There is not a bit of cover anywhere, not a tree or dug-out of any description. Nothing but mud and dead.
Stanley Roberts1
26 September–3 October 1917
Following the Battle of Menin Road, Haig was eager to strike again as soon as possible. ‘In view of the fine weather which our weather experts think is likely to last for a week,’ he wrote on 21 September, ‘it is most desirable to take full advantage of it, and of the superiority which we have now gained, for the time being, over the enemy’s aeroplanes and artillery.’2 It had been arranged with General Plumer that Second Army would attack again, with I ANZAC Corps capturing the whole of Polygon Wood and Zonnebeke, while units on its flanks continued to advance in line. Should this be successful, a third step could then take place towards the main ridge at Broodseinde and the Gravenstafel Spur.3 Haig was determined to keep going, come what may. ‘My plan is to press the Ypres offensive as vigorously as possible’, he noted on 23 September. There was all to play for.4
Plumer’s second step–the Battle of Polygon Wood–opened at 5.50 a.m. on 26 September. It had been prepared in the same intricate manner as his other battles and produced much the same result. Once again two Australian divisions, 4th and 5th, would make the main assault, pushing forward about 1,200 yards towards the Flanders I line south of Zonnebeke, while clearing the main obstacle on this part of the front: Polygon Wood. Lieutenant Sinclair Hunt, a former school teacher from Croydon, New South Wales, was part of 55/Battalion (5th Division) as it made its way up the line the evening before the attack. They were led in silence by a group of guides, who had taped out the route they would follow to their jumping-off point, which lay at the southwestern tip of Polygon Wood. What had once been a pleasant young forest was now ‘totally devoid of any life’. Not even green young saplings could survive in such a blasted place, which was regularly swept by heavy fire. ‘The whole road appeared like a forest of charred and splintered stumps standing about three or four feet high’, Hunt remembered. Every so often a flare would fizzle up from the German positions, causing them to crouch and freeze ‘so that Fritz would have no idea of what was happening’.5
Once they were in position–lying in shell holes or scrapes in the ground–they waited for the moment to attack. The German defenders seemed to have sensed something was up. Flares were fired ‘with unusual frequency’ and soon a scattering of shells fell along Hunt’s sector, causing some casualties, but fortunately missing most of the attacking waves. Gradually the minutes ticked down.
A fog had fallen and we could see Fritz flares only hazily through it. Ten minutes, a man rose here and there to tighten a belt or to stretch his cramped limbs. Three–the fog was more dense, and sections became very restless as they quietly fixed bayonets and prepared to advance. A gun behind boomed louder than the rest, suddenly the whole earth seemed to burst into a seething bubbling roaring centre of eruption and as at the touch of an enchantresser’s [sic] wand, out of the ground sprang a mass of men in little worm like columns–each wriggling its way forward to a sparkling shouting seething line of earth, fire and smoke in front of them.
After seventy-five yards they saw their first Germans, just bodies ‘chewed up by the barrage’. After 100 yards they ran into ‘a platoon of scared Fritzes’, hurrying towards them with their hands in the air. They soon reached the great mound at the far side of Polygon Wood (the ‘Butte’, which was once used for musketry training by the Belgian Army), cleared out a dugout, and then re-formed their platoons for the next stage of the attack.
Charles Bean would later call the artillery barrage on 26 September ‘the most perfect that ever protected Australian troops’, crashing out in front of them ‘like a Gippsland bushfire’.6 As it moved on to the second objective, perfectly on time, Hunt and his men followed as closely as they could (‘the boys hugged it to a yard’). There were occasional short rounds–including one that just missed Hunt and failed to explode–but they did not dent the eagerness of the men to close with the enemy. ‘Before the last shot fell on a Pill Box it was swarming with “Aussies” who scrambled all over it looking for “Flues” or ventilators through which to drop a bomb. Fritz, however, did not want any coaxing in most cases, but ran out with hands up at the first call and shewed [sic] no signs of fight. Indeed we found the rifles in most of the “Boxes” without even bayonets fixed.’ Hunt was elated at what they had done. ‘The advance itself was the finest we had ever experienced’, he said proudly. ‘The artillery barrage was so perfect and we followed it so close, that it was simply a matter of walking into the positions and commencing to dig in.’7
On the left, advancing towards the Flanders I line at Molenaarelsthoek, 4th Australian Division made good progress. ‘The barrage fell at the appointed time, 5.50 a.m., and lifting three minutes later our troops commenced to advance moving close under it. Distances were adjusted between waves after all troops were in advance of our front line’, recorded an after-action report. Although the morning was misty and visibility difficult, which meant officers had to rely on their compasses to keep direction, the fury of the bombardment cleared all before it. ‘The density and power of the Barrage had a very demoralising effect on the enemy as evidenced by his abject terror, and willingness to surrender’, recorded Lieutenant-Colonel Harold Paul, the commanding officer of 49/Battalion. ‘A few isolated cases occurred where snipers did use their rifles, but they were promptly dealt with.’8 By 7.15 a.m. 16/Battalion was on the first objective (the Red Line) and within an hour ‘leapfrogging’ troops were on the Blue Line with German soldiers ‘surrendering freely’.9
More problematic were the operations on the flanks, where the barrage was less dense and ground more difficult to cross. In the north V Corps achieved most of its objectives, but fell short of reaching Hill 40, a German position north of Zonnebeke, which remained in enemy hands. The attack had gone largely to plan, but after the infantry were held up by the Zonnebeke stream, they lost touch with the creeping barrage and suffered accordingly–machine-gun fire stopping the attack about 600 yards from the final objective.10 In X Corps, on the southern flank, the situation was more precarious, in part because of a heavy German spoiling attack that had gone in the previous day. 33rd Division had already sustained about 5,000 casualties and had been fighting for over twenty-four hours when Zero Hour came. The division was hastily reorganized, with the reserve brigade (19 Brigade) reinforcing the attacking waves, which swept forward that morning ‘with extreme bitterness’.11 Fortunately, 15 Australian Brigade helped to re-establish the line and push on to their objectives at the far side of Polygon Wood. The fighting in this shattered, broken woodland was incredibly bitter.
It was here where two Victoria Crosses were won: Sergeant Jack Dwyer (4/Australian Machine-Gun Company) and Private Patrick Joseph Bugden (31/Battalion). Dwyer, in charge of a Vickers machine-gun team, won his for leading the defence of the position throughout 26 and 27 September. Oblivious to danger, moving from shell hole to shell hole, directing machine-gun fire against the numerous counter-attacks that came through the blasted remains of the wood, he showed remarkable bravery, not to mention uncommon luck. At one point, his machine-gun was destroyed by a direct hit from an artillery shell, so he gathered his team and led them back through the enemy barrage, where they were able to bring up one of their reserve guns. ‘Paddy’ Bugden showed a similar level of bravery, but unfortunately he was not as lucky. He went out into no-man’s-land at least five times to aid the wounded, but on the final occasion he was mortally wounded by a shell splinter. He was just twenty years old.12
Further heavy fighting broke out around the bastion of Tower Hamlets, which anchored the German southern flank in Flanders, and had already resisted numerous attacks. 39th Division, deployed about 1,000 yards south of the Menin Road, made ‘rapid progress’ after going ‘over the top’. Although the right half of the division was delayed by poor ground conditions, elsewhere the attacking infantry overran their objectives on time. An after-action report noted that ‘The opposition met with on the Western slopes of the Tower Hamlets Ridge was speedily disposed of. Our troops advanced through Tower Hamlets and over the high ground in its vicinity with but few casualties, and our objective on their Brigade front was gained according to the scheduled time.’ On the right, the boggy ground, combined with enfilade fire from German strongpoints to the south (most notably a position known as the Quadrilateral), ensured that progress came to a halt–and it was necessary to pull back in places and form a defensive flank. Nevertheless, 39th Division’s hold on the high ground was secure; not even concentrated artillery bombardments and two separate counter-attacks could dislodge it. The second, which advanced shortly before 7 p.m., was ‘crushed by combined artillery and machine-gun fire’.13
The second phase of the battle, when the Eingreif divisions tried to launch their counter-attacks, was eerily similar to the events of 20 September. British aircraft had been scouring the battlefield for targets for most of the day, machine-gunning and bombing enemy concentrations, while also watching out for any German batteries that disclosed themselves. Their most important contribution, however, came in the early afternoon, when they began to notice the tell-tale signs of German units moving up: columns of infantry, trucks and horses crowding the roads southeast of Zandvoorde. Probable assembly areas, crossroads and junctions, were then subjected to heavy artillery fire.14 Three formations were ordered forward: 17th Division on the southern sector against X Corps; 236th Division against I ANZAC Corps; and 4th Bavarian Division along the front of V Corps.15
Captain Caspari (II Battalion, 75 Infantry Regiment) was in 17th Division and had been directed to move towards the break-in south of Polygon Wood. His description of how they tried (and failed) to intervene was typical of what happened on that grim afternoon. They received news of the renewed attack at 10.30 a.m. and were immediately ordered forward, but they could only pick their way ‘tortuously and painfully’ because of the heavy drumfire. With communications torn to pieces, it was 1 p.m. before they were in their assembly positions, ready to go forward. Their advance was something out of a nightmare:
Everywhere the explosions of high explosive shells and the effect of smoke shells was reducing visibility, making breathing difficult and stinging our eyes. It was impossible to follow a set route, or to maintain separation between individuals or groups of men. Commanders just led their men stumbling in a westerly direction through the roaring grey-black wall of the barrage, which was periodically lit up with flashes. Watching out for the places where the fire was falling most densely, attempts were made to pass weaker points, skirting wired-off battery positions, swamps and hedgerows, looking for crossing points across swollen streams.