It explained too why, for so long, battalions taking over the trenches had been astonished when the Germans had greeted them by name. The latest example was still fresh in everyone’s minds. It had happened only days earlier while the Australians waited to attack at Fromelles and, in impotent fury, had shot away the noticeboard cheekily hoisted above the German trenches. It read:
ADVANCE AUSTRALIA – IF YOU CAN!
And, although they were to exist in Army mythology for many years, although every man who served on the Western Front would continue to believe them for the rest of his life, they demolished the Spy Stories at a blow. The soldiers had been convinced that certain French civilians were in the pay of the Germans and stories of their perfidy abounded. The hands of a Town Hall clock, not far behind the line, which went mysteriously fast or slow when a relief was under way. The sails of a windmill which appeared to take up a significant position when an attack was imminent. A farmer who unaccountably changed direction in ploughing a field, who switched one of his pair of brown horses for a grey one or put one white animal in a grazing herd of black cows. Even the French housewife, in some hilltop village, innocently spreading bed-linen to bleach in the sun as a contingent of troops went past, was not above being suspected of signalling to the Germans, and many a volubly protesting Madame had been reported and interrogated by Intelligence Officers. Now, it seemed that there might be a simpler solution. In literally thousands of miles of telephone wires stretching right up to the front line, and even beyond it into forward saps, there was ample opportunity for enemy patrols to creep across No Man’s Land after dark and to attach a wire of their own to a junction in the jumble of British cable. In the Somme it was even easier. The chalky subsoil was ideal for induction and, by using quite simple listening devices, the Germans could pick up signals and conversations with very little difficulty. One unguarded remark, one exchange of friendly badinage between officers of two different units in the line, could give useful, even vital information on plans or dispositions. It was now outrageously evident that the enemy had made good use of his superior technical skill.
Henceforth all this must change. Frivolous use must no longer be made of the telephones and, where possible, wireless must be used and messages transmitted, not simply in Morse Code, but in coded Morse Code. It was not easy to get this message across to the troops and the Army very soon realized that, for every signal circuit set up to serve the troops in the line to send back information during the course of an attack, another must be set up as ‘listening circuit’, not to listen to the Germans, but to monitor the traffic in their own lines and to trap the unwary and the indiscreet alike.
But George Middle’s job was to provide communications for the Australian attack on Pozières. The First Anzac Wireless Company was to serve the 1st and 2nd Australian Divisions as well as the 4th New Zealand Division, but by 23 July when the Australians went over the top, Middle had barely had time to set up the receiving post on Tara Hill and to select the sites for two forward posts. One, code-named U.M., was at the head of Sausage Valley; the other, U.L., was roughly on the line from which the 13 th Rifle Brigade had launched their disastrous attack towards Pozières on 10 July. The position of the line had hardly changed since.
Lying astride the Albert–Bapaume Road, the ruined village of Pozières was an island surrounded by deep wire-entangled entrenchments. Strongpoints bristled on the high ground, dominating the land to the south-east, where Sausage Valley ran towards Pozières from the direction of la Boisselle, and to the south-west where Mash Valley crept towards it up the hill from Ovillers. The most formidable was the fortified house – so fortified that it was virtually a concrete tower – which the Germans had christened the ‘Panzerturm’ and the British troops nicknamed ‘Gibralter’.
The Australian attack on Pozières was part of an ambitious exercise. With the 48th Division attacking up Mash Valley on its left, the Australians were to capture Pozières, while, it was hoped, other attacks on their right would have secured the whole of the Bazentin Ridge beyond. The prizes of Delville Wood, High Wood, the Switch Line and even Martinpuich would then be in the hands of the Allies and, if the Australians could capture Pozières and press on a few hundred yards to capture the fortified windmill on the ridge itself, the troops all along the line would be virtually in sight of Bapaume.
Again, it was a night attack, but, on the right, the attack failed. The troops were newly in the line. There had been no chance to reconnoitre. Conflicting orders had changed the timing of Zero Hour and, at the eleventh hour, changed it back again, so that some of the troops were in position barely minutes before the attack was due to begin. Haze and cloud had hindered artillery observation, so the guns had not prepared the way. The fighting troops, many back in the line for the first time since the start of the battle, had been hastily reinforced, but they sorely felt the absence of the experienced officers and NCOs who had led them into the attack on the First of July and who had never come out.
The Australians, on the other hand, were fresh. They were at full strength, they were raring to go and they roared into Pozières. Almost in the first wave they captured the outer trenches of the bastion of Pozières. In an hour they were fighting through the shattered gardens and outbuildings of the houses on the right of the Bapaume road. Here, or just beyond, they should have linked up with the 48th Division attacking from the other side of the Bapaume road. It was just as well that they did not wait for them.
On their own initiative, the Aussies dashed across the road and battered their way through the fortifications on the other side. They conquered ‘Gibralter’ even while the 48th Division – or what was left of its men after the Germans had bombarded them in the assembly trenches – was still creeping forward in the face of terrible opposition from the posts beyond. To all intents and purposes, the Australians had captured the village of Pozières. What they had not managed to do, on their right flank, was to subdue the formidable trenches to the north of the village and to strike towards the windmill two hundred yards away.
But the Commander-in-Chief was delighted.
The diary of Sir Douglas Haig
Sunday, 23 July: A general attack was made at 1.30 a.m. The 5th or Reserve Army on our left advanced well to the west of Pozières village with 48th Division, while the First Australian Division captured the village of Pozières itself as far as the Albert–Bapaume Road and reached within two hundred yards of the windmill on the hill northeast of the village… The Fourth Army was not so fortunate.
General Haig had received the news early and in time to impart it at breakfast to his illustrious visitor, Lord Northcliffe, who was making one of his frequent visits to the front. Lord Northcliffe was particularly favoured by the Commander-in-Chief, at least by comparison with other journalists. Although he had started in a very small way as a reporter on a provincial newspaper, in the view of General Haig Lord Northcliffe hardly counted as a journalist at all. It was true that he had founded his fortune by means of a magazine of dubious reputation entitled Answers, whose content was directly aimed at ‘Mary Ann in the kitchen’, but, via the Daily Mail, he had long ago attained respectability. Now he was proprietor of The Times and was a Viscount to boot. Haig was delighted to entertain Lord Northcliffe, and very happy when, after breakfast on the dull, cloudy morning of 23 July, Lord Northcliffe accepted his invitation to accompany him to Mr. Duncan’s service at the makeshift Church of Scotland. Before leaving, Northcliffe gave the Commander-in-Chief even greater reason to have confidence in him.
The diary of Sir Douglas Haig
Lord N. was, he said, much pleased with his visit, and asked me to… send him a line should anything appear in The Times which was not altogether to my liking. He also said that Repington had now no influence with The Times. They employed him to write certain articles but he (Lord N.) knew that he was not reliable.
Tim Repington had incurred the displeasure of the Commander-in-Chief by publishing certain views which emanated more from his o
wn observations and deductions than from the Communiqués and official views of the Army regarding the conduct of the war. He had now been replaced as regular correspondent by Robinson (he of the ‘chattering teeth’). Altogether General Haig, if journalists there had to be, found Robinson more to his taste. He was certainly more to his taste than ‘John Bull’, in the person of the redoubtable Horatio Bottomley, a campaigning journalist who made it his business to find out a good deal more than the Army wished him to know and broadcast it in the vociferous columns of his magazine which the soldiers themselves were beginning to refer to by its unofficial title of ‘The Soldiers’ Friend’. Already rumours of the débâcle at Fromelles had reached Bottomley’s ears and already he was drafting the article which would dub the 61st Division ‘The Sacrifice Division’.
Meanwhile the Australians were bracing themselves for a fresh attack on Pozières, to consolidate their gains in the village and to attack beyond it.
Private Fred Russell, No. 524, 22nd Btn., AIF, 6th Victoria Brigade
Our Brigade came in and we had to take over from where the 1st Division were to carry on the fighting and go as far as we could. The place by this time was one shambles of destruction – a wreck. Our headquarters, where I was with the C O of the Battalion, was in a fort called Gibralter. It was a German concrete dugout with a six-foot tower above the ground, right in the centre of the village of Pozières and all the rest of the houses round it were absolutely smashed to pieces.
Orders came along, ‘We’re to move off at a certain time and we’ll advance on the village of Pozières.’ Our artillery guns were mounted in a place called Sausage Valley and they were continually firing and, of course, we had to go through them. The main impact of an 18-pounder gun firing is the compression of the shell leaving the muzzle as it goes forward. When you were in front of the guns, you got into that compression. Of course the shell was going up in the air but you got the full blast, where you were, and it was a very hard experience to put up with.
Then we came into the counter-fire of the Germans. The shells were lobbing all over the place. We didn’t know where on earth we were. We got into a chalk pit and guides met us there, fellows who were trained for the purpose. They led each party up. There was no front line as such, just a series of shell-holes and timber – no front, no back, no lines of demarcation. It was just an open devastated area. The companies didn’t know where they were. You had to put yourself into position and say, ‘Well, where are we?’ And our C O said, ‘Well, you take up fifty yards from here to here – say down to that broken-off tree – and the next company will have to take on from there and co-ordinate it that way.’
That went on all night, with the shelling still going on and they were throwing over big stuff. We got into this Gibraltar HQ – I had to be with HQ, because I was a signaller. We weren’t in there ten minutes when a nine-inch shell landed on top of it. There were about twenty or thirty of our fellows down below in there – and down fifteen or twenty feet in a very solid concrete-lined job. But the compression was terrific. All night long they were calling for stretcher-bearers. Every time a salvo came over, after the explosion, you could hear these calls going up outside, ‘Stretcher-bearer! Stretcher-bearer!’ We took an awful lot of casualties that night, even before the boys went over.
Five days had passed since the first attack. George Middle had got his wireless stations going and they were in position ready for the attack to begin. With the advance of the line, U.L. had moved up and was installed in the chalk pit where the vanguard of the 13th Rifle Brigade had fought so valiantly eighteen days before. The trouble was, that they could not make contact with U.M. a few hundred yards behind, at the head of Sausage Valley.
The signal reached Middle at his station on Tara Hill at 11.25 a.m.: Am not in contact with U.M. Corporal Love and two men are there but owing to very heavy shelling in that quarter, presume it impossible to erect aerial.
There was no doubt that the shelling was heavy. It was falling so thick around the island of Pozières that it seemed to the troops advancing that the approaches were encircled by fire. On the right of the road, the Australians were pushing towards the village as best they could and, on the left, the 48th South Midland Division were struggling as best they could in a pincer movement up Mash Valley.
Sapper A. E. Comer, No. 474, 48th South Midland Division, Royal Engineers
My lot went up with the troops and we had to go over with rifles. Our own bombardment was terrific. This place, Pozières, was up on top of the ridge and in front of us there was nothing but one sheet of explosives. We went straight up. You grip your rifle and you say, ‘Come on, you silly fool, you’ve got to go.’ But all you could do was go a few yards and then drop down as the shells came around, then up again and on, and down again. The only thing you thought of was getting out of it. We engineers had to be there, because the idea was that as soon as we captured a trench we would consolidate it, reverse the parapet so that we’d be able to fire at the Germans from that side. What was even worse than going forward, was trying to keep on working. You drove yourself to it. You made yourself go on but there they were firing at you all the time.
I admit that I was windy. I remember being in a shell-hole and I was clawing at the ground to get my head into it. That’s all I was interested in, to get my head right down into the ground. We captured one trench, and then a bit of another. But we didn’t get much further. We didn’t get to Pozières – and we could see it there, just in front of us. Or, at least, we could have done if you’d dared to look up but all you wanted to do was get on with your job and get out of it.
On the other side of the road, by half-past one, U.L. had succeeded in getting its aerial up and the message went back to Middle, anxiously waiting on Tara Hill: Everything okay.
The message should have gone no further. It was unfortunate that a signaller, unnerved by the noise, the barrage, the confusion of his first day in battle, inadvertently sent it on to Divisional Headquarters. It was unfortunate, too, that the message was taken at its face value to mean that the attack was going well, because under the punishing bombardment neither the Australians nor the South Midland Division were able to make much headway.
2nd Lieutenant George Middle, Royal Engineers, Wireless Officer, 1st Anzac Wireless Section
It was really a practice message and it was simply a fluke that it went through to Divisional Headquarters who’d planned the attack. I was still in the dugout at Tara Hill, an hour or so afterwards, and my immediate superior, Major Gordon, came down. I couldn’t repeat the language he used. He said to me, ‘What the so-and-so and so-and-so is the so-and-so meaning of this so-and-so thing?’ And he was flapping this signal. I was a bit taken aback to begin with, but I immediately realized what had happened and said, ‘This should never have got to you.’ But it didn’t do much good. He did belabour me because, as it so happened, everything was far from ‘okay’ and it had given Headquarters an entirely false impression of what was going on. It was a very bad start because, in a sense, we were demonstrating the use of wireless at that ‘do’ and supposedly showing how superior it was to telephones and land-lines that were so easily smashed by shellfire. As a matter of fact, at Pozières, the shelling was so intense that all the lines were shattered and, apart from runners, wireless was really the only communication there was.
By evening, the Australians had borne such casualties and were so exhausted by the ordeal of shelling and fighting that the 2nd Australian Division was ordered into the line to relieve the 1st and, in the early hours, as the relief was taking place, the 17th Royal Warwicks, of the 48th South Midland Division, struggled through and linked up with the Australians to the northwest of Poziéres. The village was secured, but the terrible obstacles to the north, trenches O.G.1 and O.G.2, still held out. Until they were captured it would be impossible even for the hard-fighting Aussies to fight their way towards the windmill a few hundred yards beyond. By 29 July, after four days in the line, after repeated efforts, the 2
nd Australian Division had lost three thousand five hundred men and still the windmill held out.
The Commander-in-Chief was sincerely impressed by the performance of Australia’s fighting spirit and by the calibre and dash of the Australian soldiers. He was less impressed with the Staff.
The diary of Sir Douglas Haig
Saturday, 29 July: The attack by the 2nd Australian Division upon the enemy’s position between Pozières and the windmill, was not successful last night. From several reports I think the cause was due to want of thorough preparation.
After lunch I visited H Q Reserve Army and impressed on Gough and Neill Malcolm that they must supervise more closely the plans of the Anzac Corps. Some of their Divisional Generals are so ignorant and (like many Colonials) so conceited, that they cannot be trusted to work out unaided the plans of attack.
I then went on to HQ Anzac Corps at Contay and saw General Birdwood and his BGS General White. The latter seems a very sound capable fellow, and assured me that they had learnt a lesson, and would be more thorough in future.
General Birdwood, although an Englishman, like George Middle, was an honorary Australian, and popular with his troops. He had gone with them to Egypt and he had brought them to France. In the aftermath of the disaster at Fromelles, he had been following with anguished pride every stage of his Aussies’ ordeal at Pozières. Now, in the face of the reproof of the Commander-in-Chief, he kept his own counsel. It was unlikely that he agreed with Haig’s opinion that: ‘Luckily their losses had been fairly small, considering the operation and the numbers engaged – about a thousand for the whole twenty-four hours.’
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