August - September 1917
Intelligence Summary
1st Australian Pioneer Battalion
30th September 1917
Casualties for the month of September:
Killed: 3 Officers, 19 Ordinary Ranks
Wounded: 2 Officers, 109 Ordinary Ranks
Evacuated/sick: 65 Ordinary Ranks
Died of Wounds: 4 Ordinary Ranks
Wounded & remaining on duty: 8 Ordinary Ranks
THE THREE REMAINING companies of the 1st Australian Pioneer Battalion pull up stumps in Lumbres Camp on the 31st August 1917. It takes a couple of days to load up our equipment and transport it out. All the troops board motor lorries and are transferred the thirty miles east to the small village of Vieux-Berquin.
We jump out of the lorries and as soon as one’s feet hit the ground you know you’re back in the fight. Fritz’s front line is around five miles due east, the big guns are roaring and the ground shakes again.
This camp is very close to where I was working with the 2nd Tunnelling Company in Armentieres exactly twelve months ago. I’m back on familiar territory.
“D” Company haven’t been sighted, they are still in Ypres working with the artillery chaps. They have been out there in the thick of it now for three weeks straight. The trickling of information coming back in is that they have been knocked around a bit, which worries me. I don’t know who’s still standing upright and who’s not, who will walk back into camp and who will be carried in. I am real keen to see them again and be back rubbing shoulders with the mates I’ve spent a lot of time with. The rumour mill has them re-joining the Battalion any day.
Two days later, 2nd September, two companies and the Battalion headquarters are moved a couple of miles south to Neuf-Berquin. I remain with the others, under canvas at Vieux-Berquin.
Late on the 3rd, the dregs of “D” Company ride into camp on lorries to re-join the Battalion. My worst nightmares are realised as I run to greet them. Of the two hundred and fifty men sent into Ypres, less than one hundred and fifty come back through the gates. The others are either dead or injured.
The sight is horrific. Shell shocked, filthy, disorientated and hardly able to stand, the lads have been tortured. I struggle to keep my composure, trying hard not to ask too many questions, doing everything I possibly can to welcome them back in, offer some comfort and unload their packs. These boys need strength and solidarity right now, a helping hand, warm handshake and a smiling face, they don’t need to smell weakness. Every man in camp has come forward to help, offering encouragement and good will.
The mess runners hand them a decent cup of tea and jam sandwiches. Most of them sit straight back down on the ground and sip on the clean, sweet, warm tea, savouring every drop as if it’s the best liquid to ever touch their lips. There isn’t much talk, just quiet chatter here and there. Water buckets and face clothes are passed around. They will be offered a bath and decent scrub soon enough but having clean hands and face will suffice right now.
I look around, ticking off in my mind who’s not here. There are a lot of faces missing.
The Battalion is rotating fifty men a week on Blighty leave. As “D” Company settle back into the warmth and semi secure camp life, other men line up at the front gate with their leave passes in hand, itching to get out of the place. The irony of war.
That night I spent a lot of time trying to rub the stabbing, pencil pressure lump over my heart away.
On the 7th September, the big move is on. The entire 1st Australian Pioneer Battalion are moved to Ypres. The fleet of lorries deliver us to shell-pocked, flat, farm land around a mile and a half south-west of Ypres town centre. A sign says we are at Marquise Camp but it’s mostly open paddocks and certainly not enough canvas to accommodate the thousand men walking in. We pitch a few tents of our own and by nightfall every man is under cover.
I am ordered to transfer supplies to an imposing privately owned building opposite, known as “Belgium Chateau”. It is now the Battalion headquarters. I walk up a dozen or so steps to the large glass-stained double front doors and into the foyer. A spectacular timber staircase and beautiful white marble floor take my breath away. An Officer’s aid ushers me down a corridor on the first floor and out the back to the kitchen. I’m in awe that some person or family would own a property as magnificent as this. From the kitchen window I can see a handful of shell craters in the paddocks, they have had a couple of close calls. Looking out across the flat, wide-open, windswept countryside the front line is only five miles away. It would be very sad if this mansion was ever destroyed.
Four hundred yards east of the Chateau is the infamous Belgium Battery Corner where the Belgian Army have been sending out thousands of shells for months on end. They’ve had a few come back their way though, It’s certainly not one sided. The area has shell holes sprinkled all over the place.
I’ve been soldiering in France, and now in Belgium, for the last eighteen months. Working up, down and under the front line, over a one hundred-mile front. I’ve had the living daylights scared out of me too many times to remember. There have been many occasions when I genuinely believed I’d seen my last sunset. Some places I’ve been comfortable in, some I hope I never see again.
And now there’s Ypres.
The French name, Ypres, is difficult for English speakers to pronounce. British troops see an easier option and pronounce it “Wipers”. There is a British Army rag (newspaper) issued here called “The Wipers Times”, it’s a play on the English pronunciation of Ypres. The Dutch version of the name is the easiest, they call it “Ieper”.
What would once have been a spectacular, beautiful town, now lays in ruins, trashed and flattened. Not an intact building can be seen.
How stunning it must have looked in its prime with the cobble-stoned town square, the breathtaking gothic architecture of St Martins Church and Cloth Hall, both built around seven hundred years ago. All that remains of those two buildings now is their burnt-out shells and amazingly, a couple of spires on adjacent corners.
As far back as the eleventh century, Ypres was known as the centre of the cloth and wool trade. So, the old girl has been an active hub of Europe for a very long period.
A moat surrounds the city that has helped keep the town protected from invaders since the Romans were here. No longer effective though in this modern war that we now find ourselves in.
The main corridor through Ypres has had the debris shovelled to one side or another to allow clear passage eastwards. Walking from the direction of the main train station, past the debris of Cloth Hall, over the moat, turn right and you’re on Menin Road. Its current claim to fame is that it is the deadliest piece of road known to man. That’s not a very comforting thought when you’re tabbing along it.
The Germans have been trying to take back Ypres for nearly three years. In the first instance the city was a stepping stone for their army marching through Belgium on their way into Northern France. The secondary importance, in recent years, is they need to take Ypres and push us back to the coast and off European soil.
Fritz occupied the town early in the war, but the British Army took it off them in a month-long battle through October and November 1914 and forced them back to the Ypres Salient. (High ground to the east). The Germans have had Ypres surrounded on three sides for most of the time since then and have been merciless in shelling the town and surrounding areas.
There have been several savage battles fought along the Salient with horrendous loss of life. Our big guns rain thousands of shells on Fritz, our men go over the top only to be cut down with machine gun fire minutes later. If we have had a good day we would take a few yards off them, on a bad day they would pull a few back on us. This has been going on for years now.
Fritz first used gas as a weapon when he opened six thousand Chlorine gas canisters just a couple of miles from here, in April 1915. The tactic claimed six thousand casualties that day and the end result was that not one yard was gained.
And that’s why, in September 1917, the 1st Australian Pioneers are now camped up around Ypres. To help keep Fritz out and preferably, one day, push the mongrel back to Germany.
“D” company haven’t had time to scratch their backsides since they re-joined the Battalion a few days earlier. Some reinforcements have arrived to lift the company numbers back up and of course, I’m back with them as well. The chaps that spent three weeks here in Ypres recently, cannot believe that they are now back in the same region after having only three days “resting”. We camp up for one night only in Marquise Camp and then our company is marched out.
We zig-zag our way in an easterly direction, skirting the southern end of Ypres. Crossing over railway supply lines, along duckboard tracks, through trenches, bomb craters and a variety of artillery camps. It takes us most of the day to make our four-mile journey to Zillebeke Lake.
There is a need to keep very low and travel mostly via the trenches as machine gun sweeps are very regular. The rattle is on and off and coming in from various directions. There is a saying around here that if you hear the rattle, it’s too late to duck, the shell is past you long before you heard it. Human reflex kicks in and you duck anyway. It’s a brave, and very silly man who leaves his head up.
The territory may once have been perfectly flat and magnificent farm land. It’s now a shell-holed, stinking shambles. Acre upon acre of turned and tortured land. Dead, bloated animals, upended machinery, abandoned and destroyed artillery pieces litter the landscape. The trenches criss-cross the area like an eight-foot deep spider web.
We pass through a couple of recently established cemeteries with handmade timber crosses prominent. The thought on everyone’s mind is “there’d be a few of ours in there”.
Our initial, primary objective in this area is to construct or rebuild roads and tracks that are crucial to keeping the front-line supplies flowing. The front line here is very hot, there is no rest in artillery going out or old Fritz lobbing shells our way. Because the land is so flat there is a clear view over a large area and shells can be seen landing all over the place. We camp up in a row of trench dugouts.
In the morning we are into clearing debris and shovelling it and clay into pot holes, running out duckboards, attempting to clear a passage a mile or so eastwards towards Hooge. It seems a fruitless exercise. No sooner have we established a respectable hundred yards or so, and Fritz drops a shell on it. Honestly, I could strangle the miserable coot.
In the first twelve hours we took eleven casualties, three took a direct shell hit and eight were gassed when a gas shell landed amongst them.
Relentlessly, we pushed on, the lay of the land running very slightly uphill until we reached Hooge. There was a town here three years ago. All that remains of it now is half a dozen shattered tree trunks. There is nothing that indicates any building, not so much as a dunny, ever stood here. One of the mine explosions along this ridge that our boys let go last year probably helped take the town off the map, a massive crater, half full of filthy water, can be seen a few yards away.
We camp up on the west side of Menin Road. The remnants of the road run east – west through Hooge, not exactly a road anymore but certainly a strategic line on a map that we are fighting tooth and nail for to stop Fritz putting one foot over it. We rest in a ditch that runs along the edge of the road. The front line is around four hundred yards away. Beyond that, the Germans hold it.
There is heavy artillery to the left, right and behind us and it’s going out at a steady rate. The shells are whistling out over our heads all the time.
Thousands of ANZAC troops are in front-line positions, forward of where D Company is positioned. They are creeping forward on Fritz ever so slowly, relying heavily on our big guns to keep the pressure on and limit any counter attack on our chaps. There must be tens of thousands more troops backed up behind us in support and artillery. I’m told that the ANZAC’s are responsible for around six miles of front line territory here. A ragged trench line running near enough, north-south.
The company sneak an hour or two with our heads down before joining in with the construction of a light railway support line running from Hooge to “Clapham Junction”, half a mile to our east.
Clapham Junction is the nickname the Tommies (English soldiers) gave to a slight kink in Menin Road some time ago. I was in Clapham Junction (London) a month ago and have a decent chuckle at the comparison. Our Clapham Junction on Menin Road is a “Y” junction with a track heading off to the north. It is however, a strategically important piece of land in that it keeps supplies moving forward.
The light gauge rail line buckles and weaves its way through some very torn up paths running parallel to Menin Road. Two shelled out tanks, half submerged in mud are off to one side. They must have been there for a while looking at the damage and rust.
Continuous maintenance and rebuilding of the track is a minute by minute operation as the line is actively being used. Fortunately, the weather has been kind to us in recent weeks so most of the earth required to fill in holes and level the timber sleepers is reasonably firm and free of water. The situation would be unimaginable if we were working in knee deep mud and snow again.
The first day working on the rail line, 12th September, wasn’t a good one for the 1st Pioneers. We took another twelve casualties in a gas shelling attack.
Being in the Pioneers requires flexibility. The job tasks are endless, and every soldier is required to adapt or change his role at a moment’s notice. You might be digging a dugout twenty yards underground and then called to “stand-to” with rifle and bayonet locked in anticipating Fritz coming over the parapet. You might be laying railway line and suddenly you’re a stretcher bearer or jump up to load a machine gun because the second gunner has been taken out. The conditions change in an instant and you do whatever you are required to do as a dedicated and conscientious soldier. There is no such phrase as, “It’s not my job”.
Immediately following the shelling and gas attack on the rail line near Clapham Junction, D Company were ordered to move back towards Hooge. We transfer tons of munitions from “K Dump” into railcars and move everything we can down the line. At several different positions the carts are unloaded, then we carry what we can, forward through the trenches to a designated storage drop or hand over to other chaps who will know where the ammunition is needed most.
The ammo boxes I carry are .303 shells for the machine guns. The boxes are quite heavy, and they are best carried as a two-man operation. One hand each through the rope handle, walking behind each other and we can manage two boxes each run. Our chaps are screaming for it all along here.
I’ve been able to hear the chatter of the machine guns on and off for the last week now. We have been working so close to the front-line it’s impossible to ignore them. There are a few positioned along our sector and I manage to do several drops to the feet of the troops manning them. They are very grateful to us for lugging the ammo in but are obviously on high alert and don’t chat much. However, one of them finds the time to talk me out of the contents of my tobacco pouch. I’ll get it back at a later date or put it down as a good will gesture. My half inch piece of lead shrapnel, my good luck charm, is rolling around the bottom of the pouch. I check it’s still there and make my way back for another ammo run.
I pass several mess crews taking in rations, Bully Beef, biscuits and offering up cups of cold tea which has a very distinct mud flavour to it.
Stretcher bearers are also working their way in and out, their line of work doesn’t stop either. I notice a couple of men being carried out who have their faces covered. Not a good sign. Several others, injured but walking, take themselves back out to find a dressing station.
We have been sleeping rough for a couple of weeks now, a dugout here, a ditch there. An hour or two whenever you can grab it. Everyone is baggy eyed and tired, but no one complains, you must deal with the circumstances as best you can. I find tiredness comes at me in waves, if I keep active I’m fine. If I sit down for five minutes my mind starts to go a bit foggy and if I have to jump to it again, quickly, it takes me some time to adjust and get my focus and concentration back.
There are two ways of obtaining intelligence information regarding what our objectives might be or what stunts are being planned. Either the rumour mill gets hold of the info or you have someone “in the know”. At the level of the food chain I am at (Private), it’s the former. There are times in the last eighteen months where Blind Freddy could feel the tension in the air, the increase in ground vibration, see the build-up of troops and equipment, the rows of eight-inch batteries lined up at twenty-yard spacing, and know that something was in the wind.
Into the third week of September, I can feel it, I can see it, I can smell it.
There is a diamond shape piece of land a thousand yards to our east known as Polygon Wood. The territory is high ground, but only marginally so. It has been a Fritz strong point for some time. He has a couple of concrete pill boxes in the middle of it somewhere that have been giving us stick for far too long.
It would have been a lovely forest before the war but now all the trees have been stripped through shelling and only tree trunks block out the view.
In the middle of the night, 26th September, two hours’ notice is messaged around that a major attack to take Polygon Wood and the high ground through to the village of Zonnebeke will take place at 5:30am. It will be a twelve-hundred-yard surge forward on our sector and helps explain what the build-up of men and machinery since we arrived back in Ypres has been all about.
My mob have been maintaining support tracks & roads for the last day or so. The small part I play in this massive assault on Polygon Wood is to help keep Zouave Road open, motor transport and carts flowing through both ways, supplies in, empty wagons out.
Right on 5:30am the big guns crank up in unison. The noise would wake the dead. I could feel my head vibrate with the shock waves. The ground shakes underfoot like an earthquake. I cannot imagine the tension out at the jump off line, half a mile away. Thousands of men lined up, bayonets locked in, waiting for the whistle to go off, over the top and move forward. My heart and soul are with them, willing them, wishing them, driving them on.
May God be with every one of them. Let them see the sunset later today.
There is a rotational system in place to try and give everyone a rest when they are deserving of it. A year or so back, if one was active on a front-line duty, you could expect to be relieved after a week and then rested for a week. If you were in support and away from the front you would be rarely rested. The system has always been flexible in that it depended on how active the area was, what role you were engaged in, weather conditions and what “relieving” troops were available.
The last three weeks here have been extremely intense and physically hard. We have been engaged in a hundred different roles and always under threat of attack from our dear mate Fritz. Living off limited rations and very little sleep. I doubt any of us have had a total of twenty-four hours sleep in the last three weeks.
On the second full day of the advance on Polygon Wood, someone higher in command decides that “C” and “D” companies of the 1st Australian Pioneer Battalion have been in the front line long enough and after dark we are pulled back to the relative safety of the Belgium Chateau Camp. It’s a decent slog that takes most of the night to get back to Ypres.
We walk back into camp filthy, tired and hungry but buoyed by the fact there is a bath, clean clothes, a cot and food available.
I’m very happy to be away from the front once again. The continuous threat from Fritz and the lack of sleep jangles one’s nerves after a while. I use my resting time well. I sleep, and I eat. I sleep again, and I eat again.
After a couple of days, the fog in my head clears and I’m in better spirits. A decent cup of tea at any time you want sure lifts the moral. The camp stew on offer is extremely tasty. Unfortunately, the bread that goes with it could be used as a hammer, but when soaked in the stew it loosens up well enough.
A writing tent has been set up since we were last here and Christmas cards are available to fill out and send home. A little early maybe but it’s not uncommon for mail to take three months to get back home, so it’s good forward thinking on someone’s behalf.
The card is a decent eight-page booklet which already has the important details printed on it:
Christmas 1917
1st Australian Pioneer Battalion – AIF
Greetings from the Front
Sketches of the main street of Ypres featuring the bombed-out ruins of Cloth Hall and St Martins Church are quite stunning. It’s a respectable piece of work and although I am not in the letter writing mood just yet, I pocket five or six that I’ll get around to filling out and posting later.
Fortunately, the weather has remained relatively mild, so the baths that are set up in a series of tents are well patronised.
The battle for Polygon Wood and beyond has been ferocious and drags on for nearly a week. The Anzac’s have taken the area and pushed Fritz back about six hundred yards. He’s on the back foot and the word is put out that our command wants to keep the momentum moving. Every available soldier is required back in the fight.
Late on the 2nd of October the Battalion is briefed that our “resting period” is over. We are given orders to move out immediately. Another major stunt is being prepared for the 4th of October. “C” and “D” companies are required to be in a front-line position, north of Polygon Wood prior to that operation commencing. Over five hundred men accompanied with four Lewis Machine Gun crews move out together.
As if on cue, after having had a reasonable dry spell, as we walk out the front gate, the heavens open up, and it’s torrential.
Once again, we work our way along open roads and tracks before dropping down into the trenches that cross through the landscape. They have started to fill with water and the going is slippery and muddy.
We made our way along Westhoek Track and skirt around the northern edge of Polygon Wood.
Fritz didn’t throw his hands up and walk away from this area, he has fought, and counter attacked hard to retain it. The damage to tracks, trenches and the very heavy loss of life from both sides is obvious. I cannot count the number of dead men wearing both uniforms that litter the trenches and open area that just a few days back was no-man’s land or German held territory.
But the battle is not over, the front line may have been moved eastwards a little, but the fight continues to rage as we move up closer and back amongst it.
We pass many injured chaps coming out, they are being assisted or directed to the safest and quickest route.
The dead, well, you do whatever is the most respectful you can with the time and orders you are under, which isn’t a great deal. We are Pioneers, not undertakers at this stage of the game.
Eventually we arrive at the very forward position. The ANZAC front line.
There is a distinct rise in the ground here, a ridge facing us to the east. It’s not high, I doubt the ground would rise twenty yards in height over two hundred, but it’s a steady gradual rise with what appears to be a plateau along the high side.
They call it Broodseinde Ridge.