chapter seventeen

Aftermath

‘We are not seeing General Birdwood quite so often these days.’

— Lieutenant-General Iven Mackay

The 1916 Somme campaign ground on through September and October and into November. The British inched forward through the bog, but still with no decisive victory in sight. By the time Haig finally closed it down on 18 November, the Allied and German armies had hurled tens of millions of shells at each other and suffered around one million casualties.1

The loose ends of that last attack on Mouquet Farm by the Anzacs took years to tidy up. Glasgow’s 13th Brigade suffered 1300 casualties in those last few days, and nearly 500 men were listed as missing.2 Some soldiers had simply disappeared; some were taken prisoner; others remained stranded behind the German lines. Most were dead, their bodies scattered about the shell holes and the ruins of the farm.

Nine days after the attack, three men, badly wounded and suffering from exposure, were found near the south-west corner of the farm. They had survived on the bully beef scavenged from the dead.3

Leslie Parsons, wounded and unable to move, had also sheltered in a shell hole, where he wrote a letter before dying. Accounts differ on the letter’s contents and its intended recipient. The Official History claims that the letter was addressed to Parsons’ brother; researcher Derek Woodhead maintains that Parsons wrote the letter in his own blood, detailing in it where his officer and mates were in the area.4 Parsons’ body was later recovered and buried in a shallow grave, but its location was soon forgotten.

Sergeant Luke Ramshaw was taken prisoner. He lay in a shell hole for three days, the wound to his thigh crawling with maggots, before some Germans stretcher-bearers found him.5 His relatives were initially informed that he was ‘missing in action’. Later, word trickled back, via the Red Cross, that he was a prisoner of war, along with Cotter.

There was no word on Bert Clifford, and the uncertainty of his fate was too much for his father to bear. Thomas Clifford died, perhaps of a broken heart, three weeks after his son was listed as missing. In March 1917, Mrs Emma Clifford received notification that her son’s death had been reclassified to ‘killed in action’.6 His body was never recovered. ‘There’s not a day goes by, dear Bert, that we don’t think of you,’ she wrote on the first anniversary of his death.7

Sometime after the battle, Wright Wadsley and his daughters received the last of Len Wadsley’s 60 letters. Reading the letters was like having a conversation with a ghost:

If you receive this I will by then have passed to the Great Beyond … I would have liked to have got back again but ’twas not meant that I should. Never mind girls, there’ll be someone else to take my place. Well Dad goodbye! Goodbye girls! Let the remainder of the family know I think of you all and hope to meet you all again later on. T’is rotten having to write this but c’est la guerre!8

Wadsley’s body was never found.

By the time Haig finally closed down the Somme campaign, 23,000 Australians of I Anzac Corps had been killed or wounded for a two-mile advance. Based on the 1911 Australian census, their losses represented the entire population of the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda or the Sydney suburb of Paddington. Add the 5th Australian Division’s 5300 casualties at Fromelles, and it represented the equivalent of Broken Hill, in South Australia, being wiped from the map.9

Even the raw casualty numbers didn’t tell the whole story. After Pozières, Brigadier-General Brand’s 13th Battalion was reinforced back to its full strength of 1028 men. Of these, only 144 had passed through Gallipoli and Pozières. Nearly all those who had enlisted in 1914 and early 1915 had been killed or wounded.10 ‘Gallipoli accounted for many of the finest and bravest lads that ever lived and now the Western Front has completed the work of destruction,’ wrote Lance-Corporal Charles Alexander from his hospital bed in Tidworth, England. ‘Only here and there will you meet a soldier who has fought on both sides of Europe.’11 These grim statistics were repeated across many battalions.

John Terraine reasoned in The Western Front, 1914–1918 that casualties — even large numbers of casualties, such as those suffered by I Anzac Corps on the Somme — can be made bearable ‘if they are accompanied by striking achievements’.12 Did the Somme offensive achieve striking results, such as shortening the war? John Charteris thought so, writing on 24 November that the battle had ‘certainly done all, and more, than we hoped for when we began’.13 If striking results were achieved, as Charteris suggested, at what cost was it to the Anzacs’ spirit? The character of the men had been temporarily crushed. Bean noted in his diary that many were subdued and lifeless after coming out of the trenches, most of them thoroughly sick of the punishment they’d endured from the German bombardment. The men yearned for complete rest and looked forward to some solitude to read or write a few letters home. Bean predicted that the soldiers’ spirits would not fully recover until the spring.14

Pozières changed the Anzacs. Those carefree divisions that Charles Bean and Paul Maze had observed marching, singing, and laughing their way to Pozières in the middle of a glorious French summer were gone forever. Its men now harboured a simmering bitterness toward their generals. ‘Evidently the English want to wipe out the Colonials,’ wrote Private Reg Telfer of the Australian Medical Corps, 27th Battalion. ‘To Hell with them.’15

‘Ten months ago I was eager to get into the firing line. My eagerness has been well fulfilled and well I know it,’ recorded Private Arthur Kilgour.16

‘As far as I was concerned, I did not get over this experience fully for six months,’ wrote Ted Rule. ‘Often at night I would wake up, and in a dazed way live some of it all over again.’17

‘God knows what we went through was hell itself,’ read Second-Lieutenant Walter Claridge’s letter, written from his hospital bed in England.18

Pozières was bad, but the future looked just as bleak. Charles Bean conceded that there was only one way out of the war for an infantryman, and that was on his back: either sick, wounded, or dead. ‘They will be put at it to fight and fight and fight — until if not in this battle then in the next each man gets his bullet,’ he wrote in his diary immediately after the battle. ‘It is a big shock to a man when he realises that.’19 The facts validated Bean’s assessment: two in three men who left Australia’s shores were killed or wounded by the war’s end.

Some soldiers could not fathom how they got through Pozières unscathed. Many attributed their luck to God’s providence. ‘The Lord seems to especially look after us doesn’t he,’ Allan Leane wrote in a letter home. ‘It is remarkable the luck we have, lets hope it lasts.’20 It didn’t; Leane died at Bullecourt in 1917.

Like Leane, Kogarah boy Alfred Stewart thanked God for bringing him through Pozières alive. In return, he promised to devote the rest of his life to God’s work. The rest of his life was short; he was killed in action in Belgium in September 1917.21

Private Jack Condon, a 47-year-old tailor, vividly described the horrors of Pozières in a letter home to his young son, Donald. ‘The dead strewn about sometimes for days and weeks as there is not much use burying them as they are rooted up by shells,’ he wrote. Then he pleaded, ‘I am telling you this son to try and dampen your ardour for the navy that is just as bad.’22 Condon had already lost one son at Pozières — 20-year-old Richard — and didn’t want to lose a second. Condon succeeded in dampening his son’s enthusiasm for the war, but he died a year later at the Messines ridge. It was another cruel blow for his wife, Anne, who lived the rest of her life on a war widow’s pension.23

Some soldiers tried to justify the huge toll at Pozières, believing that some good had to have come from it. They reiterated noble ideals: these ‘little mounds in France will be stones — foundation stones — in the world’s new temple of the True, the Good, and Beautiful,’ wrote Stanley Cocking.24

Others didn’t buy it. ‘Why go to war with one another?’ wrote Jack Bourke. ‘With these men we have no quarrel.’25

What the Anzacs hated most about the Somme were the attacks on narrow fronts, such as those on Mouquet Farm. They channelled their anger toward their commanders, including Birdie. Bean documented a rumour that, during an inspection, troops hooted Birdie and called him a ‘butcher’.26 After hearing one of Birdie’s speeches promising more fighting, Reg Telfer wrote: ‘Hell! I don’t want to come back here and neither do any of the others. Hang these big “pushes.”’27

Birdie’s behaviour after Pozières baffled some Australians; he seemed to display a complete lack of understanding for what they had just been through. Bean recorded one exchange between Birdie and some troops:

‘Well, boys, having a good rest, eh?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘That’s right — you deserve it — get all the rest you can, and then you’ll be able to come back soon and kill some more Germans.’28

Birdie’s comments to men who hadn’t yet recovered from Pozières were understandably unpopular. Bean thought the general’s intent was to avoid falsely raising the troops’ hopes that they would have a prolonged rest. A more likely explanation was that Birdie possessed a simplistic understanding of his soldiers’ motivations and assumed that they enjoyed killing Germans, when in fact few wanted to fight again.29 These incidents were almost certainly another example of Birdie lacking the necessary perspective required of a corps commander.

Ted Rule was a little more forgiving of the ‘brass heads’ like Birdie. ‘When we look back today, we can see how little our leaders understood their jobs at that time, simply through lack of experience,’ he reasoned in his memoirs. ‘At the same time trained German officers were taking advantage of our inexperience.’30 Battalion histories such as The Fighting Thirteenth echoed a similar theme: ‘So many of these small advances were attempted that one is compelled to think that our “heads” were nervous about their ability to manage big affairs.’31

In 45 days, the ‘nervous heads’ had launched 19 attacks in response to Haig’s edict for ‘steady and methodical’ attacks. In practice, the Anzac and British officers had executed piecemeal attacks on narrow fronts.

The British were overwhelmed by the number of soldiers killed on the Somme in 1916, and at a loss as to how best to manage their burial. They could not be buried in French churchyards because there was not enough room. By necessity, soldiers who died from their wounds at advanced dressing stations near villages such as Bécourt, Warloy, and Vadencourt were buried in the nearby fields. John Treloar noticed how quickly these temporary graveyards sprung up behind the lines: ‘As we walked we noticed through the twilight three mounds with a post on top of each,’ he wrote in his diary. Days later, he passed the same graveyard, ‘which was a little fuller than last night’.32

Would the dead be returned home after the war? Britain had quickly decided against it. Bodies could not be exhumed for hygiene reasons, and the cost was thought to be prohibitive. Australia followed suit, noting that it would be impractical to transport their dead halfway around the world. A grateful French nation willingly granted permanent concession for British cemeteries.

Masses of enquiries flooded the army from families desperately seeking information about their loved ones’ grave sites. The British government responded by setting up the Graves Registration Commission in 1915 to record all graves and to notify the next of kin of their location and the nearest railway station.

Unsurprisingly, families wanted to know who would tend their loved one’s grave after the war. Would it fall into ruin and disrepair? In 1917, the British government set up the Imperial War Graves Commission, which had the mandate to honour the dead; Andrew Fisher, Australia’s high commissioner in London, represented Australia on the commission. It immediately set about resolving sensitive questions such as the type of headstones to be used and the information permitted on them; if varying treatments based on rank, religion, or social status would be permitted; who would be responsible for the upkeep of the cemeteries and graves; and whether the dead would remain where they fell or be interred in one of the designated cemeteries.

After the 3 September attack on Mouquet Farm, many families waited for word on their missing loved ones; occasionally their remains were discovered and reburied. For many months, Hilda Ekin-Smyth waited patiently for news about her missing husband, Ralph, but little came. Then, a year later, ‘out of the blue’, she received a parcel. It contained her husband’s prized Kodak camera. Seven years of silence followed, and then, in 1923, Hilda received an unexpected letter. It explained that the Imperial War Graves Commission had discovered Ralph Ekin-Smyth’s remains, along with those of 18 others, in a large crater just beyond the farm. The contents in his badly deteriorated wallet had helped to identify him. Hilda requested that it be returned so that her sons, Raymond, Walter, and Kenneth would have something to remember their father by.33 For these young boys, the perished wallet and that old Kodak camera would be their equivalent of the vast panels listing the missing at Villers-Bretonneux: a personal connection to a father they perhaps never really knew. Ekin-Smyth’s remains were reburied in a small military cemetery just west of Albert.

Ninety-five years later, the wallet is in the possession of Margaret Lee, the granddaughter of Ralph. For Margaret, the wallet signifies terrible sadness. In an interview, she recounted that, during the Somme offensive, Ralph, perhaps sensing the ‘hopelessness’ of the situation, sent a letter to Raymond. In it, he implored his eldest son, who was still at primary school, to care for his mother and siblings should he not return home. According to Margaret, Raymond dutifully accepted this responsibility, no doubt a terrible burden for one so young. Margaret has memories of Hilda’s life after Ralph’s death: her financial struggles, her custom of always wearing navy to mourn her husband, her torment when sons Walter and Kenneth marched off to battle in the Second World War, and her foreboding during those years whenever the telegram boy rode past the house. Margaret plans to entrust Ralph’s wallet to her son, Justin.34

In 2004, Margaret’s cousin, Michael Ekin-Smyth, visited Ralph’s grave. Michael remembered that seeing his family name on a headstone produced a sensation difficult to describe. He wondered how and why the Great War could have enticed so many young men to give up their lives for so little, concluding that there was no possible answer to his question.35 It was as Bean had predicted: a scrap piece of iron flung at random had followed its course right through to the furthest end of the world, and impacted upon families — in this case, three generations of the Ekin-Smyths.

Daniel McCallum’s and Ernest Smythe’s bodies were discovered in the same crater as Ralph Ekin-Smyth’s. Mrs Edith Smythe, thankful for the discovery of her son’s remains and the return of his ‘sacred’ personal belongings, requested that the following inscription be engraved upon his headstone: ‘A beautiful life closed; he lived and died for others’.36

Howard Williams’ family read in the newspapers that Australian remains had been discovered near the farm, and wondered if Howard was there as well. ‘I have waited for any information possible relative to him and would consider it a very great favour if you could forward to me any matter that may have reached you,’ wrote his sister to the minister for defence.37 There was no news to give; unfortunately, Howard’s body was not one of the 19 found in the crater. His name is etched among the missing at the Villers-Bretonneux memorial.

More bodies were found in 1927, including Leslie Parsons’. ‘It is a great gratification to us all in the family to know that his poor remains have been recovered after 11 years,’ wrote his mother to Base Records upon hearing the news. She later received Leslie’s perished identity discs in the mail.38

The Anzac legend found its roots on Gallipoli, where journalists such as Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett cultivated a romantic image of the Anzacs based on the values of independence, mateship, equality, and a healthy disregard for authority. Pozières was different from Gallipoli — it was darker and uglier. Even though the horror of Pozières filtered back to Australians through telegrams, letters, and casualty lists, the battle added another dimension to the Anzac legend. Emerging themes, such as the Diggers’ needless sacrifice due to incompetent leadership and their perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds, became particularly meaningful to Australians, who sought a society free of class distinction and were perhaps keen to erase the stain of their convict past.39

Perhaps, in this context, it is unsurprising that Margaret Lee paused when asked whether her grandmother, Hilda, felt resentful that the Great War had snatched her husband away. Margaret suggested that Hilda’s resentment was overshadowed by a belief that Ralph had nobly performed his duty for a young country that sought to forge its own path and step away from the societal strictures cast by the old country.40

And why do later generations of Australians cling tightly to the Anzac themes that originated at Pozières? Perhaps questioning these premises weakens the foundations of the all-important Anzac legend.

Although Gallipoli remains Australia’s chosen and most visible symbol of the Anzac legend, almost certainly the lesser-known Pozières battle casts its own gloom over the myth and, consequently, the national identity.

From a military perspective, Haig had set three objectives for the Somme offensive — the capture of ground, the wearing down of the German army, and relieving the French army at Verdun. Were they achieved?

The final advance totalled, at best, seven miles. The cost of capturing these few miles was unsustainable, and in any case the Germans still had to be thrust back another 150 to 200 miles to reinstate pre-war boundaries. The cost of capturing objectives such as Mouquet Farm was simply too expensive. According to Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson’s calculations in their book The Somme, it took seven Australian, British, and Canadian divisions and a staggering 18,200 casualties to advance one mile to capture the farm’s ruins.41 As one battalion history noted poignantly, Mouquet Farm smashed some of the finest fighting battalions ever known in history, without anything like commensurate gain in land or enemy losses.42

As for the success of the brutal strategy of war by attrition, the scorecard read 623,000 Allied casualties and an estimated 420,000 German casualties. The German army was probably best placed to judge the impact of the Somme offensive. Captain von Hentig, a staff officer with the Guard Reserve Division, said it was ‘the muddy grave of the German field army’.43 In some ways, they helped to dig their own grave — General Erich von Falkenhayn’s decree that any ground lost should be retaken by ‘immediate counterattack’, even to the ‘last man’, unnecessarily wasted reserves and drained his army.44 Equally, one is left wondering what it cost the Allies to deliver this blow — the collapse of the French army a year later suggests a high cost. The Somme appeared to be a pyrrhic victory, although its architect, Haig, saw things differently: ‘If the whole operations of the … war are regarded in correct perspective, the summer and autumn victories of 1918 will be seen to be directly dependent upon the two years of stubborn fighting that preceded them.’45 Haig rightly calculated that the Allies’ armies could absorb the losses on the Somme and subsequent battles marginally better than the German army. Haig’s view was supported by his adversary, General Erich Ludendorff, who reflected in his memoirs that the strain of 1916 completely exhausted his army on the Western Front.46

A young officer perhaps best summed up the prevailing mood of all soldiers. ‘In 1916 English, French, and Germans alike saw victory within their grasp, and expected it after every local advantage,’ wrote Charles Edmonds. ‘In 1917 the war seemed likely to go on forever.’47