‘Shit, what’s he doing?’ Lillie cries. ‘We’re supposed to consolidate.’
‘We don’t have a choice now, sir, we have to go with him or the Boche will come around him,’ Ben says.
Lillie reluctantly gives the order to advance and the whole force sweeps forward towards the German rear lines. To their surprise there is little resistance and where they believe the lines are they see nothing but churned earth and craters. The Allied bombardment has been so heavy that all traces of the German trenches seem to have been wiped out. Eventually, judging by the number of German dead and the equipment lying about, they realise that they have reached the second line and Lillie, reporting the capture, instructs the troops to dig in. They have achieved more than has been asked of them and have done what Le Maistre has demanded. They have taken a section of the Hindenburg Line which has never before been breached. Moreover they’ve done it without having to look a single German in the eye.
But their victory is shortlived. The Germans now move in. The Welsh Borderers, a British regiment responsible for their extreme right, meets heavy machine-gun fire and is forced back, losing nine of their twelve officers and seventy-four of their men. They are intended to be the support for the Australians on the right. On Lillie and Leadbeater’s left, the 7th Battalion hasn’t arrived and only one platoon has made it to the German second line of defence. They join Lillie and the left flank is completely exposed along with the right. Lillie and Leadbeater, the two officers in command of the 5th, are also exposed on either flank with the attacking Germans about to encircle them, coming around on the left and right to once again occupy their own former front line and trap the 5th Battalion behind the German lines.
Ben points this out to Captain Lillie, who, having come this far, is reluctant to turn back. ‘Sir, they’ll be up our arses like a rat up a drainpipe before we know where we are.’
Just then a message comes through to say that Leadbeater has been killed and his company is in disarray, all its officers having been killed as well.
‘We’re falling back,’ Lillie decides. ‘Ben, get the fuck over there and bring them out, we’ll pull back to the first German lines and try to hold them there.’
Ben, sensing the direction the Germans might be taking to recapture their own front line, orders Lieutenant Fitzgerald, another one of his raider officers in charge of the 5th Battalion bombers, to move up onto their flank to guard it as he withdraws Leadbeater’s company. Fitzgerald, though an officer, accepts the order and doesn’t muck about in moving into position on the left flank to protect Ben’s withdrawal.
The Germans, using their own bombers, fight to break through Fitzgerald’s defence. The Germans have a lighter bomb which can be thrown a further distance than the one possessed by the Anzacs. To make up for this deficiency Fitzgerald and his bombers dash across the open ground so that they can overcome the disadvantage, thus constantly exposing themselves and at the same time drawing nearer to the German bombers.
In the meantime Ben pulls Leadbeater’s company back into the German front-line trenches where he joins up with Lillie. Their flank is still vulnerable to the German attack, which is being halted by Fitzgerald’s men, though it is only a matter of time before the enemy break through.
‘Sir, they’ll be breaking through and coming down their own trenches to get us,’ he tells Lillie. ‘We can’t pull back across no-man’s-land, they’ll cut us off long before we make it. We’ll have to stay here and fight it out. We have maybe half an hour if we’re lucky to build a barricade to block their advance down the trench from the railway line. We can fight them from behind the barricade with bombs, it’s about our only chance.’
Captain Lillie nods. ‘Get the men onto it. By the way, Sergeant-Major, what happened to Major Solomon, he’s your C.O.? I could use a little help.’
‘I’ve not seen him, sir, must have been caught up in the confusion when the Boche opened up at the start.’
Ben puts the men to work, building a barricade in the trench, using bits of timber and any German equipment they can find lying around. They work feverishly, knowing it is only a matter of time before Fitzgerald’s bombers are overrun.
In fact, Lieutenant Fitzgerald, venturing once too often into the open to hurl a bomb, is killed by a machine gun. Shortly after, Gray, who had earlier laid the starting tape with Ben, is also killed as well as two more of the bombers.
The barricade, though, is more or less established.
The fight begins.
At the barricade the surviving bombers and those who can crowd in with them throw until they think their arms must surely fall off. The Germans keep coming, hurling their own bombs. Ben positions six snipers who are given the job of shooting the hands off the Germans as they are about to throw bombs over the barricade. They fight for an hour, the Germans only a matter of feet away on the other side of the barricade. The 9th and the 10th Battalions arrive and at last some of the 7th to reinforce the exhausted and wounded men from the 5th.
They manage to mount a Lewis gun for a while, aiming it directly down the trench at the Germans, mowing them down before it is destroyed by a bomb. One of the officers of the 10th moves with another Lewis gun into a cross trench which effectively prevents the enemy from coming over the top of or around the barricade.
On the Australian side the bombers, by now everyone who still has the strength to throw, are standing on the bodies of their mates to get to the Germans on the other side.
At half-past seven, with the men close to collapse, Captain Oates of the 7th arrives with three platoons from his battalion and drives the Germans back almost to the railway. Then a second barrier is built higher up in the German trenches and a T-sap is cut on either side of it to create a broader front and make bombing and rifle fire easier. After two more attacks the Germans withdraw to beyond the railway and the Australians remain in possession of the German front-line trenches almost to the railway line.
It isn’t everything Le Maistre has hoped for, but they’ve achieved more than any other advance on the Germans since the beginning of the war. They’ve breached the German Line for the first time and now they are holding it.
They have little time to celebrate. The Germans are not going to let the Australians breach their lines. Realising that all their own troops are out of Pozières and can be cleared from the immediate area, they commence to bombard their former front line, making it impossible for those who hold it to retreat.
What follows proves to be the heaviest and most prolonged bombardment of the war. The length of the line the Anzacs hold is just over four hundred yards and contained in it is the whole of the 1st Division, some eight thousand men who cannot advance or retreat and are trapped under the maelstrom of German artillery.
Those who cannot find cover have little hope of surviving. The Germans, who are using their own survey maps of their former trenches, are laying down such accurate fire that whole sections of a trench are often simply wiped out. Men disappear, with arms and legs and heads torn from their bodies. Hundreds, soon thousands, of torsos and limbs and heads are scattered everywhere.
So accurate and intense is the fire that some officers lead their men out of the trenches, preferring to take their chances in the open. Dust rises in clouds that can be seen for miles and the day is turned into dusk.
Oblivious of the bombing, rats now cover no-man’s-land in waves, seeking out the corpses, gorging on the flesh of dead men until they simply drag themselves across the ground or lie panting covered in blood and gore.
Ben’s section of the trench is hit, killing twenty men who just disappear, and he finds himself cut off from Lillie with just a handful of men a little further down. Some fifty men are now in his section of the front line. Towards the end of the newly exposed section is a blockhouse, not much bigger than a small outhouse but solidly built, probably a place to store ammunition. Dead men lie at its entrance and one wall has been completely covered in someone’s blood and brains. Ben moves down to it and pus
hes open the door. Inside he finds five men, one of them Joshua Solomon, who cowers in the far corner, his knees hugged to his chest. As the daylight floods in he starts to whimper.
‘Sir, you had better come out,’ Ben calls to him.
Joshua shields his eyes against the light with one hand.
‘No way! No way! I’m not going out there,’ he cries. ‘I don’t want to die. Please, I don’t want to die, Ben. Save me. Please save me!’ He looks about him wildly. ‘Sergeant-Major, I order you to save me!’
‘C’mon, out you get,’ Ben says to the other men, ‘how long have you been in here?’
‘I dunno,’ the soldier replies. ‘Since last night I think.’
‘Last night? What time last night?’
‘When the Germans started to fire on us?’
‘What, you mean just after we started forward?’
‘Yes, Sergeant-Major, we lost our direction and then we come across this and crawled in.’
‘And him?’ Ben points to Joshua.
‘He come later, Sergeant, about two hours later, he was pissed.’
‘Righto, you bastards have done no fucking work, you’re gunna have to dig.’ He indicates Joshua. ‘Leave him there, come on, move your arses!’
The bombardment continues all day and Ben knows that if the shelling continues they will all die, but he sets his men to digging, thinking it better than keeping them idle. ‘If we get a direct hit, we’re history,’ he tells them honestly. ‘If we can dig deep enough we may have a chance, dig for your lives.’
As they dig they find the recent dead, mostly limbs and bits and pieces. They throw them over the side, tossing a dead mate’s severed head over the parapet like a melon, their hands often wet with blood and gore. And still they dig, their lives depending on it.
Ben prays that they can last until nightfall when he tells himself he’s going to have to get them out. At about six o’clock the dust is so heavy that it is prematurely dark. Ben decides he cannot wait. They have had one or two near misses with the trenches on either side of them taking a direct hit, some of the bodies being blown so high into the air that they sail way over their heads. One of Ben’s men is killed when a torso lands on his head, snapping his neck. It is only a matter of time before the German artillery find them.
He calls his men together and points to a blockhouse some sixty yards away. It has been reduced to rubble by the bombardment and seems at first sight to be even more vulnerable than the trench in which they are hiding.
‘I’ve been right up to one of those, most have a section underground, we’re going to go for it. If I’m wrong we’re dead, if I’m right the section underneath may give us a level of protection. I’m giving you a choice, you can stay dug in here and hope for the best, maybe the bombardment will soon be over. Or you can come with me. We’ll be fired on trying to make our objective and I can’t promise I’m right.’ He looks about him. ‘If I’m wrong we won’t get back, lads. I want you to understand that, there is no return, we won’t be able to get back to this trench and we’ll all almost certainly die.’
‘What if the bombardment stops? We could be safer here than trying to cross over to that blockhouse?’ someone asks.
‘Quite right, lad, but if I were the Hun and I had us pinned down like this I don’t think I’d stop firing until I had so pulverised the position, no further resistance was possible. That’s what I’d do. But I’m not the enemy and, frankly, I don’t know. I’ll give you five minutes to decide. Those who are coming to the right, get your kit together, those staying to the left, my suggestion is to keep digging.’
Ben leaves them to decide and goes to the little blockhouse where he has left Joshua. ‘Come on, we’re getting out,’ he says.
‘No, no, I don’t want to,’ Joshua cries.
‘Right, I’m going to count to ten, if you’re not out of here by then I’m going to shoot you,’ Ben says and commences to count. At the count of five Joshua has crawled out on his hands and knees. Ben jerks him to his feet, but he immediately collapses the moment he is left on his own. Ben reaches down and grabs him under the arms and pulls him back onto his feet. ‘You better learn to stand in the next two minutes, we’re moving out.’ He props Joshua up against the wall of the trench and leaves him.
Nearly two-thirds of the men are standing to the right with their gear. They’re a sorry-looking lot, the fight gone out of most of them. ‘Come on, sir, we’re going,’ he calls to Joshua.
Joshua takes a step away from the wall and collapses. Ben turns to two men, veterans he’s known from Gallipoli. ‘Partridge, Collins, take the C.O. between you.’
Partridge looks at Ben and spits on the ground. ‘Fuck him, Ben.’
Ben grabs him by the front of his shirt. ‘That’s an order, like it or not, he’s our fucking C.O., he’s coming.’
‘He’s not worth it,’ Collins says, but they both take Joshua and support him.
‘Right, we’re out of here, it’s yonder blockhouse, every man for himself. Go for it, lads!’
There is a mad scramble out of the trenches and Ben waits for Partridge and Collins to manhandle Joshua out. ‘What’s fucking wrong with him, eh? Bloody legs look all right to me,’ Partridge complains again. Whereupon Joshua, seeing himself exposed, jumps to his feet and runs for the blockhouse. ‘I should shoot the bastard!’ Partridge says.
‘Stop whingeing and get going,’ Ben orders and sets out at a trot himself. The dust is now so thick that it is akin to fighting through a dust storm and they reach the blockhouse without being fired on. Visibility cannot be more than twenty feet.
Ben is correct, they find a hole in the ground which leads into an underground section of the blockhouse that is untouched by the bombardment. It is sufficiently large to house them comfortably and the men, exhausted and frightened, collapse.
‘Righto, break out your rations, see if there’s a stove or a fireplace somewhere so we might get a brew up,’ Ben instructs one of the corporals, handing him his electric torch.
The man returns in a few minutes, ‘Found the cookhouse, a stove, wood and an urn. No water, though, Sergeant-Major.’
Ben doesn’t know where he’s heard it, but now he says, ‘Look under the floor near the stove. Wait on, I’ll come with you.’ Sure enough, in the centre of the small room used for cooking is a flagstone set in the floor and upon lifting it they see a steel tank of water and a rope with a bucket attached hangs from it. They find six storm lanterns and the interior of the room where the men are gathered is soon lit, dimly but sufficiently for them to see each other and to prepare their field rations. There is a huge sense of relief among the men. The bombardment outside continues and every time a shell falls close the noise within the blockhouse is so intense it hurts their ears.
During a slight lull between salvos Ben calls them to attention. ‘Righto, we’re not out of this yet.’ He indicates the four men he’d found in the blockhouse earlier. ‘You four, you’ll stand sentry duty for the next four hours. The rest of you eat and get your heads down, have a kip while you may.’
Ben tries to sleep himself but cannot and he takes out a writing pad and pencil and starts to write to Victoria.
My dearest sister Victoria,
I am writing to you from a German blockhouse we have captured near a village called Pozières. You will no doubt read about it in the weeks to come as it is the first major offensive the 1st Division has undertaken in France. The whys and wherefores are not important. What is, is that I feel sure that I won’t be coming home to you. That this is the end. The Germans have us pinned down and there is no getting out.
Curiously, it is also the end of a long story because Joshua Solomon is with me, the two of us in the same battle. But, as I write this, he cowers in a corner whimpering to himself. The poor fool cannot, I believe, help himself. What is happening to us all is well beyond cowardice. You do not call a man a coward for being afraid to go over the top when the whistle blows, be he a company commander or a private. He ha
s seen all his mates killed and then all his new pals killed, and, then, because the idea of friendship becomes impossible, mateship now too awful to contemplate, the replacements are received as blank-eyed strangers, who come at night to huddle beside you in the trenches. These are no longer seen as men, only as numbers in a well-thinned roll call after each skirmish into enemy lines. New recruits are no longer seen as whole, but become assorted parts, eyes, skulls, arms, legs, torsos, scraps of unidentified meat. They simply become flesh new-opened, gaping, bloody stumps where once strong arms held their sweethearts close or firm-muscled legs kicked a football and ran shouting urgent instructions across a flat green paddock under a blue sky.
The men who sit huddled in the dust and carnage beside you in the trench become torsos cut off at the waist, like open-mouthed fairground clowns. Heads lolling with fatigue on your shoulder are in your mind already disembodied, tomorrow’s ‘dirty melons’ you are sent out to gather from the mud after each attack. Only the rats are real, they waddle like fat butchers at a meat market and choose the choicest human parts, the intestines, the haggis of hate.
My dearest sister, I do not expect to return from here. The German artillery has us trapped and it has continued now all day and I daresay will do so all night. It is not too hard to understand why our cousin Joshua cowers in a dark corner sucking at an empty bottle of whisky, which he won’t relinquish.
It is to drown the noise, the booming, cutting, whining, whooshing, whistling, exploding, blunt and bloody, neverending noise that goes into the senseless slaughter of good and honest men.
And so the male line of our two families will die, here in a charnel field in France. All the hate, all the fierce endeavour, all the malicious greed, come to an end.
Now I want you to do something for me. Kiss Hawk, tell him I love him, and always have. Of all the men I have met in my short life he has always shown me that to be fair and just and honest is the way of a true man. I often think how men fight to put themselves first but he always put himself in the second place. Great-Grandma Mary once told me as a small child how he loved our grandfather Tommo above all sensibility and would have gladly laid down his life for him.
Solomon's Song Page 61