Pozieres

by Scott Bennett

  Cox had been forewarned by Haig of the ignorance and conceit of the colonials and had drafted a damning circular to his officers on 14 July, claiming that for a soldier to fall out while still able to struggle forward was disgraceful. He demanded that, in future, officers march in the rear and record the name of every straggler. Slackers were to be dished out exemplary punishment. Over the following days, as punishment the division was route-marched with full packs by every road, hedgerow, and farmhouse in the district.18 ‘It’s the hardest work I have ever done in my life,’ Sergeant Henry Palmer of the 50th Battalion wrote in a letter home.19 Some disgruntled soldiers questioned the practical worth of marching drills, wondering whether they had come to France to fight or ‘to go touring the country like blanky Cook’s tourists’.20

  Cox, a sickly 56-year-old Englishman and an old friend of Birdie, wouldn’t tolerate sloppy soldiering. He had learnt his soldiering on the subcontinent and was said to have a little of the hot Indian sun in his temper. According to the 48th Battalion history, whenever the sardonic Cox encountered his soldiers on the roads he subjected them to a strict examination; he aggressively fired questions and warned them that they were destined for ‘some dirty work at the crossroads’. The troops bristled at the treatment and complained that these mocking examinations seemed to be for no other reason than Cox’s enjoyment.21

  Cox’s abhorrence for sloppy discipline and the class-based attitudes he displayed toward the ‘colonial’ Australians alienated many of his troops. While many Australians, including Bean, celebrated the Anzacs’ larrikin streak and egalitarian ethos — which manifested itself in what many believed were harmless behaviours such as failing to salute officers and demonstrating irreverence for social niceties and authority — some British officers, including Cox, thought this insolent behaviour was harmful to good soldiering.

  British and Australians officers no doubt broadly agreed that discipline was a key ingredient to good soldiering. The trouble was, for many British officers good discipline extended to somewhat inconsequential matters, such as soldiers presenting neatly at all times. At Pozières, Australians tended to wear dilapidated uniforms, much to the annoyance of these British officers. Bean defended the Anzacs, as they could only replace their old uniforms, which were no longer issued, with British tunics, which they detested. An Anzac wearing a British tunic seemed ‘to be the hallmark of a different being — a more subservient, less intelligent man,’ claimed Bean. Australians, according to Bean, generally didn’t fuss about their personal appearance, as it was viewed as ‘unessential’, whereas they were all in favour of whatever was deemed ‘essential’: they had a tendency to dress for practicality rather than neatness. By contrast, Bean continued, the British were ‘apt to carry the regard for dress and unessentials to the most vicious extreme’.22

  Unsurprisingly, many 4th Division soldiers with a somewhat more relaxed attitude toward discipline took umbrage at Cox’s harsh response to their poor marching and the way he aggressively interrogated them. They no doubt reasoned that holding shallow trenches against repeated German counterattacks was the real mark of a soldier’s discipline, rather than marching in perfect order or fussing over his personal appearance. One soldier wrote: ‘Fritz couldn’t fault our discipline, and he ought to know’.23

  Along with apparently inflexible attitudes toward discipline, the British army also had a strict pecking order based on class distinctions: professional soldiers outranked volunteers, British-born subjects stood above colonials, and the public-school officer class were superior to their working-class soldiers. Australians — colonials and volunteer soldiers — resented the British class division that placed them on the lower rungs. These social distinctions sometimes resulted in conflict: one Australian officer, dressed in a private’s tunic, recalled being spoken to like a ‘lowborn dog’ when he didn’t return a salute to his British counterpart, who mistook him for a private soldier.24 Unsurprisingly, Australians relished their capture of Pozières after the repeated failures by British troops because it contradicted their hierarchical view of the world.

  Bean criticised the British class divisions, claiming that British soldiers were afraid of their officers and stood in awe of them as acknowledged superiors. ‘But an Australian does not stand in that sort of awe of his officer because he is of the same class as his officer — there is no social difference,’ he wrote in his diary. Bean said that the British army’s class distinctions resulted in few of the lower ranks being promoted ‘in the field’ to officers, whereas Anzac commanders scoured their battalions for men of outstanding character for officer schools, with little consideration of their social background.25 This meant that a talented private could progress through the Australian Imperial Force ranks, whereas this rarely occurred in the British army. One Anzac, whose story was recounted in the 3rd Battalion history Randwick to Hargicourt, realised the subtle differences in class attitudes between the two armies when he and some other officers entertained an Australian non-commissioned officer in their billeted house. He noted that the British officers in an adjoining billet were astounded by this behaviour. ‘They did not understand the familiarity and friendship which always existed between officers and men in the AIF [Australian Imperial Force],’ explained Eric Wren in the battalion history.26

  Cox was reluctant to promote from the ranks. His inherent class bias was evident when he discussed with an officer the possibility of commissioning a sergeant. Cox vetoed it, arguing that none of those in the lower ranks should ever become officers as there could not be working-class men leading university graduates and businessmen.27 Cox’s stance was doubtless influenced by his experiences in the British army, as well as his postings in India.

  The Anzacs, perhaps sensing Cox’s class-based attitudes, constantly tried to ruffle his composure. On an occasion when Cox lectured a brigade during the Somme offensive, a drunken sergeant continually butted in, at one point objecting to the Germans using phosphorous. Cox took it in his stride, coolly replying: ‘Don’t you get burnt up. Anyway we can’t spare you.’28

  The Australians’ supposedly distinctive views toward discipline and egalitarianism may have been exaggerated after the war, particularly by unit reunions, veteran organisations, and official institutions such as the Australian War Memorial. Perhaps it was one way of supporting Bean’s view that the Anzacs were superior soldiers to their British counterparts, which was an important tenet of the Anzac legend. And this legend, which according to some scholars was constructed around the archetypical Digger, served a number of important purposes in broader society after the war: it provided Australians with a past they could live with, it personified an idealised national character, and it affirmed that a frontier or bush lifestyle produced an improved race of people.29 Perhaps by elevating the Anzacs’ exploits, Australia’s national self-image proportionally strengthened.

  Eric Andrews challenged the key tenets of the Anzac legend, pointing out in The Anzac Illusion that the discipline and class differences between the Australian and British soldier were not always as pronounced as many observers, including Bean, suggested — in fact, he believed they were generalisations that hid a more complex truth. For example, Australian officers weren’t always promoted from the ranks, but came disproportionately from Protestant, non-manual backgrounds, such as commerce and clerical work. Furthermore, many Australian Imperial Force officers were British-born and schooled, having migrated to Australia some time before the war.30

  What seemed to be the most important ingredient in leading soldiers on the Somme was the officers’ — whether Australian or British — ability to adapt their command style to get the best out of their troops. Hooky Walker, a British regular officer who understood the Australians’ nuances, succeeded in maintaining good disciplinary standards as well as earning the devotion of his men, but it seemed that the old-fashioned Anglo-Indian officer Cox couldn’t adjust his style to the command situation he faced. As a result,
no one was quite sure how this unlikely pairing — the undisciplined and individualistic Australians coupled with the crotchety Cox — would perform in the coming battle.

  Cox’s staff were predominantly professional British officers, while two of his brigade commanders, Brigadier-General Thomas ‘Bill’ Glasgow of the 13th Brigade and Brigadier-General Charles ‘Digger’ Brand of the 4th Brigade, were Australian soldiers. Brigadier-General Duncan Glasfurd, a career soldier of the British army seconded to Australia before the war to manage the cadet-training program, was Cox’s third brigadier, and commanded the 12th Brigade. Glasfurd immediately clashed with his Australian-born 48th Battalion commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Ray ‘Bull’ Leane. On 5 August, Glasfurd ordered his 48th Battalion to relieve the 27th, which held the OG lines. Leane, a Gallipoli veteran, refused to comply, insisting that the German bombardment would needlessly slaughter them. Leane reasoned that it was better to risk a temporary penetration of the line than to suffer casualties passively in a congested front line. Glasfurd produced a written order. ‘I was now faced with this problem,’ Leane wrote in a letter in 1923, recalling the incident. ‘If I obeyed orders I felt that the men would be shot to pieces … If I disobeyed the order and lost the ridge my career as a Military Officer would be over.’31 Leane refused to obey the order and defiantly left one of his companies in Pozières.

  Leane was a strongly built man who had started a retail business in the Outback mining town of Kalgoorlie, and epitomised the mythical bushman of which Bean was so fond.32 He did not disobey Glasfurd lightly; he had already reconnoitred the front line under bombardment and was aware of conflicting orders requiring commanders to thin out the garrison to prevent unnecessary casualties. Leane’s behaviour was not a prelude to the Australian Imperial Force’s command-and-control structure breaking down under pressure, but rather a case of an officer being confident enough to back his own judgement and question orders rather than treating them as gospel. Glasfurd, an old-fashioned soldier of the British army, was not ready to adopt a more consultative approach with his battalion commanders. The Official History noted that Leane and Glasfurd’s relationship never recovered.

  While marching toward the Somme in late July, the 4th Division troops came across remnants of the 1st Division. They watched the pitifully weak platoons stagger along the road, the strain of the previous week etched on their faces.33 Despite the unnerving sight, the soldiers remained naively keen to enter the line. ‘Every day our maps were studied and the rumours flew thick and heavy,’ wrote Sergeant Ted Rule, a 30-year-old railway foreman from the dusty Outback mining town of Cobar, New South Wales, in his war memoirs. ‘The know alls said that just as soon as we got the Windmill on the ridge on the other side of Pozières, we would put the cavalry in and then it was to be the finish of Mr Hun.’34

  Days later, Rule found out that soldiering on the Somme was harder than the ‘know-alls’ made out. The citizen–soldier and Gallipoli veteran managed to get his platoon lost before they reached Sausage Valley. ‘What, lost in daylight,’ boomed his brigadier to the floundering men. ‘Don’t know what you will do in the dark.’

  Like the 1st and 2nd divisions before it, the German bombardment cut through Cox’s inexperienced troops on 5 August as they made their way to the OG trenches. When Leane’s 48th Battalion eventually arrived there, they could not find the battalion they were to relieve — the 27th Battalion had already disappeared back to Sausage Valley without orders.35 Leane’s troops, unable to find their trenches, walked a mile past their allocated position and were lucky not to be mistaken for Germans upon their return. They eventually found remnants of the line, clearly marked with the dead and wounded that the previous battalions had left behind. Leane described the relief, which started on 5 August and ended in the early hours of the next day, under the heavy bombardment, as his worst experience of the whole war.36

  The next morning, Sunday 6 August, Leane scouted his forward positions. His concerns about overcrowding the front line proved accurate — shelling had wiped out his two forward companies. ‘There were masses dead and wounded everywhere,’ he recalled.37

  Preparations continued in anticipation of the Germans’ assault. Soldiers sank trenches deeper into the loose, chalky soil and repaired the gaping holes in the trench walls. They scooped dirt out of the large shell holes in front of OG2 and converted them into strongpoints, which Lewis gun teams manned, and fighting patrols worked between, during the night.38

  Ted Rule’s platoon continued to work its way to the front line, passing through Pozières and into a blown-in trench. Dead men lay along it — some partially buried, with just an arm or a leg sticking out. ‘It was the first time I had ever scrambled over dead … I have never been so horrified in all my life,’ recorded Rule.39 The platoon reached battalion headquarters, located in a small German dugout. Rule asked an officer what the men of his unit had done with the blankets that each had carried in. ‘His answer was that we would be damned lucky if we ever used a blanket again.’

  The platoon made its way to the support lines. ‘I’ve never seen men so closely packed in a trench,’ remembered Rule. ‘It was not a bit of wonder that men were being killed like rabbits.’ Then he found the commanding officer of the 28th Battalion: ‘I bailed him up and asked him what I ought to do.

  ‘“Get up to the front line and help your mates,” he replied. “You’ll be attacked tonight.”’

  Late that afternoon, German aeroplanes flew low over Pozières, probably gathering intelligence for their field batteries. Cox’s ‘jumpy’ troops raised false alarms after scattered groups of Germans were mistaken as the start of the counterattack. At dusk, some Germans reinforced the trenches protecting Mouquet Farm. The German bombardment eased in the evening but then suddenly started again, shelling Tara Valley, Bécourt Wood, and Sausage Valley, to the rear of Pozières. Leane thought this signalled the Germans’ intention to launch an assault the following night.40 The garrison had previously been thinned to prevent unnecessary casualties. Could more troops be rushed forward when the counterattack came?

  While the Australians prepared to meet the German counter-attack, some Gallipoli veterans reflected on the first anniversary of Lone Pine. ‘I was at the Pine,’ crowed a digger to his mates. Lone Pine was a celebrated victory on Gallipoli, albeit one of little strategic importance. The Australians had rushed the Turkish position only to find that a roof of freshly cut pine logs protected them. Some clawed, scratched, and tore their way through; others entered through back entrances to capture the warren of trenches. As with the OG lines, capturing the trenches had been the easy part; holding it against desperate counterattacks chewed up countless lives. The Lone Pine veterans would never, in their worst nightmares, have imagined that they’d be caught in an even more ferocious battle exactly one year later. ‘Everyone admits that this is worse than Lone Pine,’ wrote Arthur Foxcroft.41

  Brothers Joe and Bill McSparron had fought at Lone Pine. Their personnel dossiers indicated that before the war they had migrated from Ireland to Australia, seeking a better life. Two weeks after the war broke out, Bill left his chauffeuring job and enlisted. Joe, a Parramatta rail employee, joined six months later. ‘Mother was advising me to wait a while before volunteering,’ wrote Joe, ‘but I have already done so and don’t regret it in the very least, I believe it is every young fellow’s duty.’42 Bill’s battalion led the charge upon the Lone Pine trench. He was never heard of again. Joe wrote a letter to their mother in October 1915 and offered some hope: ‘I have spoken to WG’s [Bill’s] commanding officer. He knows there was a party of our men captured at the same time and believes there is every chance that Bill is among them.’

  Exactly one year after Bill disappeared, 26-year-old Joe sat in a trench waiting for orders to attack when a shell exploded above him, wounding him and some other men. His friend, Private Jack Owens, tried to get near to check that he was alright, but the trench was too packed. ‘Malone an
d the big cook, Wicky, were trying to push through; made things worse,’ recalled Owens. They lost touch.

  The next day, Owens wrote a letter to Joe: ‘I am very sorry to hear that you were hit, but hope it is not as serious as we think.’ He needn’t have bothered; Joe had died. Like many mothers of Australian soldiers, Mrs Jane McSparron of Londonderry, Ireland, would pause on the anniversary of Lone Pine to mourn. It was a terrible tragedy of fate that her sons were killed on the same day, one year apart.

  General Fritz von Below, commander of the First German Army, wanted the Pozières ridge back. On 5 August, he had drafted orders demanding its recapture, stating that Hill 60 (the Pozières plateau) had to be recovered at any price, for if it remained in the hands of the British it would give them an important advantage.43 Attacks were to be made by consecutive waves, 80 yards apart. Troops who first reached the plateau had to hold on until reinforced, whatever their losses: ‘Any man that fails to resist to the death on the ground won will be immediately court-martialled.’44 It was a costly policy, but von Below was determined not to yield a single inch of hard-won French soil.