Charles Bean had stayed up until dawn on 23 July, monitoring the battle from Sinclair-MacLagan’s dugout. After snatching some sleep at divisional headquarters, he visited the outskirts of the battlefield in the early afternoon. He chatted with some men with light wounds coming back down a dusty track from Pozières. ‘I wish the people of Australia could see what we saw,’ he wrote in his first Pozières despatch, published in the Melbourne newspaper The Herald on 27 July 1916. Bean described how the men he spoke to, who had just passed through the shelling and were still buoyed by adrenaline, talked quickly and paced around, fidgeting, smoking, unable to sit still, and sometimes shaking or ducking involuntarily as a shell landed close by. Bean spoke to one youngster, his hand heavily bandaged, who said: ‘I hope I am not going to lose my fingers. I reckon I ought to be good for a number of the beggars yet.’ Another man passed him, stripped to the waist, covered with bandages, a German helmet on his head. ‘It might be worse,’ he told Bean.
Bean’s despatch, under the headline ‘Fight For Pozières Vividly Described’, had an exuberant tone. In one section he referred to the ‘glamour of affairs’ on the battlefield, while in another he described the ‘great, cheery, strong-faced fellows’ he saw going up the track to Pozières — how they were ‘trotting beside a great gun team, whose easy-limbed drivers looked as if the men were part of the horses’. He also described the ordinary parties of bronzed, keen-eyed men, occasionally with a cheek bleeding from a cut, walking through shellfire as if going home to tea. 77
Perhaps Bean’s exuberant mood was justified: the Anzacs had done what the British troops had failed to do — they had captured Pozières. Furthermore, casualties were relatively light, and although the German bombardment was heavy, the British guns would soon counter it. Or perhaps Bean’s upbeat tone masked darker feelings about the battle. Was it possible that he crafted a positive despatch because he didn’t want to be seen ‘doing down the side’? Bean’s diary, in which he recorded his unguarded thoughts, provides some clue — his brief entry on 23 July suggests that he was, indeed, cheered by the Australians’ performance at Pozières.78
Bean’s high-spirited despatch was a noted departure from his usual writing style. Back in 1915, he had made it clear in his diary that he didn’t want to be like other correspondents who told ‘nonsense’ stories, like those of Germans enlisting in the Australian army and then shooting Australian troops in the back, or of Australian soldiers leaving their sickbeds in droves to return to the front. Bean knew these stories were rubbish. ‘I have asked the nurses. I have asked the men,’ wrote Bean of his investigation into the second ‘nonsense’ story. Bean, who had spent almost two years with the Anzacs, covering their every major battle, was perhaps more qualified than any other correspondent to refute these stories. Yet choosing to be a stickler for the truth came at a cost: The Argus and The Age often wouldn’t publish his bland despatches, instead preferring the highly colourful inventions of other correspondents, which the public seemed to lap up. British war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett — who wrote the stirring and subsequently famed despatch that described the Anzacs as ‘a race of athletes’ whose landing on Gallipoli was the finest event of the war — was almost certainty a purveyor of what Bean labelled ‘wretched cant’. Bean admitted that Ashmead-Bartlett’s exaggerations made it a little difficult for him, presumably because it made his own despatches sound dull.79
Bean maintained these same cautious reporting standards in France. He deliberately avoided heralding the Anzacs every time they left their trenches when they were in the nursery sector at Armentières. He had explained to The Times readers back in June 1916 that the Anzacs did not want the public attention that was directed at them after their recent trench raids: ‘They well know that their mettle has not been tried in France.’80 But Pozières had changed things — the Anzacs’ mettle had been tested and they had succeeded in achieving ‘a victory of importance on the Western Front’.81 The Anzac story was taking shape. It would be another seven days before Bean visited the village to experience the truth of Pozières: the putrid smell of rotting corpses, the unsettling sight of rows of cottages reduced to rubble, the sad spectacle of men driven mad by the German shelling, and the ghastly scene of endless shell craters littered with human body parts.
While Bean gathered material for his despatch, Maze contemplated leaving the village so he could report back to Gough: ‘I had to think about getting back to Army Headquarters. It was important to let them know the conditions.’ Maze worked his way through the shelling that fell violently upon the approaches to Pozières. His autobiography provides an insight into what the Australian ration parties, runners, stretcher-bearers, and reinforcements must have experienced:
Everywhere men were held up on their way to the village, waiting all the time for the shelling to ease off; whole parties had been blown to pieces … From one place I had a glimpse of the previous night’s No Man’s Land pitted with fresh shell-holes, most of them rimmed with motionless human forms.
The Albert basilica, in the distance, acted like a guiding beacon for Maze. ‘Every step towards it was a relief,’ he wrote. In order to avoid the clogged trenches, he climbed out onto the open ground, which was pitted with shell holes. He became aware of an iridescent sky, and: ‘I suddenly realised that I was alive. I turned to look back at Pozières in the distant crest where it remained in continuous volcanic convulsions.’
Within an hour, Maze had reached Albert and commandeered an army car, and was hurtling toward Gough’s army headquarters. From the car’s window, he could see columns of singing Anzacs and an endless procession of lorries making their way toward the front line.82
Throughout Sunday, conflicting reports arrived at Hooky’s headquarters about the number of Germans troops defending northern Pozières. Some reports said the Germans had been reinforced, while others claimed they’d abandoned their positions. In spite of the confusion, Hooky and Blamey drafted operational orders to capture the rest of the village. They would first barrage the northern side of the road, then bring in fresh troops from General John Forsyth’s 2nd Brigade, which had been held in reserve, and Nevill Smyth’s 1st Brigade, to advance in extended formation (which required the troops to move forward spaced well apart) at about 4.00 p.m.
Then Gough intervened. ‘Instructions were received from Reserve Army by telephone to cease firing on the village, as it was reported to be unoccupied,’ recorded Hooky. Gough claimed that the Germans had already fled Pozières, and requested that immediate patrols, with no supporting barrage, be sent out to verify this. Hooky complied. ‘These arrangements conflicted with the plans I had made and I cancelled the previous orders accordingly,’ he recorded in his operational report.83 The Official History observed that some Australian soldiers, who had been subject to sniping throughout the day, were angry when they were told that northern Pozières was supposedly empty.84 At about 5.00 p.m., the first patrols probed the remainder of the village. Some of these patrols contained tired men who hadn’t slept for days because they had participated in the night attack and had dug trenches the following day. The men also felt edgy because of the constant sniping and sporadic shelling throughout the day. One soldier who almost certainly felt the strain was Lieutenant George Walters, a 25-year-old clerk from Western Australia, who was unusually quiet before setting off on patrol. Being ‘rallied’ about it by his platoon, he replied: ‘I’m going to get mine tonight. I know I won’t come out of this stunt.’ According to the 11th Battalion history, those around him laughed, while George ‘just shook his head and gave a wintry-sort of smile’. 85
Then, all of a sudden, flares arced into the sky. Third Battalion soldiers saw ‘shadowy forms’ quietly steal across the front about 50 yards away from them. Some soldiers prepared to open fire, unaware that the shadows were the patrolling Australians. Thankfully, before anyone could fire, Private Claude Dowling of the 3rd Battalion walked forward, confirmed their identity, an
d prevented a near tragedy.86
Forsyth’s fresh 8th Battalion, which until now had been held in reserve, moved up into the village and swept northward through the ruins just before midnight. They encountered sporadic sniping and stray shells, but most Germans, when challenged, ran to K Trench or the OG lines. One even jumped on a bicycle lying against a wireless station and pedalled for his life.87
While supervising operations, an officer of the 11th Battalion saw a shell burst in the distance; at the same time he noticed a man topple over. In the fitful light, the slightly wounded officer limped across to the body. He turned it over and discovered that it was George Walters. ‘His premonitions had been realised,’ recorded the 11th Battalion history.88 George’s mother, Mrs Mary Alice Stewart of Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, would duly receive notification of his death and receipt of his personal belongings, which included George’s rosary beads.89
The Australians had chalked up their first 24 hours in Pozières. Foxcroft’s last diary entry for 23 July summed up what had been an exceptionally trying day: ‘No sleep since Friday night, lost nearly all our mates something awful.’90
chapter seven
The Pozières Ridge
‘Pozières was like wandering through the regions
of the damned, inhabited only by the dead.’
— Walter Belford, Legs-eleven
Early on 24 July, Hooky Walker and Thomas Blamey would have experienced a feeling of momentary jubilation upon realising that Pozières was in Australian hands. Blamey wrote that its capture was most brilliant exploit of the battle and gushed that the Anzacs were the finest fighting unit in the world.1 However, as the Official History pointed out, the whole purpose of the operation was not to consolidate but attack. It is almost certain that the mood at divisional headquarters was doused when Hooky received a telegram from Gough, prodding him to act with vigour and immediately capture the Pozières ridge, and then swing around to the west and strike toward Mouquet Farm.2
Hooky carefully constructed a plan to capture the OG lines that straddled the Pozières ridge. The 1st Division, supported by a lifting bombardment, would launch two attacks on the OG lines at 2.00 a.m. and 3.30 a.m. on 25 July.3 The advance would be more complex and dangerous than that of 23 July. The first difficulty facing Hooky was that the Germans could easily see the Australians advancing from Pozières into the open fields to dig their staging posts and jumping-off trenches. The second was that Allied artillery observers couldn’t see the reverse side of the Pozières ridge; therefore, the Germans could bring up their reserves unnoticed. The third was that there was only one route to the village, which meant that the fresh troops leading the attack would have to travel over the same ground; the attack times were staggered to account for this. Then, once the troops reached Pozières, they would have to manoeuvre in the dark until they were square-on to the OG lines, rather than perpendicular to them. The midnight attack on 23 July had demonstrated that troops became easily confused and disorientated in the darkness, sometimes advancing in the wrong direction or becoming entangled with other units.
The battle terrain also posed a risk to Hooky’s plan. The attack front — 1000 yards north and 600 yards south of the Bapaume road — was similar to that of 23 July, when his division had been fresh and at full strength. Would Hooky have the number of troops needed to carry out the attack? In addition, the men had to advance up a gentle slope for about 600 yards. For local farmers, the gentle rise would have been barely noticeable, but for a soldier weighed down with his haversack, ammunition, a rifle, bombs, and an entrenching tool it could mean the difference between life and death. German sentries positioned at the peak had good fields of vision and were likely to spot the advance, and the slope had no protective folds or gullies for the Australian soldiers to shelter in to avoid German shelling and machine-gun fire.
It was the German machine-gun crews positioned on the peak that posed the most significant risk to Hooky’s plan. They would have clear and unimpeded fields of fire between the OG lines and Pozières, which would turn this strip of land into a killing field. These crews had attained a formidable reputation since 1 July, when they cut through the British like a sharpened scythe through hay.4 The seven- to eight-men teams were the best trained and the most disciplined soldiers of the German army, and rarely surrendered their guns — which meant they suffered high casualties when their positions were overrun. Those captured discreetly removed the badges from their tunics to conceal their identities, realising they risked rough handling from their vengeful captors.5
The Germans’ standard gun, the Maschinengewehr 08, was solid and reliable, fed by fabric belts that each contained 250 bullets. Although the gun was capable of firing around 400 to 600 rounds a minute — the equivalent firepower of 60 to 100 rifles — the crews fired in much shorter bursts to economise on ammunition and avoid overheating the gun’s barrel. Along with its firepower, the Maschinengewehr’s distinctive noise terrified many soldiers: when fired, it sounded like a huge hammer striking an anvil. On a quiet evening, its report carried across the battlefield, causing men to cower in their trenches even though they were in no immediate danger from the bullets.6
The gunners had positioned themselves on the ridge in strongpoints — usually elevated positions with clear fields of fire at junctures where a trench intersected another trench, or road, or railway track — protected by mounds of soil and rows of sandbags. The crews trained to bring an unloaded machine-gun up from a dugout and be ready to fire within 30 seconds.7 They would hold the OG lines at any cost.
On the fine morning of Monday 24 July, Arthur Foxcroft and other soldiers of the 1st Australian Division experienced their second dawn at Pozières. The Official History recorded that the soldiers were ‘very tired but in high spirits’, and still practically untouched by the German barrage.
At about 7.00 a.m., Foxcroft’s platoon was getting its issue of cigarettes and rations when they heard a deafening whine overhead. Seconds later, it was followed by a terrific explosion that shook the earth, throwing broken bricks, masonry, and black smoke into the air. When the dust settled, they could see a gaping crater gouged out of the earth. Then, another thundering whine and ear-splitting explosion: the German barrage of the previous day, which had fallen a quarter of a mile back on the village’s approaches, had now been redirected onto Pozières and the troops that sheltered in the trenches there. Foxcroft realised what was happening, later writing in his diary that ‘the huns [have] concentrated all their big guns on us’.8 The shellfire was from 5.9- and eight-inch German howitzers. Those caught directly under the barrage, like John Harris, could see the descending shells in their last 40 feet of flight. Harry Preston, who was sheltering at the northern end of the Bapaume road, could see them ‘like black streaks coming down from the sky just before they hit the ground’.9
The German gunners, positioned on the reverse slope of Pozières, behind the village of Courcelette, repeatedly loaded their shells into the breech of their heavy howitzers before seeking shelter behind a protective barrier of sandbags. The guns then let out an almighty belch, hurtling their shells through the sky, like comets, for the next 15 seconds. Their 5.9-inch shells — known as ‘coal boxes’, or ‘crumps’, because of the sound they made when they landed — looked like ‘swift dots of black’ as they rushed earthward and threw plumes of black smoke and dust into the air upon detonation.10 The Anzacs particularly feared the 9.2-inch shell, which made a whining sound when travelling through the air; its high trajectory and size meant it caused considerable damage upon impact. The pink dust clouds from the explosions could be seen from Albert. Soon, a thick film of dust covered everything, including rifles and machine-guns, which had to be cleaned continually, otherwise they jammed. The unrevetted trenches were unable to withstand the blasts and collapsed like books closing shut, burying those inside. The men used whatever they had — spades, tin hats, their hands — to dig out the buried. T
hough these men were often exhumed alive, the Official History observed that ‘their nerves had naturally been subjected to the most violent shock’.11 ‘Smashed our trenches in, made big gaps in our lines, heavy losses,’ recorded Foxcroft.12
Elmer Laing, whose platoon was sheltering in northern Pozières, wrote that the shells came over in shoals, ‘blowing in our trenches, burying men’.13 Charles Bean, who listened to the guns at a safe distance, agreed with Laing’s description, estimating that about 140 artillery blasts could be heard every minute.14 Despite the heavy barrage and the fact that the Germans seemed to have pinpointed his platoon’s location, Laing’s men stuck it out. ‘They deserve all the thanks,’ he wrote to his parents.
The German artillery also seemed to have registered on Howell-Price’s 3rd Battalion troops, who were sheltering in trenches adjacent to the Bapaume road. The shells, which appeared to come from the front, right, and rear, caved in the trenches and buried the occupants. ‘The obvious folly of siting a trench along a main road and packing it with men became apparent,’ reflected the 3rd Battalion history. ‘There was nothing to do but try and keep the trenches clear and dig out the men who were buried.’15 Despite the obvious dangers, Howell-Price — who described in his operational report that the bombardment was the most intense he had ever experienced — remained in the village all day, doing his best to keep up the spirits of the men. No doubt Howell-Price’s selfless approach reassured his men, who, according to the battalion history, were terribly frightened by the ‘storm of shell that rained upon them without intermission for nearly 12 hours’.
The bombardment, which had begun at 7.00 a.m., continued until 7.00 p.m. Iven Mackay initially thought the barrage signalled that the Germans were ‘on the verge of making a massive riposte’.16 False alarms were continually raised: Peter Smith described in his diary how he rushed for his rifle upon hearing that a counterattack had commenced, but it turned out to be a party of prisoners hurrying along an old trench, their guards battling to keep pace.17
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