I have been promoted to Major in the 2nd Battalion and have since then been transferred as second in command, with 13 other officers and 400 men to form the 54th Battalion, which I am forming and command temporarily. Lt Col Cass has been appointed commanding officer, but as he is away in hospital, the job has fallen to me to organise the battalion. We have received a draft of 500 men yesterday, and we have now nearly 1000 men, but of course have to organise our signallers, machine gunners, transport, stretcher bearers, band, etc. Naturally we are all kept pretty busy.
The new units struggled initially with their esprit de corps in the face of their dilution by the new recruits, as Harrison noted on 20 February:
I told you I was temporarily commanding the 54th Battalion which was formed a week ago, by transferring 14 officers and 442 men from the 2nd Battalion and then filling us up to war strength by sending a large draft of reinforcements. We were all very sorry to leave the old battalion, but as it is all for the good of the force, we are making the best of it. I am now bucking in to make the 54th the equal of the 2nd and I must say the new men are trying hard.
The new units trained hard in Egypt, driven by a combination of their desire to reach battle-readiness and the prevailing threat of an attack on the Suez Canal by the Turks, now untrammelled by their defensive commitments to the Gallipoli campaign. The reports of Turkish reinforcements at Beersheba prompted plans for two of the Australian divisions to cover the central section of the Canal defences, a line of around 40 kilometres, from Ferry Post to Serapeum.
Meanwhile, the first Australians bound for France, I Anzac Corps, left on 13 March 1916. While welcomed by the remaining Australian units of II Anzac Corps, the move created some unexpected difficulties for those left behind. The 4th and 5th Divisions had been assigned to take over the defence of the Suez Canal, but because of the massive rail transport needed to move I Anzac Corps to France they were forced to embark on a three-day route march from their camp to the Canal – across 65 kilometres of desert in blazing 40 degree heat.
The commander of the 5th Division, Major-General Sir James McCay (rhymes with sky), decided to make this a training exercise and ordered his men to march in full battle kit, including ammunition, a total load of more than 40 kilograms per man. An appalling lack of planning and supply combined with the terrible desert heat to almost turn the march into a disaster.
The 15th Brigade moved mainly in the afternoon and arrived at the camp at Ferry Post largely intact. The 14th Brigade marched through the heat of the day and was decimated, as Roy Harrison wrote in his diary:
28.3.16 Tuesday. Reveille 5 am, on the march 0700. Lunch 1120. Resumed march 1240. Struck soft sand 1250. Heat awful in the hollows between the sand ridges, old soldiers say they have not had such a terrible march in all their experiences in India or elsewhere. 1500 Heat intense. Men collapsing in dozens. Medical officers busy. Water all done. Men becoming exhausted from their loads and from heat. Reached Moascar 1600 but a remnant of the brigade only. Today’s march 19 miles [30 km] through the sand under a blazing sun. Hell on earth – an Egyptian desert during the midday heat with an empty water bottle.
1820 Ambulance wagons, camels with water, and the New Zealand infantry have just gone out to succour the men left in the desert.
The Commander of the Australian 5th Division, General Sir James Whiteside McCay. He was 51 at the time of the Battle of Fromelles and, while undoubtedly a brave soldier, he led by fear and bluster rather than by inspiration. Before the war, McCay was a politician, elected to the Victorian and, later, Federal parliament, where he served briefly as the Minister for Defence. The Bulletin wrote in his obituary in 1930 that while he was a ‘bold soldier and a brave man’, he was ‘about the most detested officer in the AIF at an early stage of the war and remained so to the end’. (AWM PHOTO H01890)
1900. Men still coming in. Worst cases going straight to hospital. Thirteen men still unaccounted for in the battalion.
McCay was unrepentant and was scathing in his criticism of his officers, NCOs and troops. In short, in a master-stroke of thoughtless leadership, he earned their lasting enmity. He concluded his tirade:
I am compelled to say plainly that today’s failure in soldierliness of the 14th Brigade after crossing the Suez Canal has been a great disappointment to me and that the blame rests largely with regimental officers as well as NCOs and the men themselves. The Brigade must pull itself together and every man must remember he is part of a regiment and not merely an individual, if I am to hope to take it into battle … until a great improvement takes place I shall not be able to report the 14th Brigade as fit for active service.
The rebuilding of the fitness and the spirit of the men began as soon as they recovered from their march. Their duties guarding the Canal allowed them to rotate the battalions on duty, freeing the others for training. They went hard at it but it was a huge task, made even more difficult by the loss of the division’s field guns and the bulk of its artillerymen to the departed I Anzac Corps. The 5th Division should have operated with about 3000 gunners. It had about 500. The rest were hastily recruited from its infantry and light horse troops and trained in relays using the few artillery pieces left. They would soon pay an intolerable price for this lack of foresight.
The climate and the tedium of the training soon took their toll on the men, as Roy Harrison wrote:
Everyone is heartily sick of Egypt, and praying to get away to France. Of course, those of us who have been under artillery fire know it won’t be all beer and skittles but knowing all we do it is impossible to keep from turning our faces to France as the Promised Land. When we get there, we shall all be wishing we were somewhere else, but that is the unrest bred of soldiering. The continual uncertainty of everything – even of life – adds to the charm.
4
TO THE ‘NURSERY’
Black dresses are greatly in evidence.
MAJOR ROY HARRISON, FRANCE, 1916
By the time the first Australian troops from I Anzac Corps reached France from Egypt, on 19 March 1916, the war on the Western Front had already degenerated into a muddy, bloody stalemate. The dramatic sweeping movements of the early weeks of the war had long since disappeared. Things first slowed down, then bogged down irretrievably as both sides searched for opportunities and places to break the deadlock.
A month earlier, the Germans thought they had found a chink in the Allied line at Verdun on the Meuse River in north-east France, about 200 kilometres south-east of Lille.
Toward the end of 1915, General von Falkenhayn had told his Kaiser he believed that Russia was effectively paralysed and France almost exhausted and that the war was only continuing because of Britain’s underlying support and influence over her allies. The logical next step was for Germany to knock Britain out of the war, but Falkenhayn conceded that this was too difficult because of Britain’s superiority at sea and his forces’ inability to deliver a knockout blow to the British front in Flanders. The next best approach, he told the Kaiser, was a full-out attack against France aimed at ‘knocking England’s best sword out of her hand’.
The Germans decided to centre their attack on the French stronghold at Verdun. Reasoning that French honour would demand that her troops fight to the last man for their sacred soil, Falkenhayn’s strategy was to lure France into an apocalyptic battle where it would ‘bleed to death’.
Allied aerial observers failed to see their preparations and 100,000 German troops launched a surprise attack on 21 February 1916. That day the German artillery fired a million shells and they unleashed their ‘storm troopers’ – small groups of soldiers attacking on their own initiative across no-man’s land. In the initial stages the Germans outnumbered the French defenders by five to one. But the French threw everything into the defence of the city. General Robert Niville summed up the French resolve when he famously said ‘Ils ne passeront pas’ (‘They shall not pass’). The battle for Verdun would rage for the rest of 1916 as the French rotated three-quarters of its entire a
rmy, led by Philippe Pétain, through Verdun to defend it.
The initial German successes in the attacks on Verdun seemed to prove Falkenhayn correct. The massed German artillery caused grievous French casualties and forced the Allies to make major changes to their overall strategy.
Originally, that Allied strategy was to attack Germany simultaneously on three fronts – the British and the French from the Western Front, the Russians on the Eastern Front and the Italians in the Alps. The aim was to stretch and divide Germany and ultimately to wear her down. But the German attack on Verdun altered both the Allies’ approach and the burden of its implementation. When the three-front strategy had been agreed, France was to play the leading role in the Western Front offensive. Verdun changed that and the British took on the main thrust. It also meant that the purpose of the Somme offensive would change in character from an attempt to inflict a decisive blow against Germany to a method of relieving pressure on the French who were desperately holding on at Verdun.
The battle for Verdun was raging by the time the second wave of Australians from II Anzac Corps travelled north by train through France, preparing to enter the Western Front battlefields for the first time and bound for the flat farmlands of the Armentières sector, to the west of Lille. It was generally regarded as a quiet backwater in the overall turmoil of the conflict. Indeed, the British called it a ‘nursery’, where they could blood newcomers.
Diggers of the Australian 6th Brigade, newly arrived in Flanders from Egypt in 1916, show their spirit. They are holding up their recently acquired steel helmets. (AWM PHOTO EZ0003)
The French welcomed the Australians with open arms, as Lieutenant Hugh Knyvett later wrote:
They pelted us with flowers and sweets and, while no one objected to the embraces of the girls, we thought it a bit too much when the men as well threw their arms around us and kissed us on both cheeks.
I received no less than six crucifixes that I was assured by the charming donors would protect me from all danger, as they had been blessed by certain archbishops, the favourite being the Archbishop of Amiens. I was mean enough to remark to one of them that it was a wonder any of the Frenchmen ever were killed.
Lieutenant Bob Chapman, a 29-year-old leader in the 55th Battalion, later wrote in his diary:
Some miles from the firing line it is hard to realise that war is in existence. Crops are growing in the fields – children laugh and run about the streets. There are very few menfolk about though. France is just one great garden. We came through from Marseilles by train and I have never seen a more beautiful place.
Roy Harrison was also caught up in the excitement of the new country and its people:
France is beautiful beyond description and no words can convey anything which would give you an idea of it all. The Valley of the Rhône is indescribably beautiful and the Saône, just north of Dijon is something out of the bag.
Everywhere, only old men, women, boys and children are to be seen. The women work in the fields, and carry on the farms without aid other than the above. Black dresses are greatly in evidence. The old grandmother at the farm where I am is 80 years old but she makes dresses from morning till night, and they are all black.
By the time the Australians of I Anzac Corps had taken up their positions in the line near Fromelles in April 1916, the sector was quiet again. The earlier disastrous battles for Aubers Ridge were just vague rumours amongst the remaining British troops.
From 20 May, the men of I Anzac Corps held the line for 14.5 kilometres, running northwards from the Sugar Loaf in front of Fromelles to the south bank of the River Lys, just to the east of Armentières. The Sugar Loaf (a salient, or protrusion, roughly in the shape of a popular local loaf of bread) jutted out of the German line, about a kilometre west of Fromelles township and directly opposite the point where the Australian line linked with the British. The Sugar Loaf bristled with German machine-gun emplacements. Because it protruded into no-man’s land, it allowed the German gunners to direct fire down the no-man’sland channel on either side. In military terms this is known as enfilade fire. It meant that troops trying to charge across no-man’s land there would be caught in a lethal cross-fire from both front and side.
The commanders on both sides were wary of the dangers of the inaction in the sector. Previous experience in the trench warfare deadlock had shown them that an attitude of ‘live and let live’ developed when the level of fighting dropped away. The leaders believed that this had deleterious effects on morale and dampened the troops’ fighting spirit. Their antidote was small-party raids on the enemy’s lines.
As soon as the men of I Anzac Corps began raiding they realised the effectiveness and resolution of the troops facing them. The Diggers suffered considerable casualties: 118 in the last week of April, rising to 773 in the first week of July.
These raids were often vicious affairs, man against man in a fight to the death. The preparation and training involved required an uncompromising approach. The instructions set out in the British Army’s manual for fighting with the bayonet – ‘Guiding Rule Number 8 for weapons training’ – were chillingly eloquent:
If possible, the point of the bayonet should be directed against the opponent’s throat, as the point will enter easily and make a fatal wound on entering a few inches, and, being near the eyes, makes the opponent flinch. Other vulnerable and usually exposed parts are the face, chest, lower abdomen and thighs, and the region of the kidneys when the back is turned. Four to six inches penetration is sufficient to incapacitate and allow for a quick withdrawal, whereas if a bayonet is driven home too far it is often impossible to withdraw it. In such cases a round should be fired to break up the obstruction.
By this stage, the second wave of II Anzac Corps (4th and 5th Australian Divisions) was moving up through France from their arrival port of Marseilles. Hugh Knyvett was with them as they completed the final stage of their journey to the front line:
The brigade did not go by train any of the distance, but marched the whole way to the trenches, taking two days. This part of the country was just on the edge of the Hun advance and, being only visited by some scouting parties of Uhlans [German Cavalry] had escaped most of war’s ravages. We marched through beautiful woods, passed peaceful villages and crossed over sleepy canals that we saw not again in France in many long months – most of us, alas, never.
Lieutenant Hugh Knyvett was a scout with the 59th Battalion at Fromelles. He survived the battle but was wounded late in 1916 and invalided out of the army. He travelled to the US and wrote a remarkable account of his experiences, Over There With the Australians. Sadly, Knyvett died from complications from his wounds in New York shortly after the book was published in April 1918. (KNYVETT PHOTO)
The troops of II Anzac Corps had done their best while they lagged behind in Egypt to reconstitute their artillery, an enormous task in the limited time available. Charles Bean wrote that the creation of II Anzac Corps’ artillery with such speed was ‘unparalleled in British experience’ and was a classic example of ‘the speed with which Australians could be trained’. The new officers were lectured for four hours each day before, in turn, training their men for eight hours.
So the Australians who were about to move into the line near Fromelles did so with distinct disadvantages: they had chronically inexperienced artillery and infantry without experience in trench warfare, both of which were about to operate in unfamiliar territory in a war zone dominated by big guns and endless trench lines.
Waiting for them, on the other side of no-man’s land, was a Bavarian division that had been moved into place a year earlier after the Germans strengthened their line following the shock British success in temporarily capturing Neuve Chapelle in March 1915.
The arrival of the 6th Bavarian Reserve Division, comprising the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment (16BRIR), also known as the List Regiment after its first commanding officer, Colonel List, and the 17th, 20th and 21st Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiments, lifted the number o
f German Divisions holding the sector from two to three – thus allowing them to reduce the width of their individual regimental front lines.
5
AN AUSTRIAN LANCE-CORPORAL
The young volunteer had become an old soldier.
ADOLF HITLER,MEIN KAMPF, 1925
One of the non-commissioned officers serving with the List Regiment was a nondescript 27-year-old lance-corporal who would change the course of the world two decades later. Adolf Hitler, a pale intense loner, was a despatch runner for the First Company HQ of 16BRIR. In 1925, almost a decade after Fromelles, Hitler would write in his autobiography and political manifesto Mein Kampf (‘My Struggle’) of the overwhelming desire he had to fight for his country when war was declared:
For me these hours came as a deliverance from the distress that had weighed on me during the days of my youth. I am not ashamed to acknowledge today that I was carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment and that I sank down upon my knees and thanked Heaven out of the fullness of my heart for the favour of being permitted to live in such a time …
I had no desire to fight for the Hapsburg cause, but I was prepared to die at any time for my own kinsfolk and the Empire to which they really belonged.
Our Darkest Day Page 7