While these advances were made north of the Somme, the Australians were advancing and consolidating their position along the Roman road, south of the river. After the disastrous attack by the 10th Brigade on 10 August – in which Knox-Knight’s 37th Battalion lost over 100 men, including Knox-Knight himself – the AIF 3rd Division’s General Gellibrand was keen to maintain pressure on the Germans, and ordered the 10th Brigade to advance north and south of the Roman road, beginning with the 38th Battalion. This battalion, under Captain Francis Fairweather, MC, advanced across the flat, open plain devoid of cover on 10 August. After crossing the Proyart road, they came under heavy machine-gun fire from half a mile to the east and from the crossroads at Avenue Cross.
The advance of the 10th Brigade was also subjected to heavy artillery and machine-gun fire, particularly upon the 38th and 40th Battalions, after the 37th and 39th withdrew to safer positions. The two forward battalions dug in, but the going was tough due to the shortage of picks and shovels. With the help of the morning mist on 11 August, the 10th Brigade had completed a disjointed line which was again heavily bombarded, isolating the battalion headquarters. The bombardment continued throughout 11 August but, under cover of the mist, men of the 38th patrolled forward and eliminated a number of German machine guns that had targeted the Australians.
The work of the runners and signallers was especially valued during this time, though a number were killed and wounded. One brave man was Lieutenant Anthony Mills, who ran between the front line and battalion headquarters. As the 40th Battalion history states, ‘The sight of this officer breaking all previous records across the open with machine gun bullets flicking up the dirt under his heels became a familiar sight … and on each appearance the odds were called and the bets made in our posts as to whether he would arrive. Odds were about 12 to 1 against.’1
An Australian patrol advanced north-east, south of Proyart, while another patrol moved up the road and into the village. Here they observed Germans fleeing west. A lone patrol by the 40th Battalion’s Sergeant Ernest Billing, however, found that the trenches north and east of Proyart were held in force by the Germans. Before returning to his unit, Billing camouflaged himself in a pile of rubbish and sniped three machine gunners. The remaining gunners ran.
With machine-gun fire pouring into the 37th Battalion, one party of thirteen Australians rushed forward, but were wiped out to a man in their brave dash to take the guns. After witnessing this action the 40th Battalion’s Sergeant Percy Statton, MM, from Beaconsfield, Tasmania, called on three men to follow him and, armed only with his revolver, rushed across eighty yards of open ground. The Germans were busy firing on the 37th, so Statton quickly entered their trench, shot two gunners manning the first gun and then rushed to the next gun. Here he shot the crew, with the exception of one man who came at him with the bayonet. Statton wrenched it from the German’s hands and killed him. The Germans at the two remaining guns had fled, only to be cut down by the battalion’s Lewis guns. Suddenly, German machine guns in Robert Wood to the east of Proyart opened on Statton’s small party, killing Private Lesley Styles and wounding Corporal Wilfred Upchurch.
For his bravery, Sergeant Percy Statton was awarded the Victoria Cross. The 40th Battalion was then relieved after they had taken casualties of twelve killed and sixty wounded, including two company commanders.
Orders went out to the Australian 11th Brigade to clear the area north-east towards Chuignolles on 11 August. The 41st Battalion advanced on St Germaine Wood, where a large number of Germans were defending both the wood and a quarry, from which heavy fire fell upon the Australians. Without Stokes mortars, they called for artillery support, and fifty shells were quickly dropped into the area. The German artillery then mistakenly dropped shells into these German positions, ignoring the flares fired by their own defenders. The battalion moved through the area, capturing 100 Germans and many machine guns while the Germans streamed back, fleeing for their life.
The brigade’s 42nd Battalion had only entered the fight with 300 rifles, and this was to be the battalion’s most grim and testing attack of the war. At one point Lieutenant Arthur Boorman, MC, led a small party of seven men and one Lewis gun. With their nearest support 300 yards away, they found themselves virtually surrounded, forcing the Lewis gunner to fire first up the road, then across the valley and then down the road. German troops ‘were thick in Luc and Long Woods. Up the valley came several hundred with many machine guns, and on this front the 42nd, now holding a 2000 yard front with 250 men, fell back several hundred yards to behind the Proyart–Bray road.’2
By the time the 42nd were relieved by the British Army’s Sherwood Foresters on 12 August, fifty per cent of the battalion had suffered casualties,3 but they had achieved their objectives, to clear the areas north-east of Proyart towards Chuignolles.
Haig was keen to continue the advance, and had decided on two separate offensives. The first, to the south, was to occur at dawn on 15 August with the Fourth British and First French armies attacking Chaulnes, east of Lihons, and the area north and east of Roye. The second offensive, on 20 August, would see the Third British Army, with the addition of four infantry and two cavalry divisions plus 200 tanks, attack towards the large town of Bapaume north of the Somme.
The Australian part in the first operation was to provide the 4th and 5th Divisions to advance on the northern flank. On the night of 14 August, these two divisions moved up and relieved the 1st Division south of the railway. However, on 13 August, the planned attack was delayed a day, and on 14 August, it was delayed indefinitely. General Currie was unhappy about his Canadian troops advancing across the old battlefields, against thick belts of wire with high potential casualties. Instead, he wanted his divisions returned to the area they knew, the Arras front.
The AIF was then shuffled about the battlefield, with the 4th Division relieving the Canadian 1st Division at the southern end of the line on the 16th and, two days later, the 5th Division relieving the British 17th Division south of the Roman road. Meanwhile, the French to the south had continued their progress, advancing over one mile on a seven-mile front south of the Canadians, near Roye. Orders then came down that the Australians were to halt their advance and, except for continued nibbling and peaceful penetration, were to bring the line up ready for the next stage of the advance. The 2nd Division held a front of 3000 yards, with the 6th Brigade holding the line. Further south, the 4th Division held a line near Madame Wood, nearly two miles north of Lihons, advancing up old trenches. On 17 August, they occupied the German positions in Lihu Farm near Auger Wood.
Now, facing the next village, Herleville, were three Victorian battalions of the 6th Brigade – the 22nd, 23rd and 24th – with the 22nd spread across the brigade front. Around Herleville, the Germans held a series of trenches, including a sunken road, and orders were issued for an attack by these battalions at 4.15 am on 18 August. During the recent advance, the Australian battalions had been decimated, with the 22nd’s three companies having thirty, twenty-four and thirty-six men instead of 250 each. Only 120 men could be mustered for the attack on a front of over half a mile and, of them, thirty had to remain to hold the front line in case of counterattack.
As soon as the men rose to advance, they were hit with heavy machine-gun and artillery fire. Twelve of the thirty men in ‘D’ Company went down immediately. Lieutenant Leo McCartin, MC, a draper from Geelong, directed his men to the objective and held on until he was relieved later in the morning. He was twice wounded in the attack and, in attempting to return across open country to report his position, was again shot. He made his report and again set out across the open country to get back to his men, but never arrived and was afterward found dead. He was buried in Heath Cemetery, but later fighting disturbed his grave.
After the 6th Brigade had pushed the Germans back 800 yards, the enemy began to fight back, as noted in the brigade’s war diary: ‘this occasioned grave resentment by the enemy who vigorously counter-attacked, driving our attacking force back and reducing our gains to five hundred yards.’4
The 6th Brigade was relieved on the night of 19–20 August by the British 32nd Division, who reinforced the line with two brigades, a much stronger force than the 1200 Australians who had held this dangerous section of the line previously.
The 21st Battalion, who had ‘overran a German Headquarters, dumps, hospitals, heavy batteries and even railway trains’, added that ‘Souvenirs were plentiful.’5 They were relieved and returned to the bank of the Somme at Daours. The men enjoyed a rest and clean clothes: ‘all the fish had been bombed out long ago, but the swimming was good.’6
The Australians learnt two lessons from the attack: first, that aggressive patrolling needed to be continued until an hour before zero hour, as it was found that the Germans, in the night before the advance, were in greater strength than previously believed. Thanks to patrolling work this information was able to be included in further planning, saving the Australians a potential massacre later on. Second, the Australians realised they were not to underestimate the German defences, morale and the strength of their resolve, as their resistance had stiffened in the days following the initial advance. Even during this difficult and costly retreat, the Germans remained a tough and wily enemy.
Outside of Lihons, the 4th Brigade was fighting through the woods and holding a line of posts. The Germans bombarded the woods and the immediate rear areas, with a 5.9-inch shell smashing the 13th Battalion cooker and killing CSM Joe Meek, ‘one of our bravest’,7 and wounding three men.
On the night of 18 August, the Australian 6th Brigade was relieved by the British. This movement was the prelude to two days of heavy shelling, which limited peaceful penetration and further nibbling. As the 13th’s battalion history states, ‘We had to sit under this unmerciful shelling. These days he [the enemy] spared neither front nor rear, but poured H.E. [high explosive] and gas shells into us day and night. The weather had been very hot and dusty, the traffic having cut up the roads and fields. Gas masks on top of this added to the discomfort.’8
By 21 August, news began to arrive along the Australian front of the success of the British and French attack, and the fallback of the Germans all along their line. At various times, German prisoners had mentioned that the German army was retiring to the Hindenburg Line. Despite this, the Allies still encountered staunch resistance by the Germans. On 23 August, when the 4th Brigade once again attacked Madame Wood, south of Vermandovillers, ‘great was the astonishment of all to find the Bosche fighting as gamely as at any period of the war, several severe hand-to-hand encounters taking place, and every foot of trench being stubbornly contested, but those diggers who revelled in tough propositions were delighted, and the contempt they had recently begun to feel for Fritz changed to admiration.’9
Further north, closer to the Somme, the 1st Brigade moved up east of Méricourt-sur-Somme, with the 3rd Battalion located just south of the town in old trenches. Over the next few days, their advance would take them from north of Proyart, through Arcy Wood and Chuignolles, and on past Chuignes to form a line south of the river.
It was during this advance that the battalion came upon the massive German fourteen-inch naval gun hidden in Arcy Wood that, along with the railway gun already captured near Harbonnières, had been firing on Amiens since June. Although it had already been spiked by the Germans, Monash said it would be ‘the largest single trophy of the war won by any commander during the war’.10 He added that, ‘it was a matter of great regret to me that the cost of its transportation to Australia was prohibitive.’11
With the success of the Australian advance on the north of the Somme, by 23 August, the line now stretched from Herleville, west of the Froissy plateau south of the river, and onto the heights north of the Somme around Curlu. Bean makes an interesting point that at this time, ‘for a day and a half, the [Australian] Corps held a front of 30,000 yards (17 miles).’12
Further north, the British III Corps had recaptured Albert, but its advance had been slow and Haig was forced to rethink his plans. He ordered two separate advances; first, the Third Army towards Bapaume, and second, the Australians to reach and pass the Froissy plateau and go for the bridgeheads on the Somme ready for the attack on Péronne.
Following the capture of the German naval gun and Arcy Wood, the 1st Brigade was to take Chuignes. Bean mentions that ‘this attack, south of the Somme, though delivered by only two divisions, was one of the hardest blows ever struck by Australian troops,’13 and the battalion history records that they ‘fought with bull-dog tenacity, the individual bravery of the Diggers being quite outstanding’.14 The casualties, however, were high, with the 3rd Battalion’s ‘C’ Company suffering four officers and sixty ORs from the five officers and 100 men who went into the attack. Other companies of the 3rd Battalion also suffered high casualties in the taking of Chuignes.
Over the next four days, by revolving attacking companies within the 1st Brigade, the Australians were able to advance the line 2500 yards beyond Chuignes, including the taking of Cappy on the river. During the advance, the battalion captured four German officers and 155 men, along with six guns, fifteen machine guns and six trench mortars.
Further south, astride the Roman road, the 2nd Brigade started their advance. Here the Victorians needed to deal with St Martins Wood, thick with German machine guns, with good fields of fire across two open, small flat valleys (the Rainecourt and Herleville gullies) that crossed the road north to south at this point. The brigade attack went in on 23 August with the 4th and 5th Battalions, supported by the 7th, north of the Roman road, and the 6th Battalion, supported by the 8th, south of the road. The supporting twelve tanks were to go around the wood, with four of them passing through it in the hope of cutting off the enemy.
As the Victorians advanced, the German barrage came down behind the two leading battalions, falling instead on the two rear battalions who had to move steadily forward through a curtain of rising dust and smoke. In the 8th Battalion, about thirty men were hit, and the 7th Battalion had nine casualties.
As the Australians emerged from the smoke, closing on the woods, German machine guns fired on them, but men ran forward, immediately attacking the guns or directing Stokes mortars to suppress this devastating fire. The tanks also played an important role, with one tank commander reporting twenty German machine guns in just 100 yards of front, and how, ‘after a desperate fight’,15 he could eliminate them or drive off their crews.
North of the road, the 5th Battalion, and on their left the 4th Battalion, kept pushing forward, but two machine guns firing along the line of the road held up the advance on the south side. The 8th Battalion had been temporarily demoralised by their high casualties and they and the 6th Battalion, who were now leaderless, were quickly organised by Lieutenant William Joynt. He led a bayonet charge on the German machine guns in St Martins Wood, capturing the wood along with eighty prisoners. Then, at Plateau Wood nearby to the south, Joynt attacked again with the remnants of the battalions, forcing the further surrender of German gunners. In the days after, he was severely wounded and evacuated to England, where he saw out the war. For his leadership, Joynt was awarded the Victoria Cross.
On the same day, a little further south, the 16th Battalion was held up in their attack on Madame Wood. As the battalion advanced towards the small village of Vermandovillers, north of Lihons, in support of the British 32nd Division, they secured their objective, but the British on their right were held up by German machine-gun fire, which quickly threatened the 16th Battalion’s flank. The attack evolved into a bomb fight, with the 16th’s bombers and the Germans fighting over a trench block.
Lieutenant Lawrence McCarthy arrived to see what was holding up the advance and, after being told of the delay, he realised the only thing to do was directly attack the guns. With his mate, Sergeant Fred Robbins, DCM, MM, McCarthy charged across open ground and into the first section of trench, where he came upon a wire entanglement blocking the trench. First he shot a German sentry and then, racing on, captured the first machine gun by shooting the gun crew that was enfilading the Australian trench fifty yards away. McCarthy continued his mad charge along the trench. Around a bend, he came upon a German officer rallying his men, so McCarthy shot him. He raced on, capturing three more enemy machine guns and inflicting more casualties.
With Robbins on his heels, McCarthy made contact with the 16th Lancashire Fusiliers briefly, but continued to the last trench. Herding Germans into a sap, he hurled the last of his grenades among them, and soon a white handkerchief appeared above the trench and forty Germans surrendered. Behind them lay fifteen dead. As he entered the trench, the surrendering Germans closed around him and relieved him of his revolver, but, after patting him on the back, they filed back into captivity. By this audacious action, McCarthy had seized 500 yards of trench line and captured about fifty Germans. McCarthy was awarded the Victoria Cross, and returned to Australia in December 1919 after getting married in England.
Back to the north, with the capture of Chuignolles by 5.30 am on 23 August, the 1st Brigade moved forward with the support of twelve Mark V tanks. Soon, however, machine-gun fire was coming from the large wood to the east of the village, and the Australians had to withdraw as heavy Allied shelling pounded the German positions. On the right, the 4th Battalion followed five tanks as they moved forward with the barrage. The German artillery response fell behind them and, with the support of the tanks, the Australians were able to ‘follow closely to the barrage and thus complete surprise and quick dealing with the enemy enabled the advance to continue’.16
By the early afternoon, the 3rd Battalion passed through the 1st Battalion. To maintain the advance, they called for a barrage as they moved south-east from Marly Wood. They were quickly resupplied by carrier tanks bringing up small-arms ammunition, grenades, flares, Stokes mortar bombs, sandbags, wire, screw pickets and picks and shovels. Tanks also contributed to the success with the war diary noting, ‘great help was given to the infantry, again providing that the tank when well supported by the infantry, is an invention much dreaded by the enemy.’17 The casualties for the 1st Brigade, however, were six officers and eighty-three men killed, eighteen officers and 433 men wounded, one officer and seventy-two men gassed and twenty-eight men missing. In a separate attack by the 2nd Brigade, immediately south of Proyart, they suffered four officers and seventy-nine men killed, twenty-one officers and 343 wounded, eight officers and 399 gassed and nineteen men missing.
While the Germans’ resistance was increasing, they were also taking high casualties. The Australian attacks south of the Somme had decimated three German divisions, troops that had been told they were facing tired Allied soldiers. The historian of the 87th German Infantry Regiment reported that these ‘tired’ troops were instead ‘Great strong figures with dash and enterprise’ and, referring to the success of Australian peaceful penetration, he added, ‘these Australians do not give the impression of a worn out Division.’18 Some German troops held defensive lines briefly; at other points the Australians were momentarily stalled, some German reports stating they were driven back. For the German 232nd Regiment, 23 August was ‘the most fateful day of the whole campaign’, with the historian of the German 28th Infantry Regiment lamenting, ‘The fight was too bitter for taking prisoners.’19
In the advance on the village of Cappy, the 12th Battalion formed up in a gully east of St Germaine Wood, and from there they followed the 1st and 2nd Brigades into the attack. Zero hour was at 4.45 am and, within ten minutes, a German barrage of 5.9-inch shells was falling in the gully, causing about fifty casualties. At 1 pm, the Australians moved into a position north of Chuignolles but were seen by the enemy, who subjected their ranks to severe machine-gun fire from Long and Marly woods. At 2 pm, the Allied barrage came down. This allowed Long Wood to be attacked, and parties of enemy were mopped up. Fire was still coming from nearby Marly Wood and when it was cleared, fire immediately began from the next wood, Gareene Wood, which was quickly encircled, with seventy Germans captured.
The Germans were now falling back to Cappy, taking heavy casualties as they fled. Some Germans found shelter in a house, but this was attacked by Lieutenant Edward Norrie and an NCO, who, ‘firing through the window of a house into a crowd of Germans penned there, captured 37 and two machine guns’.20 By evening, the Australians were close to the village and exploring the old trenches, which would allow them cover as they moved east. The following, day, 24 August, was quiet as patrols went out, testing the enemy and looking for dead ground and cover from which to continue their advance.
During this day, a 12th Battalion officer found a trench running from the south-east corner of Gareene Wood in a north-westerly direction that would provide cover. Taking his company into the trench, they encountered a bomb block, and here they engaged the enemy. The company quickly pushed the enemy back 150 yards and consolidated their new position along a line just east of Square Wood, across and around Gareene Wood and down further to the northern side of Chuignes. It had been a good couple of days but, again, the casualties were high.
By the close of 25 August, the Allies had secured a great victory. In the north, the Third Army had driven the Germans back to Loupart Wood on the edge of Bapaume and, further south, the Fourth Army had advanced from Albert eastwards towards Pozières and across the fateful battlefields of the 1916 Somme campaign. Over these days, the Allies had captured 8000 prisoners, 2000 of whom were taken by the Australians. Haig now abandoned his methodical tactic of advance, suggesting instead that each division be given an objective which they must pursue, independent of the advance of their neighbours on the flanks. He concluded, ‘The situation is most favourable. Let each one of us act energetically, and without hesitation push forward to our objective.’21
While the AIF’s 3rd Division continued their advance on the north side of the Somme, cutting off the retreating Germans and pushing east, the 1st Division also continued moving eastwards south of the river.
By this time the Australians had been heavily involved in fighting for over two weeks and, even though short breaks behind the line had been offered, the infantry and artillery units were exhausted. Monash knew this, but was keen to push his men to the limit, towards the Somme bridgeheads and the heights of Mont St Quentin, and with the aim of clearing Péronne of the enemy. Rather than setpiece attacks, he wanted aggressive patrolling and the concentration of artillery firing on back areas and German lines of communication.
To progress the attack, Monash advocated peaceful penetration. This meant utilising the old trench systems, in particular communication trenches which radiated back and provided ideal protection. The Germans, realising the vulnerability in their line, established trench or bomb blocks which halted the ease of this advance, resulting in savage bomb fights and hand-to-hand fighting.
In an example of what could go wrong with this less centrally coordinated approach, the 12th Battalion, with the support of the 11th, pushed up the communication trench north of the Chuignes gully and through what was referred to as Canard Wood, ‘gaining bend after bend of the trench to a point, 1100 yards due east of the start’.22 They were mistaken for Germans by a company of the 11th Battalion, and were fired on and shelled. Fortunately, the 9th Battalion had pushed the enemy from the river flats, beyond Cappy, to prevent fire coming from that quarter.
Nevertheless, the pressure put on the Germans through the combined force of the infantry, artillery, tanks and aircraft was paying off. Late on the night of 24 August, the Germans again fell back to a new line along the edge of the Olympia Wood and Fontaine road. But the Germans were subjecting the Australians to shelling by high explosive and gas, possibly to expend their stock of shells rather than allow them to fall into the hands of the advancing Allies. On 25 August, the 10th and 11th Battalions relieved the exhausted 9th and 12th Battalions, and after a delay, they moved forward again at 6 am the following morning. By the evening of 26 August, the 10th Battalion was between Frise and Dompierre-Becquincourt on the south bank of the Somme. In this advance, ‘captures in prisoners or material were necessarily small on account of the elusive nature of the enemy defences, but the operation was carried out with only one man killed and five men wounded, while of the enemy, a much larger number were killed and wounded and two prisoners taken.’23
Further south, the 2nd Brigade advance continued, although the Australians on the Roman road had slowed after heavy shelling, particularly with gas, had left them in no condition to keep moving. At the southern end of the line, the French had replaced the 4th Division, which added to Monash’s strength. He now sought to drive forward with two divisions, the 2nd and the 5th, to overcome the impediments to his advance. Haig cancelled these plans, however, instead focusing the Allied effort on the advances further north by the British Third and Fourth Armies. The Australians needed to proceed slowly and wait, but they wouldn’t have to wait for long.