CHAPTER FIVE

‘More or less an experiment’

Stealth raids inspire orders for ‘peaceful penetration’ on the Somme, 5 to 17 July 1918

As dusk set in on 5 July, the first day after the Battle of Hamel, the 21st Battalion captured a dangerous trench by advancing in a formal operation to a rise north of the Roman road between Villers-Bretonneux and Warfusée. As they dug in, the Germans replied with gas and high explosives. In the first hours, the men crowded into the trench, straining their eyes through the infuriating fog on the lenses of their gasmasks. The shelling became sporadic and when the gas eased off the men dug, smoked and dug some more.

At dawn they found themselves among the items they had carried and those abandoned by the enemy: ammunition boxes, coils of wire, bombs and shovels. Gas lingered in the low-lying areas, mixing with the sour taste of explosive, stinging the backs of throats. Rifle and machine-gun fire, friendly and hostile, was constant. The men of A Company, 21st Battalion, were waiting for the relief, their eyes shining, their motions stiff and jolting from the stress and exhaustion of two days and nights of constant fighting. They knew they had to stick it out only until that evening, 6 July, and fresh troops would replace them. But enemy sniping was active, and the officers began talking about another ‘hop-over’ to silence a post that had been missed somewhere in front of them – too close for comfort. It was an unwelcome prospect, the type of moment when ‘men die because exhaustion undermined them and they couldn’t fight as they fought when fit’.¹

A stranger came forward, one of two 20th Battalion NCOs whose job was to familiarise themselves with the position before their company took over the posts that night. This man volunteered to ‘have a pot … myself’ at the suspected hostile post, despite being ‘under no obligation to participate in any offensive operations’.² From the 21st Battalion’s trench he looked out into the ‘blue’, that part of No Man’s Land where men sometimes go with no distinct objective. He heard a shot, and a suspicious clump of earth 70 yards away caught his eye. He laid down his rifle, preferring two hand grenades, and went out to investigate. Another shot cracked; he knew it was close, and wondered if he was the target. He threw his first grenade at the clump but missed, so he dived into a hole. He caught his breath and looked around.

Too far out to hope for any support, he decided to keep going and found a small, ‘kidney-shaped trench’.³ In it was a light machine gun with a belt of ammunition, and at the far end, facing him, was the entrance to a dugout. The man leapt in just as a German appeared in the doorway. He hit this man in the jaw with his fist holding the grenade, knocking him back into the dugout. He thought he heard the German say ‘Kamerad’, meaning ‘I surrender’. He was truly surprised when more men appeared behind him from another dugout he hadn’t seen. He knew that to throw the grenade at one group would put him at the mercy of the other. He had no intention of surrendering, so he held his ground by the machine gun, and stood menacingly, indicating in stern language that it would please him if they all surrendered. Thirteen men, including an officer, filed out from both ends of the trench. He stripped them of their weapons, and herded them back to the 21st Battalion lines. A machine gun from another post opened fire and the movement alerted the German artillery, who sent over some shells. The 21st men swore at him for ‘drawing the crabs’ – drawing enemy fire⁴ – but he had rendered their job of raiding the post unnecessary.

When the 21st Battalion officers inquired to recommend the stranger for the Victoria Cross, they found he was Corporal Walter Ernest Brown DCM. It took these officers a few hours of investigating to work out that what their war diary described as a ‘minor operation’ had in fact been carried out by a solitary soldier from another battalion nominally not in the firing line.⁵ The story ‘spread like fire’.⁶ Those who knew Brown described him as ‘a very modest chap’, ‘quiet, friendly’ and ‘loyal beyond measure’.⁷ As was typical of the man, he hardly thought anything about his stealth raid as he was too busy. First he made sure he got one of the automatic pistols he had seen the Germans throw back into the dugout after he had stripped them of their weapons.⁸ Shortly afterwards his companion in the advanced party, Corporal William Gallagher, was wounded in the leg by shellfire; Brown carried him from the front line back to Villers-Bretonneux.⁹ This was the Brown his company of the 20th Battalion knew: self-confident and a rugged individualist, a man who took on dangerous jobs with equanimity. At Passchendaele on the night of 5–6 October 1917 he had done similar work bandaging and carrying the wounded under intense shellfire in conditions described as a ‘quagmire’. On 9 October, when Brown’s company was ordered to attack, he led his section to their objective after their sergeant became a casualty. After the battle, he was one of only six men remaining in the battalion fit to answer the roll call, out of a usual company strength of 200.¹⁰

Brown’s prisoners from the stealth raid of 6 July were men of the 137th Infantry Regiment, part of the tired, bedraggled and utterly outclassed 108th Division. After the Battle of Hamel they had unexpectedly found themselves as an advanced post; they were cut off, and had not eaten for two days.¹¹ When Monash heard of Brown’s exploit, he issued a circular throughout the Australian Corps (including the 1st Division at Hazebrouck), describing Brown’s stealth raid and the state of his prisoners. ‘It is difficult to imagine,’ he wrote to his troops, ‘men exhibiting greater dejection and a poorer morale.’ He encouraged his soldiers as individuals, sections, platoons, companies, battalions and Australians to take further advantage of similarly disorganised, ‘utterly cut-off’ and ‘quite helpless’ isolated groups of the enemy.¹²

Some men needed no encouragement. At Vaire Wood on 7 July, Lieutenant Albert Murray, Lance Corporal Bernard O’Farrell and an unknown man of the 49th Battalion crawled from their post at 2.30 pm to attack a German machine gun that had been harassing the front since Hamel. They wormed their way through No Man’s Land for over 100 yards and entered a German trench, following it for a further 150 yards until they found the machine gun. Murray killed the sentry and captured the weapon, then bombed a dugout, killing five men and taking two prisoners. As the stealth raiders returned through No Man’s Land they were attacked by what they estimated to be at least eight Germans. O’Farrell fought them off with bombs while Murray and the other man got the prisoners back to the Australian lines.¹³

Two nights later, in the same sector, men of the 50th Battalion, ‘dirty, lousy and uncomfortable … with the rain beating down on top of us’ and ‘without a wash or a shave for about 5 days’, watched as Lieutenant Avelyn Dunhill had a ‘box on’ with a well-armed German post.¹⁴ Dunhill, a veteran of the landing at Gallipoli, was leading a five-man patrol when he came across a German listening post. Being ‘some distance ahead of his men’, Dunhill decided to attack it alone; he was about to throw a bomb when the German garrison saw him and fired, so he crawled back to the Australian lines. Dunhill got more ammunition and two men, and returned to attack the German post, killing two men, wounding one and bringing in a prisoner.¹⁵ Lieutenant Ernest Hodge watched Dunhill’s stealth raid from a post nearby and described its effect on the morale of his weary company:

this bold statement may not look much, but [I] can tell you it meant something to us where we were … We had no continuous line but just a number of posts dug in to a depth of from 3 to 4 feet holding anything from 3 to 8 men. Old Fritz looked straight down on us from a high hill on our immediate left flank, we had absolutely no cover whatever and as soon as it got daylight we had to lie down in the bottom of the stony narrow limestone trench, and could not move … until 9.30 p.m.¹⁶

Hodge and Dunhill’s precarious position was the price the infantry paid for the success of the Battle of Hamel. The battle had alleviated the problem of enfilade from the north, but had created a similar problem from the south. The Australian Corps front line receded in a south-west direction at an angle of practically 45 degrees.¹⁷ The German field artillery pumped high-velocity shells and gas into positions like those occupied by Hodge and Dunhill. Monash considered launching a ‘second Hamel’ – another setpiece battle on the heels of the first – to straighten and shorten the line south-west of the bulge the advance at Hamel had made.¹⁸ At a meeting on 5 July, the day after the battle, Monash and General Henry Rawlinson, commanding the Fourth Army, sought Haig’s permission for the attack. Haig was unmoved: he proscribed formal operations in the area, citing the difficulties of inter-allied cooperation with the French to the south and, more importantly, a lack of strategic reserves. He did agree for plans to be drafted for a setpiece attack that might take place there in the future. Monash’s plans were duly drafted and submitted to Haig; Monash proposed 17 July for the battle.

On 7 July, Major General Rosenthal, 2nd Division, who had followed stealth raiders with an intelligent and sympathetic eye as a brigadier in the 9th Brigade in April and May, sent out an ‘instruction’. He urged his brigade commanders to advance if they could by means of ‘silent penetration’, meaning without assistance by the artillery. Rosenthal’s message was the first suggestion of what would become the formal policy called ‘peaceful penetration’. Effectively, a deal was being struck with the men: if you can do it your way, by stealth raids, good luck to you. If you fail, you will be going over the top. Later that day, Rosenthal concluded his personal diary with: ‘I am instructing my two line Brigadiers to do all they can under the present disorganised and demoralised condition of German defences to extend our front Eastward.’¹⁹ On 11 July he forwarded to Monash a recommendation that the Victoria Cross be awarded to the stealth raider Walter Brown.²⁰

The frontline soldier’s view was more limited. On 7 July, shortly after Rosenthal issued his instructions, the youngest officer in the South Australian 27th Battalion, Lieutenant Russell Colman, was called before his commanding officer, Colonel Frederick Chalmers, and a proposal was put to him. Colman, unaccustomed to such invitations, recalled the event vividly:

[The Colonel] told me that there was an order from Brigade (Gen Wisdom) that the line had to be shifted further out from Villers Brett. they did not want to make an attack if it could possibly be avoided & were going to try to take it by means of a raid. I had visions of a night raid & box barrage but he went on ‘and we are going to try it by daylight & I want you to take charge of it’.²¹

Colman was an intelligent youngster; three years previously he had been beginning his first semester in the School of Mines at Adelaide University. Later, in 1934, when a qualified mining engineer, he wrote an account of his war experiences in the third person. He entered it in the war novel competition at the Melbourne Centenary celebrations; his manuscript did not win, but the Australian War Memorial (AWM) has since held it in its collection. This detailed exposition, along with Colman’s candid correspondence with Bean, paints the picture of a sportsman, scholar and skilled observer of human nature. Colman described how Chalmers launched into a pep talk on how he thought it could be done:

The Flying Corps had obtained aerial photographs of the German trench system opposite. Using these as a guide, it was proposed to enter the German trench system in broad daylight, at a certain point, and work along to the left, presumably bombing the occupants as one went. An unusual feature was that the raiding party were supposed to hold the ground they captured. It was more or less an experiment, and … if he met with any determined opposition in entering the trench, he was to get his men out of it as best he could, and the stunt would have to be repeated with a thorough artillery preparation and barrage. If he could bring it off however, it would save the battalion from going over the top again.²²

The single thought to ‘save the battalion going over the top again’ inspired Colman. He was handed an aerial photograph of the German system and dismissed. As he walked back to his platoon through the streets of Villers-Bretonneux, he decided to think the situation over from a greater height. He climbed to the rooftop of the ‘Doll’s House’, the last house standing on the eastern edge of the village, and compared what he could see with the photograph.²³ He decided that the only place in his sector that gave him a ‘sporting chance’ of getting into the German trenches was through a part of No Man’s Land called the orchard, where some fruit trees stood in disorderly blasted rows.²⁴

At its furthest point from the Australian line the orchard was 150 yards from the main German trench, while on the Australian side it offered cover, since the approach to it was through a crop two feet high. Colman went into the front lines and ‘dug up’ the officer in charge; he asked him to ‘warn his coves to be careful’ as he was about to go into No Man’s Land in daylight.²⁵ He crawled through the crop for 200 yards towards the orchard, and came to an old trench two or three feet deep. Fifty yards ahead he saw a German helmet on the ground. He held his breath and waited. Nothing stirred, but it was obvious that the helmet marked a German trench. He watched this place for two hours and was falling asleep in the warm sun when a familiar ‘pop’ woke him, followed by a gut-wrenching, twisting metallic squeal: an Australian heavy trench mortar battery in Villers-Bretonneux was firing its daily shoot. The ‘Flying Pigs’ were falling short, between Colman and the Australian lines. There was a second horrifying squeal, and another shell fell in the same area. Colman estimated the next one would fall on him because the mortar men would be adjusting their aim. He crawled away, with his chin virtually digging up the earth beneath him, ‘breathing fire and slaughter against all trench mortar batteries’.²⁶ But he had seen enough: the abandoned trench was an excellent jumping-off point for his stealth raid, although the post in the crop with the helmet worried him. On a field telephone he discussed what he had seen with Colonel Chalmers, and told him he would ‘have a go at it’ the next morning at 10.

Colman was given what he described as a ‘free hand’. He used it to ‘extract a promise’ that the trench mortar battery would be kept quiet while he was out with his stealth raiders. He went to his platoon and ‘broke the news quietly’; in the battalion’s history a stealth raid on this scale had not been undertaken in daylight and without artillery, and he chose his group carefully. Colman’s own No. 10 platoon, in which he had been a private and NCO, would make up the bulk of the stealth raiders, minus three or four whom he knew were ‘not cut out’ for it. He sought volunteers from the rest of the company and increased the number to 26. For specific roles he chose reliable men: two veteran NCOs in Sergeant Richard Carter and Corporal Fred Boughen as bayonet men, and Private Claude Crocker as number one on the Lewis gun. The rest would act as a bombing and garrisoning force: that is, as supports and reserves.

Before they went to sleep Colman made sure that each man had seen the photos and understood his job and the objective. The party would creep into the crop under the cover of darkness and lie in the shallow abandoned trench until zero hour. Colman would lead them single file through the orchard. On entering the trench, the Lewis gunner would be posted to cover their rear, while the stealth raiders would head left towards the Roman road to the north then proceed, bombing if they had to, leaving a man every 30 yards to garrison the trench. This amount of preparation gave each man the opportunity to prepare mentally and to visualise the action. No one gave much thought about what to do with prisoners; they were not convinced of success, but Colman’s friend, Lieutenant Vic Lampard, offered a glimmer of hope when he promised Colman if he had the ‘good luck’ to get along the trench to a position opposite his company he would ‘help … out to the last ounce’.

In the dim dawn light at 3 am on 8 July, the stealth raiders deployed into No Man’s Land and settled into the abandoned trench for the seven-hour wait until zero hour. Standing was impossible; each man lay down while, every now and then, indirect machine-gunfire cracked close overhead. The cramped men were simmering with eagerness to get moving. Colman reflected:

there was a shot from a rifle along our trench. With nerves on edge I thought it must have roused the whole German Army. I crawled along on hands & knees to see what careless idiot had let off his rifle & given our possie away & I found that the strain had been too much for one of our men. He had shot himself in the foot.²⁷

By now it was only minutes before 10 am. The wounded soldier was left in the trench. Colman, along with the bayonet men Carter and Boughen, checked their weapons, hopped out and rushed the post, but it was unoccupied. They signalled the others forward; the main German line was still 150 yards away. The three went forward again, trying to move behind the fruit trees. To their surprise, they got into the main trench unnoticed, and motioned the others forward.

Claude Crocker, the Lewis gunner, dropped into the trench beside Colman and was posted to cover their right flank, where the trench extended towards a railway line and a brickfield containing German dugouts. Colman, Carter and Boughen led the rest of the party to the left, along the trench in the direction of the Roman road. There was plenty of evidence of recent occupation: food, ammunition, coils of wire and so on. They occupied 600 yards of trench without encountering opposition. Colman looked over the parapet and saw another trench 50 yards away that cut at an angle of 45 degrees from the trench they were in, linking his position to a second parallel trench line. Owing to the complete lack of opposition, he decided to go over the top across open ground and cut out the angle. The bayonet men followed and they were almost there when they noticed a German machine gunner through the traverse straight ahead. They went for him with bombs and found the trench ‘alive with Germans trying to grab rifles & pull on their equipment’.²⁸ Colman and the two bayonet men killed eight Germans and subdued the rest by standing threateningly above them, any thought of resistance tempered by the other stealth raiders arriving to reinforce them. They now had 14 prisoners. Colman was a little surprised:

We quickly surveyed our position. Looking back towards our own trenches … I could see our men waving excitedly to us from there. Quickly disarming the prisoners I made signs to them to move in a body back over the flat country to A [Company’s] men. A [Company] seeing them coming sent out men who met them & ratted them. My party did not have time to collect souvenirs.

Colman pulled out his field message book and scribbled a note to his friend Vic Lampard: ‘Established block. Think you could get up overland if you came quickly.’²⁹ A runner sprinted across the open space with the message, and Lampard responded by jumping out of his trench to meet him in No Man’s Land. Colman wrote, ‘Within 30 seconds of the time Vic had his hands on that message’ he had his company ‘streaming across’ and within three minutes they were garrisoning 600 yards of new trench 500 yards closer ‘towards Germany’.³⁰ ‘We had not had a single shot fired at us – it seemed as if the whole German army was asleep.’³¹ The Germans seemed unaware of what was happening; ‘it looked a good win’.³²

Colman retraced his steps to the orchard, where a field telephone had been brought up. He spoke to Colonel Chalmers; Colman thought that Brigadier Wisdom was also at battalion headquarters, listening in, but was not sure. He told Chalmers all he knew about the position:

He asked me what I thought about having a go up the trench to the right from the other side of the brickfield. I said I would give it a go.

He was given a second Lewis gun to cover him and, by creeping along the trench, captured two Germans sleeping in a dugout near the brickyards and two more sleeping further down the trench. Here they met what Colman called their ‘first reverse’. One of the Germans started to ‘jabber’ a warning to his comrades further along; Carter and Boughen put their bayonets to his throat and Colman threatened to ‘stick’ him. Colman thought ‘he was too good a soldier to murder’, so ‘we let him live’. But the ‘damage was done’.³³

Several helmeted heads were seen escaping along the trench further down. Acting on instinct, Colman sprang out of the trench and chased them, firing his revolver wildly. He gave up the chase where the trench dropped 18 feet to the railway line below. Here Colman had his men build a block of debris, wire and sandbags to protect their flank, drawing a close to his remarkably successful experiment.

In two successive stealth raids, in broad daylight in flat country, Colman had seized between 800 and 1000 yards of trench to a depth of 600 yards; captured 18 prisoners, two machine guns and a light trench mortar; and killed eight Germans without suffering a single casualty besides one soldier’s self-inflicted foot wound.³⁴ Colman wrote he ‘felt as though he were walking on air’. He was greeted at battalion headquarters by the colonel and the brigadier, and all the headquarters lads ‘crowded in to hear what had happened’.

They were all delighted because it meant to them that the objective had been gained, and there was no need for another stunt, in this case anyhow.³⁵

Wisdom informed Rosenthal, who asked Monash for ‘authority’ to try a similar stealth raid at Monument Wood.³⁶ The next day, 9 July, Wisdom took news of Colman’s stealth raid direct to Colonel Currie, who was commanding the 28th Battalion. The battalion’s scout officer, Lieutenant Phil Coburn, one of its originals, insisted that the 28th could do the same in their sector. Coburn proposed penetrating a trench that ran south from the railway cutting, opposite Colman’s block, into a position known as Monument Farm, which comprised ruined buildings with an orchard enclosed by a hedge. The farm was in the bounds of the greater park-like area known as Monument Wood, a feature that dominated Villers-Bretonneux from the south-east. The German high command understood the value of the position and for months had defended it with some of its best troops. The Australians coveted the farm and had made two attempts to capture it, though each assault was unsuccessful and costly.³⁷ The bodies of Australians killed in these frontal attacks still lay in No Man’s Land, and the smell of their rotting corpses and the swarms of green flies turned the stomachs of the men in the outposts. But Coburn was an active scout and he knew that, since the Battle of Hamel five days earlier, the German position was no longer so vigilantly or strongly garrisoned. With the help of a Newton Mortar bombardment he reckoned he could get a patrol into the trench; Currie agreed. Coburn’s strategy presented a case of the firepower of brigade headquarters being switched to cooperate with, and indeed support, a stealth raid. Since Coburn’s enthusiasm and knowledge of the ground were central, Currie gave him the job of leading the patrol that would head right – that is, south – along the trench that led into Monument Farm. Lieutenant Arthur Loveday would capture and hold the length of trench running north from the point of entry to the railway cutting opposite Colman’s block.

That afternoon a staff officer with full knowledge of Monash’s plans for a second Battle of Hamel spoke to Currie. He looked over the formidable system of trenches, the high ground of the wood and the confusing hedges around the orchard and said:

‘I suppose you’ll be having a battle there before long?’

‘This afternoon,’ was the answer. ‘What do you think we are putting in?’ The visitor shook his head.

‘A job for a brigade wouldn’t it be?’ suggested Currie.

‘Well I dare say it would. What are you tackling it with?’

‘An officer and eleven men are going for the right half and an officer and six men are going for the left.’

The visitor whistled. ‘What have you got on the left flank?’

‘An N.C.O. and four men are going to look after that.’

‘It’s the damnedest bit of cheek I ever heard of’ said the visitor ‘and I’m not going to swear it won’t come off.’³⁸

Like Colman’s stealth raid, Coburn’s was more or less an experiment. Only 40 men were to go over and, if they failed, the whole brigade had been told they would be going over in a formal battle some time later.³⁹ At 2.35 pm on 9 July the Newton Mortar battery opened up. The sky was a steel grey; moody clouds seemed to be racing overhead, as if in tune with the quickening senses of the Western Australians in their forward trenches. Each man knew his job. Like Colman’s stealth raid, the officers commanding the companies looking on had their men ready to push forward and occupy the trench if called on. Coburn led the bayonet men through a sap. They could see the helmet of a German sentry at a machine-gun post. The mortars ceased; Coburn yelled ‘Come on’ and jumped into the post. He captured the machine gun and its crew fled.⁴⁰ One of the stealth raiders recalled how the sentry and his mate could be seen running quickly along the narrow trench into the grounds of the farm.⁴¹ Coburn and his first bayonet man, Private Henry Wehsack, took the brunt of the work, throwing bombs into dugouts as they headed towards the farm. Germans ran away in front of them, some going through a hole in a wall, probably to some headquarters in the farm buildings. Others ran over ground to a second line of trenches, on the far side of the farm, known as Syria Trench.⁴² Meanwhile the NCO, with four men, crept over and secured the trench at the cutting, where they found only one German who ran away. Loveday with his six men garrisoned the space between the cutting and Coburn’s entry point. The stealth raiders captured 300 yards of trench from the cutting to the edge of the orchard within 15 minutes, with no resistance from the German garrison.

Coburn signalled A Company to advance and secure the trench, which was promptly done. Scouts reported that the saps and main trench both finished in the orchard, which the German machine gunners were seen running towards, and Coburn decided to track them. He followed a hedge enclosing the orchard on its northern side, but his patrol was ambushed. One man was killed⁴³ and another badly wounded. A rifle grenadier, Private Tom Willis, ran up from the rear of the party, aiming and firing bombs as he went. The Germans fled, leaving their dead;⁴⁴ they ran so fast Coburn’s men could not catch them. The stealth raiders cleared another several hundred yards of trench and estimated they saw 90 Germans running from the farm to Syria Trench, and deeper into Monument Wood. The 7th Brigade trench mortars that had been warned to be ready to fire now chased these men with 15 well-placed shells,⁴⁵ a clear indication of how brigade and divisional headquarters were now cooperating with stealth raiders.

Coburn and his stealth raiders now became aware of the danger of snipers in Syria Trench. They pushed on a further 50 yards, built a block and signalled to the company watching from their former front line to come over and occupy the new front line, which they did with rifles slung and cigarettes lit. Lieutenant Harry Kahan wrote that souvenir hunters ‘soon explored’ the farm buildings and found the cellars ‘fully furnished with even a piano’.⁴⁶ The whole stealth raid took 24 minutes and resulted in the capture of 1200 yards of the German front line from the southern edge of the railway cutting to the near edge of Monument Wood, a depth of about 150 yards. The stealth raiders killed at least ten Germans and captured three machine guns and two trench mortars.⁴⁷ Most of the German garrison had simply run away. When these gains were combined with Colman’s stealth raid of the day before, 67 men had captured about 2200 yards of front line for the loss of one man killed, two wounded and one self-inflicted wound. In doing so, they avoided a fixed battle and its attendant strain and waste.

Until now, historians have neglected the significance of what these men did. Their tactical achievements were significant and they undermine the assertion of the eminent historian Jeffrey Grey that stealth raids or ‘peaceful penetration’ ‘do not win … battles’.⁴⁸ Put simply, this is a misreading of the role of stealth raids in the AIF in 1918. This historical neglect has been made possible by the self-aggrandisement of Monash in his book, The Australian Victories in France in 1918, published in 1920, and the failure of many historians, particularly Monash’s biographers, to look beyond setpiece battles like those at Hamel and Amiens. This oversight, combined with a preoccupation with command and control hierarchies in the historical record – which perhaps reflects a deep-seated conservatism that valued order and discipline, which grew out of the experience of the war – has been at the expense of understanding the innovation of some frontline soldiers. The accounts of the stealth raiders themselves up-end the traditional reading of the Australian achievement, putting the focus squarely back on the experiences of these soldiers.

On 12 July German resistance stiffened. Rosenthal wrote that his brigades were now ‘hard up against the Boche and further “peaceful” advance seems impossible’.⁴⁹ This mention of the term ‘peaceful’ is the first in reference to Australian stealth raids in any Australian letter or diary. Rosenthal’s terminology is not the same as ‘peaceful penetration’, but the word ‘peaceful’ is key to his assessment of stealth raids, which resulted in few casualties and important tactical gains. The 7th Brigade headquarters dubbed the Colman and Coburn stealth raids ‘silent penetration’, whereas Russell Colman simply called it a daylight patrol.⁵⁰

On 15 July Rosenthal attributed an important tactical victory to the stealth raiders: ‘the recent advance has robbed the Boche of splendid observation and we now have the advantage over him’.⁵¹ He asked Monash for approval to continue to advance; Monash agreed. The 2nd Division headquarters instructed 5th Brigade to continue to advance by ‘peaceful penetration’.⁵² The term had connotations from the prewar period, when it had commonly been used in the British press to warn that German trade was spreading so quickly through the British territories that the Germans had no need for a war because they were gaining the British Empire by ‘peaceful penetration’.⁵³ By March 1917 the British Army and the British press had taken up the term to describe the formal patrol operations that occupied ground ceded by the Germans during their strategic withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line.⁵⁴ Its first clear use in the AIF applied to stealth raiders, and seems to have originated with Rosenthal or 2nd Division headquarters. Lieutenant Victor Sullivan’s attitude towards the term when it appeared in orders is enlightening:

In the … summer days of July, 1918, a pet phrase of those clad with authority was ‘peaceful penetration.’ The enemy was to be denied any freedom in No Man’s Land; every opportunity was to be taken to filch a few yards of ground, with an absolute disregard for the feelings of the company detailed for the unpleasant work.⁵⁵

The men recognised a distinction between formal ‘peaceful penetrations’ and informal stealth raids, which they called various names like daylight raid, one-man raid and kidnappings. The most striking differences were who initiated the action and the attitude of the men who took part. Whereas ‘peaceful penetration’ was mostly inspired from the top from mid-July, since April stealth raids had been initiated from below, and continued until well after 8 August.

Late in the afternoon of 15 July the headquarters of the 17th and 19th Battalions received verbal orders to continue to advance by ‘peaceful penetration’: to repeat the tactics used by the likes of Colman and Coburn, though at night. The objective was a series of strong posts in shell holes and trenches running north to south across the Roman road for 1000 yards, to depths ranging between 100 yards on the left, north of the road, and 500 yards on the southern flank of the advance. The battalions were told that they could expect the Germans would run upon seeing them, but should they meet strong resistance, brigade headquarters would organise a conventional barrage in support of a setpiece attack.⁵⁶

At 2 am on 16 July six platoons of the 17th Battalion, organised in fighting patrols, ‘hopped the bags’ to ‘peacefully penetrate’ a series of posts and short trenches indicated on maps provided by brigade. It was not long before the 17th Battalion met resistance.⁵⁷ On the far right of the advance, Lieutenant Roy Willard, with a platoon of nine men, captured a German machine-gun post that threatened the right flank of the ‘peaceful penetration’.⁵⁸ But in an ensuing gunfight Private John ‘Dusty’ Rhoades was killed and Corporal Frank Johnson, a long-time member of Willard’s platoon, was wounded.⁵⁹ Nevertheless, Willard and his small team prevented the German strongpoint from firing into the flank of the advancing Australian platoons.

By 4 am the platoons at the centre of the 17th Battalion’s ‘peaceful penetration’ had also reached their objectives; the Germans had evacuated their trenches, or their machine-gun fire was inaccurate.⁶⁰ But the 19th Battalion on the left flank had not moved from their trenches, perhaps because the orders arrived at very short notice and asked a lot of men who were used to advancing by conventional tactics that relied on artillery support. At dawn Lieutenant Albert West, 17th Battalion, in a newly captured post on the far left of the battalion’s advance, could see that the trench where he had been told his platoon would link up with the 19th Battalion was 35 yards to his front and manned by Germans. It was clear to West that the 19th Battalion had not reached its objectives.

West decided to stealth-raid the German post, possibly on the suggestion of Corporal Fred Abbott, an original member of the battalion, or Private Patrick Broder MM, a man with a reputation in the company for being ‘absolutely fearless’. The senior NCO present reminded them that such an action ‘would be acting contrary to orders’; the trench was in the 19th Battalion’s area of responsibility and it was now daylight.⁶¹ West’s platoon was down to ten men, and most were not interested in risking another attack; but stealth raids did not rely on orders or uninterested men. West, Abbott, Broder and one other man could see that by stealth-raiding the trench they might achieve their rival battalion’s objective, and more importantly wipe out a post that was dangerously close to their position.

The four men slipped into the high crop, and crawled on their stomachs to within rushing distance of the German trench. The rest of the platoon opened covering fire with rifles and Lewis guns. The unknown stealth raider was killed in the crossfire as he charged the German trench, but the other three got into the trench and killed a machine gunner, destroyed a heavy machine gun and bombed several dugouts against a wave of resistance put up by the garrison and another post in rear. Their mates could hear them calling for more ammunition. Private Francis Sullivan ‘fell riddled with bullets’ when he attempted to cross the intervening space to resupply them with Mills bombs.⁶² West was beaten unconscious by Germans wielding rifle butts like maces; he died of his wounds the following day after being traded for a German prisoner by stretcher-bearers. Abbott was also wounded but escaped. Only Broder got out of the trench unhurt. In the crop he found more bombs, perhaps those dropped by Sullivan; he went back to the German trench under heavy machine-gun and sniper fire and threw them before crawling back to the remnants of his platoon. Afterwards the Germans were seen taking 20 stretcher cases and several walking wounded from the trench, ‘thus testifying to the splendid work done by this party of three’.⁶³ On the following night, 16–17 July, the 19th Battalion finally responded to its orders and captured the trench against little opposition, largely because the three stealth raiders had killed, wounded or demoralised most of the garrison.⁶⁴

West, Abbott and Broder were each in their own way typical of stealth raiders. Albert West was a young officer in the Russell Colman mould: he was considered a ‘fine athlete’, he had been promoted from the ranks of his platoon and he had attributes of what the Australians considered the ideal platoon commander: he was keen, conscientious and brave.⁶⁵ Fred Abbott was one of the longest serving and most battle-hardened NCOs in the battalion. Was his experience vital in the decision to act? Did it draw the others to him? A distinctive aspect of many stealth raids is the mystery of who led them: was it the officer in charge, or his old familiars from the battalion? In the front line, men like Abbott were often the leaders.

Patrick Broder, also known as Michael John Broder, typifies the men who stood out in stealth raids; undisciplined in a military sense, he was undeniably effective in battle. He had been discharged from the AIF in disgrace in March 1915 after missing his transport ship as it sailed from Brisbane ‘because he was worse for liquor’.⁶⁶ The discharge followed a string of other minor offences for absence without leave, drunkenness and ‘insulting language’.⁶⁷

Broder re-enlisted a year later, assuming his father’s first name, and finally reached France in July 1917. He quickly ‘gained a fine reputation in his company’ for ‘coolness and initiative’, despite having little formal training or battle experience. At Passchendaele on 9 October 1917 he was ‘instrumental’ in capturing three machine guns and their crews by working around their flanks. When his company reached its objective he was said to have gone on alone. He met nine Germans; according to his Military Medal citation, ‘These he killed. He also shot a German officer from whose body he recovered official papers.’⁶⁸ Broder was an individual whose self-reliance and confidence – those same qualities that had landed him in trouble with military discipline when out of the line – would characterise the stealth raiders in 1918.

At the height of the first battle of Villers-Bretonneux in April 1918 Broder went forward alone into the hotly contested village, while his battalion was taking a brief spell from the fighting line. At the time Villers-Bretonneux was infamous as a treasure trove in the form of cellars of grog. Broder had his fill. Eight days later he was arrested in Amiens; he was court-martialled and charged with desertion.⁶⁹ He told his court martial, ‘I had … more drink than I could hold, and suffered the effects for a couple of days.’ He protested that he had been looking for his battalion when the military police arrested him. The desertion followed a series of similar absences when his battalion was not in the front line. Nevertheless, at his court martial he had supporters in the battalion, who overlooked his indiscretions. His Company Sergeant Major told the court martial: ‘The accused is a very good soldier … He is a game man.’⁷⁰ The charge against him was reduced to absence without leave, and he was sentenced to Field Punishment Number Two and fined almost £20 in pay. After the stealth raid Broder wrote that the 17th Battalion adjutant, Captain Frederick Barnett, ‘congratulated me on my bravery and said he would do his best to get the crime replenished [sic], but he got killed shortly after’.⁷¹

Broder proved ‘absolutely fearless’ in battle and for this he was forgiven many things. By 1918 it was common for the men to think that the best Australian soldier was

one who could keep himself out of the clink by the force of imagination, and the spoken word. He can do his drill when he wants to; and when the time comes he can fight hard, and if necessary, die hard.⁷²

By 16 July Monash, Rawlinson and Haig were pushing for a British counteroffensive along the Somme:

Partly because the Villers-Bretonneux plateau was very suitable for tanks, but mainly because the ceaseless Peaceful Penetration by Australian infantry had greatly strained the German defences there and apparently prevented them from thoroughly fortifying their front.⁷³

Stealth raiders and formal ‘peaceful penetrations’ had captured all of the ground that Monash had intended to take in a second Battle of Hamel, and the German garrisons were demoralised and fearful of Australian patrols, formal and informal alike. A captured document dated 13 July is telling:

During the last few days the Australians have succeeded in penetrating, or taking prisoner, single posts or pickets. They have gradually – sometimes even in daylight – succeeded in getting possession of the majority of the forward zone of a whole division. Troops must fight. They must not give way at every opportunity and seek to avoid fighting, otherwise they will get the feeling that the enemy are superior to them.⁷⁴

The document referred to stealth raiders, although Monash took the credit for it in The Australian Victories in France in 1918. Stealth raiders and their formal counterparts, ‘peaceful penetrators’, were killing Germans and taking out dangerous strongpoints at a rate hitherto unseen outside formal battles and raids and without the casualty rates the men associated with such operations. Lieutenant George Mitchell wrote that he and other experienced mates learned many ways to put a ‘draught up’ the ‘Fritzies’. Mitchell led stealth raids with ‘enthusiasm’:⁷⁵

we advanced cautiously through a wheat crop, and then we crawled through the long grass. There was a little MG fire. A few flares were coming over. We crawled on and on. At length I found a deep comfortable shell hole … Listening we heard coughs, click of rifle bolts and the sounds of picks and shovels … Sergeant Halliday and I worked forward through the grass … [then] squirmed back to the rest of the party. I got them ready. We all stood up together and gave rapid fire on to the party in front … silence. No leaf stirred. We crouched down in our shellhole. Still no answer. So I sent them off in the direction of home.⁷⁶

In the 5th Division sector north of the Somme River, Lieutenant James ‘Jimmy’ Sowter, 56th Battalion, happened upon an advanced German machine-gun strongpoint while on a formal reconnaissance patrol. He and his two companions decided to capture it, and the tactics they used were typical of stealth raids. Sowter hoped to ‘bluff’ the garrison into surrendering by approaching them from the direction of the German lines. He crept to the post alone, while Privates Harry Willis and Thomas Carroll watched from a flank, ready to act as supports.

Sowter could see the garrison ‘swinging their arms and slapping their chests to keep warm’. He called on them to surrender, which they did. But in the darkness he stepped on a waterproof tarpaulin pulled over part of the trench and ‘fell, feet first’ among the Germans.⁷⁷ They ‘snatched up their rifles’ and attempted to club him to death.⁷⁸ Willis and Carroll sprang to Sowter’s aid. They ‘pumped’ three shots into a huge man who had smashed his rifle butt into Sowter’s helmeted head several times.⁷⁹ The fight ended when all of the Germans had been killed except the big German, who was badly wounded. The 56th Battalion war diarist described how the stealth raid provoked the ‘Bosche in their usual “windy” manner’ to open machine-gun fire “from all directions”’.⁸⁰ Willis was hit as they carried ‘the massive fellow’ back towards their lines;⁸¹ he died of his wounds. The German prisoner died a few hours later at battalion headquarters.⁸² The stealth raiders’ reward was a mention in the corps despatches.⁸³

By the end of July stealth raids inspired the Australian Corps command to initiate the policy of ‘peaceful penetration’, which in subsequent histories has become the blanket term to describe Australian small-unit patrol tactics in 1918. But it was not a term or tactic favoured by the men. The reason that histories have blindly accepted the notion of ‘peaceful penetration’ lies largely with the legacy of the writing of Charles Bean. His chapters on ‘peaceful penetration’ in the Official History blend accounts of raids precipitated by formal orders with spontaneous actions initiated by frontline soldiers of the lowest ranks, undermining the significance of the Australian infantry’s achievements in 1918. Beginning in April, stealth raiders set about their raids without direct orders and almost always to offer an alternative to their higher commanders’ rigid plans, which invariably led to heavy losses. The stealth raiders in the front line had finally discovered a method of advancing their objectives – a method that had eluded commanders for so long.

An extract from the history of the British 18th Division, which had served next to the Australians at this time, indicates that this remarkable yet little-known activity was distinctively Australian. A British artillery officer recalled a discussion with an Australian artillery colonel on the Somme in July. The British officer said to the Australian:

‘I’m told your infantry do practically what they like with the Boche on their sector over the river. What was that story a Corps officer told me the other day? Oh, I know! They say your infantry send out patrols each day to find out how the Boche is getting on with his new trenches. When he has dug well down and is making himself comfortable, one of the patrol party reports, “I think it’s deep enough now, sir”; and there is a raid, and the Australians make themselves at home in the trench the Boche has sweated to make.’

The Australian nodded with pleasure. ‘Yes, our lot are pretty good at the cuckoo game,’ he agreed.⁸⁴

At Hazebrouck to the north, stealth raiders were doing the very same thing and finding that the enemy there also seemed to have ‘suffered a rot’ when faced by relentless stealth raids.⁸⁵ Corporal Len Jones recalled a comment made by an officer of the Australian Corps during a visit to the 1st Division in July:

In a big barn, he got up & said. ‘I have been sent from Anzac HQ to tell you of the wonderful deeds done by your brothers down South but it seems to me that my job is to hurry back and tell them all about your great bit of work up here.’⁸⁶