The Australian miners were tasked with defending two of the 21 tunnels that had been excavated through the deep blue clay. In the stale air, they dug in search of German miners who, themselves, were digging to find the tunnels. If distant thudding was heard, the Australians tunnelled cautiously towards it, checking to see if the mice or canaries they used to detect dangerous gases were still alive. When they got close, a listener waited alone. If the Germans were digging towards the main tunnels, the Australians detonated explosives against the wall, caving in the shafts.
For seven months the Australians dug and fought in the mines, trapping and killing Germans, as well as being buried and killed by them. One detonation trapped Sapper Edward Earl, who continued listening to German movement, wrote to his mother, wrote his will, then slept on and off for two days until rescued. He later died because of his time underground, but he and the other miners had kept the tunnels safe for the upcoming battle.
THE BATTLE OF MESSINES
By June, Messines was in ruins, its green slope churned and upturned. The Allied artillery had shelled all approaches to the village, and the Germans, cut off, hunkered in dugouts—some three to four storeys deep with stairs on either side leading up to the trenches. They were exhausted from the constant explosions and the effort of breathing through gasmasks. Unexpectedly, the safety of their shelters sapped the German troops of courage: the thumping shells and the shaking land made it increasingly difficult for the men to leave the dugouts.
On the dark night of 6 June, the 3rd Division, New Zealand and British troops marched towards the jumping-off point. They passed the artillery lined up wheel to wheel. As each gun fired, the flash from its muzzle threw an eerie light over the trees and gunners. Beforehand, some of the men had listened to their padre praying, then had sung hymns. Now, they heard the soft patter of the German Phosgene gas shells.
With horses and mules gasping in the poisonous air, each man put on his gasmask, squeezed the clips onto his nose to block his nostrils, then breathed out hard through a rubber tube and in through chemical-soaked fabric which neutralised the gas. All too quickly the glass eye-pieces fogged up and they struggled to breathe or see clearly as they walked on. Those who hadn’t got their masks on in time gasped for breath, retched, vomited and collapsed, frothing from the mouth. The others eventually stumbled out of the gas clouds, pulled off their masks to suck in fresh air, then lay down at the jumping-off point.
The moon shone brightly. A British aeroplane flew over to drown out the noise of advancing tanks. Ten minutes before zero hour, the officers ordered their men to silently fix bayonets. At 3.05 a.m., five minutes before zero hour, German star flares shot up and several New Zealand machine guns opened fire. The Australians wondered if the attack had been detected before it had begun, but just before zero hour, all was silent again. Then 19 of the 21 mines exploded under the German lines.
Some of the Australians and New Zealanders were knocked over by the force of the blast. Black earth and flames, German troops and concrete blockhouses were heaved into the air. All along the line, British, Australian and New Zealand troops charged up the dust-shrouded slope. The apprehension and fear the men felt leading up to zero hour were now gone. For Lance Corporal Robert Bett, it was nothing to stop and bandage a mate’s bad wound or to notice ‘men killed alongside you, even when you get their blood spilt on you’. One New Zealander, Private Len Coley, stopped to cut off the mangled leg of a comrade and tried to carry him back but, even with a tourniquet, the man soon died from loss of blood. German SOS rockets burst into two green stars but the answering shells fell behind the rapidly advancing troops.
The first German trench was crowded with wire, broken timber, concrete and dirt, and, as the barrage left it, the Australians and New Zealanders swept in. German dead lay everywhere and the survivors seemed too stunned to fight. They emerged with their hands raised, shouting ‘Kamerad’— comrade. Within 16 minutes, the first trench had been taken, and as demoralised prisoners were sent back to prison cages, fresh troops followed the creeping barrage up the slope.
At the edge of the village, German machine-gunners kept firing in spite of the British artillery barrage. Lance Corporal Samuel Frickleton led a group of men through the exploding shells and bombed then bayoneted the crew of the nearest gun. He then attacked a second gun, killing its three gunners and nine others who refused to leave their dugout. He was one of 10 New Zealanders to be awarded the Victoria Cross at the Western Front.
With the nearest machine guns out of action, the New Zealanders waited below the heavily fortified ruins of Messines. Each man had a map of the village that indicated the positions of fortified cellars and five concrete shelters, which gave the Germans a perfect line of fire down the main streets. As the barrage crept through the village, the New Zealanders moved into the dust-swirling streets, fighting from cellar to cellar and from strong point to strong point. Many German gunners kept firing right to the last second, then surrendered. When they emerged with their hands up, revenge crossed the minds of many troops, especially after seeing their friends die around them. ‘It’s our turn,’ Bett later wrote, ‘you have to decide, shall I kill.’ Some New Zealanders shot or bayoneted the surrendering Germans, but Bett saw them as ‘poor, frightened devils’, so demoralised they didn’t even need an armed escort to take them to the wire cages.
With the sun rising, the Australians and British on either side of Messines advanced, joined by two fresh New Zealand battalions that had passed around the town. Following dust clouds raised by the creeping barrage, and under sniper fire, they pressed on, clearing heavily defended shell holes and rushing farm ruins. The Australians were shot down by gunners who’d left their dugouts and lined the hedges of a broken farm. Private Matthew Gray, a miner from New South Wales, crept up to the hedge and spotted two Germans at the gun—the rest of their crew lay dead around them. When Gray shot one of them, the other surrendered. The farm was finally taken after another crew was killed by 16-year-old Private Henry ‘Glen’ Sternbeck, who’d enlisted under another name when he was 15. By 5.20 a.m., pigeons returned to headquarters with news that the Australian, New Zealand and British troops were digging in.
THE PILLBOXES OF OOSTTAVERNE
Concealed by a cloud of dust spewed up by the barrage, the British, Australians and New Zealanders dug new trenches as British pilots shot down enemy aeroplanes attempting to locate the new lines. The 4th Australian Division moved up the Messines slope, with horse-drawn artillery racing ahead to new positions for the next advance. In the mid-afternoon, they set out to capture the Oosttaverne Line.
Twelve hours had passed since the start of the battle, and the recovering Germans waited in their blockhouses—nicknamed pillboxes. Built above ground out of solid concrete, each pillbox was fortified and positioned to give covering fire to the troops—only a direct hit by the heaviest of artillery shells could damage them. As soon as the barrage had passed, the German gunners fired through loopholes in the concrete, while others poured out to shoot from the cover of dense hedges and trenches.
It was the first time the Australians had encountered pillboxes but they adapted quickly, creeping forward to get behind them, while Lewis gunners fired at the loopholes, their bullets splintering concrete into the Germans’ faces. It was slow and fierce and the Germans showed no sign of surrendering. Captain Robert Grieve and his men hid in a shell hole under machine-gun fire from a pillbox. Beside Grieve, two soldiers tried to repair their machine gun with wire from the entanglements, but when the gun was hit again, Grieve grabbed a bag of bombs and hurled them, one after the other, scrambling forward under the cover of the explosions until he was past the firing line of the machine gun. Crawling under the loophole, he threw in several bombs, killing the gun crew. At another pillbox, soldiers had got behind it and fired into the back entrance until the screams and whimpers ceased.
With the nearest pillboxes captured, the 4th Division stacked the dead outside and used the blockhouses as headquarter
s, first-aid posts or resting places, while the dead men’s skin blackened under the hot sun. Only one part of the line hadn’t been captured, and, as the men dug in, German machine-gunners fired in the distance. The Australians launched several more futile charges. In one, Lieutenant Thomas McIntyre knew he couldn’t fulfil his orders to capture a pillbox—it hadn’t been hit by a single shell. All he said was, ‘Alright Sir, if it is to be taken it will be taken.’ When he led his men over the top, he was killed alongside them.
Several days later, the Germans withdrew. Over 7500 men had been taken prisoner and all objectives captured. The battle had been so successful that many troops wanted to push on and capture the German guns that began shelling the new Allied trenches, but Plumer preferred small advances, to prevent the troops becoming too exhausted to defend their position.
Within 48 hours, long mule trains were transporting hot food and tea up to yet another front-line trench the men had dug. With so much digging in, the New Zealanders and Australians were now referring to themselves as ‘Diggers’.
HUMAN LIKE US
Before burying the dead, the men searched them for letters to loved ones, diaries, or other things of value to be sent home. They also hunted through German pockets for letters and photos either to keep as souvenirs or so they could be returned to the soldier’s family. Lance Corporal Bett felt that
Somehow we get wrong ideas, we forget the Hun is human like us, has his home, his loved ones and sweethearts, and it was pathetic to look through the private belongings of the Huns we buried, and see his photos, and little Bible and treasures.
To many Australians and New Zealanders, the German was a ‘Boche’, a ‘Hun’, a ‘Fritz’, an enemy they rarely saw—it was ‘old Fritz’ that sent over shells or fired SOS rockets or was shot. The Diggers were eager to punish them for starting the war and for the atrocities they’d committed. They wanted, as Captain Harold Armitage wrote, to ‘make our names stand out in Hunnish blood’. Some wanted nothing more than to use their bayonets on them. When Private David Harford first killed a German
a queer thrill shot through me, it was a different feeling to that which I had when I shot my first Kangaroo when I was a boy. For an instant I felt sick and faint, but the feeling soon passed; and I was normal and looking for more shots.
Similarly, Sergeant Eric Evans ‘felt little emotion, just intense excitement’. Even after battles, men itched ‘for another smack at the rotten Hun’.
Time allowed some soldiers to reflect on their actions and their beliefs about the ‘enemy’. Second Lieutenant Simon Fraser recalled how everyone cheered when their artillery smashed in German trenches,
but one does not think till afterwards that some poor devils may be flying up with it, who are just as anxious for the war to end as we are.
Private John Wright came to see them as ordinary men, like himself: ‘I don’t think old Fritz is any better or worse than our soldiers.’ And when Evans saw a mixture of German and Allied dead, he felt that it no longer mattered which side they were on. ‘They are dead, and for their loved ones, that is all that matters.’
New Zealand troops training for an attack on Messines, Belgium.
Alexander Turnbull Library G- 12753-1/2
Like the Australians and New Zealanders, the Germans volunteered to defend their country and for adventure. One soldier, 19-year-old Ernst Jünger, volunteered on the first day of the war and marched out ‘in a rain of flowers’ from well-wishers. After growing up ‘in an age of security, we shared a yearning for danger…We thought of it as manly…Anything to participate, not to have to stay at home.’
In the trenches, the Germans faced the same conditions as the Allies. They stamped their feet for warmth, used helmets as basins to wash in and, when it was quiet, thought of home. They too grew quiet as they marched forward through shell storms. They buried and mourned their dead and accepted cigarettes and bars of chocolate offered to them by captured soldiers. From craters, they watched and listened to low-flying aeroplanes circling ‘vulture-like’ overhead, emitting ‘a series of low long-drawn-out siren tones’ to alert their artillery. More often than not, shells would follow. During battles the men knew that if they fell, they’d be left to die—a fellow soldier told Jünger that ‘No one can help… Everyone knows this is about life or death.’
THE SOUR SMELL OF NEW DEATH
Within days, the New Zealanders and the 3rd Division began patrolling closer to the Warneton Line, the third line of German defence that had become the Germans’ new frontline. In the dark, they bombed fortified strong points set up in farm ruins and craters. At dawn, the front-line troops returned to newly set up posts in shell holes and pulled over camouflage netting to prevent aeroplanes from finding them. It was dangerous work, and the German machine-gunners were active. New Zealander Private Sidney ‘Stan’ Stan-field saw his mate Private James Hallett, a shepherd from Waipukurau, get shot as they moved out of a trench. He recalled when he returned the following day to bury him,
poor old Jim was laying there, cuddled up in a heap, as men die. Don’t forget we were all young, we didn’t die easy. You don’t die at once, you’re not shot and killed stone dead. We were fit and highly trained, and of course we didn’t die easy. You were slow to die, and you’d find them huddled up in a heap like kids gone to sleep, you know; cuddled up dead.
It had been hoped that the Germans would withdraw, but instead they strengthened their posts as their artillery tore into the Allied trenches and gassed and bombed the areas behind. Lieutenant George Mitchell saw a single shell kill seven men, leaving only shattered remains. The air stank of hot blood: ‘the sour smell of new death, mingled with the hated acid of high explosive.’ From a distance, machine-gunners fired at the men. An Australian officer who was new to the line asked Mitchell to knock out a troublesome machine gun, saying, ‘You’ve got a decoration. How about you going out and silencing it?’ Mitchell replied, after some thought, ‘How about you going out and capturing it. Then you’ll have a decoration too.’ Neither went out.
Where possible, the men slept in the safety of captured German dugouts and pillboxes. With each close shell-burst the pillboxes would ring and rock. At times, only the ‘occasional cry of “Stretcher-bearers!” broke the horrific monotony of whirring and crashing shells’.
In July, Mitchell was woken by a series of shell explosions. Then the daylight streaming into the entrance was blocked by his skipper, stumbling down the stairs, saying, ‘I’m hit.’ His voice filled Mitchell with a ‘dragging, cold dread’. The officer had been trying to move men to safety when a tiny piece of shrapnel had pierced his chest. With each pulse, blood spurted from the wound. The officer, knowing he was dying, kept saying ‘I’m done, I’m done.’ Mitchell knew he couldn’t help him but he still tried to stem the blood. Tears fell down his face. There was nothing he could say to comfort him. Blood gurgled into the officer’s chest. ‘Say good-bye to the boys. Tell my wife—’ he started, before saying a prayer.
After the officer died, Mitchell climbed back into bed and slept. It was all he could do. It was what he had to do to survive at the front.
KILLED IN ACTION
____________________
CAPTAIN HAROLD ARMITAGE
School teacher. 3 April 1917
SECOND LIEUTENANT SIMON FRASER
Farmer. 11 May 1917
PRIVATE JAMES HALLETT
Shepherd. 8 June 1917
LIEUTENANT THOMAS MCINTYRE
Carpenter. 10 June 1917
PRIVATE MATTHEW GRAY
Miner. 12 October 1917
DIED OF WOUNDS
____________________
PRIVATE DAVID HARFORD
Miner. 31 March 1917
LANCE CORPORAL ROBERT BETT
Coachbuilder. 15 June 1917
SAPPER EDWARD EARL
Labourer. 28 July 1917
CHAPTER NINE
THIRD BATTLE OF YPRES, 1917
THOUGHTS
I’m travelling down a
long straight road,
In Flanders, here in Flanders.
It’s mud and cobbles, and cobbles in mud,
In Flanders, here in Flanders.
Tho’ some may say that fine it be—
A soldier’s life is not meant for me,
For it’s naught but cobbles and mud, you see,
In Flanders, here in Flanders.
TRUMPETER HERBERT AUBURN
ON 22 JULY, with the lower Messines ridgeline captured, over 3000 British guns began saturating the Ypres heights in preparation for Field Marshal Haig’s main offensive to force the Germans from the high ground. Through a series of advances, British troops were to extend the line eight kilometres to Passchendaele.
To create a diversion, II Anzac Corps prepared to attack the Warneton Line, 10 kilometres from Ypres, but the Germans, watching the preparations from the heights, knew where the real advance was going to come from.
On 31 July, the first advance began—to Pilckem Ridge— but the right flank of the British troops’ 27-kilometre front was stopped at Menin Road by machine-gun fire between the shattered remains of two woodlands—Inverness Copse and Glencorse Wood. Then rain began falling: the heaviest downpour in 75 years. The complex drainage systems of the low-lying Flanders area had been destroyed by the war, and the rains quickly turned the land into a sea of mud. Orders were given to halt the attack.
Two hours after the British advanced, II Anzac Corps attacked the Warneton Line. Two battalions of the 3rd Division charged outposts while the New Zealanders fought from house to house in La Basse Ville. Then the rain blew in from Ypres.
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