XVI The Australians and a Windmill
The windmill upon the hill—Pozières—Its topography—Warlike intensity of the Australians—A “stiff job”—An Australian chronicler—Incentives to Australian efficiency—German complaint that the Australians came too fast—Clockwork efficiency—Man-to-man business—Sunburned, gaunt battalions from the vortex—The fighting on the Ridge—Mouquet Farm—A contest of individuality against discipline—“Advance, Australia!”—New Zealanders—South Africans.
When I think of the Australians in France I always think of a windmill. This is not implying that they were in any sense Quixotic or that they tilted at a windmill, there being nothing left of the windmill to tilt at when their capture of its ruins became the crowning labor of their first tour on the Somme front.
In their progress up that sector of the Ridge the windmill came after Pozières, as the ascent of the bare mountain peak comes after the reaches below the timber line. Pozières was beyond La Boisselle and Ovillers-la-Boisselle, from which the battle movement swung forward at the hinge of the point where the old first-line German fortifications had been broken on July 1st.
To think of Pozières will be to think of the Australians as long as the history of the Somme battle endures. I read an interview in a New York paper with the Chief of Staff of the German Army opposite the British in which he must have been correctly quoted, as his remarks passed the censorship. He said that the loss of Pozières was a blunder. I liked his frankness in laying the blame on a subordinate who, if he also had spoken, might have mentioned the presence of the Australians as an excuse, which, personally, I think is an excellent one.
Difficult as it now becomes to keep any sequence in the operations when, at best, chronology ceases to be illuminative of phases, it is well here to explain that the attack of July 15th had not gained the whole Ridge on the front ahead of the broad stretch of ruptured first line. Besides, the Ridge is not like the roof of a house, but a most illusive series of irregular knolls with small plateaus or valleys between, a sort of miniature broken tableland. The foothold gained on July 15th meant no broad command of vision down the slope to the main valley on the other side. Even a shoulder five or ten feet higher than the neighboring ground meant a barrier to artillery observation which shells would not blast away; and the struggle for such positions was to go on for weeks.
Pozières, then, was on the way to the Ridge and its possession would put the formidable defenses of Thiepval in a salient, thus enabling the British to strike it from the side as well as in front, which is the aim of all strategy whether it works in mobile divisions in an open field or is biting and tearing its way against field fortifications. Therefore, the Germans had good reason to hold Pozières, which protected first-line trenches that had required twenty months of preparation. Wherever they could keep the Briton or the Frenchman from forcing the fight into the open which made the contest an even one in digging, they were saving life and ammunition by nests of redoubts and dugouts.
The reason that the Australians wanted to take Pozières was not so tactical as human in their minds. It was the village assigned to them and they wished to investigate it immediately and get established in the property that was to be theirs, once they took it, to hold in trust for the inhabitants. I had a fondness for watching them as they marched up to the front looking unreal in their steel helmets which they wore in place of the broad-brimmed hats. There was a sort of warlike intensity about them which may come from the sunlight of an island continent reflecting the histrionic adaptability of appearances to the task in hand.
Their first objective was to be the main street. They had a “stiff job” ahead, as everybody agreed, and so had the British troops operating on their right.
“This objective business has a highly educated sound, which might limit martial enthusiasm,” said one Australian. “As I understand it, that’s the line where we stop no matter how good the going and which we must reach no matter how hard the going.”
Precisely. An Australian battalion needed a warning in the first instance lest it might keep on advancing, which meant that commanders would not know where it was in the shell-smoke and it might get “squeezed” for want of support on the right and left, as I have explained elsewhere. Certainly, warning was unnecessary in the second instance about the hard going.
Bean has all the details of the taking of Pozières; he knows what every battalion did, and I was going to say what every soldier did. When the Australians were in he was in making notes and when they were out he was out writing up his notes. His was intimate war correspondence about the fellows who came from all the districts of his continent, his home folks. I am only expressing the impressions of one who had glimpses of the Australians while the battle was raging elsewhere.
Of course, skeptics had said that Gallipoli was one thing and the Somme another and the Australian man-to-man method might receive a shock from Prussian system; but, then, skeptics had said that the British could not make an army in two years. The Australians knew what was in the skeptics’ minds, which was further incentive. They had a general whom they believed in and they did not admit that any man on earth was a better man than an Australian. And their staff? Of course, when it takes forty years to make a staff how could the Australians have one that could hold its own with the Germans? And this was what the Australians had to do, staff and man: beat the Germans.
When with clockwork promptness came the report that they had taken all of their objectives it showed that they were up to the standard of their looks and their staff signals were working well. They had a lot of prisoners, too, who complained that the Australians came on too fast. Meanwhile, they were on one side of the street and the Germans on the other, hugging débris and sniping at one another. Now the man-to-man business began to count. The Australian got across the street; he went after the other fellow; he made a still hunt of it. This battle had become a personal matter which pleased their sense of individualism; for it is not bred into Australians to be afraid if they are out alone after dark.
Having worked beyond their first objective, when they were given as their second the rest of the village they took it; and they were not “biffed” out of it, either. What was the use of yielding ground when you would have to make another charge in order to regain what had been lost? They were not that kind of arithmeticians, they said. They believed in addition not subtraction in an offensive campaign.
So they stuck, though the Germans made repeated daring counter-attacks and poured in shell fire from the guns up Thiepval way and off Bapaume way with hellish prodigality. For the German staff was evidently much out of temper about the “blunder” and for many weeks to come were to continue pounding Pozières. If they could not shake the Australian out of the village they meant to make him pay heavy taxes and to try to kill his reliefs and stop his supplies. How the Australians managed to get food and men up through the communication trenches under the unceasing inferno over that bare slope is tribute to their skill in slipping out and in between its blasts.
Not only were they able to hold, but they kept on attacking. Every day we heard that they had taken more ground and whenever we went out to have a look the German lines were always a little farther back. One day we were asking if the Australians were in the cemetery yet; the next day they were and the next they had more of it as they worked their way uphill, fighting from grave to grave; and the next day they had mastered all of it, thanks to a grim persistence which some had said would not comport with their highstrung temperament.
The windmill was a landmark crowning the Ridge; as fair a target as ever artillery ranged on—a gunner’s delight. After having been knocked into splinters the splinters were spread about by high explosives which reduced the stone base to fragments.
Sunburned, gaunt battalions came out of the vortex for a turn of rest. With helmets battered by shrapnel bullets, after nights in the rain and broiling hot days, their faces grimy and unshaven, their clothes torn and spotted, they were still Australians who looked you in the eye with a sense of having proved their birthright as free men. Sometimes the old spirit incited by the situation got out of bonds. One night when a company rose up to the charge the company next in line called out, “Where are you going?” and on the reply, “We’ve orders to take that trench in front,” the company that had no orders to advance exclaimed, “Here, we’re going to join in the scrum!” and they did, taking more trench than the plan required.
The fierce period of the battle was approaching when fighting on the Ridge was to be a bloody, wrestling series of clinches. Now trenches could not be dug on that bold, treeless summit. As soon as an aeroplane spotted a line developing out of the field of shell-craters the guns filled the trench and then proceeded to pound it into the fashionable style for farming land on the Ridge.
Trenches out of the question, it became a war among shell-craters. Here a soldier ensconced himself with rifle and bombs or a machine gunner deepened the hole with his spade for the gun. This was “scrapping” to the Australians’ taste. It called for individual nerve and daring on that shell-swept, pestled earth, creeping up to new positions or back for water and food by night, lying “doggo” by day and waiting for a counter-attack by the Germans, who were always the losers in this grim, stealthy advance.
In Mouquet Farm the Germans had dugouts whose elaborateness was realized only after they were taken. A battalion could find absolute security in them. Long galleries ran back to entrances in areas safe from shell fire. Overhead no semblance of farm buildings was left by British and Australian guns. When I visited the ruins later I could not tell how many buildings there had been; and Mouquet Farm was not the only strong point that the Germans had to fall back on, let it be said. In the underground tunnels and chambers the Germans gathered for their counter-attacks, which they attempted with something of their old precision and courage.
This was the opportunity of the machine gunners in shell-craters and the snipers and the curtain of artillery fire. Sometimes the Australians allowed the attack to get good headway. They even left gaps in their lines for the game to enter the net before they began firing; and again, when a broken German charge sought flight its remnants faced an impassable curtain of fire which fenced them in and they dropped into shell-craters and held up their hands, which was the only thing to do.
Soon the Germans learned, too, how to make the most of shell-craters. The harder the Australians fought the greater the spur to German pride not to be beaten by these supposedly undisciplined, untrained men. The Germans called for more guns and got them. Mouquet Farm became a fortress of machine guns. It was not taken by the Australians—their successors took what was left of it. The nearer they came to the crest which was their supreme goal the ghastlier and more concentrated grew the shell fire, as the German guns had only to range on the skyline. But this equally applied to Australian gunners as the Germans were crowded toward the summit where the débris of the windmill remained, till finally they had to fall back to the other side.
Then they tried sweeping over the Ridge from the cover of the reverse slope in counter-attacks, only to be whipped by machine gun fire, lashed by shrapnel and crushed by high explosives—themselves mixed with the ruins of the windmill. At last they gave up the effort. It was not in German discipline to make any more attempts.
The Australians had the windmill as much as anyone had it as, for a time, it was in No Man’s Land where blasts of shells would permit of no occupation. But the symbol for which it stood was there in readiness as a jumping-off place for the sweep-down into the valley later on when the Canadians should take the place of the Australians; and before they retired they could look in triumph across at Thiepval and down on Courcelette and Martinpuich and past the valley to Bapaume.
The development of the campaign had given the Australians work suited to their bent when this war of machinery, attaining its supreme complexity on the Somme, left the human machine between walls of shell fire to fight it out individually against the human machine, in a contest of will, courage, audacity, alertness and resource, man to man. “Advance, Australia!” is the Australian motto; and the Australians advanced.
The New Zealanders had their part elsewhere and played it in the New Zealand way.
“They have never failed to take an objective set them,” said a general after the taking of Flers, “and they have always gained their positions with slight losses.”
Could there be higher praise? Success and thrift, courage and skill in taking cover! For the business of a soldier is to do his enemy the maximum of damage with the minimum to himself, as anyone may go on repeating. Probably the remark of the New Zealanders in answer to the commander’s praise would be, “Thank you. Why not?” as if this were what the New Zealanders expected of themselves. They take much for granted about New Zealand, without being boastful.
“A blooming quiet lot that keeps to themselves,” said a British soldier, “but likable when you get to know them.”
You might depend upon the average New Zealand private for an interesting talk about social organization, municipal improvements, and human welfare under government direction. The standard of individual intelligence and education was high and it seemed to make good fighting men.
The Australians had had to grub their way foot by foot, and the South Africans on July 15th with veldt gallantry had swept into Delville Wood, which was to be a shambles for two months, and stood off with a thin line the immense forces of hastily gathered reserves which the Germans threw at this vital point which had been lost in a surprise attack.
All this on the way up to the Ridge. The New Zealanders were to play a part in the same movement as the Canadians after the Ridge was taken. They were in the big sweep down from the Ridge over a broad front. Across the open for about two miles they had to go, fair targets for shell fire; and they went, keeping their order as if on parade, working out each evolution with soldierly precision including coöperation with the “tanks.” They were at their final objective on schedule time, accomplishing the task with amazingly few casualties and so little fuss that it seemed a kind of skilful field-day manoeuver. All that they took they held and still held it when the mists of autumn obscured artillery observation and they were relieved from the quagmire for their turn of rest.