by Peter Rees
The letter coincided with one from McCay to Bean giving thanks for defending him. McCay wrote that he would have been ‘a wooden creature’ if he had not ‘felt the hurt of the persistent calumnies that have hung about my name.’ He went on: ‘I would be still wooden, did I not fully recognise, not merely your vindication of me in your pages, but also the generous warmth of your words. To be vindicated is one thing, to be absolved in the way you have adopted is another, and a better one. From my heart I thank you.’
McCay’s personal bravery and intellectual qualities seem not to have been in doubt, but it has been suggested that as a divisional commander he may have been promoted beyond his capabilities. Birdwood, for example, would not support any bid to promote McCay after the summer of 1916. By then it was clear that he was unable to get on with his senior officers. Increasingly McCay became such a liability that Birdwood told Pearce he had ‘a tendency very often to rub people up the wrong way.’ It would seem that Bean alone had a good word for him.
Few, though, disagreed with Bean’s identification of the real culprit at Fromelles—the ‘reckless’ and ‘loose thinking’ of British ‘Higher Staff ’ and in particular, Sir Richard Haking, the General Officer Commanding XI Corps. In his report, Haking patronised the Australians, attributing the failure solely to the newness of the infantry and ignoring his own culpability for the slaughter. Indeed, he portrayed it as a success, saying ‘officers and men displayed a fine spirit throughout the attack and drove back the enemy with true British vigour.’ He continued: ‘I think the attack of the Australian Division which was new to fighting out here, was carried out in an exceptionally gallant manner . . . I am quite sure that on the next occasion when the Division is ordered to attack it will distinguish itself even more than on this occasion. I have nothing but admiration for the fine fighting spirit displayed by Commanders and all ranks in the Division. The artillery work turned out even better than I expected though many of the batteries had had very little experience.’
Bean would have none of this. He noted in the Official History that the objective Haking had set for his force proved to be a series of abandoned and water-filled trenches and ditches. ‘The attacking troops were possibly unfortunate in meeting a German division of pre-eminently excellent morale,’ he wrote, ‘and the insertion, through inexperience, in McCay’s orders of the clause ordering the troops to vacate the first trench after they had cleared it, undoubtedly contributed to the causes of failure.’
Bean dismissed the operation as entirely counterproductive strategically. Within a few hours of the battle, the infantry attack had achieved precisely the opposite effect to that intended. ‘An artillery demonstration, as suggested by Haig’s staff, might have avoided all this loss and have led the Germans to apprehend that a bigger attack was being prepared. But now they knew the operation to be a mere feint, and if they had previously any doubts as to the wisdom of “milking” that front for reserves for the Somme, the fight had actually dispelled those doubts.’ In allocating blame to the British, though, Bean was critical of not just the staff but also the British 61st Division, which partnered the Australians, contending that ‘the Australian soldiers tended to accept the judgment—often unjust, but already deeply impressed by the occurrences at the Suvla landing—that the Tommies could not be relied upon to uphold a flank in a stiff fight.’
It could be argued that this was too harsh a judgement, as both divisions were untried before Fromelles. Thus two inexperienced formations had to carry a hurriedly developed battle plan—an unwise combination that invited the ensuing defeat. While Bean clearly identified British mistakes in the 118 pages he devoted to Fromelles in the Official History, the single chapter on Fromelles by Captain Wilfrid Miles in the British official history covers just seventeen pages and assigns blame to no one. Instead, Miles wrote blandly but accurately that: ‘The pity of it was that the action need not have been fought. To have delivered battle at all . . . betrayed a grave under-estimate of the enemy’s powers of resistance.’
Bean took the story of the battle from the level of the generals to that of individual soldiers and assessed the decisions and effects in considerably greater depth than did the British version. To the British, Fromelles was a relatively minor action. But Bean realised the immensity of it for Australia, for the battle crippled the 5th Division. Not until the end of the summer, when it raided the German trenches frequently and successfully, did the division regain its full effectiveness. For Bean, though, the Somme was far from over.
25
The giant mincing machine
The men in the trenches outside the village of Pozières in the Somme valley were in great heart. Bean watched as they cleaned rifles, read Australian papers or just yarned. Some boiled tea on little trench fires. Many were getting what sleep they could. ‘I believe we are going to hop over to see Fritz tonight,’ one said to Bean. Just two days after the disaster at Fromelles, a still shaken and angered Bean had had little time to think through what had happened. Yet here he was, observing preparations for a new Australian battle.
There had been continual, steady shelling at Pozières for days, and in the near distance Bean could see a flat stretch, covered with a low crop of grass and thistles, through which ran a railway the Germans had built; then a low, shredded thicket hedge; and lastly, Pozières, along the old Roman road between Albert and Bapaume.
The 1st Australian Division was to attack from the south and advance in three stages to the road through the centre of Pozières. On the left the British 48th Division would attack some communication trenches still held by the Germans west of the village. On the afternoon of 22 July 1916 the Australians bombarded the village, with Bean noting, ‘our heavy shells were tearing at regular intervals into the rear of the brickheaps which once were houses, and flinging up branches of trees and great clouds of black earth from the woods.’ Such was the ferocity of the bombardment, Bean reported, that a German letter found the next day was addressed ‘In Hell’s Trenches.’ As the Germans suffered, the Australians waited for their attack to begin. As he so often did in portraying Australian troops, Bean drew an outback analogy: in going about their tasks, they reminded him of men as ‘they yarned of old over the stockyard fence or the gate of the horse paddock.’
Such bucolic serenity could not last. The yarning stopped when shortly after dark that night Bean witnessed the ‘most fearful bombardment’ he had ever seen. ‘As one walked towards the battlefield, the weirdly shattered woods and battered houses stood out almost all the time against one continuous band of flickering light along the eastern skyline.’ Shortly after midnight the 1st Australian Division’s 3rd and 1st Brigades attacked. The difficulty, Bean observed, was ‘not to get the men forward, but to hold them’ in what was a complicated night attack. The first trench they reached was full of dead Germans. Parties of Australians went through the trees and into the village, pushing so close to the fringe of their own shellfire that it wounded some.
Bean took a car along the Fricourt road and reached a ridge from where he could see the battlefield on every side. ‘The battle seemed ever so far away over the wide world and between me and it there was nothing except the face of the misty earth and the figure of some solitary transport ahead on the lonely road,’ he wrote. Out of the car, he heard the jingle of mule chains behind him when suddenly there was the long drawn hoot of a horn. He thought it must be a gas alarm. He kept going and heard someone warn to prepare for gas, and have gas helmets ready. Bean fumbled with his, got it ready to put on, and kept going down a hill. He soon ‘got into a soft sweet aromatic smelling air’ and wondered if this was gas. He asked someone in a dugout, who replied that he had a sprained ankle. The man had been told to take a pigeon basket back to British 2nd Brigade headquarters, and Bean had no doubt that the sprain was ‘pure funk’ and that the man was afraid to go alone amid the shelling and the gas. He offered to help with the basket and they went together. As they got down the hill Bean had no doubt they were getting into
gas and, fearing ‘a deadly injury to one’s lungs,’ put the helmet on. His companion urged him to get into a trench beside the road. Bean hesitated. ‘It seemed to me a bad place for gas—a low trench—but perhaps he knew. So I got into the trench and followed him—he knew the way—I had no idea of it.’
With his helmet on, it was ‘almost deadly dark,’ and Bean could not see. He could just make out the lurid flash of gas shells on the other side of the road, and it made him hurry even though he knew he faced suffocation if he overexerted himself. ‘I could hardly hear my breath in and out. The only thing was to lie down in the trench and rest till I got it again. I knew I mustn’t take the helmet off. Really I thought then I was done. I didn’t know the way. I seemed to be going into a shrapnel barrage. I didn’t know if I should ever get back my breath, and I couldn’t see and yet didn’t dare take off the helmet.’ However, as he lay down his breath came back and he decided to move back onto the road, which he soon realised was better than the trench. ‘The first men that passed me seemed to have masks on like inquisitors; but presently two came by with no masks—I tore mine off at once. Clearly it was not bad enough for a mask there.’ Bean became separated from his companion, but soon found he had reached 2nd Brigade headquarters. A British runner was assigned to take him to the Australian 3rd Brigade headquarters.
With shells bursting on the left-hand side of the road, Bean and his guide stuck to the right. But they reached a point where, with shells simply raining down, they faced a 50-metre sprint to safety. ‘The pellets were striking the road and knocking fire out of the stones. Numbers of shell just whizzed over the road and exploded beyond. There seemed to be no chance of getting across just then so we waited. I do not know if it could have been done with a 50 per cent chance. I fancy from what I have learnt since that it could have been done with perhaps only 20 per cent.’ Bean decided to wait, and at last the shrapnel seemed to abate. ‘It seemed to me our chance, so I told my guide we’d run for it and we did. I beat him. As we got to the other side shells were showering overhead again, but some bank protected us.’ Bean found himself among a crowd of perhaps twenty men, with some dead and wounded. Two or three gas shells had just exploded and before he could get his helmet on he got two breaths of the gas, which immediately sickened him. Fortuitously, he had come upon 3rd Brigade headquarters. He blundered into the mouth of foundations and found a long flight of steps leading down to a deep German dugout. Downstairs, he found the 3rd Brigade commander, Colonel Ewen Sinclair-MacLagan, and his entire staff, sitting with gas helmets on, ‘as solemn as owls round the table.’ Sinclair-MacLagan invited him to join them. ‘I could hardly believe it—the end of the adventure had arrived.’ Still wearing his gas helmet, Bean began writing his notes for the night.
The 1st Division’s only failure was not capturing the strong German second-line system (known as the O.G. or Old German, Lines) on the crest. But here the Australians met trenches and shell craters. Bean saw that these conditions were new to the Australians, who found it difficult to be sure where their objective was or what point they had reached. The two trenches they sought were virtually unrecognisable, in some places no more than a depression among the deep holes and mounds of thrown-up earth. The shell-swept landscape reminded Bean of a choppy sea.
He noted that as daylight gradually spread over the ‘bleached surface’ Australians could occasionally be seen walking about among the trees and through part of the village they had been ordered to take. He watched as they consolidated their hold on the village and cleared out snipers from ‘half-hidden lurking places.’ A patrol bombed some dugouts, from one of which appeared a white flag waving vigorously. Sixteen prisoners came out.
That afternoon Bean went again to the battlefield and saw the victorious Australians smoking German cigars or donning the shiny black spiked German helmets while they dug. They knew they had achieved a striking success. A main buttress of the German line had been broken. Bean wrote a cable, wishing people in Australia could have seen what he saw:
Up and down a certain wandering track, far behind the battlefield, came a stream of traffic. Those going up the track were great, cheery, strong-faced fellows, with a trotting gun team, whose easy-limbed drivers looked as if the men were part of the horses. Down the same track came men limping, in twos and threes, slowly. They were wounded, from the great battle, but they held themselves with a sort of stubborn erectness, which said as plainly as in words, ‘Let nobody pity me.’ Some were smoking, others quietly yarning over the events of the wild night before, but I saw scarcely a single man who looked the remotest degree sorry for himself. ‘I hope I’m not going to lose my fingers,’ said one youngster with a shattered hand. ‘I reckon I ought to be good for a number of the beggars yet. I can’t be sure I got even one last night.’
Bean watched as the Germans mounted a determined bid to regain Pozières on the morning of 24 July. Heavy shells burst continually amid shattered trees or in brickheaps, and the whole place was intermittently hidden by mist from great black and brick-red bursts. All day this continued on and off.
Yet through this inferno our troops steadily carried out the day’s duties, and much more besides. I know this to be no exaggeration, because I saw it myself. The cooks, engineers, pioneers, and water-carriers are all doing their normal work as if things happening around them were mere street incidents. At one moment when the air was thick with flying fragments a call went for stretcher bearers. The din continued with varying intensity. One had almost forgotten that call when a big Western Australian passed the mouth of the hole in which we were squatting. ‘Anyone ask for a stretcher bearer?’ he said. The Australian stretcher bearers have a wonderful reputation to live up to. As far as I have seen, they are preserving it completely by the way they move through the heavy shellfire of the German barrages.
Bean overtook a dejected-looking corporal walking painfully back, naked to the waist except for about half a dozen separate bandages. He was wearing a German shrapnel helmet on his head. ‘I might be worse,’ was all he said when Bean asked him about it. ‘You have got a fine souvenir out of it, anyway,’ Bean said, looking up at the helmet. ‘Some bloke put it there,’ he replied.
After they had taken Pozières, Bean watched as the Australians sat on the doorsteps, smoking. Others were still clearing out the remaining Germans. ‘They would roll a bomb into the cellars and, when a German bolted, would bayonet him. They walked freely in the village at first. Even after 6 days a German could be heard moaning in one of the cellars, but they couldn’t find him.’
While the Australians enjoyed success, the British attack east of the AIF gained no ground. General Haig’s third big effort on the Somme had—except in the Pozières sector—failed completely. The cost to the Australians was high: by the time 1st Division was relieved on 27 July it had suffered 5285 casualties. Bean talked to ‘one youngster from New South Wales, working like a tiger’ who was buried three times. He continued working until the third time, when he collapsed, telling Bean: ‘I don’t think I can manage it again.’ While their stoicism was clear, the men were at pains to tell Bean: ‘For God’s sake, don’t make us heroes. We can stand anything but that.’ Bean took this seriously, writing soon after:
Steadfast until death, just the men that Australians at home know them to be; into the place with a joke, a dry, cynical, Australian joke as often as not; holding fast through any that man can imagine; stretcher bearers, fatigue parties, messengers, chaplains, doing their job all the time, both new-joined youngsters and old hands, without fuss, but steadily, because it is their work. They are not heroes. They are just ordinary Australians doing their particular work as their country would wish them to do it. And pray God Australians in days to come will be worthy of them!
Ideas were forming in Bean’s mind about these ‘ordinary Australians’, building on the prewar conclusions he had drawn about them and the respect and admiration they were now owed as standard-bearers and role models for the nation.
When the
1st Division finally withdrew, the troops were exhausted. Bean observed that when they reached bivouac in Vadencourt Wood, and had washed and rested, they were strangely quiet, far different from the Australian soldiers of tradition. ‘They resembled rather boys emerging from long illness, many lying quietly apart in their blankets, reading books, smoking, or writing home letters.’
The 2nd Division was quickly in action—sooner than it should have been, owing to pressure from the commander of the British Reserve Army, General Hubert Gough, whom Bean thought a ‘thruster’. Gough was eager for speed. The division’s commander, Major General Gordon Legge, and his staff had no experience of operations on the scale that now faced them—which Bean concluded was a disadvantage in view of the pressure from Gough to hasten the start of the attack. For once, Brudenell White, Birdwood’s chief of staff, put aside his own doubts, and the assault on the O.G. Lines was ordered for 12.15 a.m. on the 29th.
Pozières and its surrounding fields by now were little more than an expanse of desert. Bean described the village ‘so pounded by shell-burst after shell-burst that the powdered debris of houses and earth was spread like ashes six feet deep over the surface, as featureless as the Sahara, and level except for the shell-craters which lay edge to edge—like the scratching of gigantic hens in an endless ash heap.’ Each fresh salvo flung up rolling clouds of this dust and rearranged the craters. Except for two fragments of German concrete bunkers, every vestige of building above ground level eventually vanished. Pozières had simply become an open space, marked vaguely by tree-stumps, but with no other sign that a village had been there. Names such as ‘Sausage Valley’—where Bean wrote his diary 7 metres underground in the headquarters of his friend 6th Brigade commander Brigadier General John Gellibrand—reflected the grim reality of what the countryside had become. He noted, perversely, that the German battalion commander, who had previously occupied the room, had turned it ‘into something like a well upholstered little railway compartment—dark wooden battens, stone coloured wallpaper, electric light fittings,’ and a bunk. Such were the microcosms of civilisation that remained.