CHAPTER SEVEN

‘The Tommy Captain nearly fell on their necks and kissed them’

Stealth raids after the 8 August offensive

The capture of Merris was the culmination of four months in which the 1st Division advanced over a mile on a front of 5000 yards, and captured nearly 1000 prisoners, most by stealth raiding. The commanding officer of XV Corps, General Beauvoir De Lisle, acknowledged that the Australians did ‘such damage to the troops of the enemy’ that nine divisions were replaced.¹

On the Somme, stealth raiding advanced the Australian line three-quarters of a mile between 29 March and 6 May, and a further two miles by 8 July.² The tactic was so successful and so widespread among Australian troops that higher command could not ignore it. A ‘slowly widening circle of “contacts”’, which included corps, army commanders and General Haig, recognised that the Australians’ aggressive defence ‘was partly due to marked capacity in their officers and N.C.O.’s and intelligent initiative in their men’ at a time when it was the Germans who were expected to attack.³ GHQ (General Headquarters) instructed the Australian divisions to send ‘special patrols’⁴ to the British Army to teach Australian stealth-raiding tactics. In the Second Army, the number of United States Army officers and men sent to train with the Australian 1st Division was more than four times greater than those sent to any other division of XV Corps. On the Somme, General Rawlinson, Fourth Army, ordered officers from British III Corps to go to the Australian divisions to gain experience in patrolling and raiding. The III Corps asked for Australian special patrol instructors and got them.⁵

The importance of stealth raiding went beyond its influence on British Army tactics. Australian stealth raids, the Battle of Hamel and several formal operations on Morlancourt Ridge convinced General Rawlinson of the weakness of the German defences facing Amiens, and the dominance the Australians had gained. On 13 July Rawlinson asked Haig for a reinforcement of five divisions to carry out an offensive. On 23 July, GHQ approved. The next day Haig met Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the supreme commander of the Allied forces in France, and the decision was made to launch the 8 August offensive at Amiens.⁶

As far as the Australian infantryman was concerned, the skills developed in stealth raids would benefit him in two important ways when he went ‘in at the kill’⁷ on 8 August. The men believed they had a uniquely Australian fighting style that brought out ‘the true qualities of the “digger”’: ‘ingenuity, resourcefulness, and personal initiative’.⁸ Confidence was at an all-time high: ‘we … knew we had Fritz beaten’, wrote Jack Southey: ‘We could smell the gum leaves of Australia.’⁹ On 2 August, Sergeant Lionel Elliott, 56th Battalion, wrote home:

As far as this terrible conflict is concerned there is a much brighter outlook at the present time than there has been for some time past and I really think this is the beginning of the end.¹⁰

Several stealth raiders were killed or wounded before and during the 8 August offensive. Francis Burtenshaw was killed on 15 May. Jack Bruggy and ‘Raggy’ Holland were invalided home after wounds sustained in German raids against Mont de Merris in June. Harry Garlick was dead by a sniper’s bullet. Alf Richards died of wounds in July. On 22 July, Dalton Neville was severely wounded while leading a stealth raid composed entirely of Australian special patrol instructors attached to the British 58th Division. Australian, British and German posts fired on and practically wiped out Neville’s men when they tried to attack a German post by creeping up on it through a neighbouring Australian battalion’s front. The 31st Battalion, whose men did most of the damage to Neville’s stealth raiders, reported:

It was certainly a very regrettable incident, but this battalion is in no way to blame … It shows that the front line garrison was very much on alert.¹¹

The bushman Lieutenant Neil Maddox MC and Bar, one of the greatest of the stealth raiders, was hit early on 9 August in the fighting at Harbonnières and had a leg amputated.¹² Maddox wrote to a mate in the battalion from his hospital bed, ‘So sorry I had to piss off just as the fun was beginning, but I copped a fairly large shell.’¹³ William Shepherd was killed in the same battle. Dozens more stealth raiders would be killed or maimed before the Armistice. From his hospital bed the stoic Maddox asked his mate, ‘Write soon old soul,’ and ‘let me know how you all got on … I’m dying to know.’¹⁴ His mate was dead by the time the letter reached the battalion. But it might not have surprised Maddox that in the last battles of the war other men went forward to make stealth raids.

East of Amiens on 8 August 1918, five Australian divisions advanced seven miles and captured all of their objectives as well as 7925 prisoners and 173 guns.¹⁵ The Canadian Corps on their right made similar gains. Despite this ‘brilliant success’,¹⁶ marking the ‘black day’ of the German Army,¹⁷ the Australians, with their left pressed against the south bank of the Somme River three miles east of Hamel, finished the day under duress. In III Corps sector north of the river, the British 58th Division failed to reach its objective: prominent high ground known as Chipilly Spur, a ridge that rose over the surrounding country running north to south from Morlancourt plateau to form a peninsula in a bend of the Somme. Chipilly Spur was the key to the German defences on the Somme; the western terrace was thick with German machine guns that overlooked the 58th Division assembly area in the gullies and woods to the west. German machine gunners and artillery on the spur fired into the flank and rear of the Australian advance, inflicting casualties, destroying gun batteries and harassing supply lines. Monash proposed to the British command at III Corps that an Australian brigade cross the river and capture the spur to keep up the momentum of the advance.¹⁸

Friday 9 August 1918 was a warm, clear day. At around 10 am, Company Quarter Master Sergeant Jack Hayes and his friend Sergeant Harold Andrews of C Company, 1st Battalion, left their battalion lines near the village of Cerisy and went to explore the villages along the Somme. Hayes was expecting to be granted ‘Anzac leave’, a newly instituted form of six-month leave to Australia for men who had enlisted in 1914. Andrews recalled that Hayes ‘suggested a stroll’, because he was looking ‘to obtain some worthwhile souvenirs’ to take back to Australia. He wrote:

Hayes and self unarmed, in our stroll discovered a footbridge well to the west of Chipilly, as we were satisfied this village was empty, we crossed at a point that was about ½ mile from the enemy.

No shots were fired, so ‘we decided to have a close look at the village as it was rumoured that our battalion was to make a crossing at night’ to capture the village and Chipilly Spur.¹⁹

Hayes and Andrews had kept their hands free to carry souvenirs, but now armed themselves with abandoned German rifles and ammunition and ‘stalked’ a chalkpit north of the village. They heard yelling, and turned and saw a group of British soldiers waving at them from the front line, half a mile behind them. Casually the two Australians walked back, to ‘pay their respects’.²⁰ The soldiers were from the 2/10th London Battalion, which had failed to capture Chipilly on the opening day of the offensive and suffered heavy casualties. That morning they had been reinforced by 100 conscripts, 18- and 19-year-olds with no battle experience.²¹ The two veteran Australian sergeants yarned with them for a while then took the footbridge back to their battalion. At company headquarters the atmosphere was tense, as the British failure to capture Chipilly Spur was holding up the general advance. Hayes, having just come from the area, volunteered to take a patrol across the river after dinner and occupy the village.²² The battalion’s commanding officer, Colonel Stacy, was away at a school and Major Alexander Mackenzie was commanding. Mackenzie relayed Hayes’ suggestion to the brigade commander, Iven Mackay. A quartermaster sergeant was suggesting tactics to a brigadier. But Mackay had word from the British 58th Division that they would be attacking Chipilly Spur again at 5.30 pm, reinforced by the inexperienced United States 131st Regiment. He rejected Hayes’ suggestion.²³

At 4 pm the British commenced an artillery barrage as a prelude to their attack, and at 5.30 pm the Australians, watching from south of the river, saw American troops ‘sweep along the upper part of the [Chipilly] ridge … and enter Gressaire Wood’.²⁴ But nearest the Australians, the British attack aimed at the western terrace of Chipilly Spur and the village did not go well. The German defenders were practically immune to tanks and fired into the British infantry as they attempted to advance across the gully and up the slopes of the spur. The British objective was a mile further east, where the high ground of the spur, 85 feet above sea level, falls sharply to the marshlands of the Somme winding slowly below. But few of the British infantry involved in the attack had any idea that this was the objective.²⁵ Private Bill Gillman, 2/2nd London Battalion, described the attack on the western terrace of the spur:

Unknown to us there were from ten to twenty heavy German machine guns in emplacements. My God, he really opened up! He let us have it. He just swept us. I looked round as I was advancing and you could see the numbers of our people melting away, just dropping all around you. Those that fell were shot over again … There was nothing you could do. It was getting so bad, as I took my steps I thought, ‘The next one will be it!’ … I jumped for this big shell hole … I knew there was no hope of getting any orders because there was nobody to give any. The bullets were hitting the back of the shell hole; it was raining bullets.²⁶

The watching Australians quickly realised that the British attack was faltering. It took Mackay only 20 minutes to send a written message to Mackenzie authorising Hayes and Andrews to take a ‘strong patrol’ across the river to ‘see what the position was’.²⁷ Usually a strong patrol meant a platoon or platoons, and at the bare minimum 18 men with a Lewis gun under an officer. But Hayes’ experience and the battalion’s experience in the stealth raids at Hazebrouck had radically altered these outdated tactics. Hayes took just six men, and had them ready to go within ten minutes of receiving Mackay’s instructions.

At 6 pm Hayes led the six-man patrol over the footbridge under scattered fire from Chipilly Spur. The first British troops they found were remnants of two platoons of D Company, 2/10th Londons, under a temporary captain, Jack Berrell. Berrell told Hayes that his men were held up by heavy machine-gun fire from the high ground along the western terrace of the spur. Berrell had orders to attack these German posts by clearing the village of Chipilly and outflanking them from the south. His battalion commander had arranged for a barrage of smoke, high-explosive and Vickers machine guns at 7.30 pm, under which Berrell was expected to attack.²⁸ Hayes volunteered the six Australians to act as Berrell’s scouts and reconnoitre Chipilly for them.²⁹ Berrell tried to discourage him because the 2/10th London Battalion had not been able to get a foothold in Chipilly in over 30 hours of fighting. But the six Australians were keen to look for souvenirs, even if this meant leading Berrell’s men into the village under fire.

Before Berrell could object, the six ‘tore for the village, through a veritable hail of machine gun and rifle fire’ from the spur above. They spaced their run, each man around 12 yards apart, so that a burst of fire could not wipe them all out.³⁰ They reached a chateau winded but unhurt, with Berrell and his men running after them. Hayes sent Private William Kane to bring up a British Lewis gun crew. Privates Stevens and Turpin, usually stretcher-bearers, had volunteered as riflemen for the patrol. They were sent through the village to look for Germans. Andrews and Private ‘Jerry’ Fuller, a diminutive youth who was usually the company commander’s batman, went north-east ‘across country’ to reconnoitre the spur. While they went, Hayes watched the German machine gunners on the western terrace as they fired on the British infantry. When he was satisfied with this reconnaissance, he took Berrell’s men plus the Lewis gunners north, up the spur, to a position near the quarry he had explored that morning. It was an excellent position to fire into the flank of the German machine guns on the terrace. Hayes was orchestrating an attack that would turn the momentum of an entire Allied division’s flank and win a battle.

It was just before 7.30 pm; the time is known because it was then, ‘promptly and effectively’, the British barrage in support of Berrell’s orders commenced,³¹ landing practically on top of the six Australians and Berrell’s men. The fire was intense. Smoke shells shrouded the spur in a veil and Vickers gun rounds cracked overhead, so close that it was obvious that the British machine gunners had mistaken them for the enemy. The Tommies began to withdraw, but the battle discipline of the Australians held. Hayes and Andrews decided to use the smoke as cover to creep around the southern crest of the spur and outflank the German posts on the high ground, effectively isolating the German machine gunners on the western terrace by cutting them off from their flank and rear.

The two slipped through the long grass into dead ground. Fuller and Kane followed, leaving Turpin and Stevens near the village. They moved in pairs, one to assault and one to support, just as at Hazebrouck on 11 July. Along the crest of Chipilly Spur, German machine gunners peered into the smoke, waiting for the English to attempt another frontal assault, unaware that four Australians were creeping around their southern flank. Hayes and Andrews saw a German post above a sunken road leading to Étinehem. They shouldered their rifles; both were first-class shots.³² Andrews ‘often thought’ his ‘initiation in … sniping’ came from his boyhood on the family farm at Wauchope and that military training turned his skill to what he called ‘deadly purpose!’³³ Both men ‘cut loose’ with their rifles, then got into position to rush the post. Reinforced by Fuller and Kane, Andrews fired down the length of the German post, while Hayes crept down the sunken road then attacked, firing and yelling as he charged up the embankment, and practically fell into a small post he had not seen. A German fired at him point blank. The bullet singed Hayes’ tunic but he was not hit; he killed the man and captured two others. He dragged his prisoners back to Andrews, Kane and Fuller, and together they ‘fled for the chalk pit’ a mile to the west on the other side of the spur.

Here they found Captain Berrell and the two platoons of D Company 2/10th Londons talking about what to do. Andrews told them to advance ‘before [the] smoke lifted’.³⁴ Then he, Hayes, Fuller and Kane took off again on the run across the spur, as Allied artillery was pounding the area. Infantry of the Australian 41st Battalion in Cerisy had turned around a battery of German 5.9-inch field guns and were firing them at the German positions on the spur, adding to the firepower of the British guns.³⁵ Lance Corporal Charles Deitz, 1st Battalion, watching from the south bank of the Somme, called the outcome ‘a wonderful and appalling sight’.³⁶ He did not know that four Australians were pressing close to the barrage, outflanking the Germans on the high ground. Andrews recalled that they were blown off their feet several times by the concussion of their own shell bursts.³⁷ But they had experienced the worst of shellfire and become professional in their skill at reading it. Andrews had been wounded at Pozières in 1916, lying helpless in the forward trenches under a tremendous barrage for 30 hours before English volunteer stretcher-bearers carried him out.³⁸ Hayes admitted to a case of shell shock at Mouquet Farm in August 1916, which he reckoned he managed to sleep off.³⁹ Men who survived this sort of shellfire generally learned from it: ‘an experienced man can tell when a shell is going to fall very close by the sound it makes in the last few seconds of approach’.⁴⁰ At Hazebrouck in 1918 Hayes laughed, and cursed, at shellfire and actually went into a barrage, to guide less experienced men to safety.⁴¹

On Chipilly Spur they pushed close to their own barrage because it had a force and momentum of its own. The concealing smoke was their greatest ally and they knew the Germans would be dead, cowering or retreating from the force of the explosions. Hayes, Andrews, Fuller and Kane pushed further down the sunken road, collecting German potato-masher grenades from posts that had been annihilated by the shellfire. They bombed several ‘German dugouts and posts into silence’ as they passed.⁴²

The four men saw some Germans running into a heavily armed post about 20 yards from the road. Hayes decided to attack, and skilfully divided his patrol. The tactic mirrored the battalion’s daylight stealth raids at Hazebrouck: two men approached the post from a flank and two from the rear, then ‘rushed in for bayonet work’.⁴³ The Germans were utterly surprised, as they expected a frontal assault from the British, who were still the best part of a mile away. They did not expect to be assailed by four men apparently coming out of the ground. The result was panic: the German garrison fled for a dugout, leaving seven machine guns. Hayes and his men persuaded them to surrender by detonating a Mills bomb at the dugout entrance. A German officer and 31 other ranks came out with their hands up, crying for mercy.⁴⁴

The prisoners were handed to a 2/10th London party, which had followed the four Australians on Andrews’ instructions. The prisoners were ‘marshalled’ into the sunken road ‘just as the smokescreen rolled away’, leaving clear visibility for hundreds of yards. Some Germans could be seen retreating towards Étinehem and across the Somme marshes. Fuller and Kane pursued them while Andrews brought one of the captured machine guns into action and opened fire:

Fuller [and Kane] went round behind & collected 9 unwounded prisoners just as gun jammed. Bringing another gun into action I kept firing as the stragglers cleared out leaving 2 guns for Fuller [and Kane] to bring in.⁴⁵

Andrews’ fire also encouraged the rest of Captain Berrell’s men to advance in the wake of the Australian patrol. A 2/10th London sergeant, Herbert Darby, led a party and mopped up some machine-gun posts completely cut off on the western terrace by the Australian outflanking manoeuvre.⁴⁶ Simultaneously, American troops began to advance out of Gressaire Wood to the north. The Americans ‘tore into’ the Londoners, the Australians and their prisoners with Lewis guns.⁴⁷ Australians, Englishmen and prisoners dived for cover. Hayes reported that when the Americans finally caught up they were ‘greatly surprised to see them as they did not know anyone except the enemy was ahead of them’.⁴⁸

The action at Chipilly Spur marked the moment when the 8 August objectives of the right flank of the 58th Division were reached. Hayes’ six-man patrol had completed Berrell’s objective of capturing Chipilly and outflanking the hostile machine-gun posts from the south, and the wider British and American objective of capturing the spur. Allied and most German accounts alike confirmed that the success had been due to an outflanking movement from the south.⁴⁹ The six Australians captured a further 28 prisoners during mopping up and consolidation. Then, according to Andrews they

rested up awhile, smoking Hun cigarettes, kindly offered by a onetime Hun waiter in a London hotel, who wanted to know what was his chance of getting to England. He also informed us that the ridge [Chipilly Spur] was at 2pm that afternoon manned by about 360 men with about 30 guns, most of which were collected afterwards. The enemy at this point had held out for about 30 hours against repeated attempts to dislodge them.

The six-man patrol was in action, ‘or had the enemy in view close up for about 4 hours and did not receive one injury’.⁵⁰ At 9.30 pm Captain Berrell handed Andrews a note, ‘glowing in terms’, which recommended the six Australians ‘for their conspicuous work and magnificent bravery with me to-day’.⁵¹ Andrews remembered that Berrell ‘distinctly said’ that the spur was taken by the six Australians before D Company 2/10th London Battalion came up.⁵² The six then strolled back to their battalion on the other side of the river, taking 28 prisoners with them and leaving the rest for the 2/10th Londons and the Americans.⁵³

That evening, 9–10 August, British III Corps belatedly agreed to Monash’s proposal for the Australian Corps to cross the river. At around midnight Monash’s orders reached the front line. The 50th Battalion crossed the Somme at 3 am under a heavy mist, to find Chipilly Spur captured.⁵⁴ In his 1920 book The Australian Victories in France in 1918, Monash took credit for the capture of Chipilly Spur by claiming it was captured under his orders by the 131st American Regiment and the Australian 13th Brigade, 50th Battalion.⁵⁵ The claim upset Captain R. J. Martin, an officer formerly of 2/10th London Battalion. Martin wrote a scathing attack on Monash in a letter to the London Times, published 1919, which stated that the general was ‘particularly unfortunate’ in declaring that the Londoners failed to capture Chipilly Spur and claiming that the ground was not captured until Monash took command of operations. This was reported in the Australian press by Frederick Cutlack, the assistant official war correspondent to Bean, under the headline ‘Chipilly Spur: The Official Story’.⁵⁶

The newspaper controversy was exacerbated by the fact that neither Monash’s book nor 2/10th London Battalion’s war diary or published history mentioned the six-man patrol. But the battalion history does signal it:

Then, in a flash, the situation suddenly changed. The 2/10th Londons … succeeded in clearing the village [of Chipilly]. Having gained a footing on the southern end of the spur, they began to clear out the machine gun nests on the terraces that had so long delayed the advance of the Brigade … by 11p.m. the ridge was ours.⁵⁷

It was Hayes’ stealth-raiding patrol that captured the southern end of the spur.

Monash, who seldom went near the front, can be excused for not knowing anything about the role the six played in the capture of Chipilly Spur, but his assertion that the spur was captured under his orders is wrong. Martin was right to criticise Monash on this point, but the 2/10th Battalion’s history is equally flawed for its similar omission. The US 131st Regiment did note the presence of the Australians. Dale Van Every, in his history The A.E.F. in Battle, wrote that American infantry of ‘Company K of the 3rd Battalion’ attacked through Gressaire Wood and

joined the 10th London Battalion in renewing the assault … The Australians down on the Somme gladly joined … and climbed the steep slopes from the south to assist in stamping out the machine guns.⁵⁸

A few days after the capture of Chipilly Spur, ‘in the blazing heat of the day’, Lieutenant Bob Traill spoke to the six:

It’s good to see them all again and have a crack. My Sergeant Andrews, Q.M. Jack Hayes, Fuller and couple of stretcher bearers distinguished themselves in capturing 47 Huns and 27 M.G.’s on their own. It is quite an epic. The Tommies were to have a second attempt at Chipilly and these 5 [sic] went over, whilst they were talking about it, went round the flanks and did the trick. The way they worked it was very clever and the Tommy Captain nearly fell on their necks and kissed them. Undoubtedly they took the position for them and the Captain admitted it. But in the papers there was no mention of the Aussies work, but plenty about the dash of the blasted Tommies! The Captain was good enough to take their names … Hayes deserves the V.C. and Andrews the D.C.M. and Jerrie Fuller.⁵⁹

The ‘Tommy Captain’, Berrell, was decorated with the Distinguished Service Order, second only to the VC. According to his citation he ‘signalled to the assaulting troops, and leading the remainder of his party over the spur, established himself at the final objective’⁶⁰ – which the Australians had captured. All six Australian stealth raiders were awarded medals, but Hayes did not receive the Victoria Cross that Traill thought he was entitled to.⁶¹ Colonel Bertie Stacy, who was not with the battalion at the time, signed a recommendation for the Distinguished Conduct Medal – the second highest award for gallantry that a soldier from the ranks could receive – for both Hayes and Andrews. There is no evidence of bitterness in any of the Australian records that the Victoria Cross was not recommended. Did Stacy recommend the lesser award because he had a strained relationship with Hayes, and because the stunt originated while Hayes and Andrews were absent without leave and souvenir hunting in the midst of a major offensive? Sergeant Archie Barwick’s response is illuminating. On 4 September 1918 he wrote:

Heard last night that one of my greatest cobbers Jackie Hayes had been … recommended for the D.C.M. for a fine piece of work he did, captured nearly 80 Germans single handed & quite accidentally for Jackie true to the old days went souveinering [sic] in Chipilly the village that held the Tommies up … there will be no one more pleased than I if Jack gets this for he is a splendid chap & he has been badly treated by the Military.⁶²

Hayes’ citation commended his ‘great gallantry, initiative and devotion to duty’; the patrol was officially credited with the capture of 71 prisoners and nine machine guns.⁶³ These figures were quoted in Bean’s Official History, but Harold Andrews did not accept them. He believed there was a ‘discrepancy in the official reports’, representing the number of walking wounded prisoners and stretcher-cases that were ‘not taken into account’.⁶⁴ The ground gained, which allowed the Allies to secure an objective unobtained by a conventional frontal assault by infantry and tanks for over 30 hours, was even more significant than the numbers of prisoners and war material captured. In four hours of fighting the patrol advanced over one mile with no loss to themselves: further than Hayes’ entire battalion, brigade or division had advanced in any day of fighting at Pozières, Mouquet Farm or Flers in 1916, or Bullecourt or Ypres in 1917. Though these were very different battles, even the unprecedented stealth raids at Hazebrouck on 11 and 12 July, which are comparable in terms of prisoners and low casualty rates, pale in comparison with the ground gained by Jack Hayes’ patrol. A worthy comparison is Sergeant Alvin York, United States 328th Infantry Regiment. In the midst of a major battle in the Meuse-Argonne, a couple of months later on 8 October 1918, York and a few men captured a similar amount of men, machine guns and ground as did the Chipilly six. York was awarded the Medal of Honour, French Croix de Guerre and Legion of Honour, the French Médaille Militaire, the Montenegran Silver Médaille pour la Bravoure Militaire and Italian Croce di Guerra, making him the most decorated American soldier of the war.⁶⁵

Jack Hayes – Jackie to his friends – was born in Hay in country New South Wales and grew up in Bathurst, where he worked as an engine cleaner in the railways. Two days after war was declared, he left Bathurst, visited his mother, Blanche, in Marrickville, Sydney, then enlisted. He was a good horseman and hoped to join the Light Horse, but was told they had enough men; perhaps at five feet, seven inches, he was considered too short, because in August 1914 class and physical dimensions still played a prejudicial part in recruitment. Hayes found himself in the 1st Battalion: the ‘Pride of the Line’, as he would call them for the rest of his life. A photograph of Hayes and friends in uniform in August 1914 shows a youth of 19 leaning on an impromptu mess bar under canvas, apparently at Kensington Racecourse. Tough physical training and military drill in Egypt followed, before he landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 and was wounded shortly afterwards, a bullet wound in his right leg inflicted sometime between 25 and 30 April. He was back in the trenches in May and promoted to lance corporal. He fought at Lone Pine, which his friend Sergeant Archie Barwick described as a ‘frightful battle … our boys & Turks lay 3 & 4 deep, & on top of these we had to fight for our lives’.⁶⁶ Hayes remained on Gallipoli until the evacuation and left the peninsula a corporal.

He was promoted to sergeant in July 1916 when the battalion was at Vignacourt, on their way to attack Pozières. Hayes was 21 and already a veteran. He kept a diary in which he laid bare his attitude on the eve of the battle: ‘Feeling confident but a bit shaky continue this after the push.’⁶⁷ When the battalion went over the top that night, Hayes organised five men who had been separated from their units in No Man’s Land. The patrol headed for the second German trench system, OG 2. They ‘encountered 33 square heads … had a little scrap … we stuck one [with a bayonet] who was giving a bit of cheek [and] took the rest [prisoner]’.⁶⁸ He kept up his diary throughout 1916 and 1917. By the time of the Chipilly ‘stunt’ in August 1918 he was one of only a few dozen original men left in the battalion, and had either given up writing or his 1918 diary has been lost.⁶⁹ ‘Originals’ like Hayes were the custodians of the battalion’s fighting spirit and ethos; after Pozières he wrote, ‘our people … stuck it like the old boys’,⁷⁰ a reference to the standards set at Gallipoli. In September 1916 Hayes was promoted to company quartermaster sergeant.

Despite his soldierly qualities in the firing line, Hayes was often in trouble with superior officers out of the trenches. His diaries record several direct confrontations with officers, mostly the result of his independent spirit, bound to the cogs of the military machine. The most serious cases brought him before his commanding officer, Colonel Stacy; the two seldom saw eye to eye. Hayes once went over Stacy’s head and demanded to appear before the brigadier over a perceived injustice regarding leave.⁷¹ Hayes’ close friend and fellow original Sergeant Archie Barwick remembered a parade when Hayes was missing: ‘most of us knew he was down in a little quiet restaurant but no one else let on so the parade had to be dismissed’.⁷² Hayes wrote of the incident, ‘Had a good night at Lilly’s’, and followed it with ‘Lilly got her … smacked’.⁷³ A favourite poem of his was ‘Luck or Pluck’, which ends with the line, ‘’tis pluck that attains not luck that gains she gives to the man who dares’.⁷⁴ Hayes lived in the moment; he labelled as ‘stunts’ most of his adventures at the expense of the ‘mindless supervision of the parade ground’.⁷⁵ He had many adventures. One took him and some friends to Amiens; the trip began with cigarettes and six bottles of champagne and ended with seven weeks in a convalescent camp. Hayes called it mumps, but his official file called it venereal disease. While recovering in a camp of AIF incorrigibles, he furtively read letters from men in his battalion on the front. They told grim tales of the fighting at Demicourt, Boursies and Bullecourt. Hayes told his diary:

21 April 1917: Tucker not too good down here. Often wish I was back with the Battalion.

23 May 1917: Got a letter … asking me to come back [to the battalion] (toute suite).

24 May 1917: Am going to keep quiet and see if I can get out of here. Just beginning to get sick of it.

25 May 1917: Bn still getting a rough time. (Fate sent me here).

26 May 1917: I wish I was out of here. Thinking of the good times we [the battalion] used to have.⁷⁶

On 29 May, Hayes was declared fit for active service and left hospital. He was offered a relatively safe job as brigade quartermaster sergeant. He refused it in preference to returning to the battalion, his home. When he got there, he found ‘a lot of new faces’ but when he met up with old friends, whom he called the ‘remnant’, he ‘made up for lost time’.⁷⁷ Archie Barwick described Jack Hayes as ‘a fine chap and a great cobber’, ‘seething with humour’.⁷⁸ Hayes’ wartime diaries are laced with examples of his wit and irreverence. Of the Prince of Wales, he wrote, ‘cannot ride much’. He described shellfire as ‘No Bon for Soldats’, and wrote that the rats preying on corpses in the mud at Hill 60 ‘appeared to mobilise in our rear, but never launched an attack’.⁷⁹

Perhaps the most penetrating study of Hayes is a photograph taken in a French café behind the lines. In it, four Australian friends, including Hayes, are raising a toast. Three are in uniform but Jack Hayes is dressed as a civilian and looks like a Frenchman, even though impersonating a civilian was a punishable offence in the British Army in a war zone. Had the military police or his commanding officer seen him, Hayes would have been in serious trouble. The cheeky look on his face indicates he was willing to take the risk. Hayes seems very much the Australian volunteer: a soldier in the line and in camp, but doing whatever he pleased when away from his responsibilities.

When C Company went into the line during the Battle of Menin Road in September 1917, Hayes organised the parties carrying water and rations to the front. Despite the barrages, the rations got to the men, usually under his supervision. At the end of a tour at Zonnebeke, the battalion pulled out ‘badly shaken by four days of shellfire’.⁸⁰ The men were so exhausted they ‘could not have gone another twenty minutes’, when Jackie Hayes met them with a stew, tea and rum.⁸¹ The first rule of the company quartermaster sergeant’s responsibilities was to ‘get the job done’. If the men in the front line needed equipment, water, food, ammunition or leadership, there was no time to ask whose job it was.

Hayes got the job done on Chipilly Spur. Two weeks later, he, Kane and Fuller were wounded when the battalion attacked in the Chuignes valley. Hayes was shot in the chest at point-blank range while trying to rush a German post. Hayes’ son, the late John Hayes, remembered his father saying that Fuller propped him up against a tree then went on and captured the man who fired the shot. Fuller reportedly dragged the prisoner back to Hayes and said, ‘I’ve got the bastard that shot you and I’m going to shoot him down for you’, but Hayes told him, ‘No. Sit him down next to me.’ The wounded Australian and the prisoner shared photographs of family and home. Hayes was not expected to live.⁸² Harold Andrews led the men who captured the final objective:

[the dead] were buried in one temporary grave … under fire as so many others were. No burial service, with only their handkerchiefs for covering – no time to scrounge a blanket, as relief was pending and the job must go on.⁸³

Jack Hayes was not destined to die in battle. John Hayes recalled his father saying that he was one of the last of the critically wounded to be carried from the battlefield.⁸⁴

The capture of Chipilly Spur was the supreme stealth raid. Setpiece battles supported by artillery and sometimes tanks resumed but individuals and small groups of daring men continued to use stealth-raiding tactics. At the battles of Chuignes, 23 August, and Mont St Quentin, 31 August, detailed orders for these setpiece attacks arrived well after the men had used their own initiative and skills to continue stealth raiding.⁸⁵ Battalion commanders reported numerous examples of individual soldiers and small teams using ground and fire to ‘dislodge’ the enemy or take prisoners. Some platoons went well beyond their objectives, usually on ‘the initiative of local commanders’, which included NCOs and privates.⁸⁶ Bean heard of an incident during the Battle of Chuignes, where men of the 2nd and 3rd Battalions were being sniped at from a wood that should have been cleared. Lieutenant Murray Connor, 2nd Battalion, went into the wood with a party of ‘3 or 4 batmen and cooks’ and captured 18 prisoners, two trench mortars and a machine gun while a company was being organised to do it.⁸⁷ The action had all the hallmarks of a stealth raid.

In the same battle, just after dawn, a platoon of Australians, under Second Lieutenant Clem Garratt, 16th Battalion, was attacked by a stronger party of Germans in a trench where the advancing Australians had expected to link up with men of the 16th Lancashire Fusiliers. Garratt, Sergeant Frederick Robbins and eight men fought a two-hour bomb fight and pushed the Germans back 200 yards before Garratt went to collect more bombs, leaving Robbins in charge ‘where the fighting was fiercest’.⁸⁸ Their company commander, Lieutenant Laurie McCarthy, went to see what was holding up the British. McCarthy’s nickname was ‘Fats’, in reference to his robust frame. He was a wrecking ball of a man.

McCarthy took a few moments to watch the battle going on around him, as Hayes had done at Chipilly. From his trench, McCarthy could see that the Germans were bombing Robbins and his men from behind an earthwork, an island with lanes on either side in the middle of a shallow trench. Both lanes were blocked with piles of rusty barbed wire, detritus from the fighting of 1916. The Germans were firing a machine gun from behind the island, ‘almost enfilading the Australian trench’.⁸⁹ McCarthy also noticed other Germans firing machine guns 50 or so yards back from the island block.

McCarthy had no orders to attack the Germans, as their position was in the British area of responsibility. But he knew his men’s position was untenable so long as the Germans were between them and the British: ‘I could see we were in a hopeless position. I had to do something. I had either to attack … or be killed or taken prisoner.’⁹⁰ McCarthy chose to attack. Armed with a revolver and as many Mills bombs as he could carry, he leapt from cover and dashed over the top and into the shallow trench in front of the island block. Sergeant Robbins rushed to join him. Together they discovered that the bottom of the trench was part of the roof of an old dugout, and that the German machine gunners were firing from the other side of it. McCarthy decided to tunnel his way through and attack the Germans:

I forced my way through the roof of this dugout, right through the corroded iron, and I fell at the foot of the dugout and there was the German machine gunner standing up. I got my revolver out and I finished him off and about six Germans came at me.⁹¹

McCarthy ‘threw his limited number of Mills Bombs … and inflicted more casualties’.⁹² Robbins scrambled through the hole behind him, ‘[f]ighting the enemy … hand-to-hand’.⁹³ At a junction in the trench they shot another German. McCarthy raced ahead: ‘I went along, mopping up the trench.’ Robbins stayed at the junction to prevent the Germans slipping in behind McCarthy and cutting him off. Shells started falling nearby: ‘there was an enemy aeroplane overhead watching the situation’. McCarthy reasoned that the pilot was signalling to an artillery battery, so he picked up a German flare gun and fired what he knew was the German SOS signal, to trick the German artillery into stopping.⁹⁴ He came to a junction where the trench split into four directions. Two German officers appeared and McCarthy had a shootout with one: ‘[a] German regimental commander came at me, we had a duel for about two minutes … and I managed to get the better of him’. McCarthy also shot and wounded the second officer, ‘then charged down the trench using his revolver and throwing enemy stick bombs’, which he collected as he went. He captured three more German machine guns and about 500 yards of trench, then continued to bomb up the trench, capturing yet another machine gun. The fighting was close range and intense. The fact that he ran into two officers suggested he was fighting at least a company of Germans. He did not break contact. According to McCarthy, the Germans broke first:

The Germans were coming from north, south, east and west … I was standing in a pile [of German stick bombs] throwing them north, south, east and west when to my amazement a German corporal [waving a red handkerchief] took the bomb out of my hand, and said, ‘This is mine’.⁹⁵

More German soldiers followed their corporal around the traverse, gesturing to McCarthy that they intended to surrender by patting the Australian on the back, indicating to him that it was within his power to stop the bloodshed. They picked the big man up. McCarthy said: ‘They put me on their shoulders and carried me back [to the Australian lines]’.⁹⁶ McCarthy dismounted from his prisoners and covered Robbins, who led two Lewis gun teams to occupy the captured trenches.⁹⁷ Captain Daniel Aarons of A Company ‘quickly moved up & held 700 [yards] of [the] Tommies sector’. These men held the trench until ‘the [Tommies] woke up’ and came forward. McCarthy, Robbins and the rest of Garratt’s platoon consolidated the newly captured trenches and mopped up, as the six had done at Chipilly.⁹⁸

McCarthy was officially credited with capturing five machine guns and 50 prisoners, 37 unwounded and thirteen wounded, and killing over 20 men in a 20-minute burst.⁹⁹ He captured over 500 yards of trench; all this ground was handed over to the British. The engagement lasted about three hours, beginning with the bomb fight led by Garratt and his platoon of ten men, including Robbins. McCarthy was immediately recommended for the Victoria Cross. Aarons wrote: ‘well earned too’.¹⁰⁰ His official citation credited him with preventing ‘many casualties’, and being ‘mainly, if not entirely, responsible’ for the Lancashire Fusiliers’ objective being taken.¹⁰¹ Bean believed that apart from Lieutenant Albert Jacka’s efforts at Pozières, McCarthy’s was perhaps the most effective feat of individual fighting in the history of the AIF.¹⁰² The British press called McCarthy’s Victoria Cross the ‘Super VC’, and Australian soldiers like Bob Traill were pleased that finally some of their achievements were being properly recognised in the Empire’s press.¹⁰³

On 15 August, Bean at last heard the term ‘peaceful penetration’, not from the men but at Australian Corps headquarters:

It had been decided to adopt a policy of conserving men. It was considered that the Australian could do all that was wanted by cutting out expeditions and patrolling – peaceful penetration as they call it here.¹⁰⁴

Australian records show that the 2nd Division started using the term ‘peaceful penetration’ after Russell Colman’s stealth raid of 8 July 1918. On 12 July General Rosenthal used the term ‘peaceful’ advance. The term ‘peaceful penetration’ is a higher-command term, not the men’s. ‘Peaceful penetration’ was not stealth raiding, though it built on it. Formal patrols were ordered to use stealth-raiding tactics and work their way around German strongpoints to take them in flank and rear while platoon firepower, usually rifle grenades and Lewis guns, covered the assaulting party. If resistance were too great, the patrol would hunt the enemy out of the post with ‘pigs’, the infantry term for trench mortar shells fired by batteries attached to brigade headquarters.¹⁰⁵ The precedent was the 5th and 7th Brigade stealth raids led by Colman, Coburn and Willard near Villers-Bretonneux in July, and the 1st Division at Hazebrouck.

In the last days of August, the towns of Suzanne, Vaux and Curlu were captured along with hundreds of prisoners by either ‘peaceful penetration’ or stealth raids.¹⁰⁶ The official war photographer Hubert Wilkins told Bean of nine men of the 9th Battalion who pushed half a mile beyond Cappy although it was ‘not their business to be there’. They went from dugout to dugout ‘and whistled down … as you might to a dog: “come on Fritz – now then Fritzy – there Fritz”’.¹⁰⁷ Wilkins’ biographer, Jeff Maynard, points out that Wilkins thought there was something exceptional about this experience because the photographs he took of the stealth raiders ‘were among the collection of prints from the war that he kept for the remainder of his life’.¹⁰⁸ The Australian War Memorial in Canberra holds copies of two of the photographs.¹⁰⁹ A battalion original, Sergeant Doug Brown, and Corporal Arthur Henley were awarded the Military Medal for the Cappy stealth raid.¹¹⁰ Henley subsequently won a Distinguished Conduct Medal at Villeret on 18 September, where his commanding officer praised his ‘judgement’ in capturing enemy strongpoints, including 17 prisoners, by outflanking them using a tactic that resembled stealth raiding.¹¹¹ Among the men named by Wilkins are the bushman Bill Harney, a veteran 22 times in action, and Private Daniel Mahoney MM, who had distinguished himself in Wilder-Neligan’s acclaimed formal raid at Fleurbaix in July 1916.¹¹²

Monash called it a ‘merry and exciting’ few ‘days of pursuit’, and boasted that by 29 August, ‘not a German prisoner remained west of the Somme between Péronne and Brie’.¹¹³ But some ‘peaceful penetrations’ Monash ordered were far from merry and exciting. Patrols of the 2nd Division advanced over 2000 yards by ‘peaceful penetration’, mostly through old trenches, until they struck the village of Herleville. There the Germans ‘vigorously counter-attacked’ and reduced the Australian gains to 500 yards. The Australians lost 117 officers and men; 15 men of the 22nd Battalion were captured.¹¹⁴ Lieutenant Percy Smythe’s commanding officer called it ‘simply murder’ and ‘harboured some bitter feelings against the authority that had committed his men to such a futile and murderous task’.¹¹⁵

Smythe’s CO was not alone. There was a big difference between stealth raids, initiated by the men, and being ordered to do ‘peaceful penetration’ by a corps commander ‘who had not willingly visited his troops in the front line’, and therefore had little firsthand knowledge of the ground or the condition of his men.¹¹⁶ According to Bean, the order for ‘peaceful penetration’ operations in August ‘caused resentment though everyone obeyed it’.¹¹⁷ He heard that the last ‘peaceful penetration’ patrol ordered by Australian Corps headquarters resulted in a company of the 4th Battalion being ‘practically annihilated’ east of Jeancourt on 9–10 September. The so-called ‘peaceful penetrators’ lost about 60 men to gas, high explosives and machine-gun fire and ‘came back only 29 strong’. A further six were taken prisoner. Most of the survivors were wounded.¹¹⁸ Battalions were at less than a third of full strength and there were grumblings within the ranks that the men were exhausted. Monash ignored these factors; he was convinced that as long as a battalion had ‘30 Lewis guns it doesn’t matter what else they have’.¹¹⁹

Most of the time enough of the men did not let Monash down: ‘I like General Monash best’, wrote the Lewis gunner and stealth raider Dudley Jackson:

when the division was growling about it wanted a long spell from front line fighting, he lined them up and told them ‘You came over here to fight, when you have beaten the enemy you will get a spell and not before.’

Jackson and his mates Ike Turner and Thomas ‘Bluey’ Boxsell patrolled to the slopes of Mont St Quentin by self-reliant stealth raiding, as distinct from ‘peaceful penetration’. They captured Germans who had slipped out of their lines to fill their water bottles in the Somme, then Jackson and Turner rushed dugouts where they ‘smashed in’ the head of a German machine gunner and captured 18 men:

As Ike and I were on our own we had to send them back to the rest of the company without an escort. Ike wanted to take their field glasses, revolvers, and watchs [sic] etc but I thought we were loaded heavily enough already, and time was running out. Was sorry afterwards that we did not do as Ike had wanted. One of our big guns was landing shells on this line, so we decided it was too unhealthy for us, so we started forward again. We had proceeded about 300 yards … just Ike and I on our own when we heard someone calling and looking round saw our fellows advancing. So waited for them to catch up. The officer asked if Ike and I thought we could take the German army on our own. It was … broad daylight.¹²⁰

Jackson was awarded the MM, and Boxsell the DCM. Boxsell’s recommendation contains the language of stealth-raid tactics:

During the operations on Mont St Quentin … this N.C.O. on three occasions went out and personally attracted the fire of enemy machine guns from an exposed position while the remainder of his section worked round the flanks, and killed and captured the crew. His own gun was knocked out by M.G. bullets, while engaging enemy above. He immediately got a light enemy M.G. and ammunition and carried on with this throughout the operations, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy.¹²¹

Historian Peter Pedersen wrote that Mont St Quentin and Péronne, from 31 August to 3 September, more than any other battle, ‘showed the quality of the instrument at Monash’s disposal and how fortunate he was to command it’.¹²² Peter Stanley came to a similar conclusion in his book Men of Mont St Quentin, arguing that Mont St Quentin was a battle won by skilful and determined soldiers ‘in spite of slipshod command’.¹²³ Bean claimed that ‘these types of actions occurred over and over again’, usually because orders for setpiece attacks arrived well after the men had used their own initiative and skills for stealth raiding.¹²⁴

On 6 September, in the aftermath of these important battles, Lance Sergeant James Rafferty, 11th Battalion, attended an Australian Corps Patrol School commanded by Captain William Scurry, the former lance corporal responsible for inventing the famous ‘drip rifle’ at Gallipoli. Here an instructor taught of a new tactic in contrast to the old doctrine of formal or ‘forced’ raids. Rafferty noted in his diary:

A stealth raid is made up on the spot by a group of determined men and any of its infantry arms can be used organized on the information from your patrols. Patrols might report enemy post in front and you decide with the arms you have in the front line to take it.¹²⁵

This definition encapsulated the unprecedented host of kidnappings, stonkerings, stoushes, one-man raids, daylight raids, cuckoo games, the epic capture of Chipilly Spur and the Super VC. These actions and dozens like them occurred without any formal training; although somewhat belatedly, it seems some of the most innovative instructors at the Australian Corps School appreciated the difference between the ethos of stealth raids and the formal ‘peaceful penetration’ policy Monash espoused. Perhaps it is not surprising that Scurry had served in the ranks.

After Mont St Quentin, the Australian Corps opposed the Hindenburg Outpost Line. On the night of 17–18 September, a formal setpiece attack was launched to smash through this formidable barrier. ‘Peaceful penetration’ operations ordered by Monash officially ceased but stealth raids did not. When cover permitted, the Australians trusted their skill in the tactic to capture German strongpoints without heavy casualties. The 48th Battalion attacked near Le Verguier, north-west of St Quentin. It took the objective, but British troops on the Australian flank were held up and a company of the 48th was sent in support. A patrol of three Australian privates discovered a German post comprising six machine guns and over 30 men. In perhaps the last Australian stealth raid of the war, Private James Woods led the small patrol against the strongpoint while his company commander was organising more men to attack it. Woods shot one German and captured another, and the rest of the garrison fled. Woods’ entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography notes:

The Germans then counter-attacked. Despite heavy fire, Woods climbed onto the parapet and, while lying there, held off successive attacks by throwing bombs handed to him by his companions. So effective was his defence that, when Australian reinforcements arrived, they were easily able to secure the post. Woods was awarded the Victoria Cross for his part in the action.¹²⁶

Three men captured an objective set for the flank of a British division before the British or Australian orders arrived,¹²⁷ another sign of the belief the Australian infantryman had in himself and his mates and their frustration with the British troops on their flanks. According to the 48th Battalion war diary, the British

said they were in a certain position but our patrols discovered they were not. Indeed we knew more about their position than their B.H.Q … What a pity this race of athletes cant [sic] go ahead and do their own job. The remarkable thing is that they dont [sic] seem to mind othrrs [sic] doing it for them.¹²⁸

The reconstituted battalions of the British Army were full of 18- and 19-year-old conscripts still learning the lessons of war. The German Army was disintegrating, but its machine gunners and snipers still demanded respect. Stealth raiders killed many of them. The Australian battalions were barely able to scrape together 300 men each and were led by a corps commander who gave them practically no rest. But the experienced few who remained ‘knew the soldiers game from A to Z’.¹²⁹ Sometimes they anticipated the orders of their commanding officers, or knew better ways to get a job done with few casualties. These attributes, combined with a uniquely Australian ethos that championed initiative, individualism, resourcefulness and bush skills, produced stealth raiders. The fact that the AIF achieved as much as it did from April to October 1918 was in large part due to the tactics these few daring men invented.