Our Great Hearted Men

by Peter Brune

  The Court found that given the circumstances, the rations were adequate and the correct procedures for distribution had been followed but the 60 soldiers concerned were ignorant of them. Brigadier-General Elliott subsequently issued two instructions titled Mental Care of the Men and Instructions for the Occupation and Care of the Men. In order to address point 2 of the men’s grievances, Elliott ordered a medical report from the Regimental Medical Officer, which stated that the soldiers of the 59th Battalion were all suffering ‘from excessive fatigue, loss of sleep and nervous strain’ and that ‘the limit of endurance had been reached for most of the men’.31

  ***

  It will be recalled that on 18 September 1918 the 1st Division had managed to occupy its final Blue Line objective: a section of the Hindenburg Outpost Line. But to the 1st Division’s north, General Butler’s III Corps, despite frequent attacks by all of his four divisions on a limited scale, had failed to gain its Blue Line objective. Having decided to attack again on 21 September with all four divisions and a small number of tanks, Butler requested that General Monash support that operation by an Australian Corps assault on the southern 500 yards of his front. Knowing that the final attack upon the Hindenburg Main Line depended on the III and IX British Corps taking their Blue Line objectives before a suitable start line could be gained for that operation, Monash agreed. At 10.30 pm on 20 September Monash issued a warning order for General Glasgow’s 1st Brigade to undertake this limited attack. His decision made sense, given that the 1st Brigade was on the III Corps right flank and the issues of knowledge of the ground and movement would be easily accommodated. At 12.40 pm General Glasgow cancelled the 1st Brigade’s relief for 24 hours.

  Lieutenant Syd Traill, 1st Battalion, in his diary, 21 September 1918:

  Then came the first rumours of a mutiny. The men had had a hard time and their nerve was just about gone to shreds. On top of their promised relief turned out only to be another attack. We got a whisper that D Coy were not going to attack, and by degrees it so read round that none of the other coys were going to either . . . I told Hayward how things stood, and he said he’d talk to them when they had had something to eat. But they didn’t wait that long, the evil spirits amongst them worked their way, and they started to desert in droves. There was nothing we could do to stop them—the damned devils.32

  When the 1st Battalion went forward to its objective it totalled ten officers and 84 other ranks. In all 127 men were subsequently arrested and tried by Court Martial.33 Despite this, the 1st and 3rd Battalions took their objectives. Further north the British 74th Division gained the Hindenburg Outpost Line. But on their left the remaining divisions of that Corps failed to capture the old second or Red Line objective. At around noon on 21 September the Germans successfully counter-attacked the 74th Division and forced it to withdraw behind the Red Line. Those III Corps withdrawals forced the 3rd AIF Battalion to make a limited withdrawal to protect its left flank. The 1st AIF Division was relieved during the night of 23–24 September.

  With regard to the treatment of the mutineers, Lieutenant-Colonel Stacy and his Divisional Commander, Major-General Glasgow, both called for tough penalties. In his report to his 1st Brigade Commander, Brigadier-General MacKay, Stacy maintained that:

  . . . Capt Moffat informed me he had traced it all to one man in his Coy. who was a suspended sentence man and I think the same will be found in other Coys . . . the men have done well today with the few numbers, accomplishing all that was asked of them—the Officers have behaved splendidly throughout but in many cases N.C.Os have not realised their responsibilities and have sided with the men in the wrong . . . I feel it hard to make any recommendation except that in spite of the numbers, about a 100, who were timid and deserted, no man be let go free but that the severest punishment be meted out to them. I consider the lightness in suspension of sentences in the past for desertion is greatly responsible for the trouble and I would not care to have any of them in the Battalion again if they can be transferred.34

  The Court Martial convened to try the 1st Battalion soldiers found 115 of the 127 accused not guilty of mutiny but guilty of desertion. Of those 115 soldiers, the privates were sentenced to imprisonment for three years and the NCOs for five to ten years with their rank reduced. Of the remaining twelve, eleven were found not guilty and the twelfth was found guilty of Absence Without Leave.35 The majority of those found guilty had their sentences suspended within seven to eight months and a number did not return to Australia until September 1919.36

  It would seem that Major-General Glasgow, Lieutenant-Colonel Stacy and Lieutenant Traill all favoured either tougher prison penalties, or indeed the death penalty for some of these men. While there would appear to be no hard evidence that ring leaders or ‘hard cases’ instigated the mutiny, the conclusions drawn by Lieutenant-Colonel Stacy, Captain Moffat and Lieutenant Traill are compelling—and they were there. In his diary entry for 23 September 1918, Lieutenant Syd Traill made a pertinent point: ‘The rotten part is that there were some damn good men amongst them—just led astray and they followed the mob.’37

  Geoffrey Serle, in his biography of Monash has stated that:

  Shortly after the Armistice, probably at the conference of senior officers late in November, Monash and Hobbs suggested to Glasgow that he remit the sentences . . . Glasgow refused to do so and Monash gave way. Glasgow told Bean that he considered Monash showed ‘moral cowardice’ in not enforcing his opinion.38

  Following the Armistice, the sentences were remitted by Lieutenant-General Hobbs after he succeeded Monash in command of the Australian Corps.

  In the end, any judgement upon the soldiers’ actions and penalties incurred after the 1st Battalion mutiny of 21 September 1918 will be subjective. But there can be little doubt that Monash, in pushing the soldiers of his Australian Corps to the very limits of their physical and emotional capacity, was vindicated by the striking military gains achieved by the Corps—the end justified the means. Perhaps, therefore, the incidents concerning the disbandments and mutinies that occurred during September 1918 were appreciated by commanders such as Monash, Hobbs and Elliott as a by-product (however unsavoury) of the extreme demands that they had made upon their soldiers.

  Little did the soldiers of the 1st and 4th AIF Divisions realise that their offensive of 18 September 1918 would prove their last. Their war was over.

  ***

  If the strain from July to September 1918 had told on his soldiers, then Monash also had been under enormous stress. Peter Pedersen has quoted Blamey as saying that Monash ‘became very thin, the skin hung loosely on his face. His characteristic attitude was one of deep thought’. Pedersen has also stated that Monash ‘was afflicted by nervous tremors’.39

  Despite the now battle-worn condition of the Australian Corps and its Commander, ahead lay what was to prove their last monumental challenge—the final assault upon the Hindenburg Main Line.

  CHAPTER 12

  . . . one dead man to every 2 yards of trench

  Marshal Foch and Field Marshal Haig planned four major offensives for the four-day period 26–29 September 1918, which had tremendous significance for the Entente. Up until that time their battles had been planned and executed to regain the vast territory lost to the Germans during the period March–July 1918. The long-awaited time had now arrived to seize ground that had been held by the enemy since the beginning of the war. The first operation was to be an offensive by the French and General Pershing’s Americans between Reims and the River Meuse on 26 September. The second was to be a thrust on 27 September by the BEF’s First and Third Armies near Cambrai, while the third was to be undertaken by the Belgians, French and British in Flanders (Belgium) the following day. But Haig’s main blow was aimed on General Rawlinson’s Fourth Army Hindenburg Main Line front on 29 September. It is a measure of the confidence placed in Monash and his Australian Corps that Rawlinson entrusted that Corps with the main role in this operation and, significantly, placed the responsibility for the i
nitial plan upon its Commander.

  Monash submitted his plan to Rawlinson on 18 September 1918—the very day that the Fourth Army attacked the Outpost Line. In doing so he had been faced with a number of critical factors.

  The first was the paucity of infantry resources available to him. Of his five AIF Divisions, the 1st and 4th had to be rested after this present operation; he judged that the 3rd and 5th required another week’s rest; and he ‘had promised the Second Division would not be called upon until towards the end of September’.1 As Monash required four divisions for the attack (and one in reserve) but could only at first deploy his 3rd and 5th AIF Divisions, he requested that Rawlinson supply him with an additional two. Rawlinson offered Monash the American II Corps (Major-General Read), which consisted of the 27th and 30th Divisions. At that time they were the only American divisions in the British zone of operations and were deployed as GHQ Reserve. Each division had an establishment of two brigades composed of two regiments of three battalions. Monash was therefore being offered twelve full-strength and fresh battalions that also had ‘three times as many machine gun companies as a British division and twice as many engineers’.2 The Americans were prepared to fight under Monash’s command.

  The second consideration was the choice of a break-in location. It will be remembered that the Hindenburg Main Line ran mainly just behind or to the east of the extensive St Quentin Canal. The area most vulnerable to a passage over that feature was the substantial three-and-a-half mile tunnel stretching from just south of Bellicourt northwards to Vendhuile. In basic terms, the ground running over the top of that tunnel offered him a three-and-a-half mile passage across the canal, and was therefore the only point on the line where tanks might be gainfully employed. Given the existence of this prime crossing point the Germans had strongly fortified its defence. Away to the west, and until captured, the Knoll, Gillemont Farm and Quennemont Farm, although located on the III Corps Outpost Line front, were mutually supporting high-ground positions of great tactical significance; from Bellicourt northwards to Bony lay the first line; located one mile to the east of the tunnel lay the second, the Le Catelet Line, which ran roughly from Nauroy northwards to Le Catelet; and the Beaurevoir Line was the third and final obstacle.

  Monash felt confident that with a comprehensive artillery barrage and ample tanks, the tunnel crossing was achievable. He chose the two American Divisions for the break-in, which was to be along the tunnel frontage of 6000 yards and then to a depth of 4000 yards (the Green Line), and allotted them 60 tanks. The AIF 3rd and 5th Divisions were to accomplish the more difficult exploitation phase of the attack by a ‘leapfrogging’ through the Americans to gain the additional 4000 yards to the Beaurevoir Line (Red Line), supported by 30 tanks. The AIF 2nd Division was to be the Corps reserve. Should the Red Line be taken, Monash’s plan allowed for a further eastward break-through by the cavalry.

  By opting to cross the Hindenburg Main Line at only one narrow location, Monash sought to both protect the flanks of his thrust and broaden the advance by pushing the III Corps on the left flank along the tunnel breach and having it swing northwards, while IX Corps on the right was to undertake the same movement but then swing in a southerly direction. It is highly likely that Monash, in avoiding a crossing of the canal other than by the ground above the tunnel, was influenced by the recent memory of his failed frontal assault upon the Somme on 29 August.

  Monash concluded his plan by informing Rawlinson that its success was contingent upon four basic requirements. The first concerned his artillery support. Consistent with his now standard doctrine, he advocated not only a plentiful field artillery barrage to support the American thrust to the Green Line, but at least six mobile artillery brigades for the AIF exploitation phase to the Red Line. Importantly, those brigades of mobile artillery were not to be employed in the American Corps’s initial advance. Second, fully aware that the advantage of surprise could not be employed, he stressed the importance of ‘a systematic destructive bombardment of the whole of the Hindenburg trench system on the battle front, lasting at least four days’, which was designed to not only destroy or neutralise the German defences but ‘also demoralize and starve the trench garrisons’.3 Third, he stressed the importance of his 60 tanks in support of the Americans and a further 30 for the AIF exploitation phase. His last imperative concerned logistics:

  The rapid construction of usable roads, both for horse transport and mechanical transport . . . so that the whole of our battle organisation could be rapidly carried forward to maintain the battle eastward of the Red Line. This would involve the mobilisation of a large amount of mechanical transport, ready loaded with road-stone [author’s italics], so that road-making can commence after Zero hour without any delay. For these works, there would be available the greater part of the Australian and American technical troops of seven Divisions, as well as Army Troops Companies.4

  With typical thoroughness Monash and his staff planned the efficient use of all four available roads. What follows is but a small part of that detailed staff planning:

  These roads are coloured respectively BLACK, RED, YELLOW, and BLUE on the map attached . . . They will be respectively marked on the ground by sign boards, painted in the same sequence of colours. Of these roads, the RED and YELLOW roads will probably be developed into M.T. [mechanical transport] roads. The BLACK road is not likely to be suitable for any but pedestrian and horse transport traffic . . . the Armoured Car Battalion (and Whippet Tanks accompanying it) will use the YELLOW road . . . All North and South traffic must give way to, and avoid blocking, all East bound traffic.5

  At a conference on 19 September, General Rawlinson made some key changes to Monash’s plan of the preceding day. The first was a generous increase in his tank support: instead of 60 tanks, the American break-in was to now be supported by 86, while the Australians were to have 76 instead of 30. Further, as at Amiens, once the final Red Line objective had been gained, the 17th Armoured Car Battalion and a number of Whippet Tanks would move forward to secure bridges and disrupt the German line of communication.

  However, concerned by Monash’s narrow tunnel front, Rawlinson’s second amendment extended the front to 10 000 yards instead of Monash’s 6000. In this, Rawlinson was worried that the German potential to provide concentrated fire from the tunnel flanks might at worst jeopardise the operation, or at best cause heavy casualties. By deploying the IX Corps’s British 46th (Midland) Division in an assault across the canal a little south of Bellenglise to just below Bellicourt—on the American and Australian right or southern flank—the intricate task of passing three corps through such a narrow tunnel frontage would be avoided. After the 46th Division had crossed the canal, Rawlinson planned that the British 32nd Division would ‘leapfrog’ it, and then seize the smaller Le Tronquoy Tunnel and the high ground to the east. The IX Corps’s 1st British Division was to provide flank protection for this operation. If the assaults mounted by General Braithwaite’s IX Corps had been less than auspicious up to this point, then its newly posted 46th Division (it arrived on 19 September) would prove a far more formidable addition to its establishment. Rawlinson’s third change stipulated that the final Beaurevoir Line objective need not necessarily be taken on that first day, but should be left to await the success of the earlier stages of the attack. After this meeting with Rawlinson on 19 September Monash also conducted his first Australian Corps conference with his divisional commanders.

  Realising that General Read and his American 27th and 30th Divisions were inexperienced in operations, Monash created an Australian Corps Mission ‘to act as a body of expert advisers on all questions of tactical technique, and of supply and maintenance’.6 General Read, who had already moved his Corps HQ close to Monash’s, readily excepted the offer. Knowing that the Americans were in the process of relieving the AIF 1st and 4th Divisions, Monash chose the 4th Division’s Major-General Sinclair-Maclagan to command a Mission of 217 soldiers: 109 from the AIF 1st Division to the American 30th Division, and
108 from the AIF 4th Division to the American 27th. Each AIF Division ordered that such personnel were ‘to be most carefully selected in order to ensure that the best experience of the Australian Corps is made available to the American Forces’.7 However, it stipulated that the duties of the Mission ‘will be entirely advisory and not executive’.8

  The breadth and depth of tactical and administrative expertise contained in this Australian Corps Mission were impressive. Attached to the American II Corps HQ were the 4th AIF Division’s GOC, Major-General Sinclair-Maclagan, and its Machine Gun Battalion CO, Lieutenant-Colonel Murray, while the 1st Division supplied a General Staff Officer (GSO), a Deputy Adjutant and Quartermaster General, and a Senior Signals Officer. Each American Division HQ received a Brigadier, a Brigade Major, a Staff Captain and a Signals Officer; each Infantry Brigade HQ received a Battalion CO and a Signals Officer; and each Regimental HQ received a Brigade Major Trainee, a Staff Captain, a Transport Officer, a Quartermaster and a Senior Signals NCO. Although the numbers increased as the size of the junior formations grew, the ‘formula’ remained constant: personnel were supplied for tactics, administration, communications, transport, machine guns and mortars.9 The 4th Division Diary recorded ‘the probable date required’ was 24 September.10 This Australian Corps Mission was therefore to have approximately four days with the Americans.

  The basis of Monash’s initial plan presumed that III Corps was to have taken its sector of the Hindenburg Outpost Line on 18 September or as soon as possible thereafter. It did not. By 24 September General Butler’s exhausted III Corps troops were still 1000 yards short of their Blue Line objective. Thus the three important German high-ground positions of the Knoll, Gillemont Farm and Quennemont Farm on the Outpost Line had not been taken. With the final attack on the Hindenburg Main Line scheduled for 29 September, General Rawlinson was faced with an acute problem. Insisting that the III Corps start line must be captured, he realised that time would not permit a fresh force being committed to that objective, to be then relieved by the Americans for the main attack. Further, even though he had ordered III Corps to continue to attack those features, he must have doubted its ability to do so, especially as he was at that very juncture attempting to have General Butler relieved of his command.11 He therefore reduced III Corps’s role on 29 September to the minor one of merely gaining the tunnel and providing flank protection for the Americans’ crossing of that obstacle. To compensate for III Corps’s diminishing role, Haig reinforced the Fourth Army with the British XIII Corps, which would later assume the role of an advance on the left or northern flank.