‘Our men were timid at first in using the bayonet, but after they once drew blood it did not bother them in the least.’
Captain James Luke, Company E, US 131st Infantry
GERMAN GAS ALARMS could be heard ringing as the Australians and Americans advanced through the smoke, fog and dust and neared the first German trenches. The sound put smiles on attackers’ faces: General Monash’s little three-card trick with the gas shells had worked.
Three hundred metres into the advance, and after passing through gaps in the German wire, the 43rd Battalion and the 131st Infantry’s Company E were the first units of the assault to come under machinegun fire. An Australian lieutenant was killed by a spray from unseen German Maxim MG08 heavy machineguns, firing blindly into the mist of fog and smoke from an advance post dug into the chalky ground. Several other 43rd Battalion men were wounded by the same weapons. Corporal Frank Shaw, a Lewis gunner with the 43rd, boldly standing tall as others hit the ground around him, fired his weapon from the hip as he advanced through a wheatfield. He quickly silenced three German machineguns operating from the outpost to one side of them.
As these left-flank troops pushed on, another heavy machinegun opened up from a nest immediately in front of them, with the gun’s familiar deadly thud-thud-thud. From experience, the Australians knew that German machinegun detachments were made up of a dozen or so men led by an officer or senior NCO and manning a Maxim MG08 sitting on cradle-like legs and the equivalent of the British Vickers, plus several smaller machineguns which were like Lewis guns, on bipod or tripod legs. So, every MG nest posed multiple threats.
Having used all his ammunition against the previous outpost, Frank Shaw cast aside his Lewis gun, drew his pistol and ran towards the flash from the Maxim’s muzzle in the gloom. As Shaw dashed forward, he was joined by Corporal H. G. Zyburt of the 131st Infantry’s Company E. Side-by-side, the Australian and the American dropped into the German trench, then set about clearing it.
A German officer loomed in front of Shaw. Without hesitation the Australian shot the officer dead with his pistol. Tackled by another German soldier, Shaw went down. As the pair struggled, the German’s coalscuttle helmet went flying. In the desperate wrestle that followed, Shaw smashed in his assailant’s skull with the butt of his revolver, killing him. Meanwhile, Corporal Zyburt bayoneted all the remaining German occupants of the post. Shaw and Zyburt then took possession of the German machineguns in the post, and their ammunition.
A total of eight dead enemy soldiers were found in the trench once Shaw and Zyburt had finished their work. Their captured machineguns were handed over to the ‘mopper upper’ platoon coming behind, to join the large collection of German heavy weapons that would be taken by the assault troops in the battle. Said British war correspondent Philip Gibbs, ‘Many of these were at once turned onto the enemy and fired all day with his own ammunition, as every Australian machinegunner is perfectly familiar with the handling of the German weapon.’144 This was no accident; Australian commanders had made a point of having their gunners train with German machineguns.
Following Frank Shaw’s example, several more Australian Lewis gunners wiped out more German machinegun nests in their path by firing from the hip, and the advance swept on. Reaching the mid-battlefield ‘halt line’ on their maps, the advancing troops briefly came to a stop. As planned, the barrage also abated, and equally as planned the first tanks rolled onto the scene in this pause, although not as many as expected. With tanks in support here and there, the infantry pushed through gaps in the enemy wire that had been created by the pulverising barrage, or gaps made by tanks squashing their way through wire. Still, most of the hard fighting would fall to the footsloggers.
To their surprise, the 42nd Battalion and the 131st Infantry’s Company C took the first enemy trenches they encountered without opposition. ‘Before reaching Hamel,’ said Colonel Sanborn, ‘the enemy’s front and support lines [were] taken and mopped up, many prisoners and machineguns being taken.’145 Scores of German soldiers tumbled out of their dugouts with hands held high and crying, ‘Kamerad! Kamerad!’ Meaning, ‘Friend! Friend!’
As General Monash had hoped, these surrendering Germans were still wearing their gas masks; until they saw that the Australians and Americans were not, and realised they’d been fooled. Now, disarmed, they were bundled back to support troops behind the advance. The men of Captain Gale’s Company C alone captured 150 Germans without a fight here, along with numbers of machineguns, three trench mortars and a British supply tank that had been in German hands.
The units on the left advanced a good 800 metres before enemy artillery began to respond to their attack. German troops in the trenches had been so surprised and overwhelmed by the infantry assault they had failed to call in artillery support. When the Australians and Americans saw red and green German flares finally burst above them in the gloom, fired by German units further back to indicate where their artillery should aim, they tensed for the howling arrival of shells.
The problem for the German artillery commanders was that, because of the fog and smoke, and now because their front-line troops had crumbled and no one remained to direct their fire, they were literally firing blind; they had no idea where their enemies were. As a result, this German counter bombardment landed on the old Australian front line well behind the advancing Australians and Americans, on open territory in front of the trenches, and on the support trenches behind them. At this point, those vacated trenches had yet to be occupied by support troops, so no Allied casualties resulted.
The number of enemy shells falling was also much less than had been expected. Later, Australian commanders would learn from aerial reconnaissance that a number of German artillery pieces had been knocked out by the operation’s artillery barrages and aerial bombing. Panicked German artillery commanders also hurriedly withdrew many of their guns through fear of them being overrun by the surprise attack. Eventually, the remaining German gunners improved their aim, and their shells began to fall closer to the attackers. Even so, when the advance halted at the halfway mark to pause for ten minutes to allow the tanks to catch up, German shells continued to fall behind them. Pounding empty ground to the attackers’ rear, exploding no closer than 200 metres away, these German shells also failed to cause any casualties.
Nearing the western edge of Hamel, the 43rd Battalion and Company E came under sustained machinegun fire from a well dug-in MG nest. American Lieutenant Symons, leading Company E’s reserve platoon as it brought up the rear of the 43rd’s advance, saw that the men ahead had been pinned down by these machineguns, and led his troops away, working around to one side and outflanking the Germans in the post unseen. When Symons rose up and led a charge on the machineguns from the flank, he was shot by a German and fell, wounded. But Symons’ Australian runner Sergeant Frank M. Darke spontaneously took over command of the American platoon and led the charge into the trench. According to war correspondent Gibbs, some Americans yelled the war-cry ‘Lusitania’ as they charged, a reference to the April 1917 sinking of the American ship Lusitania by a German U-boat that had brought the United States into the war.
Sergeant Darke and his Yanks wiped out the defenders in this trench with bullet and bayonet, then stormed the series of dugouts along the trench. Australians had long experience in use of the bayonet. ‘Our infantry are always vigorous bayonet fighters,’ General Monash was to say, and they gave their American companions an efficient, cold-blooded example to follow on this day.146 Captain Luke of the 131st would note, ‘Our men were timid at first in using the bayonet, but after they once drew blood it did not bother them in the least.’147
When three Germans emerged from a dugout and made a run for it, they were shot down. Following the businesslike work by the Australian-led American platoon, the Australian and American attackers who had been pinned down rose up and continued to advance. Sergeant Darke then led the American platoon into Hamel, where they assisted in mopping up.
The 15th Battalion’s War Diary would record that ‘one party of thirty enemy were wiped out attempting to escape into Hamel’. Another party of thirty Germans fleeing from a strongpoint was ‘also shot down by our Lewis Gun fire’. Half a dozen British tanks arrived in the early morning light to join the 43rd Battalion and Company E for the attack on Hamel town, emerging through the exploding shells and drifting smoke as Australian and British artillery pounded the town for ten minutes. When the attack went forward again, the first enemy dugouts encountered were found to have been deserted by their defenders, who were clearly terrified by the appearance of armour.
‘When the barrage lifted from Hamel,’ said Colonel Sanborn, ‘our troops rushed in, mopping up machinegun emplacements, houses, barns, factories, stores, dugouts, etc.’ There were also concrete bunkers in the town, one of which contained a German battalion HQ, whilst another housed an aid post. ‘Most of the enemy in the village were found in deep dugouts,’ said Captain Gale, ‘and easily surrendered.’ A sergeant with Company C’s intelligence section single-handedly took the surrender of the German battalion HQ staff, comprising four officers and twenty-three other ranks.148
Here in Hamel, the Mark V tanks showed what they could do. ‘After the tanks got working there was good cooperation between them and the infantry,’ said Colonel Sanborn. These tanks made for each dugout that was pointed out to them by the Australians and Americans. Usually, but not always, they pulverised them with shellfire. Sometimes they simply drove over emplacements to destroy them. ‘One entire line of dugouts was crushed in by a single tank,’ said Sanborn, ‘which appeared to be a great surprise to the enemy, and prisoners taken seemed greatly afraid of them.’149
One American, herding prisoners from a dugout, appreciated how terrifying the tanks must be to the Germans, feeling the ground shake as a tank passed a thousand metres away. ‘The six tanks assigned to this battalion did very efficient work,’ said Sanborn’s subordinate Captain Gale. ‘Probably their best work was in strengthening the morale of our troops, as the tanks kept close up to the barrage and went after every strongpoint that appeared.’150
On the extreme left of the assault, a tank turned up after Australian troops had overwhelmed German trenches and small dugouts at Notamel Wood to the north of Hamel, in vicious hand-to-hand fighting against ‘considerable resistance’. Too late to help at Notamel Wood, the tank turned south and pushed into the ruined town itself. ‘The tanks worked splendidly,’ said Company E’s Captain Luke, ‘except one on our extreme right, which for some reason got stuck in Hamel and had to back out. As this tank did so it lost its bearings and fired on some of our own troops with cannister, killing one officer and wounding one or two of our men.’151 The Americans also witnessed two tanks being put out of action by hits from German artillery shells, which blew off tracks, after which the crews bailed out.
When Company E’s Sergeant Albert Erhardt and his platoon were pinned down by the murderous fire of a German machinegun on the outskirts of Hamel, Erhardt dashed out into the open to the nearest tank and directed it against the MG nest. Once the tank had done its work, Erhardt and his men moved in and mopped up. The American troops were still coming to terms with the Lewis Gun, but one American in Hamel proved to be a quick learner. Company E’s Private William Linskey, who had been wounded in the shoulder by friendly fire in the first minutes of the advance, continued on to the primary target with his Lewis Gun and used it to great effect in the clearing of Hamel.
Following the Monash plan, the 42nd Battalion and Company C pulled back to the western outskirts of Hamel and began digging new trenches to oppose the expected enemy counterattack from the east. ‘All the ground was extremely hard, being made of chalk,’ Captain Gale recorded. German shells also occasionally fell around them as they dug. Gale was particularly proud of one of his platoons, which ‘showed great coolness in action in marking out and digging the trenches’ while under fire.152
Once the 43rd and Company E had also played their part in clearing the town of Germans, sending prisoners back to the Australian Corps POW pens behind the lines – called ‘bird cages’ by the Australians – they too quite deliberately pulled back just to the west of Hamel and dug in. Despite the hard chalky ground, within an hour these troops had created trenches deep enough to protect them from all but direct artillery hits. Said Colonel Sanborn, ‘The front covered by the 43rd Battalion, Australians, including troops of Company E, extended from the Somme River to a point opposite the left of Vaire Wood, about 2600 yards, or about a total of one man for every two yards of front.’153
This pull-back left Hamel deserted and silent. Not even a dog moved in the town now. It proved a wise move. At 6.10 am, enemy shells would begin to rain on Hamel. The shelling of the town would continue for several hours, with German commanders convinced that the Australians had occupied it. They wasted their shells. Not a single Australian or American casualty would result.
Also as part of General Monash’s plan, Americans of the 108th Engineers attached to the assault for pioneer duty with picks and shovels quickly moved into the occupied territory. Ignoring enemy shells dropping close by, the Yanks began digging communications trenches from the new trenches the 42nd and 43rd were creating outside Hamel all the way back to the old front-line trenches. When Australian troops escorting hordes of German prisoners passed the toiling engineers, an American officer called out to the Aussies.
‘Say, can’t we lend you a hand?’ he offered.
‘Yes,’ said another Yank, ‘can’t we be of any use to you?’
The Australian officer in charge of the prisoners nodded. ‘Some of your lads might help us conduct the prisoners,’ he suggested.
Mobbed by eager American engineers, the Aussie officer welcomed them into the escort detail. This allowed him to detach the majority of his own men from the escort and send them back to the new front line, ready to help their mates greet the expected enemy counterattack. According to war correspondent Philip Gibbs, ‘No German prisoners have had such a strong and proud escort as that provided by the Americans, who had not the luck, as they thought it, to take part in the actual fighting with their comrades who had gone forward with the Australian infantry and tanks.’154
‘A good number’ of men from the 108th Engineers also worked spontaneously at the advanced dressing station at Pear Trench, giving the existing stretcher-bearers a hand and literally lightening their load. Inspired by this, Colonel Allen, commanding officer of the 108th Engineers, officially detailed fourteen of his men to assist as stretcher-bearers at the advanced dressing station that night. The engineers would return the night of 5 July to help with casualties stemming from enemy shelling and counterattacks. With casualties among stretcher-bearers themselves high, the American engineers also voluntarily helped locate and bury the dead of both sides where they had fallen. Australian and American dead were duly buried side-by-side in the Hamel Valley, within sight of Hamel, with their graves marked by wooden crosses bearing each man’s name, rank and unit.155
One American stretcher-bearer serving with the 131st Infantry, Private Christopher Keane, improvised when it came to making up for lost comrades. After two stretcher-bearers working with him were killed by German shells, he coopted several German prisoners to carry wounded through the enemy fire to places of safety.
As the 42nd and 43rd Battalions and their American 131st Infantry companions dug in outside Hamel, the 44th Battalion, which had been advancing behind the 42nd and 43rd, divided as it came up to Hamel, with half its companies passing north of the town and half south of it. On the eastern side of Hamel the 44th reformed, then pushed on towards the ridge in the near distance, their final objective, climbing up the slope and crossing the road that slanted diagonally up it as they aimed for the old British trench line that ran along the top of the ridge.
One member of the 42nd Battalion who failed to fall back and dig in was Corporal Frank Shaw. Contrary to orders, the dauntless Lewis gunner passed through the town and kept advancing east, looking for more custom for his trusty weapon. In a quarry beyond Hamel, Shaw came across more German dugouts and another machinegun post, whose surviving occupants quickly threw up their hands after he sprayed their position with his Lewis Gun and killed several of their comrades.
Only now did Shaw return to the 42nd, bringing seventeen terrorised prisoners from the quarry, who were carrying their machineguns under the corporal’s watchful eye. Shaw would be the only Australian enlisted man whom Colonel Joe Sanborn would mention by name in his postwar account of the battle. ‘In all,’ said the American, who was clearly impressed with the Australian, ‘Shaw fired nine magazines throughout the operation, and proved the value of a Lewis Gun in the hands of a brave and determined man.’156
Meanwhile, as planned, a platoon of Americans from the 131st’s Company C continued with the advance all the way up onto the ridge. ‘A large number of German killed and wounded were found on top of the knoll and in the trenches,’ said company commander Captain Gale. ‘About one hundred Germans were found in these trenches who gave themselves up and were sent to the rear.’ Captain Gale’s past career as a police inspector would come to the fore when he reported after the battle: ‘In the taking of German prisoners, a tendency was noted on the part of Australian troops of an entire disregard for the personal property rights of prisoners of war, they stripping them as a rule of anything of value. It is feared that probably some of our troops followed this along as an example.’157
The battling troops were also very conscious of the activity of Australian fighter aircraft above as the new day’s warm sunshine burned off the fog and created a clear summer sky. ‘The aeroplanes kept in constant and close touch with us all the time,’ said Captain Gale, ‘which also added to the morale of our troops.’158 Once daylight arrived there was a constant threat of being strafed by the German aircraft of Baron Manfred von Richthofen’s famous Flying Circus.
Richthofen, the ‘Red Baron’, an ace with eighty aerial ‘kills’ to his credit, had himself been shot down over Australian lines in April and killed. The Australians had buried him with full military honours, and General Monash had been given a piece of the wooden propellor from Richthofen’s downed crimson fighter the ‘Red Falcon’ as a souvenir.
Nonetheless, the Red Baron’s wing of four jastas, or squadrons, which, from 14 July would be commanded by a young Hermann Goering, who in years to come would be the creator of the World War Two Luftwaffe and second highest ranking Nazi after Adolf Hitler, was still very active and posed a real threat to the success of the Hamel operation. Consequently, the Australian pilots, returning to their Villers Bocage airfield in relays to refuel and rearm through the mid-morning before returning to the skies over Hamel, were doggedly efficient sentinels and protectors. ‘They kept the area entirely clear during the engagement and for several hours afterward of enemy aircraft,’ said Captain Gale.159