HOW THE AUSTRALIANS WERE RELIEVED
_France, September 19th._
It was before the moment at which my last letter ended that the time had
come for the first relieving troops to be drafted into the fight.
I shall not forget the first I saw of them. We were at a certain
headquarters not a thousand miles from the enemy's barrage. Messages had
dribbled through from each part of the attacking line telling exactly
where every portion of it had got to; or rather telling where each
portion believed it had got to--as far as it could judge by sticking up
its collective head from shell craters and broken-down trench walls and
staring out over the limitless sea of craters and crabholes which
surrounded it. As the only features in the landscape were a ragged tree
stump, and what looked like the remains of a broken fish basket over the
horizon, all very distant--and a dozen shell-bursts and the bark of an
unseen machine-gun, all very close--the determination was apt to be a
trifle erratic. Still, the points were marked down, where each handful
believed and trusted itself to be. The next business was to fill up
certain gaps. An order was dispatched to the supports. They were to send
an officer to receive instructions.
He came. He was a man nearing middle age, erect, tough as wire, with
lines in his face such as hard fighting and responsibility leave on the
face of every soldier.
The representative of authority upon the spot--an Australian who also
had faced ugly scenes--explained to him quietly where he wished him to
take his men, into such and such a corner, by such and such a route. It
meant plunging straight into the thick of the Somme battle, with all its
unknown horrors--everyone there knew that. But the new-comer said
quietly, "Yes, sir"--and climbed up and out into the light.
It was not an Australian who spoke. That "Yes, sir" came unmistakably
from the other side of the Pacific. It was the first of the Canadians
upon the Somme battlefield.
An hour or so later an Australian officer, moving along with his men to
improve an exposed and isolated trench (a trench which was outflanked
already, and enfiladed, and in half a dozen ways unhealthy) into a
condition to be held against any attacks at all costs--found, coming
across the open towards his exposed flank, a line of stalwart men in
kilts. His men were dead tired, the enemy's shell-fire was constant and
heavy, grey heads and helmets constantly seen behind a red mud parapet,
across a hundred yards of red mud craters, proved that the Prussian
Guard Reserve was getting ready to counter-attack him. Every message he
sent back to Headquarters finished, "But we will hold this trench."
And yet here the new men came--a line of them, stumbling from crater
into crater, and by one of those unaccountable chances that occur in
battles, only two or three of them were hit in crossing over. They
dropped into the trench by the side of the Australians. Their bombers
went to the left to relieve the men who had been holding the open flank.
They brought in with them keen, fresh faces and bodies, and an
all-important supply of bombs. It was better than a draught of good
wine.
So it was that the first of the Canadians arrived.
Long before the last Australian platoon left that battered line, these
first Canadians were almost as tired as they. For thirty-six hours they
had piled up the same barricades, garrisoned the same shell-holes, were
shattered by the same shells. Twenty-four hours after the Canadians
came, the vicious bombardment described in the last letter descended on
the flank they both were holding. They were buried together by the heavy
shell-bursts. They dug each other out. When the garrison became so thin
that whole lengths of trench were without a single unwounded occupant,
they helped each others' wounded down to the next length, and built
another barricade, and held that.
Finally, when hour after hour passed and the incessant shelling never
ceased, the garrison was withdrawn a little farther; and then five of
them went back to the barricade which the enemy's artillery had
discovered. They sat down in the trench behind it. A German battery was
trying for it--putting its four big high-explosive shells regularly
round it--salvo after salvo as punctual as clockwork. It was only a
matter of time before the thing must go.
So the five sat there--Tasmanians and Canadians--and discussed the rival
methods of wheat growing in their respective dominions in order to keep
their thoughts away from that inevitable shell.
It came at last, through their shelter--slashed one man across the face,
killed two and left two--smashed the barricade into a scrap-heap. Then
others were brought to stand by. Shells were falling anything from
thirty to forty in the minute. One of the remaining Tasmanian
sergeants--a Lewis gunner--came back from an errand, crawling, wounded
dangerously through the neck. "I don't want to go away," he said. "If I
can't work a Lewis gun, I can sit by another chap and tell him how to."
In the end, when he was sent away, he was seen crawling on two knees and
one hand, guiding with the other hand a fellow gunner who had been hit.
That night a big gun, much bigger than the rest, sent its shells roaring
down through the sky somewhere near. The men would be waked by the
shriek of each shell and then fall asleep and be waked again by the
crash of the explosion. And still they held the trench. And still every
other message ended--"But we will hold on."
They had withdrawn a little to where they could hold during the night;
but before the grey morning, the moment the bombardment had eased, they
crept back again lest the Germans should get there first.
With the light came a reinforcement of new Canadians--grand fellows in
great spirit. And the last Australian was during that morning withdrawn.
It was the most welcome sight in all the world to see those troops come
in. Not that the tired men would ever admit that it was necessary. As
one report from an Australian boy said, "The reinforcement has arrived.
Captain X---- may tell you that the Australians are done. Rot!"
Whether they were done or whether they were not, they spoke of those
Canadian bombers in a way it would have done Canadian hearts good to
hear. Australians and Canadians fought for thirty-six hours in those
trenches inextricably mixed, working under each others' officers. Their
wounded helped each other from the front. Their dead lie and will lie
through all the centuries hastily buried beside the tumbled trenches and
shell-holes where, fighting as mates, they died.
* * * * *
And the men who had hung on to that flank almost within shouting
distance of Mouquet for two wild days and nights--they came out of the
fight asking, "Can you tell me if we have got Mouquet Farm?"
We had not. The fierce fighting in the broken centre had enabled us to
hold all the ground gained upon the crest. But through this same gap the
Germans had come back against the farm. They swarmed in upon its
garrison, driving in gradually the men who were holding that flank.
Under heavy shell-fire the line dwindled and dwindled until the Western
Australians, who had won the farm and held it for five hours, numbered
barely sufficient to make good their retirement. The officer left in
charge there, himself wounded, ordered the remnant to withdraw. And the
Germans entered the farm again.
But on the crest the line held. The Prussian Guard Reserve
counter-attacked it three times, and on the last occasion the
Queenslanders had such deadly shooting against Germans in the open as
cheered them in spite of all their fatigue. I saw those Queenslanders
marching out two days later with a step which would do credit to a
Guards regiment going in.
So ended a fight as hard as Australians have ever fought.
Mouquet Farm was taken a fortnight later in a big combined advance of
British and Canadians. The Farm itself held out many hours after the
line had passed it, and was finally seized by a pioneer battalion,
working behind our lines.