The fifteenth of April was a relatively quiet day for the Australians along this part of the line. During the early-morning hours, artillery batteries of the Australian 1st Division had finally arrived. They took up positions between Hazebrouck and Nieppe Forest, where they began to register their guns while the Australian 3rd Infantry Brigade and 1st Pioneer Battalion continued to construct a reserve line. The work went swiftly and was uninterrupted by the enemy, who were focusing on an attack further north-east, capturing Ravelsberg and Bailleul. At Merris the Germans were observed moving between their posts further back, driving away livestock from the French farms. Meanwhile, along the extreme southern flank of the Australian position, the 7th Battalion took over manning Verte Rue from the exhausted 4th Guards Brigade.1

For the medical staff and those at the regimental aid posts there was no respite, as recalled by the 8th Battalion’s chaplain Joseph Booth, 32, from Richmond in Victoria. ‘One of us holds the light, for most of our dressing is done at night time,’ wrote Booth, ‘the Doctor examines the wounded, fiddles around for an artery, binds it up, gives him an injection of morphia, a drink of hot coffee for him and the [stretcher] bearers. The unfortunate lad is made as comfortable as possible and carried by the bearers to a point where a motor ambulance can carry him away. The Doctor with stained and dirty hands, lights a cigarette and begins to wash the blood stains clear . . .’2 Private Roy Ramsey, a 21-year-old clerk from Bacchus Marsh in Victoria who was with the Australian 3rd Field Ambulance, wrote:

We were all kept very busy for the next few days. It was at this time that I was asked to help in the operating theatre by holding down patients who couldn’t be given anaesthetic because of gas in their lungs. It was not a pleasant job and not so easy with only one good arm [he had previously been wounded and his arm was in plaster]. We were doing thirty operations a night with German bombs falling all around the CCS but the doctors and theatre sisters just carried on irrespective. They were marvellous. We all reckoned that the nurses should have received many more decorations for bravery than they did.3

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Early on 16 April the Germans again attacked the line of the British 33rd Division and further north in front of Méteren, forcing out the 4th King’s Regiment, which had been holding the town. The Germans quickly occupied the position in strength. A counterattack that was organised failed to retake the town, at great cost. At around 3 p.m. a request was made to the commander of the French 133rd Division to pass through the 33rd Division at dusk to help restore the line by launching a counterattack. This was agreed to, and in addition the Australian 1st Brigade was slated to advance, with the French covering its right flank. This advance would be done by the 1st Battalion, passing first through the flank of the 4th Battalion and then through the 5th Scottish Rifles (Cameronians), who were still holding the line there.4

By 6 p.m., as night fell, the 1st Battalion was crossing the ridge at Strazeele. Here it waited for the prearranged appearance of the French between Nord-Helf and the Méteren Becque stream, about 1.5 kilometres east of Strazeele. However, the French battalion that was to cooperate, the 32nd Chasseurs Alpins, was a no-show – it was only then being issued its orders. The French advanced some hours later, but limited their actions to relieving the British troops opposite Méteren. As stated in the brigade war diary, ‘At 6.30 p.m., the 1st Bn moved from Pradelles to cooperate with the French in an attack on Meteren and to maintain communications with the 4th Bn on the right . . . The French attack did not eventuate.’5 As recorded in the battalion’s published history, by the ‘time the ridge was crossed it was quite dark, and everyone agreed that it was time the French put in their promised appearance. But not a Frenchman was to be seen, and the 4th Battalion, through whose lines, not to mention many ditches and hedges, we passed, reported that they also had not seen one of our blue-coated Allies.’6

Even so, the Australians advanced, passing through hedges and ditches covered by a barrage of shells exploding among the German positions. They soon came across the 5th Scottish Rifles, still holding part of their original line among the hop-fields near the Méteren Becque, about a kilometre south of the French. Most of these British troops were relieved by the 1st Battalion, but a company of the Rifles remained to support the Australians in the front line. Now the ‘right company, under Captain Somerset, linked up with the 4th Battalion, and occupied the group of farm-houses known as Nord Hock, near Merris, which was in German hands’.7

With the loss of Méteren the Australian 1st Division was to concentrate its strength on its left flank. The Australian 3rd Brigade, which had been held in reserve, was ordered on 17 April to move behind the northern flank and be ready to counterattack.8

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Hours earlier, the commander of the 4th Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Cecil Sasse, a 27-year-old wool broker from Sydney, had decided to take advantage of the shelling to straighten out part of his line by pushing forward ‘C’ Company on his right. Captain Percy Hay, a 24-year-old student from Wollongong, and his men advanced to what they believed to be empty trenches dug by the British days before; however, they had recently been occupied by the Germans in force and the Australians came under intense machine-gun fire. As described in the battalion’s war diary, ‘Capt Hay took C Coy and advanced our line some 500 yards and attacked a German trench. Operation very successful but heavy enemy MG [machine-gun] fire encountered.’9 Hay’s company suffered over 50 casualties in its advance. Rather than retire, he reorganised his men, but soon all officers had become casualties. Sergeant Harry Dean, a 24-year-old horse driver from Sydney, took command and all proceeded to dig in, having pushed their line 800 metres forward. However, the town of Merris to their south could no longer be seen from the lower ground they now occupied.10

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On 17 April, German Prince Rupprecht, having been reinforced, conducted an intense bombardment of the Allied lines, launching the all-out attack that they hoped would finally take Hazebrouck and its vital railway hub. At 3 a.m. Strazeele was heavily shelled, and by 9 a.m. the whole Australian sector seemed to be targeted by a mass of German artillery. However, while it was a heavy bombardment, the enemy gunners had little time to accurately register their targets, and the result was that they seemed ‘to have shot at pretty well everything marked on the map, farms, cross-roads, villages, even some hedges’.11 The crossroads at Strazeele were reduced to looking like no-man’s land in Ypres, covered in shell craters, and the village and the railway station south of it were also completely smashed. While a number of casualties were reported from those behind the front lines, remarkably the bombardment missed the frontline posts, passing over them.12

At 10 a.m. the Germans launched an attack up the valley of the Méteren Becque, between Merris and Méteren. However, they were met with devastating fire from the Australian 1st and 4th battalions, supported by three platoons from the 5th Cameronians. The main assault was against the newly established forward position of ‘C’ Company, 4th Battalion, but it was ‘easily driven off by our Lewis Guns and rifle fire’.13

Even so, the Germans of the 62nd IR and others paid a large price for the failure as recorded in its history that 17 April ‘was for the regiment one of the bloodiest days in the whole war. All four company commanders attacking in the firing line were killed and three other officers as well. In all, the loss on this day amounted to 76 killed and 230 wounded . . . great part of its most experienced and bravest officers, N.C.O’s. and men.’14

Further south, the 3rd Battalion could see German officers leaping out of the trenches and trying to compel their men to attack, but the retaliatory barrage and small-arms fire were such that the German infantry apparently refused to leave their cover. Shortly after midday the German artillery fire slackened, but it recommenced in earnest at around 3.30 p.m. Two hours later, an SOS flare was fired from the 1st Brigade’s front. The Germans attempted to leave their shallow jumping-off trenches but within seconds artillery shells and trench-mortar bombs dispersed the half-hearted attack. As recorded in the war diary of the 3rd Battalion, ‘Our 18 pdrs [pounders] opened on SOS line. Our heavies fired on Merris and Vieux-Berquin. Our Vickers and Lewis guns fired constantly.’15 Indeed, this battalion estimated that at the railway embankment, where machine guns and Lewis guns enfiladed the enemy’s approach, 700 Germans were killed during the day; the 1st Brigade assessed the overall casualties as between 1500 and 2000. Australian casualties were light. The French with elements of the British 33rd Division also succeeded in shattering German attacks launched from Méteren to the north.16