because it was too crowded and too dangerous to leave them on the opposite bank. Yet this intelligence was not reflected in Hobbs’ orders to the 14th Brigade, which believed that the 15th would cross the river and attack due east, capturing Flamicourt and the ground south of that village and west of Doingt. However, Elliott persuaded Hobbs that it was useless to continue to try to force such a crossing and that the 59th and 60th battalions should instead follow the 14th Brigade with one battalion, the 58th, to assist in the mopping up of Péronne. The 57th Battalion would hold the original brigade front and look for any opportunity to cross the Somme.48

  Disrupted communications meant that this new change of plan did not reach the 14th, causing great confusion when the attack went in. Elliott was justifiably concerned, believing that the plan ‘was beyond the powers of the men and impossible to accomplish and that the attempt would pro
bably lead to a terrible disaster‘; it was ‘far too great for exhausted men’.49 Elliott considered that Monash and Hobbs had no idea of the difficulties facing the troops and was critical of their failure to make a personal reconnaissance and see the ground for themselves. Had he not made a stand, the situation on 2 September would have been even more difficult for the 14th Brigade. The worst case scenario was that the 54th Battalion may not have been able to hold Péronne.

  The 54th Battalion commander, Norman Marshall, described the confusion which resulted from the change of plan in his after action report. Just before 6.00 am on 2 September, the intelligence officer from the 58th turned up at Marshall’s headquarters, apparently catching him dishevelled and half-asleep, to ask how he would like the troops of the 58th deployed. Marshall had ‘no previous knowledge nor instructions’ of this and referred him to the headquarters of the 56th Battalion, which he mistakenly believed was ‘running the show’, but said he could use a company to help mop up the north-eastern section of Péronne. He then received a message, at around 6.15 am, that a 6th Brigade order had stated that the ‘56th Battalion do not pass through Péronne’, a point which is also clear in the 56th’s orders and in the instructions Stewart sent him at 2.12 am. At 10.00 am, Marshall seemed equally perplexed to receive a message from 27-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Jack Scanlan, commander of the 59th, outlining the situation to the north of Péronne, when the 15th Brigade was meant to be attacking from the south.50

  Graves and crosses for men of the 53rd and 56th battalions who fell during the capture of Péronne, September 1918. Army Museum of Western Australia photo.

  At this point Marshall decided that he probably should go forward and establish just where all the units around him were located. However, by this time the companies of the 58th, directed by Harold Ferres, had mopped up the town. Marshall was exhausted and had perhaps read an earlier order, unsurprising given the frequency with which they changed. This may also have been an example of how unity of policy could not be achieved when plans were made then altered with such haste that proper communication between the units involved could not be established. It was Ferres, angry with Marshall who ‘was in bed and didn’t know there was a fight on’ and had not made any attempt to attack in Péronne after the bombardment had lifted, believing the 56th Battalion would clear the town, who averted what could have been a potentially dangerous situation.51 Likewise, it was Ferres’ 58th which consolidated the gains made by the 54th on 1 September.

  For the 14th Brigade, the attack on 2 September was a repetition of what had occurred on 1 September, as Stewart had predicted; but this time it was the 56th Battalion that was severely mauled. Another ‘murderous’ attack in the evening against St Denis Wood and Darmstadt Trench was only averted by the intervention of Elliott, taking his advice from Jack Scanlan who had made a personal reconnaissance of the ground. This time the 6.00 pm conference was held at Elliott’s headquarters — so that he couldn’t get lost — and he threatened to resign the next day if the attack went in, as the position was surrounded by high ground which bristled with German machine-guns and against which the decimated 14th Brigade would not stand a chance.52 Elliott believed that the commanders had totally misread the situation. On this occasion, Hobbs and the brigadiers did go forward to view the situation and the attack was cancelled. It seems remarkable that this initiative came from the assertive 15th Brigade commanders and not from Stewart, whose troops would potentially suffer the most.

  The men of the 14th Brigade were disillusioned by the events of 1 and 2 September. Bert Bishop paints a devastating picture of what he saw along the railway embankment from which the 55th and 56th Battalions had attacked on 2 September: ‘a whole field of dead men’, where even ‘the god of war was himself over-satiated with the slaughter of that morning.’ His platoon had been reduced to just four, not men, but ghosts. His account, which may appear sensationalised, was corroborated by William Hawkins of the 59th Battalion who, after crawling on his belly over graves to dodge snipers in the cemetery, declared that he would ‘never forget the sights of the Railway Bank’. Bishop recorded comments among the men that ‘the heads had gone over to the Germans’, and that they were ‘bastards’. The men were angry, saying things ‘that I never expected to hear Aussies say’. They would have ‘torn to pieces’ the commanders responsible for the attack if they could have got their hands on them. Norman Nicolson commented that when Stewart moved his headquarters to a new position around 5 September, it was to an old German prison camp and ‘I wish we could lock him up in it’.53

  Elliott placed the blame for the 14th Brigade’s plight squarely on Rosenthal’s shoulders. The 2nd Division commander, with almost Machiavellian cunning, ‘persistently exaggerated’ his troops’ hold on Mont St Quentin and convinced Monash that the gains were much greater than they actually were. It was his influence at corps which saw the 5th Division troops ordered to advance over ground swept by machine-gun fire from Mont St Quentin ridge when the 2nd Division was alleged to either hold the ridge or be clearing it, while ‘in point of fact as we found to our cost they did neither’. Rosenthal ‘had formed his own plans and the 5th Division had to conform without either time to plan a proper operation or to reconnoitre the ground let alone communicate the orders to units.’ This led to a high casualty rate and an undermining of morale. Pompey Elliott concluded that ‘a little more of that sort of thing and the men will lose all confidence in their leaders.’54

  This vitriolic outburst was unjustified and does not reflect well on Elliott, who was embittered at being passed over for divisional command earlier in the year. The capture of Péronne with its lethal ramparts — which did even more damage to the 14th Brigade than the guns on Mont St Quentin — was Hobbs’ responsibility. While he could perhaps have been more assertive and aggressive in his approach to the quick attack, the fact is that the whole direction of the 5th Division’s operation was changed at very short notice, leaving him and his brigadiers little time for planning and preparation as Elliott correctly pointed out. Hobbs was justifiably anxious ‘at sending troops into a major action without knowledge of the ground and of the position of the enemy, and with inadequate artillery support.’ Despite the time constraints and the inherent difficulty of the task that lay before them, they deployed their battalions effectively and then relied on the skill of the battalion commanders, company commanders and NCOs to get the job done. The 14th Brigade, particularly, should not be criticised for what it did not achieve, but praised for what it did accomplish. Stewart’s attempts to maintain momentum with ‘very hazy operation orders, scant information, and without sectional maps’ ultimately resulted in considerable gains.55 The brigade did, after all, subdue some significant strongpoints and lay the groundwork for the capture of Péronne.

  On the Bouchavesnes ridge John Gellibrand faced his own difficulties. While working harmoniously with the brigadiers of the 9th and 11th Brigades, Henry Goddard and James Cannan respectively, the reciprocal antipathy between him and his 10th Brigade commander, Walter McNicoll, was palpable. This went beyond a simple personality clash and affected operational efficiency, perhaps one reason for the 10th’s lacklustre performance, particularly on 31 August. Gellibrand had been trying to have McNicoll replaced since he took over divisional command in June, but Monash felt that personal feelings must be set aside as ‘prosecuting the war’ was the first priority and he had no desire to see McNicoll, with whom he had worked well and had recommended for divisional command, discredited. For Gellibrand, ‘every attempt to secure cooperation along the lines of a uniform divisional policy failed with this officer unless issued as an order’, while McNicoll, who was equally keen to go elsewhere, maintained that Gellibrand’s attitude towards him ‘effectually prohibits the feeling of confidence and harmony which I consider is essential’.56

  It was clear that the two men could not work together. In August, Gellibrand wrote that McNicoll was in need of a change; he was ‘stale and does not do justice to his command�
�, highly strung, with his reports ‘misleading as to fact’. The 10th Brigade was not a happy unit and ‘I have to administer two systems, one for the 10th Brigade and one for the remainder of the division.’57 Charles Bean noted in his diary on 1 September that Gellibrand was having trouble with McNicoll — both were strong men ‘and the two of them could never possibly live together in the same division’.58 Gellibrand was relieved to send McNicoll on leave to England on 2 September and shortly after he secured a posting at the AIF depots there.

  Gellibrand himself was a vigilant and practical commander who was proactive in his division’s operations on the Bouchavesnes ridge. His small, loose-leaf, handwritten notebook for 1918 reveals that he directed the attack carefully and was frequently well forward, visiting 9th and 10th Brigade headquarters on 31 August, 9th and 11th Brigade headquarters on 1 September and brigade headquarters and all battalions of the 9th Brigade on 2 September. While he was ‘buried with the paper work of the attack’ on 30 August, on 1 September he went up to the line with one of his staff officers, apparently a common practice as he also ‘rode up to the line’ on 29 August before moving into the dilapidated Suzanne Château, where he was horrified that the Germans had used the hall as a stable and desecrated some nearby graves. Gellibrand — and his Chief of Staff, Carl Jess — also had the delicate task of liaising with the British divisions on his left, the commanding officer of the 58th calling to compliment the 3rd Division on 3 September. Rawlinson came to tea on 30 August and called in again on 1 September, an indication of the importance of the capture of the Bouchavesnes ridge for the outcome of this operation.59