POZIÈRES RIDGE
_France, August 14th._
You would scarcely realise it from what the world has heard, but I think
that the hardest battle ever fought by Australians was probably the
battle of Pozières Ridge.
There have been four distinct battles fought by the Australian troops on
the Somme since they made their first charge from the British trenches
near Pozières. The first was the heavy three days' fight by which they
took Pozières village. The second was the fight in which they tried to
rush the German second line along the hill-crest behind Pozières. The
third was the attack in which this second line was broken by them along
a front of a mile and a half. The fourth has been the long fight which
immediately began along the German second line northwards from the new
position, along the ridge towards Mouquet Farm. It has been hard
fighting all the way, and what was three weeks ago a German salient
into the British line is now a big Australian salient into the German
line. But I think that the hardest fight of all was that of the second
and third phases--the battle for Pozières Ridge.
Pozières village itself was not on the crest of the hill. It was on the
British side of it, where the German was naturally hanging on because it
was almost the highest point in his position and gave him a view over
miles of our territory. On the other hand, the German main second line
behind Pozières was practically on the summit; in some parts farther
north it was actually on or just over the summit. It was from two to
seven hundred yards beyond the village itself.
The German line on the hill-crest was attacked as soon as ever the
village was properly cleared. The Australians went at it in the night
across a wide strip of waste hill-top. The thistles there, and the brown
earth churned up in shell craters, and the absolute absence of any kind
of movement (simply because it was too dangerous to move), call to one's
mind Shakespeare's old stage direction of a "blasted heath." There had
been a short artillery preparation; the attack reminded one of our old
raids up on the Armentières front.
I have seen Germans who were in the line in front of that attack. They
state that they were not surprised. In the light of their flares they
had seen numbers of "Englishmen" advancing over the shoulder of the
hill. When the rush came, one German officer told me, he, in his short
sector of the line alone, had three machine-guns all hard at work. The
attack reached the remnants of the German wire. Some brave men picked a
path through the tangle, and, in spite of the cross-fire, managed to
reach the German trench. They were very few. We have since discovered
men in the craters even beyond the front German trench. The German
officer told me that his men had afterwards found an Australian who had
been lying in a crater in front of his line for four days. He had been
shot through the abdomen and had a broken leg, but he had been brought
in by the Germans and was doing well. We also afterwards brought in both
Australians and Germans who had been out there for six days, wounded,
living on what rations they had with them.
It was a brave attack. On the extreme left it succeeded. But the
trenches won by the Victorians there were on the flank, not on the
hill-top. The country behind that crest, sloping gradually down to the
valley of Courcelette and beyond, where the German field batteries were
firing and where the Germans could come and go unseen--all this was so
far an unknown land into which no one on the British side had peered
since the battle began.
Six days later the Australians went for that position again. They
attacked just after dusk. There was enough light to make out the face of
the country as if by a dim moonlight. They were the same troops who had
made the attack a week before, because there was a determination that
they, and they alone, should reach that line. The artillery had been
pounding it gradually during the week.
The German troops who were holding that part were about to be relieved.
They had suffered from the slow, continual bombardment. There were deep
dug-outs in their trenches, where they saved the men as far as possible,
but one after another these would be crushed or blocked by a heavy
shell. The tired companies had lost in some cases actually half their
men by this shell fire, losing them slowly, day by day, as a man might
bleed to death. The remainder had their packs made up ready to march out
to rest. The young officer of one of the relieving battalions was
actually coming into the trenches at the head of his platoon--when there
crashed on them a sudden hail of shell fire. The officer extended his
men hurriedly and pushed on. It was about half-past ten by German time,
which is half-past nine by ours.
The first sight that met him, as he reached the support line of German
trenches, was two wounded Australians lying in the bottom of it. So the
British must be attacking, he thought. He ordered his platoon to advance
over the trench and counter-attack. But in the dark and the dust they
lost touch and straggled to the north--he saw no more of them. He
tumbled on with two men into a shell crater and began to improve it for
defence--then they found Australians towering around them in the dark.
They surrendered.
It was a most difficult business to get the various parties for our
attack into position in the night, and some of the troops behind had to
be pushed forward hurriedly. In consequence the officers out in front
had to carry on as if theirs were the only troops in the attack, and see
the whole fight through without relying upon supports. The way in which
junior officers and N.C.O.'s have acted upon their own initiative during
some of this fighting has been beyond praise. The attack went through
up to time. The supports had to come in parties organised in the dark on
the spur of the moment. The Germans had several machine-guns going. But
as another German officer told me, "This time they came on too thick. We
might have held them in front, but they got in on one side of us; then
we heard they were in on the other; then they came from the rear as
well--on all four sides. What could we do?"
Almost immediately after the Australians reached the trenches, watchers
far behind could see the horizon beyond them lit by five slow
illuminations, about ten minutes' interval between each. They were
beyond the crest of the hill. I do not know, but I think the German must
have been blowing up his field-gun ammunition.
The men in the new trenches may, or may not, have seen this. What they
did notice, as soon as the battle cleared and they had time to look into
the darkness in front of them, was a succession of brilliant glares from
some position just hidden by the slope of the hill. It was the flash of
the German guns which were firing at them. It is, as far as I know, the
first time in this battle that our men have seen the actual flash of
the enemy's guns.
When day broke they found beyond them a wide, flat stretch of hill-top,
with a distant hill line beyond. Far down the slope there were Germans
moving. And in the distant landscape they saw the German gun teams
limber up and hurry away with the field guns which for a fortnight had
been firing upon our men.
The Germans have twice afterwards attacked that position. In the early
light of the first morning a party of them came tumbling up from some
trench against a sector of the captured line. In front of them was an
officer, well ahead, firing his automatic pistol as he went, levelling
it first at one Australian, then at another, as he saw them in the
trenches before him. He was shot, and the attack quickly melted; it
never seemed very serious. Two days later, after a long, heavy
bombardment, the Germans attacked again--this time about fifteen hundred
of them. They penetrated the two trenches at one point, but our company
officers, again acting on their own initiative, charged them straight,
on the instant, without hesitation. Every German in that section was
captured, and a few Australians, whom they had taken, were released.