Eyewitness (5 page)

A rubber dollie,

But when I told her

I loved a – ’

On the left bombing was occurring. We heard the fragments wailing like Banshees in the air, and listened, thinking it was the cry of the wounded. A machine-gun rattled somewhere, and suddenly stopped –

‘But when I told her

I loved a soldier, – ’

The voice rose an octave –

‘She would not buy me

A rub – ’

There was another burst of fire and the singing ceased.

Someone cried continually, ‘Bill, Bill,’ all that night, but Bill did not answer. Between the salvos of shells we heard him again and again till dawn. Then that voice also was stilled.

A few of the 57
^th
and 58
^th
were engaged in rushing ammunition to the front-line. All the rest were bringing in wounded. By dawn, in spite of strenuous labours, only half the wounded and a few of the dead had been brought in. For five nights this work was unremitting. Parties went out under fire in broad daylight. Some of the wounded were never found. A few crawled in three weeks later, with shattered limbs and maggoty wounds. They had hidden from our parties, fearful lest they might be Huns, swooning often, uncertain which was our trench and which the German, drinking putrid shell-hole water, foraging by night for food among the dead, lying low by day.

All night the 8
^th
and 14
^th
Brigades were fighting for their lives, almost surrounded, up to their breasts in the water with which the enemy had flooded their trench. In the morning they extricated themselves with immense difficulty and heavy loss, and withdrew through saps rushed forward from our line by the Fifth Pioneers. The next night some, after wandering lost in enemy country, returned by immense good luck and after astounding adventures.

For three days hundreds of wounded lay uncomplaining in their torment, in our line. The survivors were few by comparison with the dead. It was an hour’s hard work for four men to carry one to safety. All joined in the task. The very safety of the line was imperilled by the number of men engaged in this merciful duty. We carried till the mind refused its task and limbs sagged, and always there were hundreds for whom each minute decreased the chances of life. Release came to very many of the stricken. We left the hopeless cases undisturbed for the sake of those whom the surgeons could save.

For days an officer, blind and demented, wandered near the German lines, never fired on, but used as a decoy to attract his friends to their death. These were shot while attempting to reach him. He wandered up and down the line till he died, avoiding friend and foe alike.

This charge received a recognition from the enemy which reasons of state denied from our own side. A noble act here lights up the murky record of the German Army. Two gallant enemies carried a wounded Australian to our parapet, stood at the salute, then turned and walked away. They unfortunately neglected to secure a safe conduct, and were shot, to the sincere regret of every Australian there, by someone in the next bay, who, owing to the shape of the line and the direction they had come, was in ignorance of their errand.

The remnants of the 57
^th
and 58
^th
held the front-line system for a further 50 days, making 59 in all, without relief.

And the sandbags were splashed with red, and red were the fire steps, the duckboards, the bays. And the stench of stagnant pools of the blood of heroes is in our nostrils even now.

E.J. Rule

Captain Edgar Rule served with the 14
^th
Battalion – Jacka’s Mob – through the war. He was awarded the Military Medal in 1916 at Mouquet Farm, not far from the Windmill at Pozières – where Australia’s popular hero of the war, Albert Jacka, won a Military Cross. Rule was also awarded the MC in 1917.

Jacka had won Australia’s first Victoria Cross at Gallipoli, where he performed ‘the most dramatic and effective act of individual audacity in the history of the A.I.F.’, according to Charles Bean. Bean thought the Windmill stunt, and one at Bullecourt in 1917, should also have earned him the VC.

There were two costly battles at Bullecourt. At dawn of April 11th, 1917, after a night lying in the snow, the Australians were ordered to attack the Hindenburg Line without the aid of promised tanks. The 4th Brigade suffered 2339 casualties from 3000 men sent into battle; the 12th Brigade 950 from 2000. The battle was later used by the British staff as a model of failed planning.

The second battle, on May 3rd–17th, 1917, was slightly better organised. The 2nd Division was to take the German positions in the village of Bullecourt, but even with better planning, casualties were heavy, totalling over 10,000 for the two engagements. Edgar Rule was there, quietly observing and recording.

He was born in Cobar in 1886, was orphaned early in life and spent time working at a variety of occupations around the world, including the construction of the Panama Canal. He later became an orchardist near Shepparton, and enlisted as a private in June 1915.

He was sent as a reinforcement in the 14th Battalion at Gallipoli, and saw action and promotion through the battles at Armentières, Pozières, Mouquet Farm, Bullecourt, Messines and Amiens.

Captain Rule MM MC died in 1958.
Jacka’s Mob
was published in 1933, with a new edition in 1999.

*

We went straight out along the road in the direction of Vaulx- Vraucourt, and after about an hour’s good tramping we came to a lot of tents beside the road. Here we learnt that the whole brigade had moved very recently, and these people were the thirty-three and a third per cent who were now always left out when a battalion went into battle, so as to help reform it when it came out. Captain Macdermid was in charge of the 14
^th
Battalion’s section in that camp, and on my reporting to him he told me to attach myself to him for the time being. There were four lines of tents in all, each line representing one battalion in the brigade. C.Q.M.S. Granigan was at the wagon-lines, and as soon as he saw me he called me all the silly — he could think of for coming back just then, in face of a killing-off. Stunt or no stunt, I was so pleased to get back that it never worried me at all. We spent the night in the tents, and next day put up some shelters to make more room. That evening, 9 April, before we crawled in, we received orders to leave at 2 a.m. next morning for the line. The 14
^th
Battalion’s section was the only one concerned – the other three battalions never called for their men, though why we were called and not they, I’ve never heard. At 2 a.m. we got moving along the road and settled down to a couple of hours’ steady march. All packs were being sent forward also; this looked as if we were preparing to drive the Huns for miles. The reason for all this was that in the south General Nivelle, the French Commander-in-Chief, was about to attack the Huns near Soissons and at Rheims and finish the war; as a matter of fact, after bitter fighting in which he captured 20,000 prisoners, he came a great crash. But anyway, the part of the British in the whole show was to make a big attack in the north to draw off the enemy’s reserve troops from the French. This big British attack began on 9 April, and, a little to the northward of us, Vimy Ridge had been taken by the Canadians, and the British had made a big advance from Arras. Although we were so close to all this fighting, we were in no position to help, as the Hun had only just reached his Hindenburg Line, which was strongly wired, and we were not nearly ready to tackle such formidable defences. Our railway was miles behind us, and our artillery was very feeble. All main roads were mined at awkward places, and these conditions held up the bringing forward of the artillery and ammunition. At this particular time our newspapers were making a great song about our advance from the Somme battlefield and the enemy’s ‘discomfiture’ but they gave people a totally false impression. True, he had given up ground, but the way he made us pay for it put him on the credit side of the account. In spite of the difficulties, however, we had suddenly been ordered to attack on 10 April with the object: first, of breaking the Hindenburg Line at Bullecourt and Riencourt; second, of allowing the cavalry to sweep up behind the Hindenburg Line to meet the British farther north and capture all the German artillery and stores. A couple of miles south of Riencourt was the town of Queant, and it was at this place that the Hindenburg Line joined with the Wotan Line, the second German defence, lying behind the Hindenburg Line. We were to attack near the junction of the two. As a rule, nearly all schemes of military operations look nice on paper, no matter how rotten they are, but this one was an exception; at any rate, all our Australian chiefs were opposed to it. Maybe it looked all right to General Gough, of whose army we formed part, but he took no notice of General Birdwood and the rest of the Aussie generals when they implored him to change the scheme and give the men a chance. Later, out at Mametz camp, I heard both General Birdwood and General Brand apologise to the men who were left, and with tears in their eyes tell them how they had done everything in their power to have the plan altered, but without success. The plan to which our generals objected was that of attacking the Hindenburg Line. Our artillery was so weak that it could not be relied on to give much support but General Gough’s plan was to make up for the absence of artillery by giving us about a dozen tanks. We had never acted with tanks before, nor had the tanks ever been used in the manner proposed. They were to advance ahead of the infantry and crush flat belts of wire; that is to say, they would take the place of the artillery barrage, and the infantry were to follow in their track and gain the enemy trenches without a shot being fired on those trenches by our artillery. All the artillery was told off to fire on the German batteries, or cover us in the objective we were ultimately intended to reach, away beyond Riencourt.

Needless to say, none of our party knew all this at the time. After passing through the village of Vaulx, where we saw a few heavy guns occasionally firing, we took a track that had once been a railroad, and this led us straight down Death Valley to Noreuil. Along the gully were scattered batteries of eighteen-pounders. By this time it was just peeping day, and we were surprised to see three or four tanks waddling about. Our office received orders to halt and wait for further orders, and when broad daylight came men began to stream back from the front-line through Noreuil and into the gully. We had very hazy ideas as to what was going on, but later we found out. This was the famous ‘buckshee’ stunt of Bullecourt. The troops had been lying out ready to attack, and the reason for the retirement, which we were watching, was that the tanks, on which so much depended, had not arrived on the tape, and the stunt had to be cancelled. The zero time was just a little before daylight, and when it came, it found the whole force in sunken roads and bits of trenches in which at daylight they would be in full view of the Hun. We were a little too far away for him to hurt us much with small arms fire. Just after daybreak word came for all the attacking force to retire to the reserve line to await further orders. There being no communication trenches, the only thing to do was to go over the open. Snow was falling heavily at that moment, but the Germans from some part of their lines cannot have failed to observe the movement – thousands of men getting up out of trenches and sunken roads, and walking off leisurely towards the rear. To them it must have looked like the children of Israel going over the desert. The Hun artillery opened, but, more by good luck than good management on our part, did very little damage. Anyway, through the tanks’ failure, our hand was exposed, and it seemed to us as simple as ABC for the enemy to detect what we were up to. He had only to notice the flanks of that migration and he would discover the precise front of our attack; and it would be a simple matter to estimate the number of men employed. All during the day the Hun remained quite normal, doubtless to pull the wool over our eyes. But under cover of this he must have crammed his trenches full of men and machine-guns and laid in wait for our next move. During the day my party worked on a dugout, and in the afternoon managed to get a bit of a nap. C Company of the 14
^th
were holding the line, so that did not see any of the boys who had been in the stunt. In the afternoon we (the thirty-three and a third per cent who were not to be in the fight) received orders to go on different fatigues as soon as it was dark. Mine was to take up the food and rations to the front-lines. During the day more tanks came in, and were covered over with canvas.

As soon as dusk came on, we started off on our fatigues. I took my party and went up through Noreuil into a sunken road where battalion headquarters and our cookers were. Here we loaded up, and with the help of a guide set off for the line. It was a miserable night – it seemed as if it were trying to snow, rain and hail all at once and the walking underfoot was not good. On the way up we had a couple of rows; some of the bigger men were going far too quickly for the little fellows, and it was only after me calling them a windy lot that they steadied down a bit. Halfway I saw a trench running across a road and one solitary figure of an officer standing on the parapet gazing away out in front towards the Hun country. He appeared to be wrapped in thought, and I’ve often wondered if he had received a warning that this was to be his last night on earth. There was no mistaking that figure – anybody in the 14
^th
would have picked him anywhere. I left my party and went over towards him asking, ‘Is that you, Captain Williamson?’ He seemed to shake himself and appeared pleased to see me. I asked him if he wanted me, and he told me to report to him prior to going over, and myself to stay by him. Then he told me what the plans were, and that – after the breakthrough, and when the cavalry were going through – C Company was to be the advance-guard for the 4
^th
Brigade. When I left him he relapsed into his previous line of thought. What can I place on these pages as a record of him? Practically nothing in the way of official recognition. He wore no decorations, his name had never even appeared as ‘mentioned in despatches’. His manly dignity prevented any undesirable results of familiarity, but as Lofty he was known far and wide in the brigade. He stood six feet in his socks and was as handsome as a Greek god. He was the men’s ideal of what a man should be, and to know him was to love him. Our old padre, in referring to Lofty and Fred Stanton – two of our grand company commanders – at a memorial service later on, used these words: ‘Such boys to be such men!’ After I’d taken the rations to the line, where I saw many of my old pals and had a word with them, took the party back to wait on the cooks for the final lot of cocoa that was to be given out just prior to going over. Before I left, Lieutenant McQuiggan told me to inform Colonel Peck that one of our guns was firing short and was endangering the men’s lives in one of his posts. When I crawled into the little place where the C.O. was, I found him having a conference with his four company commanders. They were all huddled together in this little space, and he was having his final talk with them. In his short, sharp manner he was giving orders, and when he asked for my message he paid very little attention to it, passing it on to someone else to attend to. Before or since, we’ve never had such a combination of company commanders. It was impossible to get better anywhere – Bob Orr, Fred Stanton, Lofty Williamson and Wadsworth. At this time our battalion had reached one of the high-water marks in its history, and there may have been some battalions as good, but there were none better.

Having an hour or so to wait before taking up our next lot of food, we hung about killing time. I had a yarn with ‘Sarto’ Anderson and a few old bombers, and from them I learnt that the bombers had been broken up, the pick of the men being put into the intelligence staff under Captain Jacka. Their duty this night was to guide up to the tape all the tanks that were going over, and to see that they understood where to go when once the show opened. As the tanks are notorious ‘crab drawers’ (centres of attraction for shell-fire), these boys were not in love with the job altogether, though they were too good to think of growling about it. The tanks were thus given the very best men in our battalion to assist them.

Earlier in the night, as Jacka and Bradley (16
^th
) were out in no-man’s- land attending to their duty of laying the jumping-off tapes, they were surprised to see a couple of Huns approaching. Jacka and his partner sneaked around to the rear of them, and before the Huns knew what had happened Jacka was covering them with his revolver. One of the Huns started to squeal and kick up a fuss. Jacka walked up to him and, pushing the revolver into his face, soon quietened him. Jacka hit him over the head with it and the fellow calmed down and the pair of them were taken to our C.O. Here the Hun officer complained very bitterly of his treatment, but, when our colonel told him he was a b— lucky man to be alive, he shut up. What information was gained from them, I don’t know. Jacka made a thorough examination of the Hun line. I’ve heard that he crawled through the Hun wire and saw for himself the density of machine-guns and men in their trenches. I afterwards heard him say that he told all the heads that it was pure murder to attempt the operation, and Jacka’s ideas about military affairs were well worth careful consideration. After the show was over he told me that he couldn’t help feeling a sort of satisfaction at seeing it pan out as it did, though for the men’s sake he was very sorry. For the good work he did at this stunt he received a bar to his M.C.