Cox ordered further minor raids over the next few days to capture additional sections and offshoots of the trench warren. The battalions, supported by accurate bombardments, gradually edged their way forward, inch by inch, through a combination of bombing raids and barricading. ‘Everywhere successful; joined up with 15th Battalion on right; Suffocks on left,’ wrote Lieutenant-Colonel Edmund Drake-Brockman, commanding officer of the 16th Battalion, in a message to divisional headquarters at 3.45 a.m. on 10 August.30
Birdie, Cox, and Gough ‘heartily’ congratulated Brand on his success. ‘I was sure you would succeed fully,’ wrote Birdie. It seemed a solid blow had been delivered upon the wedge that would drive the Allies toward Thiepval. Gough’s ambitious timetable of capturing the farm mid-month and Thiepval toward the end of the month might just be met, although no one was under any illusions: the next two trenches would be the most difficult and costly to capture.
As Bean and White feared, isolated attacks along a narrow front had become the Reserve Army’s modus operandi. Resentment grew toward its supposed architect, the prickly and impatient Gough, who White considered dangerously impulsive.31 White, like many Australians, couldn’t understand why Anzacs were still being sacrificed to capture a seemingly insignificant farm.32 No doubt White and Bean wondered whether it would be better and quicker for the British to launch one massive, full-blooded frontal attack upon Thiepval. As the Official History pointed out, attacking Thiepval’s back door only resulted in difficult and expensive fighting.33 Why had Gough chosen this course of action?
After capturing the OG lines, Gough’s intent had been clear. From 5 August, he had ordered repeated attacks, with moderate numbers, toward Thiepval (although the first moderate thrust northward did not occur until 8 August, due to the exhaustion of the 2nd Division troops).34 He wanted as few breaks as possible so that the Germans would be kept off balance. ‘Once we allow him to get his breath back,’ he told Birdie, ‘we shall have to make another of these gigantic assaults by which time all the German defences will have been repaired and strengthened.’ And his approach, although contrary to White’s view, had some merit; the terrible losses of 1 July were still fresh in everyone’s minds. ‘I think our way keeps down casualties and brings the best results,’ reasoned Gough.35
Gough believed that Thiepval stood in the way of achieving a breach. The futility of assaulting this stronghold frontally was there for everyone to see: the twisted and contorted bodies of the 36th (Ulster) Division troops, who had attacked the fortress on 1 July, still littered Thiepval’s steep approaches. Gough was right: Thiepval was the most powerful German bastion on the Somme, and Mouquet Farm was the best point for sapping toward it.36 And according to Gough, it was working: ‘We are breaking in bit by bit and must not stop until we have made the gap.’37
Just as important, Gough’s ‘penny packet’ assaults complied in principle with Haig’s directive that his generals attack with as little expenditure of fresh troops and munitions as possible (although the toll on those troops who were thrust forward repeatedly into the attacks was high).38 Even if Gough wanted to chance another massive frontal attack, he didn’t have the materials required to pull it off. Therefore, Gough’s strategy was a logical response to the circumstances confronting him. Yet this provided little consolation for the Australians, who would have realised that they were simply one small cog in a gigantic enterprise and that, like those blackened corpses of the Ulster Division that lay on Thiepval’s approaches, they too would be ground to dust. And all for some seemingly insignificant coordinates on a map — it seemed that minor successes on the Somme always came at a shocking price.
Even though Gough’s strategy seemed well reasoned, albeit expensive, there were no guarantees that it was right or would be successful. Gut instinct, hunches, and time pressures had shaped it, along with the interpretation of uncertain battlefield data and questionable intelligence reports. Gough perhaps felt that his chosen path was vindicated by Charteris’s intelligence reports, which suggested that the Germans’ morale was irreparably damaged, and Haig’s opinion that the Germans had used up 30 of their divisions in one month on the Somme, compared to 35 at Verdun in five months.39 No doubt he also read captured German letters describing scenes, such as soldiers openly sobbing in their trenches, that suggested his enemy was under considerable distress.40
Gough favoured repeated attacks with moderate numbers, while White sought a coordinated effort across broader frontages — whose approach was right? Unfortunately, there was limited opportunity to mull over these options, as time remained the mortal enemy of strategy. It was a case of a plan vigorously executed today being better than a perfect one enacted tomorrow. No one was certain there would be a tomorrow; the only certainty was that the prospects for the Australians were bleak.
As it turned out, White had good reason to be worried.
While the Anzacs slogged their way over a brown-cratered wilderness toward the ruins of Mouquet Farm in early August, 10,000 miles away in Australia the public closely followed their fortunes in the newspapers. The reporting of the exploits was anything but bleak. Ever since 3 July, when the Melbourne Herald had first announced that ‘Britain’s Greatest Battle’ had begun, crowds had milled around newsstands, hankering for news. The Herald reported how the British public rejoiced upon hearing that the much-anticipated offensive had started, explaining that when the news was read aloud in theatres and music halls, audiences rose to their feet and cheered. The first sketchy reports, often received from The Times or Reuters, brimmed with confidence. One article declared that the ‘opening moves of the terrific drama were played with strategic skill confusing the enemy’.41
Over the next three weeks of July, the newspapers reported a string of smashing British victories — on every front the news was good. The Herald reported that Lloyd George expected to snatch victory in the next few months and that German experts had admitted their victory was near impossible.42 The war’s end seemed imminent, with some experts predicting it would end in November 1916 or early 1917.43 Only Australian correspondent Keith Murdoch expressed some concern, cautioning that the gains of the offensive weren’t commensurate with the losses.44
On Monday 24 July, news had come that Australia’s own Anzacs had captured the stronghold of Pozières. The Melbourne Herald reported that, even though the Germans had resisted fiercely, Australian casualties were light.45 More detailed reports filtered through over the next few days. The paper told its readers on 26 July of heavy fighting, with soldiers describing Gallipoli as child’s play compared to Pozières.46 Hobart Mercury readers learnt on the same day that in hand-to-hand fighting the Germans were no match for the Australians, ‘who simply love it’.47 Melburnians would have lapped up Bean’s despatch the following morning, under the giddy headline, ‘Men Cross Zone of Death as if Going Home for Tea’.48 The French, delighted with the capture of Pozières, applauded the Anzacs, who were described as ‘hard as nails’.49 In another article, a German prisoner of war was reported to have said that the Australians were brave men who seemed to have no fear of death.50 The Herald told its readers on 7 August that the Anzacs, ‘full of life and gaiety … were always anxious to get back to the firing line to show the Germans that if they were looking for more trouble they could have it’.51
The public drank willingly from the Anzac chalice. The praise was gratifying, particularly as it came at a time, as Joan Beaumont noted in Australia’s War, 1914–18, when Australians were searching for a sense of what it was to be a nation, rather than a collection of colonies. Many Australians believed the struggle of war was the greatest test of a nation and found the newspaper reports of the Anzacs’ exploits appealing. The correspondents, who embellished the soldiers’ successes and omitted much of the devastation blighting the Somme, were laying the foundations of the Anzac legend.52 According to historians Manning Clark and Ken Inglis, Australia was gradually acquiring its own secular religion (partl
y cultivated by overoptimistic reporting) that, after the war, would have all the symbolism of Christianity — a baptism of fire, selfless sacrifice, and sacred sites of worship.53
War correspondents faced many challenges in reporting the truth. The first was the Australian government’s censorship laws. Australia’s War Precautions Act was enacted in August 1914. Ernest Scott noted in Australia During the War that the far-reaching provisions of Section 4 of the act enabled the governor-general to make regulations to secure public safety and the defence of the Commonwealth, which empowered the censor to perform its function. Put simply, the act prevented any agency or person from eliciting any information that might be directly or indirectly useful to the enemy. It therefore prevented correspondents from mentioning the location of troops, the unit they belonged to, numbers of casualties, or anything else that could be seen as helpful to the Germans.54 Under the strict interpretation of these vague laws, anything written about the rolls of honour or even the weather conditions risked censure. Rather than openly challenge the act, most willingly abided by it. Bean wrote in his book Letters from France: ‘The war correspondent does not wish to give to the enemy for a penny what he would gladly give a regiment to get.’55
All correspondents’ reports passed through the censors. Although the Act intimated that legitimate criticism would not be suppressed, publication of anything prejudicing recruitment efforts or discipline of the forces was censored. Emotive phrases, gruesome photographs, or exaggeration of successes or failures would not make it through.56 The censors even dictated which British newspapers and what edition the reports were published in. On the Somme, a press officer located at Amiens carefully scrutinised Bean’s articles. Bean noted in his diary that on 31 July 1916, the officer, Colonel Hutton Wilson, warned him that his recent articles contained ‘too many exact particulars’, such as attack times. Bean, although incredulous — he said to Hutton, ‘surely the Germans know’ — complied with the request.57 Bean also relied heavily upon communiqués from General Headquarters, which, according to the Official History, were prepared more for the enemy’s consumption than for the public, meaning that events were often represented through rose-coloured glasses.58
Since the beginning of the war, the military had controlled war correspondents tightly, including Bean. In 1914, the War Office banned them from the front line. By 1916, these restrictions were relaxed. Only a handful of correspondents were accredited to cover the Somme battle. (‘We cannot conveniently control more than six correspondents,’ was John Charteris’s reason for accrediting so few journalists.)
Yet having accredited journalists on the front line didn’t guarantee realistic reporting. As Martin Farrar explained in News from the Front, the army’s accreditation system could vet correspondents and refuse access to anyone they felt might not share their view. Once accredited, the army assigned a liaison officer to parties of correspondents, who closely monitored their movements.59 Bean, as Australia’s official war correspondent, had more freedom than most to visit the front line, but at the same time he censored himself, electing not to publish anything that might upset his hosts and threaten his access to the front. And Bean had good reason to be compliant: in July 1916, the censors had stopped his early Somme despatches from reaching the British newspapers for a short period after a fellow correspondent allegedly objected to Bean’s name appearing in them. Bean thought the complaining correspondent was jealous of his growing reputation. He later wrote in his diary that petty measures such as this, which seemed directed at controlling the amount of kudos the Australians received on the Somme, resulted in the public not having ‘the least idea of the battle we are fighting’.60
As the battle ground on through August, the newspaper reports lost their euphoric tone. On 16 August, The Herald admitted that the Australians and British had suffered under ‘appalling fire’ for the previous nine days.61 The reports now wrote of consolidating and straightening the line, rather than of breakthroughs. Readers sensed that the task confronting the Allies was much greater than first imagined. ‘What one feels is that after all, our progress is insignificant, we have thrust back our foes a distance of one or two miles upon a front of 8 miles,’ wrote one reader in his diary. ‘What is this compared with the front line which is measured in hundreds of miles?’62 In late August, The Times in London predicted that the war could last until 1918. John Treloar, at I Anzac Corps headquarters, got quite a shock upon reading it: ‘The thought rather terrifies.’63
The newspapers repeatedly assured the Australian public that casualties at Pozières were light and many wounds slight, sometimes only scratches.64 But the casualty lists published in the newspapers every second or third day grew at an alarming rate. Some families accused the government of reporting casualties inaccurately, claiming they had received word through unofficial sources, such as letters and cables, before they received official notification. On 12 August, the minister for defence, Senator George Pearce, publicly disputed the claims. Although he admitted that casualties had been ‘fairly heavy’, he advised relatives ‘not to spend their money on cabling on the basis of the rumours’. Then, in an about-face, the government admitted on 29 August that there had been delays in reporting casualties, saying that the ‘great loss of officers’ had slowed the compilation of authentic information.65
Australians began to realise that the initial newspaper reports had been overly optimistic and misleading. Then, in late August, the massive casualty lists from the month before finally appeared in the papers, spilling over many pages. ‘The casualty lists in the papers made it all clear to us. Every day we saw men and women wearing bits of black, and we knew others wearing no sign at all,’ remembered one man. ‘The pattern of the war was set.’66 Between 2 August and 23 September, The Herald reported a staggering 21,000 casualties.
Yet it was often friends and comrades of those soldiers killed or wounded, and even medical staff, who provided next-of-kin with the first news of their loved ones’ fate. The parents of Private Robert ‘Roy’ Smith received a letter from Sister Cunningham, who, sometime on 30 July, in Block A of Wharncliffe War Hospital in Sheffield, had sat by Roy’s bedside and written on a Red Cross notepad, ‘I am writing to let you know that your son Pte Smith arrived at our hospital two days ago, he is quite badly wounded in both legs and one arm and chest.’ She then wrote, ‘he is much better today than when he came in’.67 These carefully crafted words suggest that Sister Cunningham wanted to offer some hope to Smith’s parents, without creating false optimism.
Smith was one of Gellibrand’s hapless 22nd Battalion soldiers who had sheltered in broken trenches between the orchard and the cemetery at Pozières for ‘hour after hour’ on 27 July under the German bombardment.68 He was fortunate in one respect only: according to his diary, the shell that wounded him had killed the men either side of him. He was evacuated in a critical condition. He remembered lying on a hard stretcher and his badly smashed leg getting shaken about.
After a series of operations and some rest, Smith felt well enough to write a letter home to his mother, Mrs Annie Bennison of Prahran, Victoria: ‘I have some bad news for you. I have been under four operations with my leg and at the last they had to cut it off above the knee. It was either lose my leg or go under myself.’69
Unlike Annie Bennison, Hester Allen, the mother of Robert and Stephen, did not receive any unofficial notification of her sons’ fate when they disappeared on 14 August. Robert and Stephen Allen had decided to enlist together in July 1915. There wasn’t much to keep them at home in the beachside suburb of Manly: neither had married, and they probably wouldn’t miss their labouring jobs. It may have worried them to leave their widowed mother, who had struggled to care for them since they were boys, but their younger sisters, Florrie and Minnie, could be depended on to help out. Allocated to the 13th Battalion, the brothers sailed together on HMAT Ballarat in September 1915, arriving in France via Egypt.
Robert and Steph
en had not answered the 13th Battalion’s rollcall after the 14 August attack. It took another month before Hester received this tragic news through the official source, the Base Records Office. Hester and her daughters patiently waited for further information, but none came. Three months after their disappearance, Florrie sent a letter to Base Records, asking if they had any more news. A printed letter replied that ‘no further report had come to hand’.70 Florrie, no doubt desperate for more details, sent a letter to the brothers’ company commander, Captain Theodore Wells. He didn’t reply.
Hester Allen’s search for news about her two missing sons mirrored that of thousands of Australian families in late 1916. Letters and cables from their loved ones’ friends and comrades, no matter how painful they were to read, provided more texture to the circumstances of their disappearance than bland official sources.
Charles Bean believed strongly in the Allies’ cause. Yet he was not merely an objective outsider looking in; he was part of the army machinery. Bean held the honorary rank of captain, wore an army uniform, and was recommended for gallantry awards. He prided himself on working obediently within the constraints of the army system, boasting that he’d never yet ‘written one word that has given the staffs a seconds anxiety, although I have seen and known more of the war — and lived far more in the thick of it — than any other writer for the paper’.71 John Charteris observed that the press censorship on the Somme worked very smoothly owing to the ‘loyalty of the correspondents’.72 The complicity between correspondents and the army became apparent after the war, when five British correspondents were knighted in recognition of their war efforts.73
Pozieres Page 22