Our Great Hearted Men

by Peter Brune

  From an Australian Corps perspective, two points should also be made. First, in hindsight, General Monash’s attempt to cross the Somme by a frontal assault upon the Corps’s arrival there was a decision based on wishful thinking rather than military reality. It was doomed to failure. Second, although Monash successfully pushed his senior commanders and troops to the very limits of their endurance and won a stunning victory, small fissures, and later significant cracks, would appear in the Australian Corps’s morale. As with all soldiers through the pages of history there is a fine line between being pushed to the limit and being pushed beyond it. Thus, General Hobbs’s protest to Monash concerning the condition of his 5th Division was not without substance. In the short term, Monash’s determination and judgement were totally vindicated, but in the longer term, there were consequences that we shall chronicle.

  ***

  Ranking any nation’s battles in order of merit is a futile affair. However, in his book The Great War, Les Carlyon has provided us with a pithy basis for an evaluation of the importance of the Australian Corps’s performance at Mont St Quentin and Péronne:

  Anzac Cove on Gallipoli has atmospherics: tawny ridges rise out of a sea that displays all the colours of a peacock’s tail. Gallipoli is part of Australian folklore; it is a place for pilgrimages. Mont St Quentin isn’t like that. It doesn’t have the atmospherics: a low hill rises out of the plain; the village, church and memorial to the 2nd Division lie near the summit, from where you look down on Péronne and the tree-lined river. Nor does Mont St Quentin have a place in the folklore; it is hardly spoken of. There is no sense to these things.61

  The Battles of Mont St Quentin and Péronne marked the final coming of age of the Australian Corps. If that attainment had first manifested itself in the superbly planned and executed set-piece Battles of Hamel and Amiens, then Mont St Quentin and Péronne provided a far different and surely more challenging obstacle to the Australian Corps. We start with its commander.

  Charles Bean would later refer to Monash’s plan for the capture of Mont St Quentin and Péronne as:

  . . . one of movement rather than a set piece; indeed within Australian experience on the Western Front it was the only important fight in which quick, free manoeuvre played a decisive part. It furnishes a complete answer to the comment that Monash was merely a composer of set pieces.62

  Peter Pedersen has astutely identified four key attributes to Monash’s command of his Corps during the battle. The first was his dogged determination to maintain his objective, which entailed the necessity of changing plans when necessary. Second, his grasp of logistics enabled the Corps to rapidly restore its infrastructure of supply, best exemplified by the Corps’s quick repair of bridges, and its ability to maintain its speedy deployment of its artillery and supplies. Third, although Monash’s first attempt at an initial Somme crossing on 29 August proved a badly calculated gamble, his grasp of the ground demonstrated his acumen. He knew the significance of the northern-flank high ground of the Bouchavesnes Spur and, in turn, of Mont St Quentin, and that they were vital steps in the capture of Péronne. Last, Monash demonstrated the ingredient of ruthlessness that is required in all great commanders. He had the ability to know his subordinate commanders’ and their soldiers’ capabilities and then to push them to the absolute limits of their stamina.63

  In his The Australian Victories in France in 1918, Monash rightly acknowledged the superb performance of his divisional commanders. At various stages during those action-packed four days of fighting, Rosenthal, Gellibrand and Hobbs were all tested by the immediacy of changed circumstances. While those constraints might potentially have inhibited the performance of his divisional commanders, they influenced brigade and battalion commanders much more. There is always the potential for failure when tired, pressured commanders have time only for rushed conferences, verbal orders, inadequate reconnaissance and hurried communications. They are a recipe for disaster. The fact that the artillery liaison was maintained under such pressures is further testimony to the standard of professionalism within the Corps.

  Last but not least, the performance of the front-line soldiers across the Corps was outstanding. They were low in numbers, suffering from prolonged sleep deprivation and stricken by further casualties. On many occasions, they lost company and platoon commanders, yet their determination, esprit de corps and initiative still allowed them to reach their objectives. During the three-day period 31 August to 2 September 1918 at Mont St Quentin and Péronne, the Australians were awarded eight Victoria Crosses.64 In any company, and certainly in the annals of Australian military history, the Battles of Mont St Quentin and Péronne must surely rank highly. It makes perfect sense.

  CHAPTER 10

  . . . a stunning achievement

  After the Battle of Amiens, General Ludendorff had planned a prolonged defence along the Somme and to its north on his so-called ‘Winter Line’. Although the Australian Corps’s capture of Mont St Quentin and Péronne had been a devastating blow to the Germans, events to the north were even more disturbing. Three battles fought during August and early September 1918 forced Ludendorff’s abandonment of his crucial ‘Winter Line’.

  It will be remembered that after the Battle of Amiens, Field Marshal Haig had shifted the main thrust of the BEF offensive north of the Somme to General Byng’s Third Army front. He had also transferred the Canadian Corps from General Rawlinson’s Fourth Army northwards to General Horne’s First Army. Haig’s offensive began on 21 August with an attack by the Third Army, and five days later the right or southern flank of General Horne’s First Army joined that offensive. As a prelude to the Australian Corps’s stunning success at Mont St Quentin and Péronne, Byng’s Third Army and the American II Corps attacked Albert, which fell on the 22nd, and on the 29th Bapaume was taken by the Third Army’s New Zealand Division. However, it was further north, on 2 September 1918, that Ludendorff suffered a shattering blow, when General Currie’s Canadians broke through the Drocourt-Quéant switch line south-east of Arras. Confronted by two breaches of his ‘Winter Line’—on the Arras–Cambrai front and at Mont St Quentin and Péronne—Ludendorff was compelled to withdraw his Seventeenth, Second and Eighteenth Armies to the Hindenburg Line. This had abundant defensive features, and a German withdrawal to that line would, Ludendorff hoped, ‘shorten his line, economise troops, and . . . give them at least a short rest’.1 The German withdrawal began on the night 3–4 September.

  Charles Bean recorded that after the fall of Mont St Quentin and Péronne:

  Rawlinson had ordered his two corps [the Australian Corps and III British Corps] to press the enemy vigorously so as to prevent roads and railways from being destroyed. This order . . . displeased Haig who did not wish to be forced into attacking the Hindenburg Line until Foch was ready with his American and French offensives elsewhere; then the blows would fall together. Haig therefore refused Rawlinson another division to bring relief to his tired troops—they must be rested by not pressing the pursuit. When the time for the combined stroke arrived, Haig would send several divisions to form a new Corps, the IX, to relieve the right of the Australian [Corps].2

  Two points are worthy of mention. The first is that in the strategic sense, Foch and Haig were now undoubtedly displaying sound judgement in their desire to attack the Germans across a number of fronts and in a synchronised manner. The second interesting thing to note is the still-constant pressure—and ignorance—of Haig’s military and political masters, who may well have had some bearing on his actions.

  As recently as 21 August 1918, Winston Churchill, the Minister of Munitions, had visited Haig at his HQ and assured him of ‘hurrying up’ the supply of ‘10 calibre [radius]-head shells, gas, tanks etc’ which were timed for completion in June 1919. When Haig explained that ‘we ought to do our utmost to get a decision by this autumn’, Churchill replied that the General Staff in London believed that the decisive period of the war ‘cannot arrive until next July [1919].’3 Eight days later on the 29th, Haig
received a personal telegram from the CIGS, General Wilson (Wilson was not made a Field Marshal until the following year), who cautioned him regarding the possibility of incurring heavy losses assaulting the Hindenburg Line. In view of the resounding success of the BEF’s recent campaigning, Haig’s diary response was understandable: ‘What a wretched lot of weaklings we have in high places at the present time!’4 On 3 September Wilson sought to explain his ‘personal’ telegram of 29 August by pointing out that the ‘Police strike and other cognate matters make Cabinet sensitive to heavy losses . . .’5

  ***

  As a significant portion of the German Western Front defences, the Hindenburg Line, known to the enemy as the Siegfriedstellung or Siegfried Position, had been constructed during the winter of 1916–17 from Arras southwards to near Soissons on the River Aisne. General Rawlinson’s Fourth Army’s part of the Hindenburg Line front was to extend from roughly a mile north of Nurlu, southwards to just north of St Quentin—about thirteen-and-a-quarter miles. And of that front, the Australian Corps sector of some eight-and-a-half miles stretched between two tributaries of the Somme: from the Omignon in the south northwards to the Cologne. These two tributaries formed two valleys, which were dominated by rolling hills, dispersed woods and numerous villages.

  By the time the Fourth Army approached the Hindenburg Line in September 1918, that line consisted of six trench systems: the first three comprised the former British 1917 line; and the last three formed the Hindenburg Line itself. In places the six lines ran to a total depth of some six miles. In essence, the Fourth Army would assault the three old British lines in reverse from west to east: that is, the old Reserve Line first, then the Main Line and finally the old Outpost Line. These three former British lines now consisted of overgrown trenches and extensive belts of rusted wire that ran for miles both across and along the ridges.

  In a stroke of luck, the Fourth Army was presented with priceless intelligence as to the nature of the three German trench lines of the Hindenburg Line—and the likely employment of them—on 8 August, the opening day of the Amiens offensive. The reader will recall (in Chapter 6) that as a part of their tank support for 8 August at Amiens, the Australian Corps had been allotted sixteen armoured cars from the 5th Tank Brigade’s 17th Armoured Car Battalion. One of those cars was commanded by Lieutenant E J Rollings who had ‘received orders to proceed to Framerville to find out any useful information I could and to do as much damage as possible’.6 In addition to taking a heavy toll on his utterly surprised enemy in that village, and having as he called it ‘by far the finest fighting day I have yet had’,7 Lieutenant Rollings had not only captured maps but also priceless documents concerning the Hindenburg Line. These maps and documents were distributed within the Fourth Army and resulted in a detailed appreciation of the Hindenburg Line by, amongst others, Captain Chapman, 5th Division AIF.8 The intelligence thus gained showed that a fundamental change had occurred since the original line had been designed and constructed.

  When first planned, the Germans had placed their Main Line behind the obstacle of the St Quentin Canal (on its eastern side). That feature ran through a deep cutting from the River Scheldt between Le Catelet and Vendhuile, and then southwards to the Somme at St Quentin. The average width of the canal at its surface was 59 feet; at its bottom it was 32 feet ten inches; and its average depth was six-and-a-half feet.9 In only two places did this Main Line penetrate the canal cutting: to the western side of a 1200-yard tunnel three miles north of St Quentin at Le Tronquoy, and at a more substantial three-and-a-half-mile tunnel north of Bellicourt. This latter tunnel varied in depth from 50 to 65 feet and was about 30 feet wide.10 Both tunnels were therefore protected from artillery fire and, as such, were capable of housing literally thousands of soldiers. The 5th Division Artillery appreciation noted that:

  The front line was provided with concrete dugouts at 40 or 50 yards interval: the captured maps show all the machine guns in the front and support lines, and the artillery not disposed in depth. Modifications must now be expected in these directions. But even for the Hindenburg Line the enemy was careful to keep a series of forward positions to deny observation and in 1918 did much work on outpost lines . . .

  Where the natural obstacle of the Canal is lacking, i.e. at the long tunnel between Vendhuille [sic] and Bellicourt and the shorter le Tronquoy tunnel, the enemy organised particularly strong and well wired trenches in the form of a slight salient. The wire is particularly strong, the forward belt being in the form of triangles characteristic of the Drocourt-Queant [sic] line.11

  The passage above highlights the 1918 German Hindenburg Line dilemma. Although the Main Line itself was protected for the most part by the canal—and at the tunnels by extensive trenches, strong posts and wire—it lay on lower ground than the first or Hindenburg Outpost Line. Thus the Main Line planned in 1916–17 relied on its defenders being deployed on the eastern side of the canal and therefore on a reverse slope, as a protective barrier to artillery fire. However, swayed by the canal’s influence as a defensive position, the Germans had opted to construct their chief defences on that feature. Therefore, instead of defending their ground on a reverse slope, they were now confronted with defence of a valley line and, as a consequence, should the ridges comprising the Hindenburg Outpost Line fall, the Fourth Army would enjoy superb artillery observation over the Main Line—which was a mere mile or two away. In simple terms, the Hindenburg Outpost Line had become a critical feature of the German defence—far from being an Outpost Line, it was now the first of two ‘main lines’. Numerous dugouts and wire belts were now constructed on this first line, its strength in personnel greatly increased, and the emphasis upon its retention heightened.

  ***

  The Australian Corps’s pursuit from Péronne began on 5 September, when General Monash deployed three divisions on that advance, each along a 5000-yard front. Given that he felt forced to rest his well-worn 2nd Division and to hold his 1st and 4th Divisions for the assault upon the Hindenburg Line, Monash was compelled to deploy his equally exhausted 3rd and 5th Divisions in the pursuit. This operation began with the British 32nd Division south of the Roman Road; the AIF 5th Division’s 8th Brigade in the centre to the north of that road; and the AIF 3rd Division’s 11th Brigade on the left flank still farther north.

  General Rawlinson’s orders envisaged the capture of four objectives, each between two and three miles apart. Beginning from the west, the first two lines (the Green and Red) passed through open country; the third (the Blue Line) lay close to the old British Reserve Line; and the fourth (the Brown Line) lay on the old British Main Line.

  During the period 6–7 September it became obvious that while the Germans were in full retreat, their machine gunners were facilitating an orderly and disciplined withdrawal. Few German machine gun crews presented themselves to No. 3 Squadron’s planes for detection or strafing. Gun battery supplies unable to be removed were destroyed, villages were torched and the bulk of the enemy infantry remained essentially just beyond reach. The Australian Flying Corps Official Historian recorded that:

  The airmen on September 6th and 7th over the Roisel plains looked down on an inspiring spectacle. The whole army was moving forward in quick pursuit of the German rear guards—light horse and cyclists in advance; infantry in skirmishing waves and little columns of sections; and vast numbers of other columns in rear; the roads crowded with guns moving up, supply-transport, and engineers’ repair-trains.12

  When, on 7 September, the advancing 8th and 11th Brigades reached the third objective (the Blue Line), Monash, sensing that the fourth and subsequent lines might require a set-piece attack, ordered that they dig in and hold their ground.

  On 8 September, Field Marshal Haig asked his army commanders for their views on how best to support the upcoming French and American offensives. Both Generals Byng and Rawlinson advocated an attack upon the Hindenburg Line. In Rawlinson’s view, given that his Fourth Army already held the old British Reserve Line, such an attack
, to be undertaken as rapidly as possible, should have the limited objective of the outer defences of the Hindenburg Line. Rawlinson saw a number of reasons for such an early but limited assault. The first was the chance to inhibit the enemy’s organisation of his defences and manpower, which in turn would further erode his already declining morale. His second aim was to rest his tired troops after a limited attack upon the outer defences and not before it. But, most importantly, Rawlinson reasoned that such a pause might provide added time for thorough reconnaissance, and a much-needed opportunity to organise his artillery. Further, this pause before the Hindenburg Main Line operation would also ease his logistics concerns. And, not unlike the Germans, Rawlinson saw the limited objectives of the two remaining British lines and the first ridge line—the Hindenburg Outpost Line—as providing opportunities for observation over the Main Line. This was a critical prerequisite to thorough reconnaissance, a sound plan, and an assessment of the enemy’s morale and power of resistance. Such a strategy, Rawlinson argued, would truly assess the vulnerability and therefore the chances of success of a major assault upon the Hindenburg Main Line.

  It is hardly surprising that on 13 September Haig approved Rawlinson’s plan. He also pledged to extend the attack by adding General Byng’s Third Army to the north, and the French to its south. Given Haig’s desire to cooperate with Foch and his plans for the French and Americans—and his warning by the CIGS, General Wilson, that the government was loath to see him incur heavy casualties on any assault upon the Hindenburg Line—Rawlinson and Byng’s limited objectives made great military and political sense.