15.

The Afternoon of the Fourth of July

‘One of my corporals and an Australian went over to the enemy line, killed a German officer, and brought back two prisoners and a machinegun.’

Captain William J. Masoner, Company G, US 132nd Infantry

SERGEANT NED SEARLE was feeling pretty pleased with himself as he sat in a blue line trench on the ridge and lunched on bully beef from a tin. His company had starred in the victorious advance to the blue line. His company commander, Captain Ern Bradley, would be decorated for his gutsy part in the successful assault, and for ensuring that D Company was first to reach the operation’s final objective in the centre. As for Ned, he had hopes of a VC.

During the morning, the 15th Battalion strung barbed wire out in front of its part of the line. Some old German wire was employed, but most of it had been brought up by one of the carrier tanks. ‘Enemy machineguns and snipers were active all day,’ Ned Searle’s CO Lieutenant-Colonel McSharry reported, ‘and his heavy and light artillery shelled the captured area indiscriminately, but our casualties after reaching the final objective were light. A great deal of enemy movement was observed during the day, and our Lewis gunners with their own and many captured German machineguns inflicted very heavy casualties on the closely packed groups of enemy moving about and re-establishing their line out front.’¹⁹²

By the warm afternoon, a German machinegun came into operation not far to the east of the 15th Battalion’s part of the line and proceeded to harass Australian positions. As 2.00 pm approached, an unidentified Australian NCO led eight men of his platoon on an attack on the German post. They exited their trench when the machinegun was aiming elsewhere. With bayonets fixed, the Australians made a slow, crawling, weaving advance across No Man’s Land, outflanking the enemy position. Dropping into the post, the attackers killed five Germans and captured eight, making their prisoners bring their machinegun and ammunition back to the new Australian front line with them. As the captives were sent to the rear, their captured German machinegun was turned on its previous owners by the 15th Battalion.¹⁹³

Inspired by this act, a pair of multinational copycats decided to go after another German machinegun that was lashing the trenches being held by Australians and a platoon of the 132nd’s G Company. Said company commander Captain Masoner: ‘In the afternoon one of my corporals and an Australian went over to the enemy line, killed a German officer, and brought back two prisoners and a machinegun.’ The American corporal involved was John De Smidt. His Australian accomplice was not named. The pair crept all the way to the target, then back again. A medal citation would soon be on Masoner’s agenda, and as a result Corporal De Smidt would receive both an American decoration and the British Distinguished Conduct Medal.¹⁹⁴

These latest prisoners brought in by De Smidt and his Australian buddy, were, like Ned Searle’s prisoners, hustled back through the lines by support troops and American engineers, to join the more than 1500 German captives already netted in the operation. Throughout the day, war correspondent Philip Gibbs, who wasn’t permitted to go any further forward than the 15th Battalion’s advance HQ, saw German prisoners coming in and listened intently as Australian and American intelligence officers questioned them before they were sent back to the bird cage in the rear.

‘The prisoners I saw today under guard by the Australians had no idea how many American soldiers there are in France,’ Gibbs noted, ‘and were astonished to meet some of them in this last battle. They believe that we exaggerate the numbers grotesquely in order to scare them, and they have been utterly deceived by their rulers.’¹⁹⁵

Not only were the Australian and American intelligence officers keen to learn about the prisoners’ units and movements, they also wanted to gauge the morale of the German troops in the trenches opposite, after close to four years of war. German-speaking Australian soldier Sydney B. Young overheard an American questioning one German.

‘Do you think Germany is winning the war?’ the American asked.

‘Yes,’ the German infantryman replied. ‘God is with us.’

‘That’s nothing,’ the American came back, ‘the Australians are with us.’¹⁹⁶

Gibbs was in turn surprised by the physical stature and good morale of these soldiers of the Kaiser who had been defeated by the Australians and Americans. They were fit young men, not boys, and looked well fed. They were not second-class soldiers.

‘These Germans, now in our hands after the brilliant attack by the Australians with these American companies, impressed me certainly as being among the best quality of men I have yet seen taken on our front,’ Gibbs wrote in a press despatch. ‘Rhinelanders, Brandenburgers, and Westphalians, they were tall men in the prime of young manhood, and obviously well nourished. They said themselves to our officers that, though their rations have deteriorated since the early days of the war – and one man spoke with the authority of four years’ service – they are not all bad, as, whatever happens about food in Germany, the soldiers are provided first with enough to keep up their strength.’¹⁹⁷

Gibbs was also surprised that the Germans maintained their discipline after capture. ‘They were tired and spent after their battle, and lay about on the grass sleeping in every attitude of extreme weariness, but their discipline is still so good, even on our side of the lines, that when an Australian sergeant gave an order in their own tongue – he knows it perfectly, having been a student for four years at Charlottenburg – the feldwebel, or German sergeant-major, sprang up at attention as though a bell had been rung in his ear, and the other men rapidly obeyed the command to fetch their rations.’¹⁹⁸

As Gibbs’ first priority was to document the performance of the American troops in the Battle of Hamel, he went looking for Yanks to interview. Learning that the four American companies were still up in the line with their Australian comrades in arms, he went to the Regimental Aid Post in search of wounded Americans who could relate their experiences about the AEF’s first offensive operation. There in the RAP, Gibbs came across the boy-faced 132nd Infantry corporal who, despite his wound, had stood up to ‘fight like a man’ and won the duel with the German bayonet-charging him by cracking his skull. The corporal had no problem with killing Germans, he told Gibbs. ‘They are bad men, and death is a just punishment for all they have done.’¹⁹⁹

Gibbs also found Corporal Albert Painsipp in the RAP, undergoing treatment for his multiple wounds. With Gibbs scribbling in shorthand in his notebook, Painsipp recounted his battle in a German dugout near Vaire Wood. ‘He had an astounding series of episodes,’ Gibbs would write, ‘in which it was his life or the enemy’s.’ Painsipp explained to the newsman how he had received three wounds and killed seven Germans.

‘That’s two Boches for each wound, and one over,’ Painsipp added. In the end, as he had hoped, stretcher-bearers had spotted the white cloth he waved at the end of his rifle, and had come to his aid.

From the American wounded, Philip Gibbs also gained an appreciation of their determination to fight well in their first battle, to impress their countrymen, to impress the Australians they fought beside, and to punish the Germans. ‘The American soldiers have come over here with such a stern spirit,’ Gibbs wrote that same day, ‘and with no kind of forgiveness in their hearts for the men who have caused all this misery.’²⁰⁰

On the battlefield, American and Australian company commanders despatched carrying parties, sending them down to the dumps in Hamel Valley. The carrier tanks had done such a good job that only fifty men from a labour battalion had been needed to carry extra supplies up to the dumps from the rear. In the AIF, these labour battalions were generally made up of Chinese Australians, who, despite the fact they had volunteered for active service, were relegated to noncombat roles. Even General Monash referred to them as ‘coolies’. At the dumps below the ridge, the parties of infantrymen sent down from the blue line trenches collected ammunition, water, food and wire, before lugging it all back up to the trenches.

Captain Gale of the 131st’s C Company was impressed by the Australians’ efficient organisation for getting food and hot drinks to their men in the new front line: ‘The system of messing of the troops in the advanced positions was very good,’ he would report, ‘hot tea being provided twice each night, and in some of the trenches which were accessible, during the daytime.’²⁰¹

At Bertangles, General Monash spoke that afternoon by telephone with General Rawlinson at British Third Army HQ. Since early morning, Monash had been keeping Rawlinson apprised of the progress of the assault, and both Rawlinson and Field-Marshal Haig were elated with the stunning success of the operation. Earlier in the day, Haig had sent Rawlinson a telegram, which Rawlinson had passed on to Monash and American commander General Bell:

Will you please convey to Lt. Gen. Sir J. Monash and all ranks under his command including the tanks and the detachment of the 33rd American Division my warm congratulations on the success which attended the operation carried out this morning and on the skill and gallantry with which it was conducted.²⁰²

Monash had passed this telegram along to Prime Minister Hughes at Versailles, together with the news that in the early hours of that morning the Hamel operation he had seen in preparation the previous day had met its objectives within ninety-three minutes of commencement. Hughes excitedly shared these tidings with the other prime ministers at the conference: Lloyd George from Britain, William Massey of New Zealand, South Africa’s Louis Botha, Canada’s Sir Robert Borden and William Lloyd of Newfoundland, which was then a separate country. Hughes instantly became the centre of attention as he regaled them with news of the first Allied offensive victory on the Western Front in months. On behalf of his prime ministerial colleagues and himself, Hughes sent Monash a congratulatory telegram. Meanwhile, France’s Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau, announced that he would visit General Monash and his brave Australians at the earliest opportunity.

Hosting another visit from a politician was the last thing Monash relished. Already, he was thinking about his next battle. As he told General Rawlinson on the afternoon of 4 July, having wrong-footed the Germans he wanted to exploit the situation with ‘another blow on an even larger scale’ against the shocked enemy. ‘His whole front from the Ancre to Villers-Bretonneux has become unstable, and is reeling from the blow,’ he explained to Rawlinson.²⁰³

Only the fact that Monash had just one division in reserve discouraged him from immediately launching an even larger attack without reference to his army commander. So, he asked Rawlinson to either give him more British troops to narrow the front he had to defend, thus freeing up more Australian troops, or release the Australian First Division from Hazebrouck to join the Australian Corps, or both. But Rawlinson would agree to neither measure.

So, that afternoon of 4 July, Monash issued instructions to all Australian Corps divisional commanders: ‘Commence most vigorous offensive patrolling all along the Corps front, with a view not merely to prevent the enemy from re-establishing an organised defensive system, but also ourselves to penetrate the enemy’s ground by the establishment therein of isolated posts, as a nucleus for subsequent more effective occupation.’²⁰⁴

Monash was determined to launch his ‘blow on an even larger scale’ within weeks, but for the moment he returned his attention to the Australian Corps’ wait for the immediate German response to its Fourth of July party.