Zero Hour

by Leon Davidson

  The brigades marched towards Albert at night, with flares rising and falling along the front-line. Smoking was forbidden; overhead, the shapes of large Gotha bombers blocked out the stars as they searched for telltale signs of moving troops.

  On the morning of 27 March, the Australians looked down a slope, past a railway embankment, at Albert and the small neighbouring village of Dernancourt. The open fields were strewn with the wreckage of three crashed aeroplanes. A riderless horse, covered in blood, galloped back past them, startling hares already bolting from shell explosions. In Albert, the golden Virgin Mary statue still glittered above the smoke from burning houses. The troops moved down to the embankment to relieve a thin, ragged line of Scottish soldiers who’d been fighting and withdrawing for six days. Lieutenant George Mitchell remembered them asking:

  ‘Who are you?’

  We told them. ‘Forty-eighth Australians.’

  ‘Thank God,’ they said. ‘You will hold him.’

  A German attack the following morning failed. From Albert to Dernancourt, the Australians stood waist-high above the embankment and fired into the advancing troops. One man, Sergeant Stanley McDougall, used a Lewis gun taken from two dead comrades until the barrel grew so hot it burned and blistered his hand. Private Joseph Pitt, a Sydney labourer, worked furiously to construct two functioning guns out of four damaged ones. Others took bombs from prisoners or threw stones. The Germans retreated to the houses of Dernancourt. That night, rain fell as the Australians emptied German packs and found them full of biscuits, letters and packages, some from Australia, stolen from Red Cross stores. In Dernancourt, the sounds of farm animals in distress could be heard; the famished Germans were killing them for food.

  TOO CLOSE TO STOP

  Despite the initial British retreat, the withdrawal was over. The Allies now held a continuous line although it was weak in places. Even though the Diggers believed the British had fled too easily, they had slowed the German advance.

  The German supply lines were over-extended and the troops exhausted, but General Ludendorff had come too close to Amiens to stop. Over the next five days, the Germans attempted to split General Gough’s weakened British 5th Army from the French at Villers-Bretonneux, another town close to Amiens. During this time, an Australian battalion helped hold the line after British troops left their positions, while the New Zealanders launched a successful attack near Hébuterne that saw the Germans driven back for the first time since 21 March.

  But on 4 April the 35th Battalion of the Australian 9th Brigade was forced into retreat through Villers-Bretonneux after British troops on either side panicked and fell back. The last Australians in the area, the 36th Battalion, were told to advance until stopped, then to ‘hold on at all costs’. Before marching out, Lieutenant Colonel John Milne, the battalion commander, looked at his men and said, ‘Goodbye, boys, it’s neck or nothing.’ When the five waves of advancing German troops spotted the fast-moving Australians, they took cover in nearby woods and opened fire. The Australians also took cover, and a soldier in the uniform of a British officer arrived at one post and ordered the men to withdraw. The lance corporal in charge of the post asked for papers, but when the officer had none and couldn’t prove his identity, the lance corporal shot him, believing he was a German. Whether he was or not was never established.

  Soldiers of the 36th Battalion fell thickly, but the survivors rushed on in small groups, one party giving covering fire as another raced forward. Soon the Germans began to break, and when the British cavalry rode forward with swords and lances drawn, some of the retiring 35th Battalion joined them to form a solid line in front of Villers-Bretonneux. The town, for now, was held.

  The next day, three German divisions attacked the Australians holding the railway embankment near Albert. They surged through a gap in the line at the railway bridge— heavy shelling had killed all the men—and moved up the slope, hauling up their artillery to fire directly into any post that resisted. The Australian artillery reply was weak—only two guns had ammunition left—so the Diggers left their wounded and retreated to a trench at the top of the slope. The wounded were taken prisoner. Some were well cared for, others weren’t. When one German officer asked a group who they were, Private Frank Curtis replied, ‘Australians.’ The officer shot him in the stomach.

  But the Germans failed to break through. They had captured the railway embankment but had run out of troops and energy. As German soldiers paid their respects by erecting rough wooden crosses for two Australian dead with the epitaph ‘Here lies a brave English warrior,’ Ludendorff paused the Somme offensive and turned his attention to Flanders.

  BACKS TO THE WALL

  Ludendorff ’s second attack—Operation Georgette—was launched in Flanders, where many Allied troops had just arrived to recover from the Somme. This attack was as brutal, and the consequences as devastating. Armentières, Messines, Bullecourt and Passchendaele—every metre of territory the British, New Zealanders and Australians had fought and died for in 1917, and more, fell. Soon Hazebrouck, a major railway centre that supplied half the Flanders area with food and ammunition, was within a day’s march of the Germans. As the 1st Australian Division moved to Hazebrouck, Field Marshal Haig appealed to his troops:

  Every position must be held to the last man…With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end.

  Arriving at Hazebrouck station on 12 April, the Australians marched forward with a pannikin of hot cocoa and dug a second line of trenches six miles in front of Hazebrouck. The following day, the Germans continued to advance and, with British troops retreating past them, the Australians found that their trenches had become the front-line.

  On the morning of 14 April, the advancing German waves made easy targets. One soldier said it was ‘like firing at a whole haystack—one could not miss.’ But on 16 April, two New Zealand companies of the 2nd Entrenching Battalion had a different experience in a village next to the Australians. The men—mostly new to France and expecting to dig trenches, not fight—found themselves surrounded by Germans. After the British retreated, one company fought its way back, but in the other over 100 men surrendered—the largest number of New Zealanders to be taken prisoner at one time.

  Despite the rapid German advances, the British eventually re-established their line. Hazebrouck was safe. With Operation Georgette slowly grinding to a halt, Ludendorff once again turned his attention back to the Somme.

  VILLERS-BRETONNEUX

  At the Somme, British and Australian troops dug new defensive positions and lived off pigs, ducks, fish and champagne taken from abandoned villages. If they spotted a flying pigeon, they shot it down. It was a brief respite; the Australians, who now held 27 kilometres of the front, from Hangard to Albert, expected an attack—reports and surveillance indicated a German build-up. On the night of 17 April, the Germans fired over 20,000 shells into Villers-Bretonneux, drenching the area in gas which soaked the troops’ clothes. When the Allies removed their masks, the gas got into their eyes and lungs. Hundreds stumbled out of Villers-Bretonneux, their eyes streaming and closing over. No advance followed but signs kept pointing to an attack.

  Overhead, Captain Richthofen and his Flying Circus fought the British for air supremacy. On 21 April the Red Baron flew low over the Allied lines, chasing a scout biplane. The Australians fired up at him as he passed over them. Suddenly the Red Baron’s machine swerved, dived and crashed. Germany’s greatest war ace was dead, shot through the heart, most likely by one of the Australians who rushed over to strip him and his triplane for souvenirs.

  That afternoon, as German deserters talked of a coming offensive, British troops replaced the Australians in front of Villers-Bretonneux. They were mostly under 19 years old, young men who wouldn’t have been accepted into the army in 1914. One Australian wrote in his diary that

  for two days companies of infantry have been passing us on the roads—companies of children, English children; pink
faced, round cheeked children, flushed under the weight of their unaccustomed packs, with their steel helmets on the back of their heads and the strap hanging loosely on their rounded baby chins.

  The British War Council, disillusioned with Haig after Passchendaele, had been withholding reinforcements for fear he would use them to capture yet another shell-holed village. But with British divisions weak after the German attacks, the council sent the reinforcements. Rather than giving them experience in quiet areas, the British commanders rushed them to critical zones. When, on 24 April, 13 three-metre-high German tanks loomed out of a dense mist after a heavy bombardment of gas and high explosives, most of the boy-soldiers fled, and, although the Germans had to fight from house to house, Villers-Bretonneux was captured.

  Two brigades of the 4th and 5th Divisions were ordered up to retake the village. The British commanders wanted an immediate attack, but the commander of the 13th Brigade, Brigadier General Thomas Glasgow, refused, saying the men would be slaughtered in the daylight. The British insisted until Glasgow replied, ‘If it was God-Almighty who gave the order we couldn’t do it in daylight.’

  While the men wrote letters, ‘posted’ them in a sandbag for delivery and drank hot tea, their commanders finalised the plan. The two brigades—the 15th under Brigadier General Elliot and the 13th under Glasgow—were to skirt the village and then meet in front of it to prevent German reinforcements from entering and those inside from leaving.

  NEW WAVES ALWAYS COME ON CHEERING

  It was dark when the 13th Brigade waited at the jumping-off point. Captain Billy Harburn, commander of one of the companies in the 51st Battalion, told his men to ignore the German-held wood and village houses on their left, and that nothing was to stop them getting to their objective. ‘Kill every bloody German you see, we don’t want any prisoners and God bless you.’ The sky glowed red under the thudding British bombardment as soldiers of the 51st and 52nd Battalions moved slowly forward, freezing each time flares lit the night. Then German machine guns churned to life.

  The 51st Battalion was in trouble; the Germans in the woods fired flare after flare, silhouetting them against the skyline. The troops staggered on through gunfire, then halted. Groups of men half-knelt on the slope, as if they were praying, but they were all dead. Lieutenant Clifford Sadlier and Sergeant Charles Stokes, both from Subiaco, Western Australia, knew they couldn’t move until the Germans in the woods were silenced. They gathered as many bombs as they could and then, leading the survivors, charged into the trees towards the bursts of phosphorescent tracer bullets flickering in straight, steady streams through the trees. Stumbling in the dark, they bombed their way from gun to gun, until the woods grew silent.

  But as the Australians continued their advance, German machine-gunners in a trench in front of them opened fire. The men stalled, but surged forward again at the whistle-blow of an officer, picking their way over the barbed wire and rushing the trench. The Australians advanced another 900 metres, until eight further gunners set up in shell holes opened fire.

  The Germans fired until they were down to their last belt of ammunition. Many of the Australians, rushing forward in groups under cover of their Lewis gunners, were killed, but, as witnessed by a German officer, Sergeant Major Elfeldt, ‘New waves always come on cheering in their place and rush forward into our machine-gun fire.’ As the ammunition ran out, the Australians let out a final wild yell and chased the Germans until forced to a halt. They were 250 metres short of their final objective, and, although they weren’t able to join with the 15th Brigade in front of Villers-Bretonneux, the brigade machine-gunners instead trained their guns across the gap.

  THERE THEY GO

  Like the 13th Brigade on the right, the three battalions of the 15th Brigade had also lined up as houses burned in Villers-Bretonneux. It was just past midnight on 25 April, and some men smiled at each other and muttered, ‘It’s Anzac Day’— taking this as a good omen. But they too were spotted. The Germans opened fire. The Australians broke into a roar and surged forward, screaming into the flare-lit dark. They charged machine guns frontally, killing the crew. Any German who tried to surrender was killed and those found hiding were bayoneted. There were calls of ‘There they go, there they go!’—the 15th Brigade chased any who fled; their hands and rifles became slippery with blood.

  By 4 a.m., machine guns of both brigades covered the gap in front of Villers-Bretonneux, and after several British and Australian companies cleared the village, the troops scavenged for souvenirs. Men played billiards in a mansion while bullets pinged through the window. Others changed their lice-ridden underwear for fancy lingerie, much to the surprise of the nurses when some were later wounded.

  The German advance had failed. The battle, on the anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli in 1915, had left 1500 Australians dead or wounded. The sandbag of letters the men had written prior to the attack was found beside the body of a dead soldier, the envelopes stained with blood. It was Lieutenant Mitchell’s duty to read the letters:

  War hardened as I was, the task shook me—these last lines of the fallen. Cheering words to mothers in far-off sunny places, loving thoughts to wives, to children, to sweethearts. A little longing of the writers crept through. Sometimes there was a hint of the knowledge of the approach of the reaper. My eyes were wet, long before I had finished.

  On 3 May, in the moonlight, Mitchell ‘hopped the bags’ again. He was in a bad mood; he was to attack a German-held wood opposite Villers-Bretonneux with ‘untrained rabble’ against seasoned troops. Without conscription, the Australian reinforcement numbers were running low, so men who’d enlisted into non-combat roles were being used to fill up the thinning ranks. While veteran troops had drunk wine with French soldiers, Mitchell had trained the reinforcements to load a rifle. Now, in the flare light, the inexperienced troops grouped together as a German ‘with a voice like a bull’ barked at his machine-gunners to fire. The attack quickly failed.

  When stretcher-bearers raced out waving white clothes in place of Red Cross flags, a tall German officer confronted them, asking them if they wanted to surrender.

  The Australians said, ‘Surrender be—.’

  ‘I do not understand French. Talk in English,’ he replied.

  Mitchell met the German officer in the middle of no-man’s-land, and, after saluting each other, they agreed to a 20-minute truce. After two hours, the two men met again. Mitchell declined an offer of more time, and they returned to their lines. Once there, they met each other’s gaze before dropping into their trenches.

  The Spring Offensive was over. Although the Germans had gained land—most of it the same land they’d occupied in 1914—this was no longer enough to win the war. They’d failed to defeat the British and their crack troops had been shot down leading the advances. They still had more divisions on the Western Front than the Allies, but they hadn’t defeated the British before the Americans arrived.

  KILLED IN ACTION

  ____________________

  PRIVATE FRANK CURTIS

  Farmer. 5 April 1918

  LIEUTENANT COLONEL JOHN MILNE

  Engineer. 12 April 1918

  PRIVATE CHARLES BIRD

  Pipe moulder. 1 September 1918

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  BLACK DAYS, 1918

  LINFORD —In sad and loving memory of our dear son and

  brother, No. 3880, Private Charlie Linford, 2nd Pioneer

  Battalion, killed in action on the 5th October, 1918,

  at Montbrehain.

  Our brave hero,

  When we see the boys returning

  Our hearts they throb with pain

  To think that you’re not there,

  dear Charlie,

  And will never come again.

  INSERTED BY HIS LOVING

  MOTHER AND FATHER ,

  SISTERS AND BROTHERS .

  NEWSPAPER ‘IN MEMORIAM ’ NOTICE

  WHILE THE BRITISH divisions recovered from the Spring Offensive, the Australians a
nd New Zealanders welcomed the quiet arrival of better weather at the Somme and Flanders. They bathed in streams, bombed for fish, played two-up, wrote letters home, and shot hares and goats to eat. Veterans who’d served at Gallipoli now wore a golden ‘A’ sewn to their tunic.

  Not content with resting, the Diggers made sure that their sectors at Hazebrouck, Amiens and Hébuterne became the liveliest on the front. Using the hedges in Flanders and the high wild crops growing in the Somme no-man’s-land as cover, they began what became known as ‘peaceful penetration’. On hot dry days, they stole across no-man’s-land into the enemy trenches, killing or kidnapping sentries. To the troops who came up to relieve the posts, these men seemed to have just disappeared. A history of one German sector recorded that

  we have the Australians opposite us (200 metres away) and they are very quick and cunning. They glide about in the night like cats, and come right up to our trenches without our seeing them. Last night they were in our trenches and killed two men and dragged one away with them.

  Another history said: ‘They lay opposite us, exceptionally good Australian troops, who kept us on tenterhooks with their all night activity.’ Commanders began to complain about being put opposite the Australians, and referred to their time as ‘bloody’. According to a German intelligence report the New Zealanders were a ‘good assault division’ with a

  very strongly developed individual self-confidence… and a specially pronounced hatred of the Germans. The Division prides itself on taking few prisoners.

  Propaganda claimed the New Zealanders were cannibals.

  While the Allies waited for the next blow, the Australians launched small attacks, capturing the village of Ville-sur-Ancre on 19 May. Eight days later, the Germans forced the French back 50 kilometres, to within 56 kilometres of Paris, before running out of steam. Then, on 10 June, the Australians stormed Morlancourt at the Somme, capturing 325 Germans and leaving their divisional commander worried that if ‘a complete battalion had been wiped out’ in a few minutes, worse could happen.