chapter six

Consolidation

‘The most dangerous moment comes with victory.’

— Napoleon Bonaparte

Despite the intense fighting of the previous few hours and the absolute exhaustion of many soldiers, the Australians had to set about consolidating their trenches before the German counterattack they feared was coming. As the first light of dawn came over the ridge at about 4.00 a.m., Paul Maze observed that the Australians were much further into the village than he had first thought. ‘In front of us earth was being rapidly shovelled out of a trench, and we could see the heads of a few men busily consolidating the position,’ he recorded.1

Elsewhere, Vickers and Lewis gun crews rushed forward, engineers and pioneers dug support and communication trenches, guards escorted prisoners out of the village to holding cages, officers sorted stragglers and lost men back into their correct platoons, and reinforcements came forward from the brickworks, located near Albert, to replace those killed or wounded.2

Just after daybreak, a British spotter aeroplane swooped low over the village. The pilot sounded his klaxon horn in sharp bursts, signalling to those below to light their green flares to show him where the new front line was. But the pilot couldn’t see any flares because the mist and smoke were too heavy; the location of the front line was unclear.3 As a result, wrote Arthur Foxcroft, ‘our artillery didn’t know how to “range” their guns so we got some of our own shells as well as Fritz’s’.4

As the sun rose, the exhausted men congratulated each other on their success. ‘We were surprised by how few casualties had been sustained,’ wrote Douglas Horton. ‘Satisfied with ourselves, we lay on the parados of the trench basking in the sun.’5

Another satisfied soldier pencilled a letter home. ‘Mum, I don’t think I will ever forget the fighting last night,’ he wrote. ‘Don’t ask me how we took Pozières. But, Mum, we did it. That’s all I know … and that’s all that matters.’6

Maze, after the heavy fighting of the previous night, welcomed the morning solitude. ‘Strangely enough, precarious as our position was, we felt protected,’ he recorded.7 The Official History attributed the morning lull — the artillery of both sides was almost silent — to the gunners being tired and the respective staff ‘as yet uncertain where their own or the opposing infantry were situated’.8 Australian soldiers felt safe enough to venture out into the open to gather up ammunition that lay scattered all over the ground; it was now desperately needed for the inevitable German counterattacks. The 3rd Battalion history compared the strange lull to the windless centre of a cyclone, with the front line taking on ‘almost the semblance of the peaceful Fleurbaix-Armentières “nursery”… ’.9

The quiet period provided some men the opportunity to snatch sleep for the first time in two or three days. The 3rd Battalion history observed that the silence allowed many Australians, fatigued by the strenuous digging and brutal fighting, to drop in their tracks and fall asleep.10 ‘Huddled up in strange and contorted attitudes in the trenches, or stretched out in shell holes in the rear,’ wrote John Harris, ‘they slept as soundly in all the discomfort and danger as if they had been in feather beds.’11

Suddenly, around daybreak, the peace was shattered by rifle shots from across the road. ‘As we were standing-to a sniper got busy and “pipped” a few of our men off,’ Peter Smith recalled.12 Some soldiers darted across the road and hunted for the snipers, while others, according to Bean, ‘ratted’ for Germans in dugouts and cellars, chasing, shooting, and bayoneting those who got away. After Foxcroft finished improving his new trench he joined the soldiers in ‘chasing huns and smoking them out of their cellars’.13

‘We lost a number of men to snipers that day,’ Lieutenant Elmer Laing wrote in a letter to his parents. ‘I wanted to take a party out and clear them but was not allowed to.’14

The outbreak of German sniping permanently ended the fleeting peacefulness experienced that morning at Pozières.

At about the same time Foxcroft was ‘ferreting’ Germans from their dugouts, Douglas Haig awoke at Val Vion Château to reports that the Australians had captured most of Pozières. It was the only success of the British ‘double-fisted’ attack that had been delivered by Haig’s Fourth and Reserve armies; as the Official History observed, ‘no inch of ground was gained’ on the whole front east of Pozières. Despite Haig having carefully planned the manner and timing of the attacks with his army commanders the previous days, it appeared that the Germans, strengthened by fresh reserves, had successfully repelled most of the assaults.15

The weight of expectation upon Haig during the Somme offensive must have been suffocating. The Allies, both on the field and off, looked to Haig to break the deadlock on the Western Front.16 Haig appeared to cope with the immense pressures imposed on him by the Allies, British politicians, and his enemies by maintaining the same routine, irrespective of the highs and lows of battle. Charteris closely observed Haig’s daily schedule. He documented in Field Marshal Earl Haig that his bedroom door opened punctually at 8.25 a.m. and he would go for a short walk. At precisely 8.30 a.m., he would come into the mess for breakfast. At 9.00 a.m., he would go into his study and work. Any matter brought to him was dealt with immediately. He seldom used the telephone, as he believed conversations on it were inaccurate and liable to distortion, no doubt favouring the candour of face-to-face meetings. He preferred that a staff member use the telephone on his behalf, reasoning that his staff were better placed to verify information provided by subordinates.

At 11.30 a.m., he would see his army commanders or department heads for their scheduled daily meetings. Haig’s personal staff noted these officers’ symptoms of anxiety as they waited to be ushered into his study for their rigidly timetabled interviews. Undoubtedly, Haig — with his direct questions, insistence that officers refrain from using notebooks, and reputation for ruthlessly removing incompetent officers — had the capacity to intimidate his army commanders and department heads. Although he occasionally berated an officer, most walked from his study with their nervousness replaced by marked signs of restored confidence. Haig never took notes and rarely had a paper on his desk.

At 1.00 p.m., he would have lunch. He would then motor out to the headquarters of an army, corps, or division. On the return trip, he would arrange for his horse to meet the car and ride with his escort to within three miles of his headquarters. From there, he would walk. He would then have a bath and do some physical exercise. Haig would work in his office until exactly 8.00 p.m., when he would have dinner, usually with a visiting guest, such as French commander General Joseph Joffre, King George V, British prime minister Herbert Asquith, secretary of state for war David Lloyd George (Kitchener’s death in 1916 had resulted in Lloyd George taking on the war ministry), newspaper proprietor Lord Alfred Northcliffe, or war correspondent John Masefield. After dinner, he would work until 10.45 p.m., and then retire to bed at 11.00 p.m. He rarely varied from this routine, except during major battles. Distinguished guests conformed to it. So many hours for work, exercise, and sleep; he focused his whole mind and life on the Somme offensive.

Haig’s immersion in the war meant that he dealt with people in a clinical and dispassionate manner. He was a composed rationalist who preferred to make decisions based on facts; opinions weighed little with him. Once he made a decision, the meeting ended. ‘Though completely courteous,’ remembered Charteris, he ‘was cold and formal. He appeared to treat those with him rather as a doctor would a patient.’17

Why was Haig, as Tim Travers observed in The Killing Ground, so obsessive about order and the need to rigidly adhere to the same schedule? Why did he deal with people so clinically? Perhaps he derived some comfort from maintaining the routine and keeping an emotional distance from the officers who reported to him. Perhaps it gave him a sense of control, a feeling that he was on top of things.18 After all, the four walls within his château were possibly the only things he controlled completely. The war had its own trajectory; no man could command it any more than a man could hope to direct an earthquake.

Despite the setbacks of 23 July, Haig seemed to draw some satisfaction from the Anzacs’ efforts. They had broken one of the two buttresses, Pozières and Thiepval, on the enemy’s northern flank of the battlefield. He wrote in his diary: ‘The capture of Pozières by the Australians will live in history.’19

While Haig pondered how the 23 July setback would reshape his Somme strategy, Australian prime minister William Morris ‘Billy’ Hughes was returning to Australia, sailing on the Euripides, after four exhilarating months in Britain.20 Welsh-born Hughes, judged by today’s standards, was a man of extreme opinions: he advocated the White Australia policy, compulsory military training, and racial purity, and he viewed war as a natural Darwinist phenomenon to re-establish the world order at the expense of weak and corrupt races. The Labor leader held contradictory views: he was a fervent Australian nationalist but, unlike many in his party, also had a passionate belief in the British Empire. John Charteris aptly summed Hughes up as a queer combination of socialist and imperialist.21

Hughes had visited Britain on the basis of an informal invitation, issued to all colonial prime ministers by the British government, to discuss the war effort. Once there, he immediately struck a chord with the public. Although 53-year-old Hughes was small, nearly deaf, and had a squeaky voice, his frail body housed a magnetic personality and a sharp mind that could comprehend the most complex information and convert it into simple, emotive messages that the average person could understand.22 In a series of bellicose speeches, he questioned the British government’s lack of vigour in executing the war, and its lack of any discernible plan for winning it. ‘You cannot have a great nation when the basis is rotten,’ he lectured one audience in Cardiff, Wales. ‘You must face these facts. You cannot shut your eyes and say, like the pacifist, that we should have no war …’23 For all his preaching Hughes was right: Britain hadn’t yet established a war economy that could adequately supply the front line, as the munitions shortage of 1915 had demonstrated. Furthermore, no central body was responsible for coordinating the Allies’ war strategy, and Britain had no unified council devoted to managing its efforts.24 Hughes, unencumbered by party loyalties and with no fear of upsetting the current British prime minister, Herbert Asquith, let rip, saying whatever he liked. The more his message seemed to resonate with the British people, the more extreme his speeches became. The rewards of his ‘fiery crusade’ included several honorary doctorates, the regard of King George V, and the applause of the British press, who, according to his biographer, W. Farmer Whyte, declared: ‘An ounce of Hughes is worth a pound of Asquith.’ Bean described the visit ‘as a personal triumph for Mr Hughes’.25

Australia’s war contribution gave Hughes’s voice credibility — Australia had about 300,000 men in uniform by June 1916. As evidence of Hughes’s growing stature, he was invited to attend a British cabinet meeting on 9 March, and in June, due to popular insistence of the public and the press, the inter-Allied conference on economic issues, in Paris.26 Before the war, it would have been inconceivable that a dominion prime minister would be afforded such prominence.

The British admired Australia’s efforts on Gallipoli, and appreciated its growing role on the Western Front. Haig desperately needed its four divisions in France to wage the later part of his Somme offensive, and Hughes had promised even more troops.27 A shrewd political tactician like Hughes would likely have recognised that he had to convert his increasing popularity into political clout. Despite his visit to Britain being hailed as a triumph, Hughes must have realised that he only attended the British cabinet meeting as an observer rather than as a representative of Australia. At the inter-Allied conference he represented Britain, not Australia. Australia did not have the status of allies such as Japan, China, Belgium, and Portugal. No doubt, Hughes was still irked by Britain’s decision to deploy its Anzac troops on Gallipoli without prior consultation with the Australian government.

On 1 June 1916, Hughes had tried to exercise his clout when dining at Haig’s General Headquarters in France. He insisted that the Australian divisions should fight as an army rather than being scattered across different corps, and that this army should be placed under one commander, preferably Birdie, who would be responsible to the Australian government.28 Haig politely refused the request, writing to Hughes some time later: ‘I cannot form an Australian Army now, nor can I place all the Australian Forces in France under General Birdwood’s command.’29 Haig needed his forces to remain fluid; he didn’t want the whims of a colonial government to restrict him. An emboldened Hughes wasn’t deterred; he would persist with his agenda.

Battalion commanders, including 26-year-old Lieutenant-Colonel Owen Howell-Price of the 3rd Battalion and 34-year-old Lieutenant-Colonel Iven Mackay of the 4th Battalion, continued to meet with their officers throughout the morning to discuss their position, sort their soldiers into the correct units, inspect the freshly dug trenches, and thin the line of surplus troops — who were now overcrowding the trenches. Within hours, the two commanders would receive operational orders from divisional headquarters outlining their next objective.

Howell-Price and Mackay each commanded a battalion of about 1000 men. In the pre–Great War army, which traditionally made appointments based on seniority rather than performance, there had been only a handful of men who led such large numbers of troops, and they’d been groomed for it all their soldiering careers. (Just over a year earlier, the 3rd and 4th battalions had been commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Astley Thompson and Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Bennett, who were both 50 years old.) Howell-Price and Mackay’s early promotions were due, in part, to the transformation that the Australian Imperial Force had undergone in Egypt in early 1916 in response to a flood of new recruits. Birdie, who oversaw the transformation, was adamant that this was a young man’s war, and Howell-Price and Mackay’s promotions reflected his thinking.30

Were these two men too young and inexperienced to hold such important commands? Bean seemed to think that opting for an energetic commander such as Howell-Price, who had a Military Cross and strong organisational skills, was a much better proposition than handing out commands to soldiers based on seniority. He believed the latter approach had already saddled units with commanders who were entirely lacking in the right spirit to discipline troops, select quality subordinates, and foster morale.31

Howell-Price and Mackay had much in common: mixed with their youthfulness was a streak of cold determination of which Haig would have approved. Each had strict self-discipline and determination — perhaps inherited from their fathers, who were both in the clergy. Each seemed also to have absorbed and assimilated the lessons of the new, industrialised form of warfare, which was fought with artillery and machine guns rather than muskets or swords; coordinated at army and corps level rather than regiment and battalion level; and contested across trench networks spanning multiple countries, rather than over open plains. They placed emphasis on careful planning and the crisp execution of battle plans, not on the military routines often valued by older officers, such as marching smartly, rolling up a greatcoat correctly, or conducting parade-ground drills. And they shared a love for their men: the commanders’ thoughtful acts — Mackay, for example, organised half a pound of fruit cake for each man in his battalion on the anniversary of the Gallipoli landing — demonstrated this affection (and no doubt contributed to one soldier declaring that Mackay was the fairest man he had ever known).32 But it was a tough love: both men had already demonstrated on Gallipoli and now at Pozières that they were capable of throwing their soldiers into battle, possibly toward certain death, without a moment’s hesitation.

Mackay, the son of a Scottish preacher and raised in the Calvinist tradition, was strict with his troops, earning him the nickname ‘Iven the Terrible’. One officer remembered Mackay, armed with a rifle and a pistol, and Mills bombs bulging from his pockets, continually inspecting the battalion’s defences. ‘I don’t know how the Old Man kept going. Nothing showy about him. You knew that everything was under control once he arrived,’ observed one soldier.33

Howell-Price left the safety of his headquarters to personally direct affairs in the village that morning, as did Mackay. Howell-Price, the son of a Welsh clergyman, was one of five brothers to enlist in the Australian Imperial Force. On Gallipoli, he revealed himself as a talented trainer and organiser of men. Howell-Price’s troops considered him strict and resented his four-hour drills aimed at improving discipline — perhaps because of his youth, the commander took his responsibilities too seriously to be popular with his officers and men. Despite this, the 3rd Battalion history conceded that underlying his sternness and austerity was a deep and single-minded loyalty to his men.34

Both men’s company and platoon commanders, who, on this morning, were busy organising their units, were often young men, only 21 or 22 years old. Military experience, some higher education, a modicum of common sense, and a little time in the trenches on Gallipoli seemed the main qualifications needed to command a company or platoon. They would be the ones to execute Howell-Price and Mackay’s orders in the coming days, to cajole one more effort out of their exhausted troops — like Foxcroft, who hadn’t slept since Friday — even if they didn’t have one to give.

At about 5.30 a.m., as Howell-Price and Mackay organised their troops, several hundred Germans were seen massing at the OG lines. The Lewis gun crews — about 16 of these guns had reached the village with the first attacking troops the previous evening — would be vital in defending the Anzacs’ newly captured position. The crews braced themselves for the attack. The Lewis gunner, who fired the weapon, had to be careful because an ammunition pannier could be fired off in six seconds flat. He had to be sure of his targets and fire in short bursts, otherwise his valuable supply of ammunition would be expended quickly.

The Germans pinpointed the gap between the OG lines and the village. They advanced in tight formation, offering themselves as easy targets. Harry Preston recalled: ‘They came towards us like swarms of ants rushing from shell hole to shell hole.’ The Lewis guns hammered away. In Preston’s trench, the men, full of confidence, lined the parapet and emptied magazine after magazine into the attackers.35

‘It was almost a shame to shoot,’ recounted one soldier. ‘Our machine guns mowed them away.’36

Some Germans tried to surrender. ‘Although their hands were upraised, they met a volley from our trench,’ Maze recalled. ‘Those who got through squatted at our feet, happy to be prisoners and out of the war.’37 Others caught in the open and exposed to Lewis gunfire hid in shell holes; a few minutes later, still under heavy fire, they scurried back across the Bapaume road and sought cover in the hedges near the village.38

The purpose of the German attack was most likely to probe the line and try to establish the size of the gap. The German doctrine of recapturing all forfeited ground meant that more counterattacks would follow. One thing became clear from this attack: the Lewis gun — the Germans called it the ‘Belgian rattlesnake’ — would be a critical weapon in blunting those counterattacks to come. It was relatively light, weighing only 27 pounds, and had great firepower; however, the slightest amount of dirt in its breech jammed it.39 The Official History reasoned that, with Lewis guns positioned along the front, the well-entrenched Australians were more than capable of shattering any future counterattacks; their main risk would be being crushed by German artillery fire.40

Douglas Haig was responsible for setting the broad strategy of the Somme offensive, which ultimately determined the nature and shape of the Anzacs’ fighting around Pozières. In response to changing circumstances on the battlefield — such as the setbacks of 23 July — Haig would, naturally enough, recast key elements of his approach. His reshaped stratagem would then be communicated to Gough’s Reserve Army staff, who would be responsible for converting it into high-level operational plans. Eventually, Haig’s strategy would cascade its way down through multiple operational layers — corps, divisions, brigades — to battalion commanders like Howell-Price and Mackay, who would be responsible for executing discrete sets of orders that would collectively deliver the outcome Haig desired.

There were also factors beyond empirical measures of yards gained and lives lost that would influence Haig’s strategic decisions, including external pressure from the Allies and British politicians, and Haig’s inherent character traits (his bulldog-like tenacity meant that his natural inclination would always be to cling to his enemy’s throat).41 Haig’s response to these factors would determine the Anzacs’ role in the offensive over the next six weeks.

Some time after the Australians captured Pozières, Haig penned a letter to Lady Haig, protesting that the War Office insisted he provide interviews to war correspondents for propaganda purposes.42 Yet although Haig did not approve of the practice, the outcome was, to his surprise, that British newspapers wrote favourable stories about him; they portrayed him as in possession of the infinite wisdom of Solomon and able to impose his will upon events — a chess master effortlessly moving his pieces about the board. These stories further strengthened the public’s belief in Haig, whom they seemed to trust as they trusted God.43 No one considered for a moment that he, too, might be overwhelmed by events.

In reality, Haig did have complete responsibility and account-ability for the British Expeditionary Force, but this did not equate to complete control. His fate, and that of the Somme offensive, depended upon many things beyond his grasp. He relied on the home front to raise the requisite recruits and supply adequate munitions; he depended on his French ally to contribute divisions to the offensive; and he counted on his political leaders for backing, and to stop vacillating between an eastern and western strategy. On top of this, his enemy, the most technically advanced nation in Europe, refused to yield a single inch of French soil.

Each day that his armies failed to break through, Haig’s political masters and Allies became increasingly concerned that his Somme strategy was flawed and his leadership unimaginative. The War Council sought reassurance from Haig that his heavy losses would be rewarded with significant gains. How could he promise this? His French ally goaded him to strike the enemy harder, in order to relieve the pressure upon Verdun.44 Would he have to destroy his own army to save theirs? The British public, who monitored the official communiqués in the newspapers that reported constant successes, expected Haig to deliver a swift and decisive victory.45 Haig dared not shatter their rising spirits.

Haig’s biographers — both supporters and detractors — seemed to agree unanimously that he was single-minded and tenacious in his pursuit of a ‘victorious end’ to the Great War.46 Therefore, it is unsurprising that he decided to continue the Somme offensive, albeit on a lesser scale until adequate men and munitions were accumulated for a full-scale resumption in September.47 Despite the lack of British success on 23 July, he would drive at the enemy with all the endurance his armies could muster in order to wrest the advantage from his German adversary, chief of the great general staff General Erich von Falkenhayn. ‘The war must be continued until Germany is vanquished,’ Haig declared in his diary in late July.48 He wouldn’t shrink away from this goal in the face of horrific casualties.

Haig had confronted von Falkenhayn in battle the previous year, when the German threw his armies at the Belgian city of Ypres in an effort to break through to the vital channel ports. Haig’s divisions initially inflicted massive casualties but, outnumbered, gradually buckled under the unrelenting pressure of the Germans. The important city seemed lost, but then, inexplicably, von Falkenhayn halted the offensive, believing that victory lay beyond his grasp. Alistair Horne speculated in The Price of Glory that von Falkenhayn, although ruthless, was at critical moments plagued by ‘indecision and excessive prudence’.49 Perhaps at Ypres, it was von Falkenhayn’s inherent cautiousness, rather than his misinterpretation of battlefield data, that turned a potential victory into a half-success. Had von Falkenhayn possessed more tenacity and persevered, he might have turned the tide of the war. Two of Haig’s biographers — Gerard De Groot and Andrew Wiest — believed that Haig learnt from the incident and would have been determined not to repeat von Falkenhayn’s mistake.50 John Charteris, Haig’s confidant, summed up the prevailing creed within Haig’s headquarters on the eve of the Somme battle: ‘If we face losses bravely we shall win quicker and it will be a final win.’51

At 6.15 a.m. that morning, Haig instructed his army commanders to cease coordinated general attacks and, instead, commence local actions at selected points to improve their tactical position prior to launching another general attack in September. Although Haig wanted to maintain the pressure on the Germans, he couldn’t afford to expend troops and munitions at the rate he had in the first three weeks of July. Haig’s amended policy aimed to keep the Germans off balance while he accumulated men and munitions in the reserve areas. In response to this policy, I Anzac Corps and III British Corps would develop plans to capture the remainder of Pozières and the OG lines.52 With the cessation of general attacks, the Australians’ local attacks toward Pozières would undoubtedly attract greater attention and prominence, not only from Haig, but also from their German adversary.

As it turned out, however, just as Haig was meeting with his army commanders, the Germans launched their retaliatory action against the Australians.

Like the British, the Germans had formidable artillery on the Somme. Their standard tactic after losing a trench or village was to lay down a curtain of fire upon its approaches, to prevent their adversary from bringing forward fresh troops, food, water, and ammunition. This increased their chances of recapturing lost ground when they inevitably counterattacked.

At 6.25 a.m., about an hour after their initial attack, German shelling began. Shells shrieked over the heads of those Anzacs sheltering in the village, exploding about a quarter of a mile back, on the village’s approaches. The ground shook and convulsed. Billowing clouds of acrid red dust hung in the air. The Germans had boxed Pozières off from the rest of the world — a tactic they had perfected after using it against the French at Verdun. Pozières’s approaches were soon littered with the bodies of Australian runners, pioneers, stretcher-bearers, ration parties, and engineers who couldn’t make it through the barrage.53

Despite the danger, Bean noted that it became a matter of pride for men to carry food or ammunition to their mates waiting for them in the firing line; they understood that their ‘burden must be delivered, barrages notwithstanding’.54

While German shells fell on the approaches to Pozières, Australian troops doggedly continued ‘ratting’ in northern Pozières. They worked their way through a series of German dugouts and cellars, throwing phosphorous bombs into them rather than inviting the occupants to surrender. Bean described this ‘grim sport’: Australians could be seen chasing terrified and shrieking Germans and bayoneting them, or shooting from the shoulder at those who got away. One German with a Red Cross insignia on each arm surrendered to Second-Lieutenant Fred Callaway of the 2nd Battalion. ‘He clung to me crying for mercy,’ Callaway explained in a letter to his sister and aunt. As a precaution, he felt beneath the prisoner’s coat and found a dagger and a revolver. ‘I pointed to his red cross and then the revolver. He only cried.’ Callaway raised the revolver to shoot him, but the German fell down and grabbed his knees, begging for mercy. ‘I hadn’t the heart to shoot him in cold blood, but he deserved it,’ he wrote.

Although the enemy soldier had gained a reprieve, Callaway still had to find a guard to escort him to the rear, through the bombardment, before he reached the relative safety of a large open-aired prisoners’ cage.

Not all Australians were as forgiving as Callaway; many shot German soldiers as they left their dugouts to surrender. ‘I saw some awful cold blooded acts but you can’t blame the men, they must protect themselves,’ reasoned Callaway.55

Lieutenant Elmer Laing, a farmer from Western Australia, whose platoon was clearing dugouts in northern Pozières, was involved in one such incident. A German in a wireless station tried to give himself up as soon as he saw Laing’s men upon him.

‘Come out, you ——,’ yelled one of Laing’s men.

Laing heard him and rushed back, shouting at the soldier to shoot the ‘swine’ or else he would. The soldier shot dead the defenceless German.56

This didn’t seem to be an isolated incident. Laing’s letter to his parents suggests that his platoon had a premeditated plan to kill surrendering Germans: ‘The Huns saw our chaps coming with bayonets fixed and cleared or tried to surrender, but it was too late.’57

Killing prisoners was illegal under international law.58 The Allies understood the importance of appearing to fight fairly and not committing acts considered heinous, such as killing unarmed prisoners.59 But, on the Somme battlefield, the Australians faced a practical dilemma. By abiding with international laws that prohibited the killing or wounding of unarmed men, they risked their own lives. It seemed much more expedient to throw a bomb into a dugout than try to entice its occupants out when they might meet with resistance. Earlier that day, a German sniper had shot one of Laing’s fellow soldiers as he stood alongside him. Another German had fired at Laing three times.60 Perhaps Laing decided not to take further chances.

Many Australians also became suspicious of surrendering Germans after hearing that 19-year-old Gallipoli veteran Lieutenant Walter ‘Tiny’ Host, a popular officer of the 2nd Battalion, had been killed by a prisoner.61 Accounts differed as to how he died. One eyewitness told the Australian Red Cross enquiry that Host had arrested nine Germans in a dugout. ‘His men wanted to finish them off, but the Lieut. stopped this,’ claimed this eyewitness. ‘Thereupon a severely wounded German picked up a bayonet and ran him through the body.’62 Another witness disputed this version of events, claiming that shrapnel struck Host as he escorted the prisoners out of Pozières. Whatever the case, the rumour conveyed a subtle message: when it comes to the enemy, don’t take any unnecessary chances.

In a way, it is unsurprising that the Australians killed surrendering Germans. English instructional officers in training camps, such as the notorious ‘Bull Ring’ at Étaples on the French coast, conditioned them, through repeated bayonet practice drills, to kill without hesitation.63 It was difficult to switch off this instinct simply because an enemy soldier who was a threat a moment earlier had suddenly raised their hands in surrender. ‘They will fire at us right up to the time we hop into their trenches, and then they fling up their hands and cry, “Mercy, comrade,”’ explained one soldier. ‘How can we give them any mercy after seeing them shoot down our cobbers?’64 Even Bean, with his Victorian values and sense of fair play, reasoned that it was idle for men so caught to expect mercy.65 Fred Callaway feared that, in the confusion of battle, a prisoner might manoeuvre behind troops and shoot them in the back. ‘Our lads know this and take no chances,’ he explained in a letter home.66

Sometimes, the sheer practicalities of the battlefield offered no alternative to killing prisoners, as Iven Mackay explained in his biography, Iven G. Mackay. ‘Many [German soldiers] remained in their dugouts, terrified, and had to be bombed and bayoneted out,’ he wrote, recounting an incident during the Pozières attack. ‘Some never came out. A number of the Germans taken prisoner would not, through pure fright cross No Man’s Land. They had to be killed.’67

The killing of prisoners during that first morning of the Pozières battle sits uncomfortably with the Anzac legend that flourished after the war. It also posed a problem for correspondents like Bean, who asserted that the Anzacs were fierce fighters — brutal in the heat of battle — but also had a chivalrous side that meant they were fair to their vanquished enemies afterward. According to Alistair Thomson, who analysed Bean’s representation of Australian manhood during the Great War, Bean sometimes explained away these unsavoury incidents, claiming that soldiers of all nationalities committed them and that the war-mongers were ultimately to blame.68 On one occasion, when German prisoners told Bean that Australians had machine-gunned German stretcher-bearers and killed inmates in a hospital, he quickly discounted these events, claiming that the machine-gun fire must have been indirect and the Australians couldn’t have known that the Germans were wounded.69 Frenchman Marc Ferro, in The Great War: 1914–1918, claimed that there was also an element of self-censorship at play that suppressed the reporting of these incidents, as no one wanted to be seen as ‘doing down the side’. Rather, ‘responsible authorities’ focused on stimulating the nation’s will to fight, which meant that people had to be shown they were ‘fighting for the Right’.70

Throughout the morning, many Germans, shaken by the previous night’s bombardment, gave themselves up and staggered in, ‘like drunken men’, according to Foxcroft.71 Australians began taking souvenirs from their prisoners — grabbing at their helmets, cutting buttons off their tunics, taking their watches, and unlooping their belt buckets. The Germans were given cigarettes and chocolates as compensation. Officers frowned on ‘prospecting’ and warned looters that the enemy shot prisoners on whom any German buttons or papers were found.72

This prospecting was the first contact that many Australians had with German soldiers. At best, they may have observed prisoners working at the port at Marseilles when they had docked there in March; or perhaps they had glimpsed the fleeting, grey uniforms in the opposing trenches near Armentières. Yet many now saw their adversary up close, usually in compromised positions: Mackay observed them with their hands up, surrendering, and mumbling in a half-dazed way; Coates surveyed them scattered across the battlefield bearing horrific wounds, crying out for help; Foxcroft watched them shuffling like drunken men back through the lines; and 3rd Battalion troops caught sight of their pale and haggard faces, etched with signs of intense mental and physical strain.73 Did they see hulking beasts, half-ape and half–Neanderthal man, raping and pillaging their way across Europe, or dishevelled men in dirt-smattered grey uniforms? Perhaps these Australians caught the Germans’ downcast eyes and glimpsed something of themselves in them.

Foxcroft’s diary provides an insight into his attitude toward the Germans after the Pozières attack. Foxcroft described how he entered a cellar, decorated with furniture and hanging pictures, knelt by the corpse of a German, and picked through his belongings for souvenirs. He came across some worn black-and-white photographs in the tunic pocket. One was a portrait of the dead man. He had a long, boyish face and a pencil-thin moustache, with black hair poking from underneath his cap. In another photograph, the soldier’s parents, young wife, and infant son posed in a sunlit garden. It was probably taken in the hot summer of 1914, just before he marched off to war.

The third photograph, an intimate portrait of the soldier’s wife, showed dark eyes, a soft complexion, and thick black hair neatly gathered in a bun. The young woman would be unaware of her husband’s fate — unaware that he was a corpse on the dirty floor of a dugout in a foreign land, with an enemy soldier picking through his most intimate possessions. Foxcroft did not record his thoughts about the photographs, but it is hard to imagine that he was not affected by the personal nature of them. We do know that he mailed them home to his parents, writing: ‘I am sending some photos I got from a dead Hun and any card or anything I send home please keep for future reference.’ Did Foxcroft intend to return the photos to the soldier’s wife? Were they simply souvenirs? His diary does not reveal his motivation, but the photographs must have held some significance for him, as he kept them in his possession for the rest of his life.74

Private John Bourke was more open with his thoughts. He recorded in his diary that, while sheltering in the lower chamber of a blockhouse, he found a heap of cake boxes made of cardboard and sewn in with calico. He had received similar parcels from Australia. The addresses were in a child’s handwriting, as were one or two of the letters. In another corner, he found a rolled-up coat. ‘I opened it out, and found it stained with blood, and there right between the shoulders was a burnt shrapnel hole,’ Bourke wrote in his diary. ‘The owner of the coat was a German, and, some might say, not entitled to much sympathy. Perhaps he was not, but I couldn’t help but feeling sadly of the little girl or boy who sent the cakes.’75

Back at I Anzac Corps headquarters, John Treloar, who was responsible for processing documents taken from German prisoners, expressed similarly conflicting emotions: ‘Most [documents] seem to contain photos of people most wonderfully like ourselves. Often there are picture postcards of little children.’ But he couldn’t reconcile this image of Germans with that promoted by the press, as his diary entry indicated: ‘One’s thoughts go to the Lusitania outrage, and one wonders how it is that a nation who must have some love for children can be guilty of the atrocities they have committed.’76

Foxcroft’s, Bourke’s, and Treloar’s diary entries suggest they understood that the Germans were not the ruthless barbarians they were often portrayed as in newspapers and recruitment posters. The Australians at Pozières did not, by and large, view the Germans with sympathy, but many of them perhaps saw that they had more in common with the enemy than they had first thought.

Charles Bean had stayed up until dawn on 23 July, monitoring the battle from Sinclair-MacLagan’s dugout. After snatching some sleep at divisional headquarters, he visited the outskirts of the battlefield in the early afternoon. He chatted with some men with light wounds coming back down a dusty track from Pozières. ‘I wish the people of Australia could see what we saw,’ he wrote in his first Pozières despatch, published in the Melbourne newspaper The Herald on 27 July 1916. Bean described how the men he spoke to, who had just passed through the shelling and were still buoyed by adrenaline, talked quickly and paced around, fidgeting, smoking, unable to sit still, and sometimes shaking or ducking involuntarily as a shell landed close by. Bean spoke to one youngster, his hand heavily bandaged, who said: ‘I hope I am not going to lose my fingers. I reckon I ought to be good for a number of the beggars yet.’ Another man passed him, stripped to the waist, covered with bandages, a German helmet on his head. ‘It might be worse,’ he told Bean.

Bean’s despatch, under the headline ‘Fight For Pozières Vividly Described’, had an exuberant tone. In one section he referred to the ‘glamour of affairs’ on the battlefield, while in another he described the ‘great, cheery, strong-faced fellows’ he saw going up the track to Pozières — how they were ‘trotting beside a great gun team, whose easy-limbed drivers looked as if the men were part of the horses’. He also described the ordinary parties of bronzed, keen-eyed men, occasionally with a cheek bleeding from a cut, walking through shellfire as if going home to tea. 77

Perhaps Bean’s exuberant mood was justified: the Anzacs had done what the British troops had failed to do — they had captured Pozières. Furthermore, casualties were relatively light, and although the German bombardment was heavy, the British guns would soon counter it. Or perhaps Bean’s upbeat tone masked darker feelings about the battle. Was it possible that he crafted a positive despatch because he didn’t want to be seen ‘doing down the side’? Bean’s diary, in which he recorded his unguarded thoughts, provides some clue — his brief entry on 23 July suggests that he was, indeed, cheered by the Australians’ performance at Pozières.78

Bean’s high-spirited despatch was a noted departure from his usual writing style. Back in 1915, he had made it clear in his diary that he didn’t want to be like other correspondents who told ‘nonsense’ stories, like those of Germans enlisting in the Australian army and then shooting Australian troops in the back, or of Australian soldiers leaving their sickbeds in droves to return to the front. Bean knew these stories were rubbish. ‘I have asked the nurses. I have asked the men,’ wrote Bean of his investigation into the second ‘nonsense’ story. Bean, who had spent almost two years with the Anzacs, covering their every major battle, was perhaps more qualified than any other correspondent to refute these stories. Yet choosing to be a stickler for the truth came at a cost: The Argus and The Age often wouldn’t publish his bland despatches, instead preferring the highly colourful inventions of other correspondents, which the public seemed to lap up. British war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett — who wrote the stirring and subsequently famed despatch that described the Anzacs as ‘a race of athletes’ whose landing on Gallipoli was the finest event of the war — was almost certainty a purveyor of what Bean labelled ‘wretched cant’. Bean admitted that Ashmead-Bartlett’s exaggerations made it a little difficult for him, presumably because it made his own despatches sound dull.79

Bean maintained these same cautious reporting standards in France. He deliberately avoided heralding the Anzacs every time they left their trenches when they were in the nursery sector at Armentières. He had explained to The Times readers back in June 1916 that the Anzacs did not want the public attention that was directed at them after their recent trench raids: ‘They well know that their mettle has not been tried in France.’80 But Pozières had changed things — the Anzacs’ mettle had been tested and they had succeeded in achieving ‘a victory of importance on the Western Front’.81 The Anzac story was taking shape. It would be another seven days before Bean visited the village to experience the truth of Pozières: the putrid smell of rotting corpses, the unsettling sight of rows of cottages reduced to rubble, the sad spectacle of men driven mad by the German shelling, and the ghastly scene of endless shell craters littered with human body parts.

While Bean gathered material for his despatch, Maze contemplated leaving the village so he could report back to Gough: ‘I had to think about getting back to Army Headquarters. It was important to let them know the conditions.’ Maze worked his way through the shelling that fell violently upon the approaches to Pozières. His autobiography provides an insight into what the Australian ration parties, runners, stretcher-bearers, and reinforcements must have experienced:

Everywhere men were held up on their way to the village, waiting all the time for the shelling to ease off; whole parties had been blown to pieces … From one place I had a glimpse of the previous night’s No Man’s Land pitted with fresh shell-holes, most of them rimmed with motionless human forms.

The Albert basilica, in the distance, acted like a guiding beacon for Maze. ‘Every step towards it was a relief,’ he wrote. In order to avoid the clogged trenches, he climbed out onto the open ground, which was pitted with shell holes. He became aware of an iridescent sky, and: ‘I suddenly realised that I was alive. I turned to look back at Pozières in the distant crest where it remained in continuous volcanic convulsions.’

Within an hour, Maze had reached Albert and commandeered an army car, and was hurtling toward Gough’s army headquarters. From the car’s window, he could see columns of singing Anzacs and an endless procession of lorries making their way toward the front line.82

Throughout Sunday, conflicting reports arrived at Hooky’s headquarters about the number of Germans troops defending northern Pozières. Some reports said the Germans had been reinforced, while others claimed they’d abandoned their positions. In spite of the confusion, Hooky and Blamey drafted operational orders to capture the rest of the village. They would first barrage the northern side of the road, then bring in fresh troops from General John Forsyth’s 2nd Brigade, which had been held in reserve, and Nevill Smyth’s 1st Brigade, to advance in extended formation (which required the troops to move forward spaced well apart) at about 4.00 p.m.

Then Gough intervened. ‘Instructions were received from Reserve Army by telephone to cease firing on the village, as it was reported to be unoccupied,’ recorded Hooky. Gough claimed that the Germans had already fled Pozières, and requested that immediate patrols, with no supporting barrage, be sent out to verify this. Hooky complied. ‘These arrangements conflicted with the plans I had made and I cancelled the previous orders accordingly,’ he recorded in his operational report.83 The Official History observed that some Australian soldiers, who had been subject to sniping throughout the day, were angry when they were told that northern Pozières was supposedly empty.84 At about 5.00 p.m., the first patrols probed the remainder of the village. Some of these patrols contained tired men who hadn’t slept for days because they had participated in the night attack and had dug trenches the following day. The men also felt edgy because of the constant sniping and sporadic shelling throughout the day. One soldier who almost certainly felt the strain was Lieutenant George Walters, a 25-year-old clerk from Western Australia, who was unusually quiet before setting off on patrol. Being ‘rallied’ about it by his platoon, he replied: ‘I’m going to get mine tonight. I know I won’t come out of this stunt.’ According to the 11th Battalion history, those around him laughed, while George ‘just shook his head and gave a wintry-sort of smile’. 85

Then, all of a sudden, flares arced into the sky. Third Battalion soldiers saw ‘shadowy forms’ quietly steal across the front about 50 yards away from them. Some soldiers prepared to open fire, unaware that the shadows were the patrolling Australians. Thankfully, before anyone could fire, Private Claude Dowling of the 3rd Battalion walked forward, confirmed their identity, and prevented a near tragedy.86

Forsyth’s fresh 8th Battalion, which until now had been held in reserve, moved up into the village and swept northward through the ruins just before midnight. They encountered sporadic sniping and stray shells, but most Germans, when challenged, ran to K Trench or the OG lines. One even jumped on a bicycle lying against a wireless station and pedalled for his life.87

While supervising operations, an officer of the 11th Battalion saw a shell burst in the distance; at the same time he noticed a man topple over. In the fitful light, the slightly wounded officer limped across to the body. He turned it over and discovered that it was George Walters. ‘His premonitions had been realised,’ recorded the 11th Battalion history.88 George’s mother, Mrs Mary Alice Stewart of Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, would duly receive notification of his death and receipt of his personal belongings, which included George’s rosary beads.89

The Australians had chalked up their first 24 hours in Pozières. Foxcroft’s last diary entry for 23 July summed up what had been an exceptionally trying day: ‘No sleep since Friday night, lost nearly all our mates something awful.’90