TWO
France
and Fritz

Private Lynch was admitted to hospital with the mumps on the day he landed in Plymouth, and he remained there for 11 days. Though no mention is made of his sickness and medical treatment in Somme Mud, we know that on 23 October he was released and returned to the 12th Training Battalion camp at Rollestone to begin his training.

After the AIF had moved from Egypt, it had established a number of training camps in southern England, 15 to 30 kilometres from Salisbury, some within sight of Stonehenge. Initially the 1st Division had established a divisional training base at Perham Down. They were followed by the 2nd and 4th divisions, who established themselves at Rollestone, while the 5th Division had their base at Larkhill. These camps were part of Southern Command and came under the control of General Sir Henry Sclater, an officer of the British regular army renowned for firmly laying down War Office regulations about the fitness standards and training of men about to be sent to the front.

While Lynch was training in England, weekly reports were coming in as to the exact number of reinforcements needed to replenish depleted battalions in France. Losses to battalions came not only from those killed, wounded and captured but also from those evacuated due to sickness, those who were sent to attend specialist training and from those transferred to other units. Reinforcements came from the men who had been trained in the AIF divisional camps around Salisbury, generally men fresh from Australia and new to France and the war, or from those returning to the front.

Since being involved in the heavy fighting between the Windmill and Mouquet Farm, just to the northeast of Pozières, in August 1916, the 45th Battalion had travelled north into Belgium, to the area west of Ypres. Then they had gone into the line at Ridgewood near Vierstraat to relieve the Canadians and from there on to Bois Carré to relieve the Australian 47th Battalion.

On 28 October, they and all the other Australians serving in France had voted in Prime Minister Billy Hughes's first conscription referendum. Australian recruitment numbers were down from 36,600 in July 1915 to 6,170 in July 1916 and something desperately needed to be done to keep battalions at full strength. Prime Minister Billy Hughes had spent the early part of 1916 in England, where he had seen their conscription system in practice. Though conscription was politically unattractive to many of Hughes's Labor ministers, some of whom resigned rather than support him, he decided to put the idea of compulsory military service to the people of Australia and the troops overseas through a plebiscite.

All Australian troops at this time in the war were volunteers. There was a strong sense of pride in fighting for king and country without being conscripted as this, they believed, would change and devalue their sacrifice and contribution. There was also a strong feeling that only men who were prepared voluntarily to enter this hellish world of gas, mud, shelling and death should be there – a surprisingly sensitive thought given that more reinforcements from Australia in the line would have relieved their position and assisted their effort.

The issue divided the nation and split communities and families, and after the votes were counted, the 'no' vote prevailed by a narrow majority. The troops overseas voted in favour of conscription: 72,000 votes to 59,000. In Australia, the failure of the first conscription referendum had been compounded by low recruitment numbers and a general apathy among potential volunteers. The Prime Minister was, as a result, expelled from the Labor Party and, with four loyal ministers and 19 backbenchers, formed a new party, the National Labor Party, later known as the Nationalist Party. The raising of further troops would depend solely upon volunteers, of which there were only 5,055 in November 1916. The following month, total recruitment across Australia would be only 2,617 men.

Back in the training camps near Salisbury, Lynch was preparing to leave. He made the three-hour journey by train to the southeast coast of England, where he left the port town of Folkestone on 21 December 1916 on the ferry Princess Clementine, escorted across the Channel by warships.

Though only a three-hour trip, it was a potentially dangerous one, as slow-moving ferries were tempting targets to German U-boats. It was also frequently a rough voyage. The journey across the choppy English Channel made many men sick, though probably as much from nerves as the sea itself. Little wonder Lynch had his character Nulla comment that the 'ship reeks with the sour stench of seasickness'.

On arrival in Boulogne, France, Lynch travelled by train to the massive British base area at Étaples, about 25 kilometres south. Here there were depots for the five Australian divisions plus an Australian General Base Depot for other branches of the service, such as the Light Horse. There were also 16 British hospitals and a convalescent depot, which collectively could accommodate 22,000 soldiers at any time. Nearby was the Étaples Military Cemetery, where today among the 11,000 graves are those of 461 Australians.

Men new to France and the front were subject to further tests, medicals and training and a 'final touch-up before facing the foe', as Nulla puts it. Within the training camp at Étaples was the famous 'Bull Ring', a circular course of training stations that had a reputation for being rigorous and harsh and overseen by bullying British NCOs – men not popular with the Australians. Training aimed to prepare the men for the practical side of fighting and for surviving the frontline trenches, and included bayonet practice drill, trench warfare, 'hop-overs' (leaving the trench and going 'over the top' for an attack), grenade throwing and the use of gas masks.

The days were long and hard and, for some, a frustrating delay, but if Lynch's account in Somme Mud is any indication, the men of the fourth reinforcement had lost none of their sense of humour or anti-authoritarian spirit. Nulla's mates get their own back on the training staff, making a fool of, and even injuring, the sergeant whose unfortunate job it is to teach them bayonet fighting. But at night they hear the faint rumble of the guns on the front, 80 kilometres away, which must have been sobering. Nulla reflects, 'We were not very interested as we know before we're much older we'll hear all the guns we'll ever want to hear.' [p. 16]

After 10 to 15 days' training at the Bull Ring and then being passed medically fit, men were sent to join their battalions. Some were sent to nursery areas on the frontline which ran from Armentières southeast towards Lille. Here the country was unsuitable for active operations and both the British and the Germans had a tacit agreement to let it remain quiet, which provided good experience for newly arrived troops.

Lynch was not to be so lucky. He was destined for Dernancourt – a 'scene of filth, mud and misery' according to his narrator, Nulla – and then the far-from-quiet Gueudecourt. It is likely Lynch's journey from Boulogne to the front was similar to the one he describes in Somme Mud, and that after about ten days' training at the Bull Ring he had three days' travel, stopping in a couple of villages on the way.

In Somme Mud, Nulla tells us:

For two days we journey slowly towards the Somme. The train stops at night in pouring rain and after marching the wrong way, we arrive just after daybreak at the tumble-down village of Brucamps where our own battalion is billeted. [p. 20]

Going by the battalion's published history, Lynch's battalion was in fact probably not at Brucamps. Although there is a brief reference to 100 reinforcements joining the battalion there in October 1916, Private Lynch did not land in France until 21 December, when the battalion was north of Amiens at Flesselles, about 22 kilometres closer to the frontline. This is one of very few instances in the book where the life of Private Lynch and his character Nulla diverges and was probably a simple mistake in dates.

Australian troops were often billeted in French farms and houses well behind the line. Nulla describes a typical farm layout that has been used to accommodate Australian soldiers.

Our platoon is in a big shed where fowls once camped before the Australians, part of a large farmhouse. The centre is a great, smelly manure pit round which the buildings form a quadrangle. On one side is the residence, whilst barns, stables and sheds complete the other three sides. The pit is fed with every bit of manure dropped on the farm; rotten vegetables, waste straw, potato peelings, feathers and rubbish of all sorts go into it, to be used by the farmer as fertiliser. [p. 20]

In France today you can still see farms laid out this way – the barn, sheds and storage areas forming the four sides of a quadrangle. Sometimes entry is through an arched doorway to a paved or cobbled courtyard area. During the First World War, French farmers were not only paid for billeting Allied troops, but for any food they provided like eggs, milk or fresh vegetables. They were also compensated for anything 'used' or stolen by the troops during their stay. Nulla mentions a number of times how French farmers would claim inflated losses:

Our billet tonight is a disused pigsty, so we 'rat' a lot of hay from a shed to sleep on. The old podgy Froggie farmer pretends not to see us taking the hay. We remark upon this, but a wise-head tells us, 'He sees all right, the lousy cow, but he won't complain for fear that we'll be made [to] put it back. He'll wait till we're moving out tomorrow and then kick up a shindy and get paid for three times the amount we've used. All these Frogs do that.' [p. 20]

These claims were rarely contested or disputed by the Allied authorities, but paid for through the Anglo-French compensation system.

Thanks to an especially wet autumn, the battlefields and trenches had turned to slimy mud, slowing down the Somme offensive. The Allies were held back by logistical problems, too. Late in October 1916, the vital Mametz–Fricourt road was forced to close because heavy military traffic had badly damaged it. Surrounding roads were blocked, too, and much-needed supplies could not get to the front. Those left waiting on the roads were enticing targets for German artillery or air attack. Ambulances took hours to travel a few miles, men died in need of medical help and there were fears that the troops on the frontline might run out of food. As a consequence, repairing the roads became a first priority, for without roads to deliver supplies to the front, the men there would have no chance of rebuilding the frontline trenches.

At Longueval in early November, an attack by a number of battalions even looked in jeopardy because of transport problems. Because the men had been constantly removing the mud from the trenches, they had become too deep to perform the usual 'hop-over', so scaling ladders, which the troops would use to climb out of the trenches, were needed before the attack could take place. But as the time of the attack drew near, few ladders had made their way to the front. Field ambulance horses and sledges designed to take the wounded from the battlefield had to be requisitioned to fetch them. Such a small thing as 600 scaling ladders could ruin the timing of an attack, costing lives.

The main Australian operational area was around Flers, to the east of Pozières and just south of Gueudecourt; a number of futile attacks around Flers were launched in November, but as winter approached, the offensive was halted. On 18 November, the Battle of the Somme came to an end. The Germans fell back from Verdun, thanks to successful French counter-offensives. Both the French and the Germans had appalling casualties at Verdun, but in the end this frightful battle had achieved very little for either side. French casualties alone numbered 377,000 men, while British casualties on the Somme numbered some 432,000. The Germans had an estimated 567,000 casualties on the two fronts and, in most places, the frontlines had changed very little.

The men of the 45th Battalion were active in their patrolling at night, but the German artillery was alert to this. Their unit history says that on 27 November 1916, one officer and seven men were killed and one officer and 28 men of other ranks were wounded – a lot of good men. After this time in the line near Gueudecourt, they moved back to New Carlton camp near Bazentin, 10 kilometres behind the line. The 45th then established themselves at Flesselles, north of Amiens, where they enjoyed Christmas and were granted leave to visit the city. Though far from the warmth of an Australian summer, the men of the 45th Battalion enjoyed a quiet Christmas behind the lines. The men's ordinary food ration was supplemented 'by the purchase of certain delicacies', according to the battalion history, and each man received a parcel from the battalion Comforts Fund, including a pipe and tobacco, cigarettes, socks and sweets. The battalion history goes on to say: 'These simple gifts had a special significance to soldiers fighting thousands of miles away from their own folk and they were valued because they were packed with loving care and the best of good wishes.'¹

In Australia, the hot, dry summer was in great contrast to the northern winter. Christmas for many families was a sombre affair with celebrations and the usual ceremony far from their minds. Of more concern were their menfolk, how they were faring; if indeed they were still alive. On 1 January 1917, daylight saving was introduced under Commonwealth legislation as a wartime fuel-saving measure which, due to wartime emergency regulations, was binding on all the states.

In early January 1917, the 45th Battalion were met by their reinforcements, including Private Lynch, and marched to Dernancourt. There, Nulla and his mates are like visitors at first, inspecting 'souvenirs' in chalky old trenches, seeing their first dead man, wandering off to look at an anti-aircraft battery, before they 'make off for fresh excitement'. Nulla watches the firing of the big guns and speaks to the gunners about their targets. The gunners explain that each gun, when not firing on a specific target, is ranged on the Australian SOS line – an area in front of the Australian frontline in no-man's-land and extending back into the German positions. Should there be a surprise attack upon the Australian line, the defending troops would fire a coloured flare or series of coded flares so that the guns, already registered on the likely area of attack, could be quickly brought into action. The Germans did the same and many times in Somme Mud we read of German SOS flares being fired once any disturbance was detected from the Australian front.

For Nulla and his mates, it is only when they see the first casualties come in, 'the mud-stained, blood-sodden bandages and the frail white faces', that reality begins to sink in. But there is no time for pondering: that afternoon they move off for the frontline.

Moving towards the front 'through absolutely unbelievable conditions', Nulla passes through Bernafay Wood:

On either side stretches a quagmire, a solid sea of slimy mud. The roads are few and narrow and only distinguished from the surrounding shell-ploughed mud by an unbroken edging of smashed motor cars, ambulances, guns, ammunition limbers and dead horses and mules. [pp. 22–23]

Bernafay Wood had been a British objective in the July 1916 offensive and was the scene of savage fighting. The Germans had set up well-sited machine-gun positions in the shattered wood and inflicted high casualties on the advancing British, but the wood was captured on 4 July. Today this wood, as with others in the immediate area like Delville Wood, Trones Wood and High Wood, shows the scars of the heavy shelling and fighting during the First World War.

This is the same across many of the old battlefield areas of France and Belgium. After the war, the trees grew back, creating woodlands once more, but nobody cleaned up the area and filled in the shell-holes. And so today, once you walk into the tree line, the ground is rough and churned up and both the trench-lines and the shell-holes are clearly visible, though overgrown with blackberry bushes and other weeds. The boundaries, however, remain virtually the same as they were for hundreds of years before 1914.

The men press on. Nulla notes that bogged vehicles are being dug out and 'patches of corduroy are being placed over the worst places' in the road, referring to the common practice during the First World War of laying down logs side by side to make a roadway. The existing roads had not been built to take the enormous amount of traffic and the heavy weight of gun limbers (carts for guns and ammunition) and supply wagons. They were farm tracks or narrow country laneways between villages, unsealed and with no firm foundation or base. For the men stumbling forward, they were now covered in slippery logs or lengths of sawn timber; broken, irregular and hazardous underfoot. Men slipped and twisted their ankles, slid between the logs or stumbled on exposed roots covered by a layer of sticky mud.

Because of the accuracy of the German artillery, these roads were continually under fire, so that the sides of the road were littered with upturned wagons, dead horses, smashed timber and the stores and supplies that had been spilt from shell-shattered wagons. Among this debris would have been the bodies of men and horses, mud-splattered and bloated and left where they had fallen.

Nulla trudges through mud, lies in the mud in the rain with the other men for over an hour and then, when darkness falls, files on towards the frontline. He and his mates want to shelter from enemy shelling while the experienced soldiers, who have 'been through Gallipoli, Fleurbaix and Pozières', seem to barely heed it. The young reinforcements do their best to hide their fear. And then comes the 'strangled scream and the rushing air of an approaching shell' and Nulla witnesses his first death in battle, before he has even made it to the frontline.

With a mighty roar the shell explodes spouting flame and phosphorus fumes everywhere. Mud is showered over everyone as pieces of shell fly over our prone bodies. A man five feet ahead of me is sobbing – queer, panting, gasping sobs. He bends his head towards his stomach just twice and is still ... We've had our baptism of fire, seen our first man killed, right amongst us, and hurry on before another shell comes. [p.. 23]

Finally they reach the front. We know from the battalion history that, just as in Somme Mud, at the frontline the 45th Battalion took over the 46th Battalion's trenches – Grease Trench and Goodwin's Trench – where the men were up to their knees in mud. These trenches were part of a complex of trenches including Lard Trench, Petrol Lane, Whale Trench and Oily Lane, near Gueudecourt to the northeast of Pozières. Trenches were given names in various ways. Sometimes it was after an officer who commanded a section of trench or ordered it be dug. At other times a theme was used, such as the trench system northwest of Gueudecourt, which was named after various grain crops. Hence you have Barley, Wheat and Malt Trench. Sometimes places were named after popular landmarks such as Hyde Park Corner and Piccadilly in Ploegsteert Wood, and Collins Street in Gueudecourt.

Gueudecourt was the scene of heavy fighting for the Australians and the 45th Battalion until early April, when they moved north to Bullecourt. The British front at this time was trying to continue the push in a northeasterly direction and Dominion forces were everywhere in this part of the line. The South Africans had suffered badly at Delville Wood just to the south and the New Zealanders had a similarly costly experience at nearby Longueval.

Gueudecourt is today a typically sleepy French village surrounded by green fields and quaint little farms. One place easily identified on the outskirts of the village is Fritz's Folly, which still remains a sunken road. The stark black and white photographs of Fritz's Folly show a desolate landscape bare of trees, but you can make out the snaking lane and the high ground occupied by the Germans a kilometre in the rear.

Also near Gueudecourt is what is known on the trench maps of the time as 'Cheese Road'. This too is a sunken road which starts a kilometre out of the village near the AIF Burial Ground, Grass Lane. This cemetery was in dead ground, well out of sight of German artillery observers, and was the location of an Australian Field Dressing station in 1916 and 1917. Men who died while receiving treatment were buried there. Naturally there are a number of men from the 45th Battalion interred there, such as Private Walter Leo Lussick, a New Zealand-born member of the battalion who died aged 20 on 19 January 1917. Like Private Lynch, he had enlisted in Bathurst in February 1916 and had arrived in the third reinforcement of the battalion.

Nearby are the graves of two other 45th Battalion soldiers who died on the same day – 6 August 1916 – fighting near Pozières. The first is of another Bathurst boy, Spencer John Letcher, an apprentice painter. He had enlisted in October 1915 and had sailed as part of a reinforcement for the newly formed 45th Battalion then in camp at Tel-el-Kebir in Egypt. From there he had sailed on the Kinfauns Castle to Marseilles, arriving in early June 1916 and, like so many others, took the train north to the battlefields. After his death, his personal effects were sent to his father and comprised '2 wallets, belt, note book, cigarette case, letters, gospel, tracts'.

In the same cemetery is the grave of Lance Corporal John Stewart Mulholland, aged 33, who was also killed in action on 6 August 1917. He was born in New Zealand, landed at Gallipoli five days after the initial landing and also sailed to Marseilles on the Kinfauns Castle. He was killed during the fighting around Flers and Gueudecourt in early 1917.

Private Lynch's luck held and his war continued. On his first night in the line in Grease Trench, his character Nulla experiences the German heavy mortars known as minenwerfers ('mine throwers') as they bombard the trench, making the ground shake. These weapons came in a range of calibres, but the most common was the 'light' minenwerfer, which fired a 7.6-centimetre-calibre explosive-filled projectile weighing 4.5 kilograms. It had a range of up to 1,300 metres but was very effective in close trench fighting because it could send a projectile high into the air so that it dropped on the Allies' line only 300 metres away, demolishing a section of trench. Though they were heavy and difficult to handle in muddy conditions, they were used extensively from the beginning of the war. At the armistice, there were 10,000 still in service.

While the Germans had developed the minenwerfers before the outbreak of the war, the British were slow to introduce an equivalent. The British engineer Wilfred Scott-Stokes set to work designing a 3-inch mortar, however, the first Stokes mortar did not see active service until September 1916.

While in the frontline at Grease Trench, Private Lynch was part of a wiring party sent out at night to strengthen the barbed wire defences in front of their position. This involved screwing in iron pickets, twisted iron stakes (also known as a 'screw picket') to act as a post onto which the wire was secured. This was dangerous work in no-man's-land in front of the Australian trenches and close to the German frontline. As Nulla tells us:

No one speaks as everyone knows that half a dozen machine-guns are on the enemy parapet just a hundred yards away. Quietly out, our footsteps sound like thunder to our excited minds. [p. 24]

At this time, screw pickets were made in Sweden and the company supplied both the German and Allied armies. Today in France and Belgium, you can still see First World War screw pickets being used by farmers to hold up fences to keep in their cows. You can also find them dumped with other rusty war detritus.

As Nulla recounts, his half hour with the wiring party and coming under fire did more to accustom him to the frontline than a week standing in the mud. He and his mates had been blooded. They were not quite the same fresh-faced, carefree larrikins who steamed across from Australia on the Wiltshire. We can only imagine that Private Lynch, like so many Australian soldiers, experienced a similar dramatic change on entering the frontline.

For almost the next three years, Lynch would go through a cycle of spending a few days in the frontline, or in support or reserve lines, then being marched out to a rest area for a spell or to a hospital for treatment of his wounds, only to then return to the frontline to face death and the horrors of battle once again. Just like his narrator, Nulla, Private Lynch's war was to centre for months on a small area no bigger than 10 or 12 kilometres by about 6 kilometres across; from Gueudecourt in the north, to the divisional baths in Fricourt further south. From early January until the move north in April 1917, he was never far from the sounds of war and, for most of this time, within artillery range of the heavier German guns.