by Will Davies
The AIF was under the control of the British Commander-in- Chief, Douglas Haig, but in 1917 the incoming British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, endorsed France's strategic plans for the coming year, even offering to put Haig, and therefore the Dominion forces, under the direct control of the new French commander, General Nivelle, who had been successful in the counter-offensives at Verdun. The Allies' strategy was focused on the Western Front; the aim was to break through the German defences, flood into the gap and overrun the Germans' rear. This would rely on a heavy concentration of French infantry, which meant the British would have to extend their front and mount a series of attacks to divert the enemy's attention. The Australians were to play a key role in these diversionary plans in the coming spring.
In Germany, as in England, France and Australia, the early hopes of a quick victory had long passed. British efforts to cut off imports into Germany were beginning to bite and food rationing and a shortage of raw materials such as coal had started to affect daily life and war production. German casualties, especially after the Somme and Verdun battles, had become unsustainable. Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff, had taken control of the war effort in 1916 and reappraised Germany's military strategy.
In February 1917, the Germans' big hope was their U-boat campaign, with their renewed focus on unrestricted submarine warfare, by which any ship believed to be associated with the Allies – whether it was a naval, passenger or merchant ship – was a target for German torpedoes. Their aim was to starve Britain into submission; they believed that a successful submarine blockade would create economic and social difficulties that would force Britain to sue for peace. On land, they would take a more defensive position and hold out as long as possible for the submarine victory. England began to experience increased shipping losses in the Atlantic and around the coast of Britain, with a concentration of sinkings along the south coast and around Ireland.
On the Eastern Front, Germany feared they would have to fight off an offensive, but after months of turmoil, official ineptitude, widespread starvation and enormous casualties, it appeared that the abdication of the Tsar – who in 1915 had disastrously taken over the command of the military – was imminent. The burgeoning socialist revolutionary movement was having a negative impact on the morale of the troops and desertions exceeded two million men, with some sources putting this figure as upward of three million. Russian armies had suffered enormous casualties with over two million men dying in 1915 and a similar number in 1916. The soldiers were undernourished, weapons and ammunition were in poor supply, and transport and communications were totally disorganised. Strikes and riots broke out over shortages of food and the troops, particularly in Petrograd, refused to suppress them, placing increased pressure on the Tsar to abdicate. This in turn led to a breakdown in the military command and offensive action by Russian forces on the Eastern Front virtually ceased.
On the Western Front, the Allies and the Germans were in a stalemate, locked in a war of attrition in which each side's greatest hope was to hammer away at the manpower, materials, equipment and morale of the other until they were so weakened that they could be overrun. Initially, Ludendorff and Hindenburg would have preferred to attack at the sides of the British salients – those parts of the frontline that projected out from the rest of the line. But they believed that the British were too strong and they did not wish to commit their reserves for an offensive, especially when the Allies were likely to mount offensives north and south of the Somme in the spring. The Germans particularly feared that the Allies would strike at the German salient north of the Somme.
Unlike the British, who still believed in the strategy of attrition, the Germans had learnt their lesson at Verdun and decided that there would be no more wearing-out offensives. They would go on the defensive and let the Allies bleed instead. Unknown to the Allies, since September 1916 they had been constructing a shorter, far stronger frontline 20 kilometres in the rear. Rather than placing their troops all along an extended trench system, the Germans would adopt a practice of 'defence in depth', a system of defences several layers deep that enabled men to retreat if they came under attack and reserves to flood forward, so that a counter-attack could be mounted.
The brainchild of von Hindenburg and Ludendorff, the Germans called this new line the Siegfried Stellung Line, but the Allies dubbed it the Hindenburg Line. It extended 125 kilometres from Arras, through the high ground at Mont St Quentin and on to Soissons in the southeast, and contracted the frontline by 40 kilometres, allowing the Germans to withdraw 13 divisions as reserves.
The Hindenburg Line consisted of three zones: a 500-metredeep 'outpost zone' that was to be thinly manned, intended to break up or provide warning of an attack; a second line 2.5 kilometres deep called the 'battle zone' comprising prefabricated concrete blockhouses, also known as pillboxes, that were used as machine-gun emplacements and could act as minor fortresses if the British attacked, with thick wire entanglements and deep underground shelters; and a third zone known as the 'rear zone' with a depth of 5.5 kilometres, where reserves would be stationed so they could be rushed to any point of breakthrough. Before the Allies got to the new outpost zone, they would have to make their way through a 15-kilometre-deep zone in which the Germans had destroyed or booby-trapped all the roads, bridges, railways, communication lines, houses and any shelter at all for advancing troops.
Withdrawing to this new defensive line would bring some major benefits. Immediately, the Germans could abandon some of the dangerous salients in the line and hold more men in reserve at the rear. Equally important, British and French plans for the spring offensive would be dislocated and delayed, giving more time for the submarine offensive to achieve results.
When the German prisoners taken by the 45th Battalion in Stormy Trench were interrogated they did not give away that a big troop movement was about to happen. This, and continued activity along the German line, meant that the Allies went on believing that the enemy were still holding the line in strength. Who would anticipate or expect such a major withdrawal?
All appeared normal through the daylight hours of 23 February, the day after the 45th Battalion's attacks on Stormy Trench. But as night closed in over the battlefield, patrols started to return with reports that the German positions were unusually quiet. Patrols from other divisions returned with similar intelligence: the German front, which had been very active the day before, was suddenly still. There was no fire from known machine-gun positions and the flares being thrown into the sky were coming from the rear rather than frontline positions. Reports came in that British patrols further to the west had also found German positions abandoned. It was all very strange.
Gradually it dawned on the stunned Allies that a major German withdrawal and redeployment was taking place that would not only shorten and straighten, and so strengthen, the German line, but also severely dislocate British and French offensive plans for the coming spring and summer. 'I am afraid it is a very clever thing the Germans have done,' declared the AIF's Major General White.5
Though the withdrawal is briefly mentioned in the 45th Battalion's history, no mention is made in Somme Mud. One wonders how this major German redeployment was seen and understood by the privates in the field. Did they realise the significance of what was happening, or was it kept from them or not fully explained? There was a lack of communication at the highest levels in the early days of the German withdrawal, so perhaps it is no wonder that Lynch did not show Nulla grasping the significance of this new strategic situation.
The 45th Battalion was sent to the rear to rest after the Stormy Trench stunt, but other Australian units now found themselves advancing across no-man's-land or open country without opposition. They had been geared up to attack the German salient at Bapaume, tackle the Maze, storm the Butte de Warlencourt, but now they were able to take those positions with only minor German resistance. Charles Bean makes an interesting observation that it was difficult for the Allies to go from fighting a stalemated
war, confined to trenches and narrow fronts, to moving in the open, across large distances and in semi-open warfare. It would have been frightening and stressful to say the least, for the Germans had destroyed their trenches, dugouts and earthworks as they retreated and in their place left booby traps and mines. On 25 March, about eight days after the Australians entered Bapaume, there was a huge explosion in the Bapaume Town Hall, the result of a mine hidden by the Germans, and twenty-four men were killed. Soon after, a dugout being used as an officers' headquarters exploded, burying two signal clerks, and from then on, men and officers were banned from occupying dugouts and houses.
For the remaining two years of the war, the breaching of the Hindenburg Line would become the primary aim and occupation of the AIF.
TEN
Mixing
it at
Messines
In the days that followed the taking of Stormy Trench in late February 1917, the men of the 45th Battalion were relieved and moved back to Mametz camp, about 12 kilometres to the rear. From there, the battalion moved to Bécourt, just to the east of Albert, for training, and then on 23 March they moved out to Shelter Wood, near Fricourt. Private Lynch did not join them in Fricourt, though, for according to his personal medical records, he had a severe case of trench foot and was admitted to hospital in Rouen on 22 March 1917. He was transferred to the 4th Division hospital at Étaples on 14 April and did not return to his unit until 28 April. It is curious that Lynch was hospitalised for trench foot at this time rather than while in the frontline, and it raises questions such as whether Lynch was in fact with his battalion behind the line or elsewhere; if he had suffered the beginnings of trench foot in silence, until he could put off treatment no longer; or whether he in fact developed it during training at Mametz or Bécourt. We will never know.
While Lynch received treatment for the agonising condition, his battalion footslogged north along the famous Albert to Bapaume road, past the old British frontline at La Boisselle, on past the moonscape of Pozières, up over the rise at the windmill and down the long slope and on to Le Sars. On 28 March, they reached a tented camp at Le Barque, where the battalion was awarded 37 decorations for bravery in the fighting at Stormy Trench.
The battalion pushed on towards the frontline through the remains of Bapaume, where troops were assembling for attacks on the outpost villages. The Germans had brought artillery forward into these villages and the Allies would have to take them before they could tackle the formidable Hindenburg Line about 10 kilometres away. The small fortified village of Noreuil had been captured by the Australian 13th Brigade, but ahead lay the real obstacles, where breakthroughs were planned by British High Command: Arras and Bullecourt. The attack on Bullecourt was to be made by the 62nd British Division and the Australian 4th Division, with Lynch's 45th Battalion held back in reserve.
The first assault was scheduled for 10 April, to be spearheaded by something the Australian troops had never seen in action before: tanks. These were to advance first, crushing the wire and firing on the enemy's frontline, the Allied troops following on behind them. The Australians had taken up their positions ready for the early morning attack, but the British tanks were delayed by a heavy snowstorm and could not get into position; exhausted and demoralised, the men were forced to return to their frontline and ready themselves to mount the attack the following day, at 4.30 a.m. Again many of the tanks failed to arrive on time – one even went in the wrong direction and ended up with its nose stuck in the bank of a sunken road. Despite this, the Australians crossed their start line and moved across the flat, featureless ground, following the few tanks that were operational. The 46th and 48th battalions crossed the first belt of German barbed wire that had been broken by the British artillery and rushed on. By 5.50 a.m., the 46th had captured their first objective, the old German frontline trench, and by 6.20 a.m., the 48th Battalion were at their objective, the old German reserve trench.
Things started to go wrong. A savage German counter-attack drove both battalions back to their original start line, leaving many men dead and wounded behind them. Communications were poor, the tanks were all but useless and Allied artillery failed to support the attack, which had been dismally and hastily planned by General Gough of the British High Command. On that awful day, the 12th Brigade, having committed three battalions or around 3,000 men, had casualties of 30 officers and 900 men. The 4th Brigade, which had also sent in 3,000 men, had nearly 2,400 casualties. And all in just ten hours. Though it was not on the scale of the disastrous first day of the Somme offensive on 1 July 1916, the disaster at Bullecourt was to become a prime example of British battlefield blundering and incompetence and was used as a vivid example in officer training schools for the rest of the war of how not to plan an attack.
Fortunately for Lynch's 45th Battalion, they were not called forward to join the butcher's picnic. From Fricourt they had marched to Noreuil, where they took over the old frontline, established a line of advanced posts and patrolled to prevent further German counter-attacks. The 45th Battalion was kept busy bringing in the dead and wounded. Though Edward Lynch was in hospital at this time, he did place Nulla at Bullecourt, presumably basing his account on the battalion history and perhaps the stories told to him by his mates when he rejoined his unit.
Nulla observes remarkable heroism, such as Longun's mate from the 13th Battalion who jovially apologises for being unable to shake hands – because his hands are the only thing holding in his bowels, the result of a bullet wound to the abdomen. There is the man who fights off seven Germans with a trench spade and is shot through each knee but who will not be taken out on a stretcher because he thinks his mate needs it more. There is the 'young lad of seventeen who had his knee slit clean open' [p. 133] yet makes a desperate stand, throwing grenades at the Germans at close range so fast he doesn't have time to pull the pins out.
Nulla is quick to also point out the bravery of the German gunners. When they find one chained to his gun, Nulla discounts the story going around that the Germans are now chaining their gunners to their machine-guns, and believes the German when he says that he chained himself to it, fearing that his 'nerves might break'. Nulla has seen too many brave Germans die while working their machine-guns and concludes: 'Some of the bravest men we've ever bumped have been Fritz gunners: we know that to our sorrow.' [p. 134]
Two days after the failed Bullecourt attack, the men of the 45th Battalion moved back to Bapaume, where they entrained and returned to their old camp at Shelter Wood near Fricourt, before going into more comfortable billets at Bresle, on the outskirts of Albert. Although the frontline had moved forward, removing the threat of German long-range artillery bombardment, their 'rest' time behind the line was far from a holiday camp. A solid round of training started immediately and officers and NCOs were sent to various courses. Select men were also sent to Britain to undertake officer training while others were sent for periods of six months to the divisional training camps on the Salisbury Plain to train the new arrivals from Australia.
While the battalion is at Bresle, Lynch provides Nulla – and the reader – with a bit of light relief in the form of an unauthorised visit to some local towns to sample cognac and other delicacies, and he and his mate Snow are punished with a night in the clink, loss of wages and a week confined to barracks. Lynch's personal records do not indicate that he was ever charged Absent Without Leave while in France, though of course that proves only that he was never caught, not that he never took a break away from his battalion. Indeed, the Australians had been renowned for high rates of men going Absent Without Leave since the fighting at Pozières in 1916. Unlike the British army, which executed around 350 men during the First World War, the Australian army never enforced the death penalty.
Since the announcement by Germany of unrestricted submarine warfare, the Allies had set their sights on the Belgian ports of Oostende and Zeebrugge on the North Sea, which were important German U-boat bases. Because of shipping losses, particularly the deaths of Am
erican civilians on passenger ships such as the Lusitania, the United States had declared war on Germany on 6 April; soon after, Congress adopted conscription. In Russia, the revolution had begun. In the Middle East, the British had occupied Baghdad and the first battle of Gaza was under way. The French army was on the offensive on the River Aisne, to the south of the Somme.
The British, and thus Australian, focus turned northward, to the German frontline in Belgium. Their goal was to eliminate the salient in the line east of Ypres and force the Germans from the high ground at Passchendaele. But first they needed to capture the German line along the ridge that extended from Wytschaete, some 8 kilometres south of Ypres, to Messines, 2 kilometres further south. The Messines–Wytschaete Ridge gave the Germans the high ground, enabling them to observe the Allies, so its capture was crucial to the Allies' plans for the coming offensive against Passchendaele.
The German defences along the salient were laid out according to Ludendorff 's plan, with the forward positions only lightly defended, often by machine-gun crews stationed in shell-holes and supported by concrete blockhouses. Waiting in the rear were mobile units ready to counter-attack if the Allies broke through the line. The Allied response to this set-up was to plan an initial artillery barrage to destroy the enemy's barbed wire and machinegun nests, then to target the Germans' rear assembly areas. They would also target German artillery batteries and lines of communication, to cut off supplies to the frontline and prevent the movement of reserves into forward areas.
By now, spring had replaced winter, improving the comfort of the troops. Leaves began to return to the trees, the hedges and wildflowers were in bloom, and the roads had turned from mud to dust. With the arrival of spring rose the spirit of the men who began to look back on the winter campaign as a hideous dream. On 12 May 1917, after an inspection by General Birdwood and a one-month rest at Bresle, the 45th Battalion, which Lynch had rejoined about two weeks before, entrained for Bailleul, on the border of France and Belgium, ready for their next big test: Messines and the Ypres salient.