THE DIGGERS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
CHILDREN OF THE DEAD END _Seventh Printing_
THE RAT-PIT _Sixth Printing_
THE GREAT PUSH _45th Thousand_
SOLDIER SONGS _Second Printing_
THE RED HORIZON _Third Printing_
GLENMORNAN _Second Printing_
THE BROWN BRETHREN _Second Printing_
THE AMATEUR ARMY _Fourth Printing_
THE
DIGGERS
THE AUSTRALIANS IN FRANCE
BY
PATRICK
MACGILL
With an Introduction by
THE RT. HON. W. M. HUGHES
HERBERT JENKINS LIMITED
3 YORK STREET, SAINT JAMES'S
LONDON S.W.1 MCMXIX
_Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner _Frome and London_
TO
W. P.
FOREWORD
BY THE RT. HON. W. M. HUGHES
MY DEAR MR. MACGILL,--
From the day on which _The Children of the Dead End_ came into my
hands, I have been amongst the most devoted of your worshippers.
In this and in your later books, your genius has won world-wide
recognition, and no words of mine are needed to commend to your
very wide circle of readers this story of the achievements of the
Australian soldiers in France.
The imperishable deeds of Australia's glorious soldiers have carved
for themselves a deep niche in the topmost towers of the Temple of
the Immortals. The story of their valour will live throughout the
ages, and future generations of Australians will speak of them as we
do of all the heroic figures of antiquity, and strive to mould their
lives upon the sublime spirit of self-sacrifice and love of country
and liberty which animated them. Their valour has covered Australia
with a lustre that shines throughout the world, so that her name,
which but yesterday was almost unknown, is now a household word in
the mouths of all the peoples of the earth.
The war has made of Australia--a young community without
traditions--a nation, acutely and proudly conscious of its
nationality, its record in this war, and the great future which
awaits it. Upon that day some four years gone, when in the grey of
early dawn the Australian soldier leapt upon an unknown shore and
in the face of a murderous fire scaled the heights of Gaba Tepe--a
feat of arms almost unparalleled in the history of war--the young
Australian Commonwealth put on the toga of manhood, and at one stride
entered on a footing of equality the family of free nations of the
earth. Gallipoli--scene of that most glorious attempt which though
falling short of success lost nothing of its greatness--thy name is
and for ever will be held sacred to all Australians! In that fiery
furnace of trial, of suffering and death, was formed the mould,
in which throughout the long and dreadful years of war the young
Australian soldier has been cast. From that day onwards, through the
fearful horrors of trench warfare in France and Flanders, on the
burning sands of the East, on land and on sea, the armies of the
young Commonwealth, casting out not only fear but doubt, have dared,
endured, and died, supremely confident of victory.
Through the long dark days when the skies were black with omens of
disaster for the Allies, they faltered not, nor for a moment doubted
that the cause for which they fought would triumph. Their record
is a glorious one, and its lustre is no fitful gleam, but shines
brilliantly throughout the long dread years of trial.
It is of the deathless story of the Australians before Amiens that
you write, and inspired by such a theme yours will be a story to make
the pulses of all Australians leap in their veins with exultation.
When in the Spring of 1918 the great German offensive pressed back
and by force of numbers broke through the sorely tried British line,
the Australian divisions were hurried down from the North and rushed
up to stem the German armies, flushed with triumph and supremely
confident of final victory.
The story of the battles fought by the Australians before Amiens
is amongst the most thrilling in the history of this great world
conflict. Here was the fate of civilization decided. The great German
army, marching along the road in column of route, reached the crest
of high land overlooking Amiens, and with but a few miles between
them and this key to Paris, were held up by a veritable handful of
Australians, later reinforced as the rest of the Divisions came to
hand. It was the turning of the tide; the fighting raged around
Villers-Bretonneux, but the car of the German Juggernaut rolled
forward no more. From that day the onward rush of the enemy offensive
was stayed. An impassable barrier had been set up beyond which the
enemy could not pass. But the young soldiers of Australia, not
satisfied with arresting his onward march, began to force the Hun
back; at first slowly, and then faster and faster, until in the great
offensive of August 8, when along with four Divisions of Canadians
and two British, they swept him back in headlong rout, nor gave him
pause until breaking through the vaunted Hindenburg line they stood
victorious at Beaurevoir.
The deeds of these brave men will remain for ever fresh in the minds
of Australians. Australia has reason to be proud of her war effort;
she has done great things; but she has paid a great price. That a
small community of five millions all told should have recruited
417,000 men and sent 330,000 twelve thousand miles across the seas,
is a great thing. The number of our dead--57,000--and our total
casualties--289,723--show how great is the price which Australia has
paid for Liberty.
Although I have not seen the manuscript of _The Diggers_, with such a
theme it is impossible that the author of _The Children of the Dead
End_ and _The Great Push_ can fail.
Sincerely yours,
W. M. HUGHES.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE SOMME 17
II VILLERS-BRETONNEUX 33
III TOWARDS PERONNE 41
IV MONT ST. QUENTIN 53
V THE HINDENBURG TUNNEL 67
VI THE DEAD VILLAGE 83
VII GRAVES 93
VIII CAMBRAI AND AMIENS 99
IX IN THE CAFÉ 111
THE SONG OF PICARDY (1918).
Oh! barren hearth of Picardy
And trampled harvest field,
Say, who will light your fire at night
Or mill your autumn yield?
No more the reaper plies his trade,
The hours of peace are o'er,
And gone the matron and the maid,
And they return no more.
The poppies blow in Picardy,
The skylark sings o'erhead,
And flower and bird their vigil keep
Above the nameless dead;
But though above the dark sky lowers,
Beneath its gloom is set
The little seeds of Freedom's flowers,
To rim the parapet.
And hearts are strong in Picardy,
Where Hope is still aflame,
Where Freedom's heroes see ahead
The goal at which they aim;
Though drear and cold the ruined hearth
And barren fields are dumb,
A voice breathes soft across the earth
Of peace that is to come.
CHAPTER I
THE SOMME
In the afternoon of October 11, 1918, I found myself with a party
travelling out from Amiens and taking the straight road that runs
eastwards towards St. Quentin across the war harried fields of the
Somme. We had just passed through a country where the harvest was
gathered in, where the hay ricks and cornstacks stood high round
the ancient farmhouses, and we were now in a country where Death
had reaped its sad harvest for over four years, where all was ruin
and decay--a spread of demolition and destruction. This was the
battleground of the Somme.
This department is level, very fertile and was at one time amongst
the best cultivated districts of France. Cider was made there,
poultry reared, and the locality was rich in all manner of farm
produce. And it stood high in textile industries--wool, cotton,
hemp, silk-spinning, and the weaving of velvet and carpets. In
addition to these industries there were also large iron foundries,
beetroot sugar factories, distilleries, breweries, employing prior
to the war close on seventy thousand hands. But now, at the present
moment, all these industries are obliterated, the rich pastures of
the Somme are barren wastes, the factories and distilleries huddles
of charred wood, twisted iron, and broken bricks. All homes and
hamlets are destroyed, and for miles and miles ruin succeeds ruin,
until the eye wearies and the heart is heavy at the sight of the
horror which has been heaped on the once fair land of France.
The land of the Somme is not alone deserted and ravaged. It is dead,
utterly laid waste as if the lava of war had not alone fallen on
it, but blotted it out as a sand storm smothers the landmarks of a
desert. Of the great trees which lined the roadways nothing remains
save the peeled stumps, that stretch mile after mile as far as the
eye can see, passive relics of the hate which swept over them and
broke them down. Never again will they bear a leaf or call to the
dead earth for the food which gave green to their foliage.
The green which spreads out from the roadways is the green of rank
weeds, thistle, nettle and dock, the rank undergrowth which rises
through the tortured strands of rusty wire that were once the outer
ramparts of the Hindenburg line. Up from these nettles, docks, and
thistles, rises here and there a cumbrous tank which at one time fell
into a shell-hole and was unable to hiccough itself out again.
By the roadside lie shells which failed to explode, shells in their
cases which were never despatched on their mission of death, shells
sticking nose deep in the clay with their bases showing through the
weeds. Near these are gun emplacements with the guns still in their
original positions pointing back towards the locality where the
British troops are at present billeted in their many rest areas.
Here is a mill, its walls down, a brewery silent and deserted, a
sugar refinery with its girders twisted and bent, its framework
stripped of all covering, its iron bowels naked to the sky.
It is hard to picture this spread of world being other at any time
than a wild desolate waste, covered with broken homes, rusty limbers
and waggons, with ghastly spiked contraptions of war, chevaux de
frise, distorted entanglements, trip wires hidden in the weeds,
snares for unwary feet, and grotesque ill-proportioned dug-outs, with
doors askew and roofs falling in.
Elbows of trench suddenly gape by the roadside and as suddenly cease.
At one time these were parts of a well-proportioned alley, set with
fire-bay and traverse, boarded floor and well-built parapet, running
for mile after mile in one continuous crooked line from the steep
Vosges of the South to the sand dunes of the North. Here was a sap
that once stretched across No Man's Land, there was a front line, and
further back, crawling through holt and hamlet, all that remained of
a communication trench could be dimly discerned. The hamlet was now a
medley of tortured beams and fallen bricks, the holt a congregation
of peeled stumps that in the distance looked like an assemblage of
lepers, and sap, fire-bay and communication trench were defaced,
disfigured, their shapeless ruin adding to the ravage which had
deformed the face of the country.
In imagination I could picture the country in days of peace with
its rich pastures and fields of corn, its long roads lined with rows
of magnificent trees, its hedgerows, dykes and canals, its populous
villages where the bells of eventide called the faithful to prayer.
This and much more could be pictured, the snug farmhouses, with their
ricks of hay, the red-tiled cottages, the merry cafés, the shrines
by the roadside, the windmills circling to the breeze, the old men
smoking their long-shanked pipes, the women, bravely arrayed in mutch
caps and white aprons, carrying on the work of their household, the
children playing.... Where were the children now?
Even as I thought of this I could picture a date not so very far
back, the winter of 1916-17, the most trying winter of the war. Here
in this battle-wracked region the Australians were up against it. And
"up against it" means everything, from the shattering on the parados
of the mail bag with a letter from home, to the horrible death as
men were sucked inch by inch into the rising mud of a slushy trench,
sinking down into a grave where every effort to get clear was futile
and where the tomb, cold, clammy and slimy, rose up to engulf the
helpless victim.
The endless, ghastly horror of that winter will never be forgotten
by those who lived through it. Two things are impossible: one, the
forgetting of that Somme winter by those who knew it; and the other,
the inability to picture the life of the trenches by those who have
never fought in them.
Take the case of the young soldier suddenly dumped into the trench of
war. Let the man be a sundowner from far back, where life is hard, in
the Australian scrubs, or let him be a clerk from some shop or office
in Sydney or Melbourne. For both, the life that they had formerly
known was comparatively comfortable when placed in contrast to the
life which Europe offered them when they came there as soldiers.
One came from the parched Paroo, the other from the Sydney shop;
both donned the habiliments of war and after a certain period of
training found themselves stuck in a stinking drain on the Continent
of Europe. This drain was the trench, with a fire-bay that was a
miniature lagoon, the fire-step covered with slush, the parapet and
parados falling in as if they were ditches built of wet sand. Water
was there, water mixed with litter and clay. It was impossible to
lie down, for the slush rose over the body, finding its way into
eyes, mouth and ear. When the men slept they slept standing, to find
when they awoke that it was almost impossible to move hand or foot.
They simply stuck there and had to be hauled out by their mates. No
fires were allowed to be lit, for the position had to be kept hidden
from the enemy. Even if fires were allowed, there was no fuel, no
coke, no wood and no matches.
And it was constantly raining or snowing, filling the alleys of war
with slush and slime. In addition to the rain which winter brought,
there was the eternal rain of scrap-iron sent across from the enemy
gun emplacements. If a man was wounded he had to lie in the trench
all day, for the sniper was always on the wait for the men engaged
in the task of helping their stricken brothers. To move through the
trench with a weighty stretcher was impossible.
At night, when the darkness covered the battle-area, the
stretcher-bearers crossed the parados and carried the wounded back to
the dressing station, their way beset with danger, bursting shells,
hidden holes, and the trip wire that littered the terrible fields.
And the mud rose to the men's knees, threatening to drag them down
into its clammy depths. But despite this, the great work of war, the
deeds of mercy and endurance, were carried on by the brave soldiery
who had come so far to fight, not for the glory of their Empire so
much as for the freedom of the world.
The dangers which beset the men going out also beset the men coming
in. Ration parties were sent to bring in food to the trench garrison,
but dangers being many and the way difficult, all food was cold when
it arrived. Often it never came to hand at all, and those sent for
it never returned to report themselves to the battalion. They left,
the men of the ration party, with steaming dixies of tea, so the
head-cook in some broken-down house at the rear, reported. "But they
never reached here," said the battalion orderly sergeant in the front
line. And somewhere in the semi-liquid mud that stretched from the
field kitchen to the trench, the ration party disappeared from the
sight of their mates for ever.
Then, after long days of hardship and nights of waiting (how many
days and nights had passed they knew not), the men who garrisoned
the front line were relieved and went back to support trenches for
a rest. Here they would sit in a trench as wet as the trench which
they had left, sleep in a shelter which hid the sky from their eyes
but never kept the rain away from their sodden clothes. But despite
this the trench had some advantages denied to the men nearer No
Man's Land. They could light a fire and cook meals, make tea and fry
a rasher of bacon. But the wood to make the fire was seldom to be
obtained, and when it came to hand it was too wet to burn. Still,
their own efforts to make their stay in support comfortable, helped
a little to relieve the tedium of the time. The rest came to an end
at the close of three or four days, and back again they went to the
front line trenches.
Away home in England or in the Colonies of that Kingdom live men and
women who, despite reading, report and record, cannot picture the
life which was lived by these men. The limit of suffering overpassed,
nothing but their imperturbable endurance nerved them to the work
which was theirs. For those who live so far away, the sight of these
trenches even at a distance would raise a feeling of discomfort, to
walk through these lines of mud would cause them no end of torture,
mental and physical, to stay there for a day would be horrible, but
to fight there in rain and snow and shell fire would be superlative
in its ghastliness. Yet far away from these scenes, removed from all
the agony war entails, it has been reported of some that they calmly
sit down in their comfortable rooms and with smug pens and righteous
speech protest against the little tot of rum which is issued now and
again to the gallant soldiers who stand against the enemy, guarding
the Empire which that enemy has set out to assail. Heaven send that
this war waged against the foe without may help a little to cripple
the smug intolerance that dwells within!
It was through the beaten land, on the road that runs from Amiens to
Peronne that our car sped. Scarcely a soul was in sight, though now
and again we could see refugees returning to the homes which once
were theirs. We passed a woman and two children, the former dressed
very neatly, with a mutch cap on her head and an umbrella under her
arm. A mother and her loved ones, probably going back to the home
they had known in days of peace.
A few miles out from Amiens we saw an old man ambling painfully along
in front of us, now and again coming to a halt and looking round him,
taking stock of the country through which he was passing. Hearing the
car following him he turned and looked at us. He was a very old man,
his beard white; he carried a stick in his hand and held a bundle
under his arm. As the car came close to him it stopped and the driver
inquired of the man where he was going.
"To Villars-Carbonnel," said the man, putting his stick under the arm
that held the bundle, and rubbing his whiskers with the free hand.
"Your own village?" asked the driver.
"Yes, sir."
"Come inside and I'll drive you there," said the driver.
"No, thank you," said the man. "I prefer to walk. I'm near there.
Villars-Carbonnel is round the corner."
The car drove on, and my thoughts dwelt with the man who was going
to Villars-Carbonnel and who preferred to walk there. In viewing
the countryside from the road he probably wanted to see all that
had happened to the place since he was there before. Or perhaps he
wanted to prolong the joyful anticipation of the homecoming. With
the remembrance common to the old he was no doubt calling to mind
the village which he had known all his life, the people whom he
had known and loved when he dwelt there. What would the village be
like now? Would it be broken down like the other villages which he
had passed on the road, Villers-Bretonneux, Warfusse Abancourt, and
Lamotte-en-Santerre? These were twisted out of all shape, their cafés
in ruins, their streets piled with rubble, the roof beams of their
many homes burned, and churches beaten almost to the ground. But no,
his native village would not have suffered as these had suffered! He
loved it so much that the thought of irreparable ruin hanging over
his own birthplace could not certainly have entered his mind. Let him
have his dreams of homecoming and he was happy.
I could picture that old man in days before the war sitting in front
of his house in the summer evenings with the vines trailing round
the front door and the apple blossoms blooming in his garden. In the
distance the mists crept up from the Somme, the village girls leading
the cattle in from the pastures came down the street; the children
played on the pavement, making the night glad with their innocent
prattle. Possibly the church bell was then ringing out the Angelus,
calling the devotees to worship, while the old man sat there smoking
his long-shanked pipe with the tobacco piled high over the bowl and
the gleaming threads falling down on the breast of his coat. Then,
after a while, he might go into a café, drink his glass of red wine
and play a game of draughts or dominoes with his neighbour. And he
knew the village, knew every man and woman there. It was his native
place, loved as only the French can love the spot of earth on which
they were born, and known to him as a painter knows every tint of
colour on the picture which he has completed.
We came to a cross-road and here for a moment the driver stopped
to look at his map. Round us the country stretched for miles, with
here and there a ruined village or farmhouse breaking the landscape.
Under us the road was a dun colour, showing that broken bricks had
been used in the fashioning of the highway. Thistles grew by the
roadside and through these could be seen many strands of rusted wire,
with here and there a cross turning green with the rain and topped
with a trench helmet or khaki cap. Flowers grew there, late flowers
nodding gravely in the breeze. Not a house was to be seen, not even
the ruins of a wall. Above this was a board with something written on
it, and leaning over the car I could read the message. This was what
it told me:
HERE ONCE STOOD THE VILLAGE OF VILLARS-CARBONNEL.
THE FIGHTERS
The loaded limbers trenchward wend, the straining horses churning
The slush upon the cobbled road that takes them to the fray,
And far ahead in lurid tints the fires of war are burning
And leprous white the poplar stumps that line the soldiers' way.
The great rage smites the heavy world and tears the sky asunder
(Oh! silent forms that bow and bend beneath the heavy load!)
The East aflame with war's red strife and riot of its thunder
(Poor weary boys that wend their way along the shrapnelled road.)
Oh! hearts that follow, wish them luck and strength in sleep and
waking,
These gallant youths that come and go through all the gloomy night
To labour on the mighty job; its stress and toil unshaking
The fire and faith of mighty souls that battle for the right.
Oh! Heaven light their darkest hour and send them safely through it
To reach the goal of their desires and see the struggle through.
The way is rough and hard the fight. God give them strength to do it,
To weather through and finish up the work they've come to do.