The winter of 1916–17 was the worst in living memory, and the snow and icy conditions were something totally new to the Australians. The earth froze for a time and, while this was easier to deal with than mud in terms of moving troops and supplies, it increased the risk of hypothermia for the men and made attacks impossible. Weapons and machinery froze because oil could no longer lubricate them; guns did not fire. Men took to loaves of bread with axes and slept in their boots, as they would be unable to pull them on in the morning because they would be frozen and brittle. The earth was rock hard, impossible to dig into.
The weather slowed operations and the mounting of offensives would have to wait until the spring thaw. The war had become one of survival against the elements more than the Germans. In Egypt, the British were preparing to push into the Sinai Peninsula to clear out Turkish forces before their planned invasion of Palestine, which had Jerusalem as its ultimate objective. In Mesopotamia, British forces were pushing towards Baghdad. On the Western Front, the Australian divisions were concentrated in a 5-kilometre front in an arc around Gueudecourt.
Lynch's first experience of the frontline had lasted an exhausting eight days, and following three weeks' rest at Mametz Camp, he returned with his battalion to the trenches near Gueudecourt. On 8 February they moved into the support positions in Gap and Switch Trench and relieved the 14th Battalion. Eight days later, they moved forward into the reserve trenches at Pilgrims Way, before moving into the frontline at Stormy Trench on 17 February.
It is in the village of Bazentin – by now just a 'pulverised brickyard' – that Somme Mud picks up the story. That night it starts to rain and, weighed down by heavy greatcoats, equipment, rations, ammunition and a wet blanket each, they march to the line. Nulla mentions that the guide who is to lead them to their positions calls to them when they reach 'the sunken road'. Sunken roads, which are still common in this area, are roadways that have, as a result of constant use over a long period, cut themselves into the landscape and hence appear 'sunken'. They may be a metre or more beneath the level of the surrounding countryside, often with steeply angled sides. Within the deeper sunken roads, men were able to burrow into the sides and make temporary shelters. Battalion headquarters, always somewhere just behind the frontline, were often situated in the protection of a sunken road, along with support units such as field kitchens, first aid posts and communication centres. Today they are popular with military archaeologists who, with the aid of metal detectors, often find interesting war relics in and around them. Many sunken roads have been widened to allow two lanes of traffic and their profile is very different from what it would have been in 1917.
Naturally, changeovers were done at night, but any sound quickly summoned an enemy barrage on the frontline and the support trenches, risking the lives of double the usual number of men, as one battalion left and the new one came in to replace them. If German intelligence received word of troop movements in and out, they became an attractive target for the gunners – men massing in narrow, unprotected trenches, with nowhere to run.
Nulla and the other men climb up out of the sunken road and walk across the mud to their guide, who is waiting for them in Eve Alley, a communication trench leading to the frontline. The trenches around Gueudecourt were in very poor condition, especially Eve Alley. The mud there was knee deep and the men preferred to walk in the open above the trench, exposing themselves to enemy fire, rather than struggle through the mud and become exhausted. Nulla himself does this, risking the German machine-gunners and snipers about 200 metres away. Conditions in the reserve lines were no better. According to Charles Bean, Gap and Switch Trenches, near Gueudecourt, were 'merely an open muddy drain in which men suffered almost as severely as in the frontline'.2 Looking at the open, undulating countryside today, so windblown and exposed, it is clear the men had little protection from the elements and it is easy to imagine how terribly cold they must have been.
This part of the frontline had been so heavily shelled that long sections of trench had been obliterated. Soldiers were manning shell craters and short sections of trench and there were gaps between their isolated posts. There was a large gap in the line between Lynch's 45th Battalion and the 48th Battalion some 100 metres away and this gap needed to be patrolled regularly during the night, with men from each battalion taking turns to make the dangerous trip between outposts.
One can imagine the fear of a man having to sneak out alone and make his way across 100 metres of muddy, shell-blasted battlefield at night with nothing to guide him but his sense of direction and rat-cunning. There were no landmarks in this flat, desolate landscape, no hills or even trees to act as reference points, just a trust in your sense of direction and a lot of courage. You were on your own. In the blackness, somewhere over there, you would have to find the Australian frontline, knowing that the men there were silent and alert, staring into no-man's-land, ever vigilant in case of a surprise attack. The chance of a nervous or trigger-happy sentry firing on you would prey on your mind, especially as you needed to crawl close to the Australian position before whispering the password, so that the Germans, a short distance away across no-man's-land, could not hear.
Over 100 metres, if a man strayed off course by only a few degrees, he could suddenly find himself in the enemy's trench or caught in their wire. As trenches were built and destroyed, saps were pushed forward and trenches weaved and twisted in all directions, it was very easy to take a wrong turn. Later in this chapter, Nulla's mate Yacob makes himself very unpopular both with the men and his officers when he nearly guides the relief troops into the enemy line – and from what history tells us about the trenches around Gueudecourt, particularly the nearby area of the 'Maze', this was easily done.
Nulla knows the danger involved in doing the first patrol, but is 'prompted more by nervousness than anything else'. He likens it to the nervousness descending over a batting side in a game of cricket, before the wickets begin to fall. It is a simple comparison that highlights the limited experiences of a 19-year-old. As he leaves he is warned about wandering too far and getting lost, because two nights before a man disappeared on a similar patrol. Had the man wandered into the German lines and been captured? No one had heard a shot. Had he been silently garrotted or stabbed somewhere out there in the darkness, bleeding and dying alone, his body sinking into the seemingly bottomless mud of a shell-hole, lost forever? How would his mother ever find his grave in a place like this?
Fortunately for Nulla, he doesn't allow this fear to be augmented by the story told by the 48th Battalion men that the Germans had a secret and silent killing weapon; a bow that fired steel arrows carrying an electric current. The tale went that it was this weapon that probably 'got the cove on Friday night'. Nulla seems, however, to have picked this for what it was – a joke for new men in the line. There would have been many new men who were not as educated or astute as Nulla, who would have believed this tale and worried unnecessarily about it.
Nulla does have a truly frightening experience on his first lone patrol, however, and must wonder for a moment whether he is about to disappear, just like that other Australian the night before. He is confronted by two Germans, lying in wait in a shell-hole. As flares light the sky, they appear to fly straight for him. He bounds sideways out of their line of attack, and as the flare dies so the Germans disappear back into the jagged landscape. Then, another flare and there they are, not 3 metres away, staring at him – dead. As Nulla puts it, 'No six live Fritz have ever given me the awful turn those two dead ones did.' [p. 30]
Lynch evokes the surreal nature of the battlefield at night, a time when imaginary danger can be even more terrifying than the real. Nulla needs his mates; sick from fear, he hurries to the trench. Over the course of Somme Mud, it becomes ever clearer to the reader just how crucial mateship was to the Australian war effort, and here Nulla says of the trench, 'It's not its protection so much as its companionship I seek ... At last I'm back with my mates.' [p. 30]
Undaunted, Nulla is soon volunteering again, this time to replace a runner who had to be evacuated. Radio communication would not arrive on the battlefield until 1918. Until then, the most efficient way to communicate was by field telephone, but the telephone lines were easily damaged during bombardments. More often than not, a man had to run with a message between the forward areas and the headquarters at the rear, or between units spread along the line. The runner took messages between officers and NCOs, sent reports back to headquarters and delivered requests for supplies and ammunition. (In the absence of a working telephone line, artillery bombardments were ordered not by runners but by the firing of coded signal flares in the air.) Runners also acted as guides, leading incoming units through the maze of trenches and over the blasted ground to their forward positions, leading exhausted units out of the line to the rear, or leading men carrying supplies.
On his first mission as a runner, Nulla is ordered to go down the trench and tell the men to prepare for rifle inspection in half an hour. He notes the casual attitude of his fellow men, some of whom have useless rifles caked with mud, others with their mechanisms frozen even though non-freezing oil has been issued. Some men would keep their rifles wrapped in protective material, and would therefore have 'yards of blanket to unwind before they can use [them]'. 'We're a pretty casual sort of army all right,' says Nulla, and continues:
The battalion has never lost a position to the enemy and much of their worth lies in this casual-going attitude. They'll stand amidst a tornado of screaming, crashing death and pump bullets into an enemy attack ... with the same casual air that they'll chuck, or fail to chuck, an off-handed salute to the British staff officers on the Strand. [p. 32]
The Australians' casual attitude may also partly explain the trench humour that Nulla finds hard to become accustomed to. Though every effort was made to bury the dead where they fell, bodies were often disinterred by shellfire and their remains scattered. Some killed in attacks lay where they were hit, especially if they fell between the lines, like some Australians who died at Fromelles who were not recovered until 1919. Nulla is aghast when he sees a dead man's hand – 'bleached white from exposure to the weather' – protruding from the side of the trench. No one knows whose hand it was. He speculates, 'Maybe a musician, a Fritz, as the trench had lately been captured... . Poor beggar!' [pp. 34–35] The hand has been used as an ashtray and a small cardboard sign reading 'Gib it bacca, boss' hangs from it by a piece of string. To young Nulla – and indeed, to us readers – it seems callous, but a corporal explains that humour is a survival technique for the seasoned soldiers. He advises Nulla that the best way to cope is to 'give up thinking too much' and to 'treat danger as a humorous episode'. Nulla seems to heed at least the latter advice, as he and his mates do come to see the lighter side of grim situations.
There are abundant wartime stories similar to the one about the fun being had with the unknown soldier's hand, and such things were common occurrences. Charles Bean mentions that troops were helped by looking upon hard times as a joke, and by dismissing and covering their inner feelings with wittiness and hilarity. There is much evidence of this tendency in their letters home, in poems and diaries and even in official dispatches and reports.
Nulla's next job as a runner is to guide into the line men carrying supplies designed to help the battalion cope with the cold, muddy conditions: sheepskin gloves and whale oil. By mid-January 1917, the snow had turned the battlefield into deep, clinging mud. Trench walls collapsed and the trench bottom was deep in mud, which went up to men's knees. Men tried to get some sleep standing with their backs against the wet, muddy trench wall but they would simply slide into the mud as soon as they nodded off. Just as Lynch describes in Somme Mud, some men would spread a blanket, hoping that this would keep them out of the mud, but their weight would soon cause it to sink and they were left with a cold, muddy blanket to keep them warm.
It was the depths of winter and the clinging mud was as cold as ice. This caused hypothermia, which itself sent many men to hospital; with the continual exposure of the men's feet to moisture, it also led to the dreaded 'trench foot'. This was a form of frostbite and was caused by bad circulation in the legs and feet due to the cold and damp. It was exacerbated by the men's tight boots and puttees. As with hypothermia, blood from the heart ceases to flow to these frozen extremities, the limbs freeze solid and frostbite begins to set in. Hands and ears could also become frostbitten, but this was far less common as they were clear of the mud and the men could cover them or rub them to keep the circulation going.
It was impossible to keep their feet out of the icy mud, though, so their circulation was reduced and if they did not receive treatment, gangrene would develop. Their feet would go black and the tissue would die. Nulla describes how 'huge water blisters appear and when these burst, a painful raw sore is left ... men ... endure great agony, can't stand and must be sent out of the line to have their feet amputated' [p. 33]. The problem was endemic to the Western Front and Bean noted on a tour in the frontline during the 1916–17 winter that 'practically all the men in many Australian battalions were suffering from trench feet at least in its incipient stages'.2
Attempts were made to prevent trench foot by encouraging the men to regularly massage whale oil into the skin of their feet and then put their boots back on, unlaced at the top. Instead of winding puttees tightly around their legs from the tops of their boots to below the knee, they were to wind sandbags loosely around their legs, to allow blood to circulate more freely. You can imagine how hard it would have been to put this advice into practice. Standing in a cramped trench, you would have to take one boot off while balancing on the other foot sunk deep in mud, then clean, dry and rub whale oil – which Nulla says has 'an awful smell like nothing we've smelt before' – into your foot. Then you would need to put on a clean, dry sock – not such an easy thing to find – and struggle to get your boot back on again, only to sink it straight back down into the mud. The officers who gave such instructions had little knowledge of conditions in a frontline trench and they compounded their ignorance by threatening military discipline on men who got trench foot. They ignorantly believed that it was a self-inflicted wound that should be punished harshly.
In an effort to keep the AIF warm, men were also issued with a pair of Australian sheepskin gloves with the wool inside and a long cord that passed around the neck to join the gloves together and prevent them getting lost. Though it is not mentioned in Somme Mud, woollen sheepskin vests were also distributed to men on the Western Front.
These sheepskin gloves and woollen vests were greatly appreciated by the men freezing in the frontline. At this stage of the war, the cold weather and mud were causing more casualties than the Germans. This, of course, required stretcher-bearers to carry them out, but carrying stretcher cases in deep mud was an exhausting and near impossible task in itself. Normally it took two men to carry a stretcher, but here you needed 10 or 12, who, after 50 metres, needed to be relieved. To get a soldier with trench foot to the rear, just 4 kilometres or so away, took 12 hours and many relay teams. There were cases of men with trench foot crawling back to aid posts to allow valuable stretchers to be used for wounded men more in need than themselves. However, casualty clearing stations were often exposed to the weather, so were wet and freezing and provided little shelter, comfort or any real relief for the wounded and sick.
After four nights and days, only half of Nulla's company remains holding the line. Even his corporal has been carried out with trench foot, and so Nulla is taken off runner duties and put in charge of his old post. A young and inexperienced soldier – albeit one who has already displayed courage and dependability – now finds himself commanding his fellow men. Similar scenes to this were being played out across the front as Australian battalions became severely depleted through illness. Soon after being told to take charge, Nulla is put to the test.
On 16 January 1917, while in the front line near Gueudecourt, the 45th Battalion was attacked by a German raiding party of approximately 50 men. The battalion diary states:
At 3 a.m., a raiding party of about 50 or 60 raided our trench at [grid reference given]. This party was repulsed suffering four OR's ['other ranks', meaning gunners, privates, drivers or sappers] killed and a number wounded. Our casualties as a result of the raid nil.3
Nulla makes mention of this raid in Somme Mud:
Suddenly the stillness of the night is broken by a whispered 'stand to' passed down the trench ... Men scramble up and line the parapet, eyes peering into the darkness ahead. [p. 38]
Later, we are told by Nulla:
The prisoners say about fifty men attempted the raid and that very few escaped unwounded, but most of the wounded crawled back to their own trench. [p. 40]
This is a typical case of an incident report being written up in the battalion history and then included in the narrative of Somme Mud, providing the historical accuracy that is evident throughout the book.