In the Footsteps of Private Lynch

by Will Davies

  [Axford] at once rushed to the front, threw his bombs among the machine-gun crew, and jumped into the trench, killing ten Germans and capturing six. He then threw the machine-gun on to the parapet and called for the platoon to come on, which it did.10

  For this action, Axford was awarded the Victoria Cross, the second one earned in about 15 minutes.

  The attack continued to surge forward into the woods. As hoped, many of the Germans still wore their gas masks, which made them easier to deal with. Men were advancing in line, firing their Lewis guns and rifles from the hip and driving the fleeing Germans into the barrage that was still falling ahead of them. Prisoners started trailing back and Bean notes that 'many were found to be very young and small'.11 The Germans, like the Australians, were running out of men.

  Later in the day, Victorians of the 14th Battalion who were digging a support trench were fired on by a group of Germans in a communication sap. When a tank was called in to deal with this position, the Germans waved a white flag above their parapet, so Lieutenant Rule went over with some men to take them prisoners. Halfway across, they were suddenly fired upon and a corporal was shot through the head. Furious, Rule ordered the Germans out of their dugout but it was found that the occupants were a 'crowd of young boys'.12 After the war, Rule wrote the classic book Jacka's Mob, an account of the history of the 14th Battalion. In it he wrote:

  We could not kill children and these looked to be barely that. If you asked any of us how old they were, most of us would have said between fourteen and fifteen ... With a boot to help them along they ran with their hands above their heads back to our lines.13

  In the initial stages of the attack the tanks were delayed because the darkness, the smoke and dust had reduced visibility. But when the tanks had caught up with the infantry, they came into their own, quickly proving their worth and wiping out German strongpoints. German morale also suffered and often Germans simply surrendered on their approach. Large groups, as many as 50 men and their weapons, were captured.

  As the Australians consolidated their new position and pushed forward, the tanks proved invaluable, especially the four carrier tanks, which now appeared with much-needed supplies. Twenty-one-year-old Colonel Douglas Marks, the commander of the 13th Battalion, was astonished when he found that in the area behind Vaire Wood, one tank had delivered 134 coils of barbed wire, 180 long- and 270 short-screw pickets, 45 sheets of corrugated iron, 50 petrol tins of water, 150 trench mortar bombs, 10,000 rounds of ammunition and 20 boxes of grenades. Never before had the Australians had supplies delivered during the advance of an attack with such speed and in such quantity. The value of using carrier tanks was considered one of the great lessons of the battle.

  As the dawn light crept in across the battlefield, observers on the heights north of the Somme were able to report, '4.45. Tanks everywhere beyond Hamel. Beyond Vaire Wood.'14 Aircraft from No. 3 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps, flew across the frontline positions tooting to the troops below, signalling for them to light small fires in shell-holes and trenches, out of sight of the Germans. These fires were then marked on a map which ten minutes later was dropped at the headquarters of the 4th Division.

  By 5.30 a.m., most of the tanks had returned to the rear, widely acknowledged to have played a very important part in the operation. Only three of the 60 tanks had not reached their objective, all but five were back at their assembly points by 11 a.m. and these damaged tanks were recovered in the next two days. The tank crews' casualties were light, with only 13 men being put out of action. However, when the tanks returned to their staging area near Blangy-Tronville, eight men were killed when a German aircraft bombed their lines. The positive response of the officers to the tanks' performance at Le Hamel is mentioned in Somme Mud when an officer says:

  'The tanks were great. They kept right on the barrage and each time a machine-gun nest held us up, we only had to signal to a tank and it just waded in and shot up the gun crew ...' [p. 245]

  As dawn broke, aircraft were able to deliver ammunition by parachute. Each plane carried one box of small arms ammunition and the 12 planes involved averaged four trips each, dropping ammunition under two brown parachutes wherever they saw the 'V' sign displayed on the ground. In all, 93 boxes of ammunition – some 111,600 rounds – were delivered in this way, though some were carried by the wind and could not safely be retrieved. Unfortunately, one aircraft was lost. There were varying accounts of its fate, with one close observer reporting that the parachute, thrown out at 1,200 feet, caught in the wing. The pilot was seen to steady the aeroplane then hand over control to his observer, climb out on the wing and untangle the parachute. But 30 metres above the ground, as he started to bring the plane safely down, something went wrong and the plane crashed. Other observers said that the plane was hit by a shell, but it is possible that both mishaps occurred. Both pilot and observer were killed. Later a second ammunition carrier plane was shot down when more than 30 German aircraft swarmed over the area, bombing and strafing ground targets and directing German artillery onto the new Australian frontline. The Germans tried delivering rations to their frontline troops, without parachutes and, according to Bean, 'incidentally delivered a few of these parcels to the Australian outposts'.15

  Meanwhile, the Australians of the 43rd battalion had also cleared the village of Hamel. Early in the fighting, Corporal B. V. Schulz, a 25-year-old farmer from Willowie, South Australia, noticed on an aerial photograph the line of a buried German cable from the village to Notamel Wood to the north. He followed the cable to a house in the northern part of the village, where, with the aid of two German-speaking Americans, he asked to be allowed in.

  Once inside, he captured a battalion commander and his staff at what proved to be a forward headquarters. In so doing, he denied the Germans any information about the Australian attack on the village. In fact it was two hours before the Germans realised that this position had been captured. Again tanks proved their worth. In the words of Lieutenant Colonel Drake Brockman, they proved 'particularly useful and efficient in the village.'16 By 7 a.m., Hamel had been cleared.

  A number of smaller operations had simultaneously taken place across the river to the north, as feints to draw German artillery away from the main focus of the attack. Near Sailly- Laurette, men of the 55th Battalion raised and lowered papier-mâché dummies, which occupied the German machine-gunners for half an hour. It was here that the most serious Australian casualties were taken in an area to the east of the village of Ville, where German resistance was stiff and where the open marshy ground gave little cover to the attacking troops. The Australians established their new line to the east of Le Hamel at their objective of the Wolfsberg and though the Germans counter-attacked, the line held. The day after Hamel fell, the 45th moved in to relieve the 42nd Battalion along the new frontline from the north of Hamel to the Somme canal near Bouzencourt. They worked deepening the trenches begun by the 42nd Battalion and on connecting the disjointed line. Then, two nights later, C and D companies of the 45th advanced in an attack with the 46th Battalion and established a new line of posts which provided a better field of fire. Digging in fast, they erected wire under cover of rifle and machine-gun sections but the Germans, when they discovered their position, retaliated with a fierce gas bombardment resulting in a number of casualties.

  Today, the trenches that were the objective of the successful Australian attack on 4 July 1918 are part of the Australian Corps Memorial Park. Still visible across the valley to the east are the short observation saps the Australians dug forward towards the German lines. For 80 years after the war, they remained virtually undiscovered, overgrown with brambles and privet, a narrow boat-shaped piece of ground crowning the hilltop that French farmers had ploughed around and somehow left undisturbed. Under the scrub and low brush, the trench still held the detritus of the time: old rusty cans, boots and unrecognisable pieces of iron.

  Nearby in the furrows of the field, a shell lay menacingly along the line of the plough, turned
up but not collected. And nearby lay another shallow trench system, the chalk beneath the surface easily visible and its zigzagging course still apparent. Since then, the land has been cleared and a memorial erected to the men of the five Australian infantry divisions. It was unveiled on 4 July 1998 to mark the 80th anniversary of the battle.

  The men at Le Hamel had been allotted 90 minutes to reach their objective on the high ground east of the village. They reached it in 93 minutes, with about 1,400 casualties. It was an amazing feat.

  The success of the battle of Hamel, particularly the innovation of co-ordinating tanks, artillery, infantry and aircraft, was studied afterwards by units of all the Allied armies. It would become the basis of the technique of Blitzkrieg introduced by the Germans in the Second World War – the co-ordination of various offensive units striking on a narrow front and driving through an enemy's frontline.

  On the Sunday after the battle, the French Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau, who had replaced Aristide Briand following General Nivelle's failed offensives, visited the headquarters of the 4th Division. Addressing the Australians at Bussy-lès-Daours, near Corbie, he spoke to them in English and said:

  When the Australians came to France, the French people expected a great deal of you ... We knew that you would fight a real fight, but we did not know that from the very beginning you would astonish the whole continent ... I shall go back tomorrow and say to my countrymen: 'I have seen the Australians. I have looked in their faces. I know that these men ... will fight alongside of us again until the cause for which we are all fighting is safe for us and for our children.'17

  SIXTEEN

  Leap-frogging

  to Victory

  The great German offensive of the spring of 1918 comprised a number of separate strategic initiatives. First there was the assault towards Amiens, which had originally been a more ambitious plan to roll up the whole Allied line to Arras to the northeast, but had been downscaled by the German commanders and then brought to a halt by the Australians at Villers-Bretonneux on 25 April. The Germans also launched an offensive in Flanders, Belgium, on 9 April, known as the Battle of the Lys, when they attacked south of Ypres and pushed northwest towards the city, but were stalled and finally halted by stout British defence on 29 April. Next, in May, General Ludendorff pushed southwest on the Chemin des Dames, a road along the ridgeline south of the river Aisne that led towards Paris. With his eye on the capital as the main objective, he advanced 65 kilometres in three days. But then he was met by the newly arrived Americans and strong French defences; again, his offensive ground to a halt and was pushed back.

  By July 1918, General Ludendorff 's three major offensives had failed. Though initially he had overrun vast areas of France, he was now virtually back to where he had started in early March. He had failed to capture and retain any significant towns or strategically important ground or infrastructure, such as the railhead at Amiens, and the German army had suffered huge casualties and loss of matériel and stores, which, at this stage of the war could not be easily replaced.

  When Hindenburg and Ludendorff had first arrived on the Western Front from the Eastern Front in 1916, they were shocked by the scale of the battles being fought, the immense artillery barrages conducted by both sides and the level of German casualties. Even then they realised they were losing the material war, the ability to match the Allies in artillery and ammunition. The Allies' naval blockade had cut off Germany from desperately important raw materials such as nitrates for explosive production, which were shipped from Chile. Tactically, the Germans were reliant on artillery to protect their frontline troops and shortages of shells became a serious problem the more they had to rely on defensive rather than offensive strategies. Although German scientists did develop a technique for making synthetic nitrates, this took time.

  The problems that were facing Germany on the battlefield had their origins years before. Germany did not embrace total war – the commitment and devotion of all of a country's material and human resources to the war effort – to quite the same degree as the Allies. German women were not called into war production in anywhere near the numbers British women were. In fact, as the war drew on, increasing numbers of German men were withdrawn from the army to work in factories. By December 1917, nearly 2.1 million men had been released from the army for service in factories in Germany, and younger and younger men – many mere boys – were called up for military service.

  The situation was very different in Britain. Though its material losses had been enormous in the retreat in March, the country was benefiting from America's war contribution, both in manpower and material. The German U-boat campaign had succeeded in sinking ships but had fallen far short of starving the island of food, raw materials and troops. With advances in anti-submarine technology such as depth charges, along with the addition of American destroyers and the use of the convoy system, the German submarine threat was being contained, allowing an influx of supplies from America. British industry had been able to massively increase its production levels since the beginning of the war.

  Britain was also re-skilling and re-training the army and learning from the past: the lessons of the Somme and Arras were transforming military planning and tactics and improving their staff work. The army was being provided with new equipment, and weapon systems were being developed in the hope of breaking the stalemate. The new Mark V tanks were showing their value on the battlefield. The reliability of artillery shells was improving after the early years in which a high percentage of the shells being produced were duds. British sound-ranging equipment could now locate, target and destroy German artillery with frightening precision. Artillery could be used effectively in creeping barrages, and machine-gunners standing shoulder to shoulder could rain bullets on German troop concentrations much like the English archers did to the French knights at Agincourt. Advances in British military technology combined with Britain's higher production rate dramatically increased the number of artillery pieces and machine-guns the Allies had at their disposal. Simply put, the Allies could now outgun the Germans.

  What Britain understood was that this was a rich man's war. Superior technology and massive amounts of weapons and ammunition – which all came at a high cost – were needed if the war was to be won. The shell for the smallest and most common artillery piece used by the Allies, the 18-pound field gun, cost £4 per shell. This was a huge expenditure considering that towards the end of the war English troops received only three shillings per day. That means it cost nearly four times a British private's weekly wage for one shell for a gun that could fire 25 to 30 shells per minute. It is estimated that over 86 million 18-pound shells were fired during the Great War, which gives an indication of just how rich a nation needed to be.

  By the middle of 1918, the French army had again become an effective fighting force. Esprit de corps was high and there was a burning sense of shame about the recent loss of French territory in the German spring offensive. French industry, which had been mainly concentrated in areas now behind German lines, had relocated in the south and established production to meet the enormous demands of the French army, especially after the losses at Verdun.

  New tactics, increased amounts of equipment and the introduction of a command structure that worked all contributed to the vast Allied initiative, which was further aided by German offensive mistakes and their dwindling war economy. The balance was finally tipping.

  In July 1918, preparations were under way for the next phase of the Allies' operations: a great offensive to be launched on 8 August. The Australian troops on the Somme were not idly waiting, though; this was the height of 'peaceful penetration', small-scale trench raids and audacious attacks on the German lines. It had become something of a sport for the Australians and they were never short of volunteers. Lieutenant E. J. Rule, writing after the war, said:

  Under cover of a barrage, they were to hop in, grab a few prisoners, kill all others they laid hands on and get out in fifteen minutes.1


  The Germans came to fear these raids and one English-speaking prisoner is reported to have said: 'You bloody Australians ... when you are in the line you keep us on pins and needles; we never know when you are coming over.'2

  On 6 July, as the Australians settled in to their new frontline at Le Hamel, a sergeant of the 20th Battalion, Walter Ernest Brown, who had just arrived at the line as part of an advance party of his battalion, was told of a German sniper nearby who was causing trouble. He headed off down the trench with the words that he would go see if he could 'have a pot at them himself'.3 He looked out across the open ground and noticed a mound; soon a shot was fired, seemingly from that direction. Taking the initiative upon himself, he set down his rifle and ran towards the mound with two Mills bombs in his hands. Another shot was fired, so he stopped and threw a grenade at the mound, but not far enough – it exploded short of its target. He dropped to the ground and waited until all was quiet, then got up and ran towards the mound once more.

  Brown found himself standing above a small, empty kidney-shaped trench with a machine-gun standing on the parados. He jumped down and ran to the entrance of a dugout at the end opposite him. As he reached it, a German emerged and Brown, with a swinging punch to his jaw, sent him flying back down the stair of the dugout. Suddenly, behind him, more Germans emerged from a dugout at the other end of the trench which he had not noticed until now. All he had was one grenade – and if he hurled it in the small trench, he would be in even deeper trouble, as he would have to face the ire of any survivors. So, he threatened them with it instead. Demoralised by the Australian rout two days before, and having been left without food and water and cut off from their own troops, they surrendered. Wielding his last remaining Mills bomb in his hand, he sent all the Germans in the trench – one officer and 12 men – across to the Australian lines.