Our Great Hearted Men

by Peter Brune

  Despite the telling mechanical reliability and manoeuvrability of the Mark V Tank, conditions inside them were still most trying. Lieutenant Draper reported that his crew were exhausted after the action and that his tank had fired some 200 rounds of machine gun fire. Interestingly, he further stated that he had despatched two pigeons with messages.40 The frequent crushing of German machine gun posts and often their occupants was not confined to those accounts provided above. Tanks 9183, 9026 and 9097 reported the same tactic.41

  Among these events on the 4th Division front, Corporal Cliff Geddes was engaged in the consolidation of the first 13th Battalion objective:

  I heard a chap from B Coy . . . say ‘Geddes is hit.’ I questioned him, & he told me ‘Boo was hit in the thigh, & was lying in a shell hole,’ so I went ahead to B Coy in front [‘Boo’ was Geddes’s brother Aubrey] . . . when I got to where Boo was, I saw some awful sights—the men who brought this war on the world ought to be tortured to death . . . I was delighted to see Boo lying in a shell hole, pale but conscious, his right thigh bandaged & all blood, but a smile on his face as he spoke. Near by, were cruel sights, dead Australians & Yanks, & men groaning with awful wounds. They had to lie there till the stretcher bearers could take them, they had been hit by our shells, moved too fast behind the barrage . . . Some time later 4 of the 13th Bn bearers brought Boo down, & I saw him safely carried off by 4 Field Ambulance bearers to the relay station, where motors carry them off to hospital. He was very bright, smoked his pipe, & hasn’t a serious wound, 3 nasty flesh hits.42

  On the southern front the 2nd Division’s 6th Brigade enjoyed similar success to their comrades on the central sector. Attached to the 21st Battalion, Lieutenant Atack in Tank 9097 reported three points of interest. The first concerned the tanks’ ability to deal with snipers. He pointed out that they were ‘causing trouble behind the infantry and were concealed in growing crops; these were killed by my machine guns’. Second, the tanks—especially the supply tanks—were a priceless asset: ‘I handed over 4 boxes of SAA and 8 gallons of water which I had carried for the infantry . . .’43 But one concern for longer operations was to be the extremely trying conditions even inside this new and much-improved Mark V Tank. Lieutenant Atack noted that after only two hours and twenty minutes of action, two of his crew were ‘overcome by petrol fumes’.44 In short, perhaps Lieutenant Litchfield in Tank 9055, in support of the 6th Brigade’s 21st Australian Battalion, best summed up the infantry–tank–artillery coordination at Hamel: ‘The enemy appeared to be surprised and demoralised by our barrage and the approach of the tanks.’45

  In summing up the performance of the Tank Corps at Hamel, the Fourth Army Report noted that in addition to its admirable fighting qualities, that each one of the supply tanks carried a load of approximately 12 500 pounds ‘within 500 yds of the final objective, within half an hour of its capture’.46 The total load delivered by these supply tanks equalled the efforts of 1200 soldiers carrying a load of 40 pounds each. In sharp contrast to the unreliability of the Mark IV Tank, the 60 fighting tanks and four supply tanks deployed at Hamel all arrived at the start line; 57 of the fighting tanks and all four supply tanks reached their objectives; all but five tanks were able to reach their rallying points; and all five disabled tanks were recovered within the following two nights.47 The Mark V Tanks and their crews had provided a new and critical dimension to warfare on the Western Front.

  To add further to the firepower at Hamel, ‘12 [machine] guns were allotted to each attacking brigade for support of the artillery during the advance’, and moved forward in close support of the infantry. The Fourth Army Report on the Hamel operation noted that:

  Machine gun group positions were sited with special reference to our knowledge of hostile shelling and were for the most part chosen in places which were usually unoccupied by our troops. For these reasons it is considered that numerous casualties were avoided. Owing to the nature of the ground the majority of machine guns were sited on the flanks of the attack, and were afforded excellent opportunities for enfilade fire.48

  Among all of the intricate planning and implementation of the Battle of Hamel were the sterling efforts of the air support. Their aerial photographs were critical to the artillery’s predicted fire and were also provided to the infantry; their new-found ability to drop ammunition by parachutes to the infantry was invaluable (some 114 000 rounds were thus despatched); and they maintained a steady bombing program both prior to and during the battle.

  The Australian Flying Corps Official Historian has left us with a dramatic description of the airborne Battle of Hamel:

  They saw little but the locating flares, here and there the lumbering tanks crawling over German posts, small fires of burning houses, a rain of shell-bursts sweeping the enemy area, and only a few vain reply-shots from the German guns; vague knots of men in the half-light, and little columns of pioneers going up to dig in; over all a haze of mist and smoke undispersed by the first shafts of the rising sun.49

  Monash had timed his battle to last for 90 minutes. In the event his estimate was flawed—it took 93. And the sight being witnessed by those intrepid airmen was in fact an overview of a thoroughly evolving and sophisticated modern battle in which four arms were used to telling effect. In the end, there was only one real impediment to an otherwise flawless battle. At Pear Trench the artillery barrage began behind the German defences and the tanks on that objective became disoriented in the mist. In a timely reminder of past troubles, the now vulnerable infantry were forced to assault their objective in an unsupported frontal attack. They suffered accordingly.

  At a cost of around 1400 casualties, over 1600 prisoners were taken and more than 170 machine guns captured. Bean estimates that the German casualties considerably ‘exceeded 2000’.50

  ***

  On the day after his involvement in the Battle of Hamel, Corporal Geddes witnessed both the ongoing carnage of Great War artillery and the sheer luck involved in survival on the Western Front:

  Our company had some sad luck today, some big shells seemed to burst very close to 15 Platoon, on our right. One shell hit the trench, & two corporals, ______ & ______, two of the finest chaps in the whole battalion, were lying asleep in the bottom of the trench. They were blown to pieces, another chap was badly wounded, another deafened & a fifth got a very bad shaking . . . The two were so knocked about that they buried them in the broken trench, & I went along there, as Lt. Player read the burial service. Cpl ______’s head was missing, & one leg knocked off. Good heavens, it’s an awful business, you never know what a minute will bring forth.51

  CHAPTER 6

  . . . the finest fighting day I have yet had

  Der Wendepunkt der Kriegslage (the turning point of the war situation) occurred just a fortnight after the Battle of Hamel. Following his major offensives in France during March–June 1918, General Ludendorff had planned to mount an operation designed to capture Reims and split the French armies, which he hoped would force the French to withdraw their troops from Flanders and thus facilitate his long-sought-after victory against the BEF. Beginning on 15 July, this German offensive gained ground, but it was called off on the very day—18 July—that the French launched a massive counter-attack on the River Marne and towards Soissons. Employing nineteen French and four American divisions, some 2100 guns, over 1100 aircraft and nearly 500 two-man Renault tanks, Generals Charles Mangin and Jean Degoutte shattered Ludendorff’s last offensive of the war. The long-lost initiative on the Western Front now lay in the hands of the Entente’s Supreme Commander, General Foch.

  Throughout the troublesome period March–June 1918, Foch had held his nerve. As early as 3 April he had proposed a two-pronged offensive with logistics in mind: the first by the French Second Army in the Montdidier area to secure the St Just–Amiens railway, and the second by Rawlinson’s Fourth Army astride the Somme to safeguard the critical Amiens railhead. Ludendorff’s Lys offensive caused its postponement. Then, during the quiet period in May 1918, Foch a
gain sought to resurrect the plans for his offensive. And those plans were now far more extensive: he saw Rawlinson’s role as ‘a surprise attack launched with tanks between the Somme and the Villers–Bretonneux–Amiens railway with the Morcourt–Harbonnières ravine, five miles distant, as its objective’.1 A few days after Rawlinson’s attack Foch envisaged a French pincer movement by his Second French Army in the Montdidier area. Peter Pedersen has identified three key issues with this plan. The first is that when Haig sent Foch’s plan to Rawlinson, he stipulated that the Fourth Army’s formations for the offensive would comprise the Australian, Canadian and III Corps; second, that due to the considerable depth in Foch’s objectives, a ‘leapfrogging’ of formations would need to be employed; and third, that when Birdwood and White assessed the plan they ‘pointed out that guns on the heights between Sailly-Laurette and the Chipilly Spur could enfilade the advance to Morcourt on the opposite side of the river [Somme]’.2 It will be shown that Birdwood and White’s concern was prophetic.

  Despite the fact that the German offensive on the Aisne at the end of that month caused yet another postponement to Foch’s plans, it is apparent that the soon-to-be-fought Battle of Amiens was growing in definition and scope. On 17 July, fortified by the continuing fruits of ‘Peaceful Penetration’ and the Australian Corps’s victory at Hamel, Rawlinson submitted a written plan to Haig. In essence, this plan shows the evidence of a gradual but decisive acquisition of knowledge and expertise by a BEF army commander who had, to an extent, learnt his trade, and amply portrays the two-year learning curve described earlier in this work.

  On 17 July 1918, Rawlinson noted the vulnerability of the German defences; their poor morale; the ‘moral superiority gained by the Australian Corps over the enemy in the last three months’;3 that the terrain chosen was ideal for tanks (as per Cambrai and Hamel); the excellent existing observation of the German lines and good artillery positions already held; and the ‘covered lines of approach and cover, which render a surprise attack comparatively easy’.4

  As at Hamel, Rawlinson emphasised the importance of secrecy and that it must be ‘the basis on which the whole scheme is built up’.5 He had also absorbed the tank lessons of Cambrai and Hamel:

  As in the case of the attack of July 4th, it is proposed to employ as many fighting tanks as possible, so as to save casualties to the infantry, and also to make full use of any supply tanks that may be available, so as to reduce infantry carrying parties. Whippets [Medium Mark A tanks] will be required for exploiting success. Approximately six tanks (Mark V or Mark V one star) per 1,000 yards will be required for each objective.6

  Haig endorsed Rawlinson’s basic plan on 23 July, Foch approved it the following day, and also advanced the operation from 10 to 8 August 1918.

  Monash subsequently made a number of claims for the genesis of the Amiens offensive that are simply inaccurate. Pedersen has noted that on 17 August 1918 Monash ‘informed [Keith] Murdoch that he was responsible for the battle on the 8th,7 and further, he later claimed that the idea of using the Canadians was his. Pedersen provides telling evidence that:

  The origin of this offensive illustrates nothing more than the operation of the chain of command from generalissimo downwards, with Monash’s role typifying the relationship between a Corps and an Army commander. Rawlinson’s discussions with him dwelt on the tasks and requirements of the Australian Corps in an Army plan, which the Army commander had prepared. As Bean finally concluded in 1935: ‘we know that Monash did not devise the August offensive . . .’8

  In all this, a critical point should be noted. By mid-1918 the Entente’s chain of command had become far more defined and refined. Foch and Haig deserve some credit here. Although the two had had some disagreements, they both perceived the growing vulnerability of the German defences and the opportunities they provided. In their telling study of Rawlinson, Prior and Wilson have noted that:

  . . . what we are seeing, in microcosm, is the way in which the role of an Army commander was being adapted to the circumstances of war on the Western Front . . . Rawlinson was becoming less and less the creator of great operations. Rather, his role was diminishing to that of a manager drawing forth and co-ordinating the endeavours of others . . . As the complexity of the war expanded, the nature and extent of his job significantly contracted. Thereby it fell more within the limits of his competence.9

  Also, in an evaluation of Hamel—and as a precursor to Amiens—Prior and Wilson have further stated:

  For what occurred there [Hamel] was not just a display of an enhanced weaponry and technical expertise which, at many levels, now lay at Fourth Army’s disposal. It was also a demonstration of those many facets of planning which were now passing out of the orbit of the Army commander and into the hands of a considerable array of experts.10

  Rawlinson’s basic contribution to the forthcoming Battle of Amiens was therefore one of a sound basic plan, an allocation of two highly competent and well-led shock-troop corps, the provision of the necessary implements of war for their use, and the knowledge that, at the corps level, the expertise applied to his plan and then its execution would be judicious.

  ***

  While a basic blueprint for a combined arms operation had been established at Hamel, its limited scale had seen the employment of just three AIF brigades (using ten battalions) over a front of 7500 yards on the furthest objective and to a greatest depth of 2500 yards.

  For the Battle of Amiens, Rawlinson’s front was some 19 000 yards, stretching from the River Ancre near Morlancourt to south of the River Luce near Démuin. On the left, or northern flank, two divisions of General Butler’s III Corps would provide flank protection north of the Somme; in the centre, the four-division Australian Corps front—some 7200 yards and eventually widening to around 9000 yards—stretched from the Somme near Sailly-Laurette southwards to the Amiens–Nesle railway. South of that feature was to be General Currie and his Canadians’ four-division 4000-yard front, which diminished as it journeyed eastwards to 3500 yards. Just south of the Luce, two of those Canadian divisions, with the eventual support of the 3rd Cavalry Division, were to exploit a break-through.

  The northern extremity of the Australian front was the River Somme, the Amiens to Péronne Road (Roman Road) was its central feature and the railway formed its southern boundary. Monash’s first objective was the Green Line (roughly 3000 yards from his start line) that ran from near Cerisy on the Somme, and swung to Lamotte and thence to the railway line. The second objective—the Red Line (a further 4500 yards)—ran from the Chipilly Spur eastwards around the village of Morcourt and down to the railway. An occupation of this line would place the critically important railway centre of Amiens out of German artillery range. The last objective was the Blue Line (a further 1500 yards), which ran from the eastern edge of the Chipilly Spur. It bordered a horseshoe-shaped loop in the Somme, from just west of Proyart to just east of Harbonnières to then reach the railway line. The southern portion of the Australian Corps’s ground lay between the Amiens to Péronne Road (Roman Road) and the railway, which was relatively flat, open ground on which were scattered a number of woods and villages.

  From a Fourth Army perspective, a potential for heavy casualties on the central AIF front was the German-occupied Chipilly Spur, which lay in General Butler’s III Corps front. The German artillery not only dominated two nearby re-entrants, but could also reach as far as the distant villages of Bayonvillers and Harbonnières.

  As at Hamel, Rawlinson (and Monash and Currie) placed a heavy emphasis upon secrecy. Although Hamel now provided them with a blueprint for how to maintain such secrecy, at Amiens we note a greater degree of difficulty and a marked sophistication in the measures taken. The first problem was the deployment of the Canadian Corps to the Amiens front. Since the prowess of that corps was well known to the Germans, any concentration of Currie’s Corps on a new front—with the AIF Corps in the vicinity—would have aroused understandable suspicion. At a conference held at III Corps HQ on 29 July
, it was planned that the Canadian Corps’s 2nd Division would arrive on 1 August; its 3rd Division two days later; and its 1st and 4th Divisions at midday on 5 August.11 In an attempt to mask those moves, a battalion from both the 2nd and 3rd Canadian Divisions was sent in the opposite direction to the Second Army front, along with a number of wireless units and two casualty clearing stations. As at Hamel, senior officers only became aware of the plan as necessity dictated. Another example of the extension and sophistication of secrecy was the proposed screening of the tanks’ arrival both in the area and during their approach to the start line. Two days of droning heavy aircraft drowning out the noise of the tank approach at Cambrai had become eight consecutive days at Hamel, while at Amiens:

  From to-night [29 July] onwards aeroplanes will be in the air at irregular intervals. They will not be employed every night but will be employed somewhat on these lines—in the air to-night and to-morrow night; not in the air at all on the third night; in the air on the fourth night; not in the air on the fifth and sixth days; in the air on the seventh and eighth days, and so on, the main provision being that they are not to be in the air on the day prior to zero day.12

  ***

  General Monash had been present at a conference with Rawlinson on 21 July concerning what was then a provisional Amiens plan. As the latter sought Haig’s endorsement of it on the 22nd, Monash had journeyed to England on leave to witness the opening of Australia House in London, which was fixed for 3 August. Rawlinson granted that leave on the basis that Monash would return to France forthwith if required.