FIRST BATTLE OF PASSCHENDAELE
The front-line was littered with dead and wounded from the 49th and 66th British Divisions. ‘Stretcher bearer,’ they called, and, ‘For God’s sake come here.’ Australian Lieutenant Walde Fisher arrived at ‘one pillbox to find it just a mass of dead’. At the next one, he found
about fifty men alive…Never have I seen men so broken or demoralised. They were huddled up close behind the box in the last stages of exhaustion and fear.
When daylight arrived, the Australians and New Zealanders crept out and moved from one waterlogged crater to the next to give the wounded food or water. If they could, they carried them back to crowded first-aid posts. All through the grey, bleak afternoon, stretcher-bearers worked to carry men out. Private Leonard Hart was dumbfounded that the British officers had abandoned the wounded: ‘I have seen some pretty rotten sights during the two and a half years of active service, but I must say that this fairly sickened me.’
At the same time, the II Anzac Corps commanders who had not visited the line were realising that the jumping-off point was practically the same as before the last attack. To offset the extra distance, the pace of the creeping barrage was doubled. Now the men would have to cross the first 450 metres in 20 minutes, a pace never attempted in dry weather, let alone in mud. According to Private Stanfield, the soldiers at Flanders were
a pretty dumb beast. That’s how he’s treated, you see. He was only gun fodder, that’s what I feel. We were pretty dumb beasts, or we wouldn’t have been thrown into that sort of warfare, because it was hopeless before you started, we all knew that.
That night, as it rained heavily, the men moved to their jumping-off positions, and by 4 a.m. they were waiting under waterproof sheets in shell holes for dawn and zero hour.
Opposite the New Zealanders was the blocked Ravebeek stream, muddy craters, wire entanglements, then the pillboxes on Bellevue Spur. The men hoped the artillery would destroy the wire, or that at least the pillboxes would be bombarded while they cut through it. But when the shelling eventuated, it was sporadic and brief. The Diggers wanted to do their best, but, as one New Zealand officer wrote in his diary:
I do not feel as confident as usual. Things are being rushed too much. The weather is rotten, the roads very bad, and the objectives have not been properly bombarded. However, we will hope for the best.
Across no-man’s-land, Crown Prince Rupprecht wrote in his diary: ‘most gratifyingly—rain; our most effective ally’.
At 4.20 a.m. the rain stopped, but the wire in front was still intact. Then, at zero hour, 5.25 a.m., the men followed a creeping barrage of mud and steam, only to be shot down. Mud swallowed the dead and wounded and weighed the survivors down. They unclogged their guns and rifles and fired at the pillbox loopholes, momentarily forcing the Germans to take cover, while others slid forward to cut the wire. Second Lieutenants John Bishop and Norman Watson cut through both belts, then charged a pillbox. Short bursts from a machine gun killed them both before they could throw their bombs.
At 8 a.m., the New Zealanders were ordered to dig in and hold what little they’d gained of the slope. German gunners fired down at them from the spur as they dug into the sloppy mud. Around them, snipers hidden in trees, shell holes and even in the wire picked off men scurrying to find better shelter. Many of the men didn’t see a single German that day.
Experiencing less opposition than the New Zealanders, the Australians of the 9th Brigade left a trail of dead and wounded as they outflanked pillboxes, then dug in at the second objective, 1900 metres from the start.
The 10th Brigade, next to the New Zealanders, hadn’t got as far. With the New Zealanders out of action, the Germans on Bellevue Spur had turned their guns onto the advancing Australians. In groups of two or three, they scrambled from crater to crater, but with only 150 men remaining and just at their first objective, they dug in. While they waited for reinforcements, 20 of them set out for Pass-chendaele. They crept up a sheltered gully and walked straight into the village. There were no Germans, but there were no Australians in sight either, so the men returned to their comrades. With shells exploding around them, their officer, Major Lyndhurst Giblin, sent a message to headquarters asking ‘What am I to do?’ He’d already sent soldiers to suppress the fire from Bellevue Spur but they didn’t return. At 3 p.m., orders were given to the Australians to withdraw to the starting point.
THE COLD TRUTH
The Australians and New Zealanders had failed. It was the New Zealanders’ first defeat. Many blamed the commanders, particularly Lieutenant General Godley. One New Zealander, Corporal Harold Green, believed ‘the stunt should never have been ordered under such conditions. It was absolute murder.’ Rifleman Henry Gibbens felt that the commanders—‘the bloody heads’—should ‘have been sent over the top instead of us. They had nothing ready and you were up to your hips in mud and water.’
That evening, with rain still falling, the men held on grimly to the little they’d gained. There were nearly 3000 New Zealand casualties, and more than 4000 Australian. The aid posts overflowed. Limbs hung from tendons; some men had huge holes in their bodies; and one shocked soldier continued to drink his coffee as it poured out of the bullet hole in his cheek. Doctors and orderlies toiled to help them but the wounded arrived faster than they could be seen to. Outside, men lay on the wet ground, shaking uncontrollably under ‘cold driving rain and hail’ and exploding shells.
Private George Tierney and five other stretcher-bearers struggled through the mud to carry out a wounded man but they soon had to stop: all were vomiting from the effects of an earlier gas attack. Around them, the walking wounded led other gas victims, their eyes bandaged over. With nothing left to vomit, Tierney retched continually as his eyes filled with water and swelled up. By the time he reached the hospital, he was blind. Nurses bathed his eyes and inserted cocaine under his eyelids before bandaging them, but ‘the agony was awful…it was as though my eyes were full of sand.’ The gas could cause lung-collapse and, over two nights, five men died. Tierney was kept alive by the hard work of New Zealand nurses, who visited other hospitals on their days off to find New Zealand soldiers and see if they could help them. It took Tierney two weeks to regain his sight; others took much longer.
Bringing supplies up through the mud, Ypres sector.
AWM E00963
To cope with the numbers of wounded, extra battalions were sent forward to act as stretcher-bearers. It took eight men four hours to stretcher out a single soldier to advanced dressing stations, where doctors stitched up wounds, sawed off mangled limbs and applied splints to broken ones.
At the front-line, German soldiers held their fire and directed stretcher-bearers towards the wounded. But not all of them could be found. Men cried out at night. One kept calling over and over. Private Stanfield helped search for him but
we couldn’t find him and we heard him crying part of the next day. Calling, you know, calling, sort of crying, not screaming or anything, crying out. We just knew there was a wounded man lying down under something you see. We never found that man. That’s the only thing that’s stuck in my memory.
Twice now the Germans had defeated the Allies, and their spirits lifted. Their artillery fired over sneezing gas, which made it difficult to wear a mask, then mustard gas followed, blistering skin, swelling eyes and turning the men’s voices hoarse. At night, Gotha bombers flew overhead, lit by the glare of British searchlights.
The Diggers were demoralised and depressed. Victory or defeat both came at a heavy cost. Men spoke of times before or after Passchendaele. They hated the war and could see no end to it. The thought of another winter filled them with despair.
A VICTORY TOO LATE
The Canadians took over and, at their commander’s insistence, were given more time to prepare. They would seize in three advances what the Australians and New Zealanders had been expected to take in one. In bitter fighting, after an 11-day bombardment, they captured Bellevue Spur on 26 October, then
Passchendaele on 10 November.
The Third Battle of Ypres finished three months after it had begun. Over 70,000 Allied soldiers had been killed and 200,000 wounded. Although the Germans lost fewer troops, their commanders worried they wouldn’t recover from the damage done. They began to realise the war could be lost.
Then, on 20 November, 400 British tanks tore a 10-kilometre hole in the Hindenburg Line near Cambrai. It was a huge success—in one day the British gained six kilometres, over half what had been captured in the three-month Ypres offensive. People in Britain celebrated, and for the first time since the start of the war, church bells were rung in celebration. But 10 days later, the Germans counterattacked and regained the lost ground. Despite this victory, the German commanders knew they wouldn’t survive if they continued to take a defensive approach to the war.
THE YEAR ENDS
The Australians stayed at Passchendaele for several more weeks, then all five divisions moved to Messines to rest and recover. For the first time since arriving on the Western Front, all the Australian divisions were together under one commander, Birdwood—now promoted to full general. The I Anzac Corps was renamed the Australian Corps, while II Anzac Corps became XXII Corps. The New Zealanders took over the line in front of Polygon Wood.
It was another hard winter. When the land froze, bullets ricocheted off the earth and fragments from exploding shells ‘flew incredible distances’. Icicles hung from tin hats, and soldiers slipped on the duckboards. Gas lingered blue in the still air and the dead lay frozen and twisted.
The year ended, once again, in a stalemate. The German submarine campaign had not brought Britain to its knees; nor had the British driven the Germans from Belgium, although they had drawn German reserves away from the recovering French.
In Russia, troops sick of being poor, hungry and ill-treated, overthrew the tsar in a revolution and made peace with the Germans, but the peace treaty was a stark reminder of what the Allies were fighting for. In return for peace Russia gave Germany one-third of its agricultural land, half of its industry and most of its coalmines. With Russia out of the war, the Germans began moving their troops from the Eastern Front to the Western Front, exactly what Field Marshal Haig and others had feared. Over the following weeks, an extra 1000 guns and 35 divisions reached the front with the aim of attacking the Allies before the Americans arrived.
KILLED IN ACTION
____________________
PRIVATE GEORGE SEABROOK
Painter. 20 September 1917
PRIVATE THEO SEABROOK
Engine fireman. 20 September 1917
MAJOR PHILIP HOWELL-PRICE
Bank clerk. 4 October 1917
SECOND LIEUTENANT JOHN BISHOP
School teacher. 12 October 1917
SECOND LIEUTENANT NORMAN WATSON
12 October 1917
LIEUTENANT WALDE FISHER
Law student and tutor. 5 April 1918
DIED OF WOUNDS
____________________
SECOND LIEUTENANT WILLIAM SEABROOK
Telephonist. 21 September 1917
SERGEANT DAVE GALAHER
Storeman. 4 October 1917
PRIVATE ROBIN HAMLEY
Schoolmaster. 6 October 1917
CHAPTER TEN
THE SPRING OFFENSIVE, 1918
BIRD—In loving memory of my dearly loved and only son, Pte.C . Bird (Charlie), 5th Batt., killed in action Mont St. Quentin, September 1, 1918.
I little thought when we said goodbye
We parted forever and you were to die.
We’ll meet again, my dearest son.
INSERTED BY HIS LOVING MOTHER ,
A. MADEN .
NEWSPAPER ‘IN MEMORIAM ’ NOTICE
ON 21 MARCH 1918, with thick fog hanging over the land, more than 6000 German guns opened fire across an 80-kilometre front at the Somme. For over five hours, their shells tore into the British trenches. Then German storm troops charged through the swirling mist. They carried their new light machine guns, bombs and entrenching tools, sharpened for hand-to-hand combat. After forcing gaps in the British line, they surged through them, leaving any heavily defended villages and strong points for following troops to capture. The resistance was, in places, more hardline than expected, and with no supplies the storm troops lived off food taken from British shelters—eating ham and bread and sucking raw eggs dry. They kept their water-cooled machine guns from overheating by filling the cooling system with urine.
The Spring Offensive was Germany’s last attempt at a victory before the Americans arrived. Support for the war in Germany was weakening; there were strikes over food shortages, and the country was reaching the end of its manpower. Many wanted peace even if this meant handing back Belgium, but to the leaders and generals this was the same as losing the war. Instead, they attacked where the British and French Armies joined, with the aim of splitting them and driving the British back to the English Channel. Once the British were trapped and destroyed, the Germans believed the French would have little will to continue.
As the British were forced into retreat across the Somme, large gaps opened in the line, and ground that the Allies had captured in 1916 fell again—High Wood, Flers, Thiepval and Pozières. The British were in disarray, and large numbers of troops retreated in confusion as six massive German guns began shelling Paris.
GIVE A MAN A CHANCE
The New Zealand Division and the 3rd, 4th and 5th Australian Divisions moved to the Somme, travelling by rail, in motor lorries or on foot, marching huge distances each day and stopping only to eat cold meals and sleep. Although the Germans seemed unstoppable, the Diggers were excited— surely the German Army would become exhausted and too weak to defend itself.
At the same time, on 26 March, the Allied leaders met at Doullens, just north of Amiens. Field Marshal Haig had earlier requested that the French general, Pétain, send reserves to help the British, but Pétain had refused—he was convinced the Germans were going to launch a new offensive against Paris and he didn’t want to deplete his troops. With divisions emerging between the Allies, Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch was put in charge of the Allied front. For the first time since the start of the war, British and French troops were under one commander. Foch’s first order was that there were to be no more withdrawals.
The Australians and New Zealanders were frustrated by the retreat—they felt the British had been too quick to flee. While some men accepted that the British had simply been fighting for too long, others felt that the rigid class system robbed soldiers of initiative and that they relied on officers for direction. They disliked the officers even more, believing most were promoted because of money and connections, not ability. The Anzacs’ respect had to be earned, and if an officer showed courage they would follow him anywhere. But the typical British officer, they felt, flounced around with gloves, cane and eyepiece, miles behind the front-line and hopelessly out of touch with reality. A popular joke among the men was about an officer overtaking a hare while retreating from the advancing Germans, and yelling, ‘Get out of the road you brute and give a man a chance who can run.’
A TERRIBLE THING TO DO
As the Diggers got closer, the land appeared largely deserted, except for refugees carting out their possessions, and the occasional British soldier heading in the opposite direction, telling them that if they kept going they’d ‘get killed’.
On 26 March, two brigades of the 4th Australian Division arrived at the village of Hébuterne, 38 kilometres north-west of Amiens, to find it still lightly held by exhausted British troops who’d been fighting and withdrawing for five days. Some wept with relief as the Australians took over.
When the New Zealanders arrived near Beaumont-Hamel close by, the lack of British troops made it obvious they’d come to a gap in the line. Stretching eight kilometres from Beaumont-Hamel to Hébuterne, the gap had to be closed— it was in front of the vital railway junction at Amiens, and this was what the Germans were now aiming for. The New Zealanders mar
ched out to close the gap just as the Germans, flushed with success, were advancing through it. Small fights broke out. In one trench, Private William Morris bayoneted a German soldier. ‘It was the only time I used a bayonet, I’m glad it was the last. I was nearly sick. It was a terrible thing to do.’
When the Aucklanders arrived, they were given a Mills bomb each and sent to extend the line towards the Australians at Hébuterne. At dawn, as distant villages burned, fresh German storm troops strolled forward, full of confidence, smoking and laughing, unaware that the gap had been closed. The New Zealanders waited until they were only 45 metres away, then opened fire. The Australian troops in Hébuterne were just as deadly. The Germans tried to advance four more times and, each time, the Diggers shot them down. For Morris, it was a terrible day. The Germans
sent another lot and he got wiped down the same. Terrible!…They had four deep, cleared the whole thing. Terrible! A terrible thing to happen, isn’t it? Just murder.
‘YOU WILL HOLD THEM’
With the line secured, the two other brigades of the 4th Division turned their attention to Albert, 15 kilometres from Hébuterne. The town had been captured by the Germans, but instead of pushing on to Amiens and the railway junction, they had stopped to loot and drink.
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