chapter sixteen

Graveyard or Glory

‘There is only one decisive victory: the last.’

— Carl von Clausewitz, military theorist

There was time for one last Australian offensive at Mouquet Farm before the Canadian Corps relieved the Australians and they were transferred north to Ypres. Canadian engineers were already busy erecting huts at Contay Château in anticipation of the changeover. John Treloar observed the ‘happy’ Canadians playing drums and blowing bugles as they marched toward the reserve areas, writing in his diary: ‘I wonder what they will think after a few days around Pozières.’1 Like the Australians before them, little did the Canadians, who were entering the Somme battle for the first time, know what horror lay in store for them.

It was planned that on 3 September Brigadier-General Bill Glasgow’s 13th Brigade would attack the farm at dawn with three ‘strong’ battalions: the 51st (Western Australia), 52nd (Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia), and 49th (Queensland). Although the attack was less than brigade-strength (four battalions), as White had previously sought, the facts that the frontage was limited to 1250 yards and the battalions’ assembly trenches would be dug by other troops meant that the proposed force should prove adequate to break into and secure the farm.2 The battalions’ first objective was to storm and capture Fabeck Graben Trench — which, it was hoped, would block German reinforcements sweeping down into the farm — and then peel off to secure the farm.

On the same day the Australians attacked Mouquet Farm, Gough’s Reserve Army would storm Thiepval from three directions. Further south, Rawlinson’s Fourth Army and the French Sixth Army would attack Guillemont and Combles at noon.

Opinion was divided on the looming attack. Some soldiers felt that capturing the farm’s ruins would be of poor consolation for the awful losses they had already suffered. Others believed that too much had been sacrificed to leave the battle for the farm undecided. General Cox, the last remaining Anzac divisional commander on the Somme, was desperate for the attack to be successful. He sent a message to his troops urging them to firmly hold any ground captured: ‘The importance of holding on … cannot be underestimated,’ read Cox’s circular.3 One of his officers, Captain Charles Dawkins of the 51st Battalion, was as focused on surviving the attack, writing: ‘God, I hope it’s a success and I come through all right.’4 Lieutenant Len Wadsley of the 52nd Battalion simply wrote of the fighting: ‘We are all thoroughly sick of it.’5 Wadsley possibly wondered why, after six failed attempts upon Mouquet Farm, the seventh attempt would be any different. Some time earlier, Wadsley had written a letter home explaining that he was preparing to fight in a fairly large offensive which ‘may be the end of a good many of us and I may be one of the number … I leave myself in the hands of the Almighty and trust him absolutely’. Wadsley had handed the letter to a mate. His instructions were, ‘Post it for me if I do not come back.’

On 2 September, Glasgow’s troops filed up the narrow communication trench from the Pozières cemetery to the quarry, which sat about 250 yards from the farm. They reached their position at 11.00 p.m., about six hours before zero hour. Just after midnight, Lieutenant Duncan ‘Big’ Maxwell of the 52nd Battalion synchronised watches with his platoon commanders, including Len Wadsley of 11 Platoon.

The Western Australian 51st Battalion sheltered in the trenches to the left of the farm. Captain Daniel McCallum, a bank clerk from Kalgoorlie, and Lieutenant Bert Clifford, a farmer from Donnybrook, would have been bitterly cold that night because they and their troops had been ordered to leave their greatcoats and blankets behind. McCallum and Clifford were both in their mid-20s and had joined up as adventurous young men in 1914. McCallum and Clifford saw themselves as ‘real hard doers’, and were fiercely loyal to their battalion and outpost state. They would lead the first four waves of 51st Battalion troops into the attack.

Captain Howard Williams was another ‘hard doer’ of the 51st Battalion. The 23-year-old Williams grew up in Carlton, Victoria, and had studied at the University of Melbourne and attained a teacher’s certificate from the Victorian Education Department before being lured away to the uncharted west. A year of soldiering must have aged him; his men said he looked about 30.6 He would lead the last three waves of ‘mopping-up parties’, made up mostly of bombers, into no-man’s-land. Their objective was to clear the farm’s tunnels.

At 5.10 a.m. on 3 September, as the morning sun cast its orange glow across the clouded sky, four waves of Queenslanders from the 49th Battalion, who were positioned on the right flank, climbed from their shallow trenches and clambered toward Fabeck Graben. A barrage of high-explosive and smoke shells, mortar bombs, and machine-gun fire screened their advance. ‘Rockets from both sides coursed through the half light in elegant curves,’ remembered a German soldier defending the farm. ‘The earth shuddered with the impact of heavy and super heavy shells.’7

The first wave of Queenslanders captured a subsidiary objective called Kollmann Trench. The second wave advanced and spread out in shell holes in front of Fabeck Graben to act as a security screen. Despite heavy machine-gun fire, the third wave went forward and broke into a small section of Fabeck Graben. They quickly cleared the trench of Germans and set up protective barricades. From their elevated position, they had clear views beyond the battlefield to the open country and the red-tiled roofs of the German-held villages Courcelette and Grandcourt. Some men diverted, as planned, to the farm and threw bombs down dugout entrances. The troops of the fourth wave, who were carrying picks and shovels, advanced and acted as a security screen for those soldiers who had seized Fabeck Graben. German machine-gun crews were slow to react, and were killed before they could mount their guns.

At the same time that the Queenslanders moved forward, seven waves of Western Australians from the 51st Battalion, on the left flank, climbed from their trenches and advanced toward Fabeck Graben. McCallum and Clifford led the first four waves into no-man’s-land, followed by Williams and his three waves of ‘mopping-up’ bombers.

‘We left our trenches somewhere before 5 o’clock in the morning. It was not quite daylight,’ recalled Private John Cotter, a farmer and Boer War veteran of the 51st Battalion. ‘We were instructed that we had to capture Mouquet Farm and a machine-gun strong post to the right rear of the farm … We did not lose so many men crossing over.’8

Clifford and McCallum’s companies advanced toward their objective, about 100 to 200 yards beyond the farm. ‘We pushed on with the advance and got through a mess of barbed wire entanglements to the left of the farm,’ remembered Cotter. Surrendering Germans spilt out of their dugouts with their hands raised.

After seven attacks, the Australians seemed close to securing the farm. Success, however, depended on the 52nd Battalion in the centre breaking into Fabeck Graben and linking up with the 49th and 51st battalions on either side of it.

As the protective barrage passed over the Germans’ heads at about 6.30 a.m., their surviving machine-gun crews manned their weapons. Although it was unlikely they could see the 52nd Battalion through the smoke and dust, they fired in the direction they expected the attack to come from. As the fire intensified, some Australians panicked and sought cover in shell holes, while others ran back to their own trenches. Lieutenant Duncan Maxwell and Sergeant Allan Black tried to settle them. Black then manned a Lewis gun and returned fire, eventually silencing one machine gun. The troops edged forward again and captured a small portion of Fabeck Graben. Germans hiding in the shell craters close by surrendered.

The 49th and 52nd battalions each held a portion of Fabeck Graben. The C Company of the 52nd Battalion had to fill the gap. Captain Ralph Ekin-Smyth, a portly 41-year-old customs officer from Woodville, South Australia, and a citizen–soldier for 25 years, led his company toward Fabeck Graben, but didn’t recognise it because it had been destroyed by the bombardment. Ekin-Smyth’s company kept advancing, and walked straight into their supporting barrage. It shattered the company in minutes, and an exploding shell blew Wadsley’s head off. Sergeant Roy Pollard, who took over Wadsley’s platoon, was unsurprised by his death. ‘A few minutes before the charge, he told me that he felt as if he would not come out of it,’ he explained in a letter to Wadsley’s family.9

Ekin-Smyth gathered the survivors together; yet, as they retraced their steps, shrapnel struck the captain. Although seriously wounded, Ekin-Smyth yelled orders and directed his men with his cane. Confused and leaderless, some men panicked and again walked into their own barrage, while others streamed back toward their own trenches. The gap remained.

Maxwell, stuck in Fabeck Graben with his flanks exposed, sent a patrol out to contact Ekin-Smyth’s company. The patrol leader, Lance-Corporal Ernest Green, found Ekin-Smyth lying in a crater and gave another man a hand to bind up his wounds. ‘His left arm was broken in two places. While binding him up a bomb lobbed in the crater and struck Ekin-Smyth in the stomach killing him,’ Green explained in his statement to the Red Cross.10

By 7.00 a.m., Maxwell had established all-important but very tenuous touch with the C Company of the 52nd Battalion. Meanwhile, Williams’s 51st Battalion bombers had secured most of the farm’s ruins. According to the Official History, they had worked their way from dugout to dugout, tentatively peering down their dark shafts. If shots rang out from below, Williams’s bombers rolled grenades or phosphorous bombs down. Within minutes, smoke billowed from a dozen wrecked dugouts.11

At 7.30 a.m., Williams, in his temporary headquarters in a deep cellar, scribbled down a message and handed it to his runner. Some time later, the runner arrived at battalion headquarters at the cemetery. Williams’s message read that Mouquet Farm had been captured except for a few isolated dugouts. The great news quickly spread among the nearby troops. ‘13 Brigade took Mouquet Farm and is still holding it,’ recorded Harold Morris in his diary.12

Had Williams sent the message prematurely? Machine-gun fire soon intensified; large 9.2-inch shells exploded among the Australians, and those digging the communication trench linking the farm to the Australian trenches downed their tools and sought cover. By 8.00 a.m., the staff officers at headquarters had become concerned because no further messages had been received from the farm. Observers in spotter aeroplanes sent up to check the advance’s progress returned with confusing information: the green flares that marked the advance’s limit were seen scattered around the farm, but so too were red, yellow, and white ones.

The Australians held a large section of Fabeck Graben Trench. The Germans responded to this reversal by despatching reinforcements through the communications trenches toward Fabeck Graben. Pockets of Australians spotted the Germans advancing toward them, and desperately dug trenches to establish a continuous defensive line and prevent themselves from being outflanked.

Elsewhere, German reinforcements advanced from shell hole to shell hole toward the farm. They bombed and pushed back an Australian platoon positioned on the farm’s eastern outskirts. The sight was a blow to the men clearing the farm’s dugouts who, till then, had been ‘confident they were winning hands down’.13

Meanwhile, Clifford and McCallum’s battered companies managed to reach the north-east corner of the farm, as planned, and dug in. When the advancing Germans attacked them, Clifford and McCallum had little choice other than to hold their ground. Then there was a loud explosion and McCallum collapsed. ‘He was hit in the head and also had several stomach wounds,’ stretcher-bearer Private William Reith told the Red Cross enquiry some months later.14 McCallum bled to death on the battlefield. Lieutenant Francis Bailey, 21, from Subiaco, took over his company.

Reaching the outskirts of the farm, the Germans flanked Clifford’s isolated position. They entered the farm’s hidden underground entrances and then manoeuvred behind Clifford’s party.

Suddenly, a Lewis gun covering Clifford’s party jammed. Moments later, Clifford received a message from 24-year-old Gallipoli veteran Lieutenant Ernie Smythe, who was protecting his exposed flank. Smythe wrote that he was being bombed out and couldn’t hold on much longer. Clifford sent a short reply: ‘Hang on at all costs.’15 Only a handful of Clifford’s men stood between the Germans and the farm. At 8.30 a.m., Clifford scribbled a note and handed it to a runner. It read:

Being hard pressed. Enemy bombing up our trench from both ends. Strong point on our left rear has not been cleared, as they are sniping in our rear … Only have about 30 men with me. No sign of a communication trench to us from farm as yet. Lost trace of the 52nd. Believe we have gone too far.

Elsewhere, a German Minenwerfer crew fired its large two-gallon canisters, filled with scrap metal, into the sky. The canisters could be easily seen in flight, rising slowly and momentarily hanging in the air before tumbling over into the Australian positions. Deafening explosions shook the ground. Further back, German shells fell thickly in no-man’s-land, the support trenches, and divisional headquarters at Tara Hill.

By 8.45 a.m., battalion headquarters had lost touch with Clifford and Bailey. Soon after, Bailey, who had only taken over his platoon’s command an hour before, was sniped through the head and died instantly.16

At 9.30 a.m., with few men left, bombs running low, and Germans continuing to emerge from secret passages, Williams withdrew his troops from Mouquet Farm and returned with them to their own line. Somewhere along the way, according to a subsequent Red Cross enquiry, a bullet drilled Williams through the forehead, killing him instantly.17 Clifford’s men were now completely cut off.

The Germans, possibly sensing the shift in momentum, attacked Clifford’s isolated position from all sides. Moments later, Clifford was shot dead; it was the second anniversary of his enlistment. Lieutenant William Halvorsen positioned himself between Clifford’s limp body and the Germans. Halvorsen, also severely wounded, recalled later the hopeless situation confronting the stranded troops:

All our Lewis guns had been put out of action … runners were sent back for reinforcements and additional Lewis guns, but we received no response to these messages. The German barrage was on us and we were being persistently sniped.18

Halvorsen lapsed into unconsciousness.

The Germans infiltrated Ernie Smythe’s isolated position, and he made for the farm. ‘I saw him shot as he was running across No-Man’s Land,’ said an eyewitness. ‘I don’t know how badly he was hit.’19 Another soldier later saw Smythe lying dead in a crater.

‘We were surrounded,’ remembered Private John Cotter. ‘I went out to try and get assistance for the wounded men when I was rushed by about 30 Germans.’20 Cotter and the remaining soldiers surrendered, concluding the Australians’ last hopes of capturing the farm.21

Glasgow, in his dugout headquarters near the cemetery, forwarded reserves at 9.30 a.m. to help his besieged battalions. It was too late: they were unable to find anyone, and returned some time later. Glasgow, although only 1000 yards away from the farm, responded to messages despatched by officers that were sometimes two hours old. He commanded companies that had ceased to exist.

Further back at Tara Hill, conflicting reports arrived at divisional headquarters throughout the day and into the evening about the attack’s progress. At 12.50 p.m., the 13th Brigade reported that they had lost the farm; at 6.35 p.m., artillery observers stated that the Australians still held it. ‘Latest reports show that we may still be in Mouquet Farm itself but this is unclear,’ read a 4th Division situation report at 6.45 p.m. ‘Two Coy’s, 51st still out west of the farm. We are still trying to link up with them.’ 22 The attempts would be futile, as Clifford’s and McCallum’s men were either dead, wounded, or captured.

The only thing left to decide was whether the Australians could hold the ridge to the right of the farm. Expensive attacks and counterattacks continued throughout the day as the Australians and Germans desperately tried to wrestle the prized ridge from each other, which by late evening was crowned with the twisted corpses of both sides. The next day, ‘Big’ Maxwell, whose 52nd stubbornly clung on to the ridge, wrote in response to the suggestion that his battalion was knocked out, ‘Rot, we are going strong.’23 The 450 casualties that the battalion suffered in the battle suggested that Maxwell was adopting a brave face.

Gough’s offensive to capture Thiepval and Mouquet Farm had failed completely. At 6.00 p.m., he suspended all other offensive action, but confirmed an order for Glasgow to maintain his tenuous grip on the high ground near the farm. Although admitting that his Reserve Army had met with a large-scale repulse, Gough was adamant that it would be soon avenged. According to historian Martin Gilbert, Gough blamed his commanding officers’ lack of ‘discipline and motivation’ for the failure to capture Thiepval. Gough was somewhat more generous toward the Anzacs, writing in his memoirs that the Australian officers and men had shown a fine spirit in attack, and steady courage under the constant shelling.24

Despite the frightening casualties and minuscule gains of the last attack upon Mouquet Farm, it still provided grist for the Anzac legend. Their ability to persevere with seven attacks, despite overwhelming odds and supposedly incompetent leadership, supported Bean’s contention that the Anzacs’ unique qualities of mateship, independence, and resourcefulness set them apart from soldiers of other nationalities, particularly those from the ‘old’ and presumably decadent nations of Europe.25 According to Bean, the Anzacs — ordinary fellows flung into war — had completed their duty nobly, despite failing to capture their stated objective. As Gallipoli had proved, the noble nature of their struggle, rather than the attainment of victory, was the key pillar of the Anzac legend.

Unlike on Gallipoli, the Australians’ last days on the Somme were not marked by any great victory, humiliating defeat, or defining moment. The survivors simply left, with the struggle for the farm unfinished. The Anzacs had arrived, in the manner of a huge circus, with great fanfare; now the show was over, they quietly packed up and moved on — to the next town, and the next round of fighting.

Earlier that day, Birdie had prepared to shift his headquarters north. He reflected on the momentous events of the last six weeks, writing in his diary:

We took Mouquet Farm high ground to NE … at 5 a.m. We can now feel we have fully done our bit. I think we have taken more [prisoners] than any other corps since we started on 23rd … while our own casualties have been about 24,000, many of them will I hope return soon.26

Birdie appeared pleased with his two-mile advance, even though it had cost him the equivalent of two divisions and the farm remained uncaptured.

In the afternoon of 3 September, Birdie and White vacated their Contay headquarters and departed for Ypres, where the 1st, 2nd, and 5th Divisions were now located; Cox followed a couple of days later. Canadian Corps commander Lieutenant-General Julian Byng oversaw the last-gasp efforts of the 4th Division. Gough remained on the Somme, where he continued to plot the downfall of Thiepval. He sent a message to Cox: ‘I shall always be pleased to see your division near me in a fight.’27 It is unclear whether Cox shared the same feeling.

On the same day that Birdie departed for Ypres, Treloar also prepared to shift the Central Registry north. By 9.00 a.m., his clerks had packed away their stacks of records into cases, and loaded them onto lorries. Treloar stayed behind to hand over to the Canadians. At 3.15 p.m., a car arrived to take him north.28 Yet even though Treloar had left the Somme, it seemed that the Somme had not left him. Somewhere near Doullens, his car stopped to let a hospital train pass. ‘In it were many Australians,’ he observed, ‘some, I suppose, of those who were wounded in the fighting around Mouquet Farm.’ It is hard to imagine that Treloar was not saddened as the train passed, particularly as many of his Gallipoli friends and registry-office clerks had fought and died in the battle.

Bean decided to ‘see this business through’, and remained on the Somme until the Australians ceased fighting. When he walked from the battlefield on 6 September, he remembered feeling lighthearted, not the least that he was turning his back on Pozières for the last time.29 Bean caught a train from Amiens to Calais and then crossed the English Channel. He welcomed the respite, noting that the war ‘seemed to end at the French quayside’.30 But the strain of long hours had evidently taken its toll. ‘I have aged a lot in this war,’ he later explained in a letter to his parents. ‘Everyone lives three years in one during the war.’31

The Canadians relieved the last Australian unit in the line, the 49th Battalion, on 5 September. ‘Can you tell me if we have got Mouquet Farm?’ asked a worn soldier.32 The sad answer was ‘no’. On 5 September, the Australians’ battering operations against Mouquet Farm finally came to an end. The normally restrained Official History described the operation as groaning to a halt in front of Mouquet Farm like some clumsy machine having ground out, through mud and blood, a few yards of almost valueless advance.33 On the same day, Haig ordered the Reserve Army to give up its attempts to secure Thiepval prior to the mid-September offensive. Haig re-emphasised to Gough the importance of economising his men so that he had fresh reserves ready to exploit any future successes.34

On 8 September, the Germans recaptured the toehold that the Australians had gained in Fabeck Graben and had desperately clung on to with the assistance of the Canadians.35 Ironically, Thiepval, the cause of all this suffering, eventually fell before Mouquet Farm did. Gough later admitted in his memoirs that the final assault that captured Thiepval on 26 September was ‘less costly’ than many of the other ‘preliminary and minor operations’ had been.36

Charteris continued gathering intelligence, even though rain had turned the battlefield into a quagmire. He teased of an imminent German collapse. But now, even the War Office didn’t believe him. A committee set up by the War Office to examine the Germans’ available manpower concluded that they had about 750,000 reserves left. Charteris dismissed the figures, saying that morale was the pivotal determinant in the Germans’ willingness to fight. The report did, however, force him to admit that there would be no hope of exhausting their reserves in this year’s fighting.37

The Australians were not celebrating. The earlier successes at Pozières were forgotten. Even Thomas Blamey — hardly the most sensitive soldier — warned prophetically: ‘The grief that struck Australia over Gallipoli will be slight compared to the grief that will strike it now.’38