Great Battles in Australian History

Other books (selected) by Jonathan King
The Other Side of the Coin (1976)

Stop Laughing, This is Serious! (1978)
Waltzing Materialism: Attitudes that shaped Australia (1978)
A Cartoon History of Australia (1980)
Governor Philip Gidley King (with John King, 1982)
The First Fleet: Convict voyage that founded a nation (1982)
The First Settlement: Convict village that founded a nation (1985)
In the Beginning: The founding of Australia from the original documents (1986)
Voyage into History (1987)
Australias First Fleet: The original voyage and the re-enactment (1988)
Battle for the Bicentenary (1989)
The Man from Snowy River (1995)
Australias First Century: A pictorial history of Australia (2000)
Gallipoli Diaries: The Anzacs own story, day by day (2003)
Gallipoli: Our last man standing (2004)
Mary Bryant: Her life and escape from Botany Bay (2004)
Gallipolis Untold Stories (2005)
Historica (2006)
Western Front Diaries: The Anzacs own story, battle by battle (2008)
Great Moments in Australian History (2009)
To the 102,000 Australians who have died in wars
First published in 2011
Copyright Jonathan King 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968
(the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever
is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational
purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has
given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, London
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218
Email: info@allenandunwin.com
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available
from the National Library of Australia
www.trove.nla.gov.au
ISBN 978 1 74237 457 4
Internal design by Simon Paterson, Bookhouse
Set in 12/15 pt Garamond Premier Pro by Bookhouse, Sydney
Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
S
uccess in our battles depended first and
foremost upon the military proficiency of
the Australian private soldier and his glorious
spirit of heroism. War was a game for him and
he played for his side with enthusiasm.
The Australian Army was composed of the
flower of the youth of the continent. It was
a volunteer army; the only purely volunteer
army that fought in the Great War and it was
composed of men carefully selected according
to a high physical standard. They shared a
strong instinct for sport and adventure and
were also critical, intelligent men who had been
taught to think for themselves, judge things
independently and apply knowledge in practical ways.
Many of them were bushmen or country boys, adaptable
in the outdoors, where they knew how to make themselves
comfortable, especially in the trenches. To light a fire and
cook was the Australia soldiers natural instinct. Asheet of
corrugated iron, a batten or two and a few strands of wire
were enough to enable him to fabricate a home in which he
could live with ease.
In the Australian Army there was no officer caste, no
social distinctions in the whole force. All men shared a
sense of equality and were graded and rewarded according
to their individual merits. In short our Army was proof that
individualism is the best and not the worst foundation upon
which to build up a collective discipline. The glorious and
decisive victories of the Australian Army should re-echo
throughout the world and live forever in the history of our
homeland.
Lieutenant General Sir John Monash, Commander of the Australian Corps,
World War I
The Australian Victories in France in 1918 (first published, 1920)
By 1931, when Lieutenant
General Sir John Monash
headed the Melbourne
Anzac Day parade, the great
military strategist who had
commanded the Australian
army in World War I had
become the nations most
revered military leader.
[p. vi]
[take in pic: vi Bean Fewster Bookl PhotosonicFile0010]

vii
FOREWORD
O
n the walls surrounding the pool of reflection in the Australian
War Memorials commemorative area are listed the names of
all the campaigns in which Australia has taken part.
Behind the cloisters are the 102,000 names of those who didnt
return, listed column after column on the bronze panels of the Roll
of Honour.
In my time as Director I have escorted many overseas dignitaries
as they pass through the area on their way to the Hall of Memory.
The place invariably invokes a thoughtful solemnity, indeed awe.
However, from time to time a VIP will remark that with all the
campaigns on the walls one could be excused for thinking we were
a warlike race.
We know this is far from the truth. Australians are keenly aware
of the tragic impact of war. For a variety of reasons, invariably
seen as valid at the time, members of our defence force have been
committed overseas many times over the last century.
There is no doubt war has played a significant role in shaping
the Australian identity and how we see ourselves. We can debate
at length whether this was influenced by the views of Charles
Bean, World War I official historian, based on his admiration for
the mateship, determination and stoicism of those who faced the
challenges of coping with living in the Australian outback; the
one-time prevailing public school ethos of continuing to play the
game pluckily and loyally in war, once perceived as the greatest
game of all; or other sundry reasons.
Not only did the official
war correspondent Charles
Bean cover the great battles
fought by Australians
throughout World War I,
he then went on to write
the official history of the
Great War and establish the
Australian War Memorial
in Canberra. Portrait
by George Lambert.
GREAT BATTLES IN AUSTRALIAN HISTORY
viii
Australia was involved in an overseas war in South Africa at
the time of Federation. There were significant losses, for disease
was to take its toll on the force. However, it was the later landings
at Gallipoli that had a profound effect on the young nation. At
first there was an upsurge in national pride from Australias active
participation on the world stage: but then the casualty lists started
to come in. A close link with New Zealand forces gave rise to
the military acronym ANZAC, which quickly developed a deep
meaning that continues to this day. It conjures up thoughts of
individual bravery and sacrifice, resilience, high spirits and dogged
perseverance which have inspired members of the defence force
over the years up to the present day.
Prolific author Dr Jonathan King, in this his latest military
history book, gives an insight into the legend as it has evolved over
the years by recounting selected battles with an emphasis on personal
narratives. He also steps back into the period before Federation to
cover some of the conflicts in colonial times.
There is little analysis of politics, strategy and generalship in
this book. Rather, it unashamedly seeks to communicate with those
wanting to know more about Australias military history and to
engage them with relevant stories. Its intended audience is broad:
those wanting information and those wishing to learn more about
their identity as Australians.
With the approaching centenary of the Gallipoli campaign, the
carnage on the Western Front and the exploits of the Light Horse
in the Middle East, this book is most timely in meeting heightened
interest in our military heritage.
Steve Gower AO AO(Mil)
Canberra, May 2011
CONTENTS
Introduction xiii
Timeline xx
Vinegar Hill, 5 March 1804
The Irish Rebellion comes to Australia 1
Eureka Rebellion, 3 December 1854
The bloody battle for democratic rights 9
Boer War, 24 July 1900
Australias first Victoria Cross 21
Sydney battles Emden, 9 November 1914
The Royal Australian Navys first single-ship action and kill 29
Gallipoli landing, 25 April 1915
Australias greatest battle 38
The sinking of Australias Gallipoli submarine, 2530 April 1915
The sub that ran the gauntlet 52
Courtneys Post, 19 May 1915
Australian bastards repulse massive Turkish counterattack 64
Lone Pine, 610 August 1915
The greatest bastard in the world 73
The Nek, Gallipoli, 7 August 1915
Slaughter on the tennis court of death 83
Fromelles, 1920 July 1916
Australias blackest battle 93
Pozires, 23 July 1916
The worst killing field of all 101
First Bullecourt, 11 April 1917
Betrayed by British tanks 114
Second Bullecourt, 317 May 1917
The stoutest achievement of the Australian soldier in France 123
Messines, 7 June 1917
Tunnelling to victory 132
Polygon Wood, 26 September 1917
Premonitions of death at Polygon Wood 141
Broodseinde, 4 October 1917
Attacking forces meet head-on 149
Passchendaele, 12 October 1917
The bloody muddy hell of Passchendaele 157
Beersheba, 31 October 1917
Historys last successful cavalry charge 166
Villers-Bretonneux, 2425 April 1918
Anzac Day revenge 177
Hamel, 4 July 1918
Blooding the Yanks in a turning-point battle 186
Amiens, 8 August 1918
The black day of the German army 196
Mont St Quentin and Pronne, 31 August 3 September 1918
The greatest military achievement of the war 207
Montbrehain, 5 October 1918
Agonys end 216
Capturing Tobruk, 2122 January 1941
Capture of the Italian fortress 225
The siege of Tobruk, 11 April7 December 1941
Enter the Rats of Tobruk 233
German raider sinks HMAS Sydney, 19 November 1941
Australias worst naval disaster 243
The fall of Singapore, 815 February 1942
The worst defeat in British history 253
Battle for Darwin, 19 February 1942
Australias Pearl Harbor 266
Bombing of Broome and other towns, March 1942November 1943
Australia under attack 278
Sydney Harbour, 31 May 1942
Repelling Japanese midget subs 287
First El Alamein, 127 July 1942
Outfoxing the Desert Fox 298
Milne Bay, 25 August 7 September 1942
Japans abortive Gallipoli landing 307
Kokoda Track, 29 August 1942
Chocolate soldiers halt Japs at Isurava 317
Second El Alamein, 23 October5 November 1942
Chasing the Fox out of the desert 327
Balikpapan, 1 July 1945
Bigger and better than Gallipoli 337
Kapyong, 2324 April 1951
Halting the communist advance 347
Long Tan, 18 August 1966
Diggers defeat Viet Cong in a downpour 357
CoralBalmoral, 12 May6 June 1968
Australias biggest Vietnam battle 368
Iraq, 30 January 2005
Success in Mission Impossible 380
Afghanistan, 11 June 2010
Winning Victoria Crosses against the Taliban 389
Peacekeepers: A tribute 399
Battle casualties 406
The Victoria Cross 408
Army formations and ranks 413
Acknowledgements 415
Picture credits 417
Selected bibliography 419
[p. x]
[take in pic: Introduction, Two soldiers with donkey,
monkey Auths Coll Photosonic File0020]
xiii
INTRODUCTION
Nothing can alter what happened now; ANZAC stood
andstill stands for reckless valour in a good cause, for
enterprise, resourcefulness, fidelity, comradeship and
endurance that will never admit defeat.
Charles Bean, official war correspondent, 191418
T
his book was written to tell the story of Australias forty
greatest battles, all of them too important to be forgotten.
It was also written to tell the story of some of Australias greatest
heroes who fought in these battles, again all too important to forget.
Lest we forget, indeed.
And those heroes in these battles are worth reading about
because like all Australians on the battlefield they punched well
above their weightthat is an Australian characteristic. Australians
are great fighters, they help win battles and they help win wars. In
World War I aloneby far the worst war in terms of Australian
lives lostthey did better than any other nation. As their leader,
Lieutenant General Sir John Monash said, the Australian army
represented less than 10 per cent of the British and Allied armed
forces on the Western Front in 1918 but these Australians still
captured nearly 25 per cent of all enemy territory, German prisoners
of war, weapons and ammunition. Yes, we could fight all right, old
Jack Buntine, a Military Medal winner and veteran of both Gallipoli
and the Western Front told me in the late 1990s. Nobody could
fight better than us diggers.
From the moment they
enlisted, many Australian
recruits like Vernon Bone,
left, with his pet monkey
and his mate with his
pet donkey, turned out to
be colourful characters
exhibiting an ingrained
individualism which their
commanding officer,
Lieutenant General Sir
John Monash, claimed
was the key to their
success as fighters.
xiv
So the book was written as a tribute to the fighting prowess of
the Australian soldiers over the decades, men who fought hard and
brilliantly in battles for causes in which they believed.
With so many battles to choose from, I had to select the forty
conflicts that seemed most memorable. Ichose battles where indi-
viduals stood out, like the compassionate Captain Neville Howse,
who won Australias first Victoria Cross in the little-known battle at
Stinkhout boom risking his life to rescue a wounded bugler in 1900
during the Boer War; or a battle in Afghanistan more than 100 years
later where Trooper Mark Donaldson won his VC by risking his
life to rescue an Afghan interpreter in 2005a re-run of the brave
Boer War feat. I have also tried to tell the story of each of these
battles through the eyes of a hero who dared to make adifference.
I also selected battles that were great battles in themselves, such
as the 1915 landing against impossible odds at Gallipoli. I chose
some battles because they ushered in a new era, like the 1854
battle at the Eureka Stockade, which hastened the introduction of
democracy in the colonies. Other battles were included because they
were ill-conceived and unwinnable, such as The Nek, at Gallipoli
in 1915, in which so many young mens lives were unnecessarily
sacrificed and from which the reader can learn valuable lessons.
Some battles were included because of the scale of the human
tragedy that unfolded. With nearly 2000 killed in action, for example,
Fromelles (in 1916) represented the worst one-day Australian death
toll ever. And Pozires, also in 1916, was the worst killing field of
all. Likewise the 1917 Battle of Passchendaele, which cost so many
Australian lives and which should never have been fought, given
the atrocious conditions of torrential rain and impassable mud. Yet
in Vietnam in 1966 at Long Tan, Australians managed to defeat
the Viet Cong in a torrential rainstorm at the Battle of Long Tan;
if we remember the Passchendaele disaster, then it makes the Long
Tan victory even more of a feat.
Without a doubt, the battles of World War I on the Western
Front were the worst of all battles fought by Australians because
the soldiers were thrown into trenches out in the open flat fields
of France and Flanders and ordered to charge across no-mans-land
Introduction
xv
against entrenched Germans firing machine guns. Yet our World
War I soldiers spent three years in those trenches, exposed to the
heavy rain and freezing cold. The Germans fired everything they
could lay their hands on at the trenches, killing or wounding the
infantry with machine-gun fire, rifle fire, exploding shells, shrapnel,
bombs and even gas. It was hell on earth. The sound of the firing
never really stopped, and many men in the trenches got shell shock
or went mad. Thousands upon thousands of Australians were killed,
in the battle, manning the trenches between engagements, or from
disease caused by unhygienic conditions.
Although 8709 died at Gallipoli, 46,000 died on the Western
Front, far more than the whole of the death toll from World WarII
and from a much smaller Australian population. In fact more
Australians were killed in 1917 alone than in the whole of World
War II. But what the Australian soldier was asked to do in World
War I was well beyond the call of duty. To ask soldiers to
rush headlong into machine-gun fire at battles like
The Nek, Fromelles, Pozires and Bullecourt was
sheer bloody murder as Australias most highly
decorated soldier in World War I, Captain
Harry Murray, reported after Bullecourt in
1917. No wonder the death toll was so high.
One of the last Australian survivors of
World War I was Ted Smout, who went
back to the Western Front in 1998 for the
80th anniversary of the wars end (with a
party from the Department of Veterans
Affairs) to receive his long overdue Legion
of Honour from the French. There, he broke
down and cried when he saw those trenches
again. Life in the trenches, he said, was far
too horrible to talk about.
I chose the 1917 Battle of Beersheba in
Palestine because it was such a spectacular
demonstration of the skills of the Light Horse
in historys last successful cavalry charge. The 1918
Private Albert Alfred Curry,
4th Battalion, of Granville,
Sydney, was typical of
the enthusiastic recruits
who had no idea what
adventures lay ahead. In his
case, having been invalided
from the trenches of the
Western Front in February
1918 with pneumonia,
he was forced to cling to
wreckage all night after
his clearly marked hospital
ship was torpedoed in the
English Channel before
a passing ship rescued
him the next dayone
of thirty-one survivors
out of 186 on board.
xvi
Hamel battle was selected because it was a turning point, when
Australians pioneered new winning strategies; and 1918 Amiens
because that was when the Australian leader Monash was knighted
by King George V on the battlefieldthe first knighthood on the
battlefield for centuries and historys last. The Battle of Montbre-
hain, fought in October 1918, was chosen because soldiers who
had landed at Gallipoli and fought ever since were killed there on
Australias last day of fighting in the war.
Although World War I was the worst war of all and full of
great battle after great battle, the Australian soldiers nevertheless
rose to the occasion, as their proud and gifted leader Lieutenant
General Sir John Monash says in the quotation at the beginning
of this book. They set the standard for soldiers ever since, and that
is why there are so many World War I battle stories in this book
compared to other wars.
From World War II, I included the four 1941 North African
battles in which the Australians halted the German campaign for
the first time when the Rats of Tobruk could not be moved, and
then helped to drive them back home at El Alamein in battles that
ushered in the end for Nazi Germany. The 1941 sinking of HMAS
Sydney was such a shocking event, with the loss of all 645 hands,
it had to be included so readers can learn from such mistakes and
remember the great sacrifice of those sailors. Here, too, are battles
closer to homeat Darwin, Broome and in Sydney Harbour, a
reminder of how close the war came to our homeland and how
lucky we were to repel the Japanese. The battles of Milne Bay and
Kokoda were the first times any army had defeated a Japanese
invasion by sea or land. The 1945 Balikpapan battle was included
as a re-run of the Gallipoli landing, which showed howwhen
Australians were in chargethese amphibious landings could be
extremely successful.
Australia took part in the Korean War, often called the Forgotten
War because of its low public profile today. The 1951 Battle of
Kapyong demonstrated the resilience of Australian defenders against
the greatest of odds when they were attacked by thousands of
Chinese troops. Later, in the Vietnam War, two battles stand out:
Introduction
xvii
Long Tan and CoralBalmoral, both neck-and-neck engagements
that became decisive victories for the Australians. Finally the battles
of Afghanistan and Iraq were chosen because Australian soldiers
were performing as well in these difficult Middle Eastern theatres
as their forefathers had on the horrendous Western Front. In fact,
the way in which Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith won his Victoria
Cross in Afghanistan could have been taken straight out of the
pages of a book on VC winners in World War I.
These stories all start with accounts of the individuals who
distinguished themselves in the battlesmen like Gallipolis most
highly decorated soldier, Captain Alfred Shout, whose bravery
helped the Anzacs capture Lone Pine in 1915 and who inspired
other individuals in later wars. Often, it was individual feats of
heroism that helped win a battle.
I like to imagine there is a crimson thread, the colour of the
ribbon on the coveted Victoria Cross, that connects the heroes of
the Boer War, right through all wars in which Australia participated,
to the soldiers taking part in the most recent military actions in
places like Afghanistan. All battles come down to this: brave men
putting their lives on the line to help their mates win against a
determined enemy. That brings us back to the quote at the start
of this introduction by Charles Bean (18791968), perhaps the
greatest war correspondent in Australian history, who said those
famous words about Gallipolithe first benchmark of Australian
bravery and now the best known of all Australian battles (and
destined to become even better known through the centennial
celebrations in 2015). But if Bean were alive today he would prob-
ably apply those words to the Australian soldier who has carried
these values like a baton decade after decade from war to war:
ANZAC stood and still stands for reckless valour in a good cause,
for enterprise, resourcefulness, fidelity, comradeship and endurance
that will never admit defeat.
Having interviewed the last ten veterans of Gallipoli, toured the
Western Front with the last four veterans of that theatre who were
still fit enough to receive the Legion of Honour in France in 1998,
and also interviewed soldiers from all the other conflicts right up
xviii
to Iraq and Afghanistan, I can only agree
with Bean. Todays Aust ralian soldier is
the equal of his brave, skilled and spirited
World War I counter partwith just as
much practical common sense and will-
ingness to fight as ever. In fact Australian
soldiers have won more Victoria Crosses
per head of popu lation than almost any
other nation, proving their worth on the
battlefields of history.
I have defined the word battle to mean
any significant conflict between two armed
opposing sides, either civil, like the 1854
Battle at Eureka Stockade, or international
conflicts between Australia (with its
allies) fighting against other nations and
enemies. By great, Imean signifi cant, not
goodmany of the battles in this book were bad for Australia,
including disastrous defeats like The Nek (1915), Fromelles (1916)
and Passchendaele (1917), not to mention the 1941 sinking of
HMAS Sydney.
I apologise in advance for leaving out battles and stories of some
of Australias greatest heroesbut there were simply too many to
include. I also plead guilty to telling the story of each battle from
the Australian point of view, although I hope to have encompassed
at least some of the contributions and sufferings of all combatants,
whether they be Australias allies or our enemies. It should not
be forgotten, for example, that while Australia lost 8709 men at
Gallipoli, some 86,000 Turks were killed successfully repelling the
Australians invasion.
The account of each battle begins with a dramatic incident
describing the efforts of an individual trying to do something excep-
tional against the odds. I then go on to explain the wider battle he
was fighting in, the historical background leading up to the action,
and the reasons for it being a great battle. Apostscript and brief battle
statistics help to give a more complete picture of the engagement.
Australian Pilot Officer J.S.
Archer, flying a Wirraway,
shoots down a Zero in
a successful dog fight
off New Guinea during
World War II. Archer was
one of many pilots trying
to stop Japanese fighter
planes attacking Allied
targets. Drawing by Roy
Hodgkinson, AWM
Introduction
xix
Readers will also find other useful information, including a
timeline, a list of army ranks and formations, along with casualties
for different wars and a list of Victoria Cross winners.
I have drawn on a wide range of sources, including soldiers
diaries and journals, along with numerous secondary sources,
including newspaper accounts and books. I have also used the
extensive resources of the wonderful Australian War Memorial.
Iacknowledge these writers that have gone before me; I have stood
on giants shoulders in order to get a better view.
xx
TIMELINE
In this timeline of conflicts, battles and wars, the great battles
featured in this book are in bold
c. 60,000 years ago Aborigines arrive. As their population increases,
disputes probably break out over territorial claims
1629 Batavia shipwreck off Western Australia provokes first
European battle between survivors
1787 Battle on First Fleet transport bound for Botany Bay as
convicts mutiny
1788 First Fleet arrives in Sydney Cove, and battles begin between
settlers and Aborigines
1804 5 March, Battle of Vinegar HillIrish convicts rebel against
Governor King
1804 Risdon Cove, Van Diemens Land (Tasmania)whites kill
50 Aborigines
1838 White settlers carry out Myall Creek massacre, Inverell
Station
1854 3 December, Eureka Rebellion
1854 Colonial soldiers sail for Europe to serve in Crimean War
1861 Lambing Flat Riots, Young
Timeline
xxi
1863 Maori Wars
1880 Battle for GlenrowanNed Kelly vs Victorian police
1885 Sudan War, Colonel J.S. Richardson leads colonial forces
1900 24 July, Battle of Stinkhoutboom, Boer WarCaptain
N.R. Howse wins Australias first Victoria Cross
1900 Boxer Rebellion, Society of Clenched Fists opposing British
domination
1901 Australia becomes a nation, with Edmund Barton as first
prime minister
1901 Administration of colonial military forces passes to Common-
wealth on 1 March
1901 First Commonwealth of Australia troops sail off to fight in
the Boer War in South Africa
1914 4 August, World War I starts
9 November, HMAS Sydney sinks German ship Emden
Australians capture German radio station, Rabaul, New
Guinea
1915 25 April, Anzacs land at Gallipoli
25 April, Australias AE2 submarine penetrates Sea of
Marmara
19 May, Albert Jacka wins Australias first VC in World
War I, at Gallipoli
610 August, Battle of Lone Pine
7 August, Battle of The Nek
1916 1920 July, Battle of Fromelles
23 July, Battle of Pozires
1917 11 April, First Battle of Bullecourt
xxii
317 May, Second Battle of Bullecourt
7 June, Battle of Messines
26 September, Battle of Polygon Wood
4 October, Battle of Broodseinde
12 October, Battle of Passchendaele
31 October, Light Horse charge captures Beersheba
1918 2425 April, Battle of Villers-Bretonneux
4 July, Battle of Hamel
8 August, Battle of Amiens
31 August3 September, Battles for Mont St Quentin and
Pronne
5 October, Battle of Montbrehain, last Australian battle
of World War I
11 November, Armistice ends World War I
1919 Australians serving with White Russian army against Bolshe-
viks win two VCs
1928 Coniston (NT) massacre of Aborigines
1936 Australians serve in Spanish Civil War
1939 3 September, World War II starts
1941 2122 January, capture of Tobruk
11 April7 December, siege of Tobruk
1941 19 November, German raider Kormoran sinks HMAS
Sydney
1941 7 December, Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor; US enters war;
Prime Minister John Curtin switches allegiance from UK to
USA
Timeline
xxiii
1942 815 February, fall of fortress Singapore
19 February, Japanese bomb Darwin
3 March, Japanese bomb Broome
31 May, Japanese midget subs attack Sydney Harbour
4 May, Battle of the Coral Sea
5 June, Battle of Midway
127 July, First Battle of El Alamein
25 August7 September, Battle of Milne Bay
29 August, Battle of Isurava, Kokoda Track
23 October5 November, Second Battle of El Alamein
1943 Japanese sink hospital ship Centaur off Queensland, killing
299 patients, nurses and doctors
1944 RAAF squadrons help bomb German targets in Europe
Australian troops begin fighting Japanese on islands of South-
East Asia, driving them back
5 August, Japanese POWs break out from Cowra camp
1945 May, Allies defeat Germany and win war in Europe
1 July, Battle of Balikpapan
August, US drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
ending war against Japan
1947 Peacekeeping forces start serving on battlefields around the
world
1950 Korean War starts
1951 2324 April, Battle of Kapyong
1956 Malayan Emergency
xxiv
1959 Indonesian Confrontation
1966 18 August, Battle of Long Tan
1968 12 May6 June, Battle of CoralBalmoral
1970 Vietnam anti-war protests peak with massive Moratorium
1990 First Gulf War
1999 General Cosgrove leads Australian force for INTERFET in
East Timor
2001 11 September, al-Qaeda terrorists attack World Trade Center,
New York, and Pentagon, Washington DC
October, American-led invasion of Afghanistan
2003 March, US-led invasion of Iraq (Australian forces involved)
2005 30 January, first Australian killed in Iraq War
2010 11 June, Australian Ben Roberts-Smith wins Victoria Cross
in Afghanistan
2011 May, US Special Forces kill Osama bin Laden
June, US announces phased withdrawal from Afghanistan
from 2012
1
THE IRISH REBELLION
COMES TO AUSTRALIA
Whereas a number of labouring convicts of Castle Hill
and other parts of this district have assembled and in a
dangerous and daring manner have attacked and robbed
several of His Majestys peaceable and loyal subjects of their
property and arms and proceeded therewith to great acts
of outrageI do therefore proclaim the districts of Parram-
atta, Castle Hill, Toongabbie, Prospect, Seven and Baulkham
Hills, Hawkesbury and Nepean to be in a state of rebellion,
and do establish Martial Law throughout those districts.
Governor King, Martial Law Proclamation, 4 March 1804
E
mboldened by the odd tot of rum and the cheers of his Irish
troops behind him, rebel leader Phillip Cunningham glared
across the clearing in the bush at the heavily armed redcoats and
militia lined up against him. He made a split-second decision.
He would pick up the gauntlet thrown down by the leader of the
government forces, Major George Johnston, who was riding out
in advance of his soldiers loudly challenging Cunningham to walk
out alone to parley with him.
Even though he was on foot and the major on horseback,
Cunningham, a former soldier, and veteran of the original Vinegar
Hill battle back in Ireland in 1798, knew he could outsmart any
Englishman. And Johnston was not even carrying a pistol, none that
he could see anyway. Besides, Cunningham had a sword, already
2
bloody from earlier fights, and would be quick to use it, as he had
in 1798.
Cunningham also had far more men than the government. His
hundreds of wild, English-hating Irish rebels, armed with stolen
muskets, pitchforks and pikes, were spoiling for a fight, and ready
and waiting to charge down the hill to deal with the redcoats
below, who he could see were exhausted from marching all night
from Sydney Town.
But noticing that the major had beckoned another New South
Wales soldier to ride alongside him, Cunningham ordered his
deputy and fellow Vinegar Hill veteran Will Johnston to walk
with him. Together, the two rebels stepped out bravely from the
safety of the ranks.
With the rebels poised to charge down the slope and the troops
of the New South Wales Corps lined up opposite them ready to
fire, a hush descended over the scene as the ambassadors drew
closer. Reining in his horse, the major demanded that Cunningham
surrender; he had no intention of parleying with a bunch of rebels.
Outraged when the rebel leader, feet firmly planted on the ground,
refused to surrender, the major asked Cunningham what it was he
and his rebels wantedonly to be met with the uncompromising
cryDeath or Liberty!
Major George Johnston
and his New South Wales
Corps won the first great
battle in Australian history
on a clearing near Castle
Hill in 1804, when they
defeated the Irish rebel
leader Phillip Cunningham
and his attempted uprising
against the British colonial
administration of Governor
Philip Gidley King. NLA
3
The battle
It was 5 March 1804 in the British penal colony of New South
Wales and this was the Castle Hill Rebellion, also called the Second
Battle of Vinegar Hill or the Battle of Toongabbie. The battle was
fought in a clearing surrounded by gum trees near Castle Hill, today
a suburb of Sydney 28 kilometres north-west of the city centre.
But it proved to be a very short battle, and Cunningham never
got a chance to fight. Without warning, Major Johnston dismounted
from his horse, as if to talk to Cunningham, only to draw a pistol
hidden in his sash. He lunged at the convict, putting the muzzle to
his head, while the majors companion, Trooper Thomas Anlezark,
also dismounted and put his pistol to Will Johnstons head. The
rebels did not have a chance. The two soldiers hurriedly frog marched
the rebel leaders back to the fold of the government ranks, and at
once Major Johnston ordered his redcoats to open fire on the main
body of the startled rebels.
Major Johnston had been ordered by Governor Philip Gidley
King to crush Cunninghams rebellion, not to negotiate, so for
Cunningham it was all over. By walking into a simple trap he achieved
death rather than liberty, as did Will Johnston.
Both should have known better, as they had
played leading roles in the Irish Rebellion of
1798, in which they had fought at the original
Battle of Vinegar Hill in Ireland. Cunningham
had also been a leader of an unsuccessful mutiny
on board his convict transport, the Anne, on the
way to New South Wales.
The English had hoodwinked the Irish leader.
Cunninghams rebels got the fight they had
wanted, but the outcome was never in doubt.
Taken by surprise and without their leader, the
untrained, poorly armed rebels were no match
for the steady volley of fire from the well-trained,
heavily armed soldiers. Although undisciplined
and disorganised, the rebels fought bravely for
about twenty minutes. They fired off a few shots
Even though they
outnumbered the
government soldiers at the
battle, the rebel convicts
were no match for the
cunning leader of the New
South Wales Corps, Major
George Johnston, who
persuaded the convicts
leader, Phillip Cunningham,
to come forward for talks,
then pulled out his pistol
and arrested him. Portrait
by Robert Dighton, SLNSW
4
and landed some blows on the soldiers, inflicting minor wounds with
their makeshift weapons, but in the end they could not overcome
professional soldiers. During this unfair and one-sided battle at least
fifteen rebels were killed, many others wounded and twenty-six
captured. The remaining convicts fled into the surrounding trees
when they realised the game was up.
Historical background
The conflict was a flow-on from the Irish Rebellion of 1798. One of
its major engagements was fought at Vinegar Hill, near Wexford, in
June of that year. Phillip Cunningham, a charismatic Irish Catholic
activist, took part in the battle, which was won decisively by the
British. Cunningham was captured, convicted and transported to
Sydney Town. Still seething with rage against the Protestant English,
at Castle Hill he teamed up with William Johnston, another Irish
convict who had also fought in Ireland in 1798.
In the aftermath of the rebellion, the government sent many more
Irish political prisoners to New South Wales than they did English
criminals. By 1801, the Irish represented a third of the population
under sentence and a quarter of the white population of the colony.
In fact, Governor King was expecting trouble and had already
complained to London: I am much concerned to inform Your Grace
that the rumours of a troublesome spirit among the Irish lately sent to
this colony for sedition have lately proceeded to a very great height.
From the prison farm near Castle Hill where he was stationed,
Cunningham hatched a plan to take over the colony by recruiting
Irish rebels, plus disaffected English, to march on Sydney, where
they would capture and put Governor King to death.
They would then take any ships in the harbour and sail back
to Ireland and to freedom. As their Catholic brothers, the French,
were known to be exploring the New South Wales coast, they hoped
to contact them in the hope the French would help, as they had
offered to do in 1798 in Ireland.
Cunninghams plan was to raise a force of 1000 convicts from the
penal settlements at Castle Hill, Hawkesbury River and Parramatta
before marching on Sydney Town.
I am much
concerned to
inform Your Grace
that the rumours
of a troublesome
spirit among the
Irish lately sent
to this colony for
sedition have lately
proceeded to a very
great height.
5
The uprising had actually begun on the evening of 4 March
1804, when William Johnston ran around the Castle Hill settlement
shouting the password that confirmed the start of the uprising.
The experienced Cunningham had managed to keep the rebel-
lion a secretthe Irish had learnt at bitter cost over the years
that informers could destroy the best made plans. Although some
convicts did sell the information to guards in exchange for alcohol,
it was too late to stop the uprising.
What Cunningham did not know was that yet another informer
had ridden to Sydney to warn Governor King.
Rebel supporter John Cavenaghs hut at Castle Hill was set
ablaze as the signal for the rebellion to begin. A growing force of
rebels broke into the Government Farms buildings, taking firearms,
ammunition and other weapons. Overpowering the constables,
the rebels went from farm to farm seizing more weapons and
supplies, including rum and spirits, which were eagerly consumed,
with unfortunate results. Cunningham managed to restore some
discipline after a few hours and was soon elected as the undisputed
leader of the convict rebels.
Although Cunningham mobilised a force of more than 300
men at Castle Hill, the expected uprisings at Parramatta and the
Hawkesbury did not happen. It seems most likely Cunninghams
vaunted secrecy backfired when, for various reasons, his agents
failed to reach the two settlements with details of the revoltand
their failure was not known to those at Castle Hill. Even if the
Hawkesbury rebels had seen Cavenaghs burning hut, they could
not have been sure what it meant.
When Cunningham realised something was amiss, he decided
to make for the Hawkesbury to gather his forces for an assault
on Parramatta, and then Sydney Town itself, setting off along the
Windsor road.
Tipped off by the informer, Governor King hurriedly rode to
Castle Hill to see what was happening for himself. Major Johnston,
acting on Kings orders, mobilised a New South Wales Corps
contingent of 56 men and marched through the night, linking up
6
at Parramatta with twenty armed members of the Parramatta Loyal
Association Corps and a handful of other free settlers.
Meanwhile, the rebels were having difficulties co-ordinating
their forces. Many had drunk too much stolen rum to be of any use,
but still Cunningham had more than 200 men, far more than the
government. When news reached Cunningham of Major Johnstons
approach, he must have felt confident in his superior numbers and
decided to meet the redcoats head-on.
The canny major sent a tame Catholic priest, Father James
Dixon, ahead of his troops to reassure Cunningham and his fellow
rebels with a promise of negotiation. Dixon, oblivious to Major
Johnstons real intentions, tried for several hours to parley with
Cunningham, who refused to talk terms with him and demanded
to speak with the major. But these negotiations were really just
delaying tactics, and during the exchange Major Johnstons forces
reached the clearing and formed ranks for the battle.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because it was the first significant
clash of arms in the history of Australias European settlement. It
also marked the first declaration of martial law in the colony of New
South Wales, which lasted for ten days. At least twenty-three rebels
were killedfourteen on the battlefield and nine hanged afterwards.
It was also a great uprising by hundreds of Irish political pris-
oners, a civil conflict that was an echo of a rebellion against the
British that had reached a savage climax at the original Battle of
Vinegar Hill in Ireland in 1798.
It also drove a great wedge into colonial society between those
of Irish origins and the English authorities and military. It hardened
Irish resentment and English discrimination against them, sowing the
seeds that would grow into the Eureka Rebellion at Ballarat half a
century laterwhen the catch cry was, once again, Death or liberty!
Postscript
Since Governor King had imposed martial law, his troops felt safe
in wreaking a savage vengeance after capturing Phillip Cunningham
7
on the battlefield. Put simply, the troops ran amok. Well after the
fighting was over many prisoners were killed by soldiers and the
militia. Major Johnston only stopped the slaughter by threatening
troops with his pistol. Then, acting on his own initiative, he took
the badly wounded Cunninghamwho had been run through and
left for dead after his capture by Quartermaster Thomas Laycock
to the Public Store in nearby Windsor. He quickly hanged the
rebel leader from the staircase, a summary execution he claimed
Cunningham deserved as he had threatened to plunder the store.
Governor King at least had time to convene a trial for deputy
rebel leader Will Johnston, who was found guilty and hanged along
with seven other rebelsJohn Neale and George Harrington (at
Castle Hill), Samuel Humes, Charles Hill and Jonathon Place (all at
Parramatta), and John Brannan and Timothy Hogan in Sydney. King
had nine more rebels flogged and consigned another thirty-four to
hard labour in the mines at Coal River (later Newcastle).
Although he was a
compassionate family
man and had appointed
the first Roman Catholic
priest to conduct services
for Irish convicts, the New
South Wales governor,
Philip Gidley King, could not
tolerate an open rebellion of
prisoners who threatened
to put him to death and
seize control of the colony.
Portrait of Governor King,
his wife Anna Josepha
and children (left to right)
Elizabeth, Anna Maria
and Phillip Parker by
Robert Dighton, SLNSW
8
The rebels who were flogged received up to 500 strokes of the
notorious cat-o-nine-tails, which cut the flesh off the back, down
to the bones. Although the cat was considered inhumane by many
prison reformers of the day, the senior religious leader in the colony,
the Reverend Samuel Marsdenthe Flogging Parsonwas also
a magistrate who pronounced extraordinarily severe sentences and
often attended the bloody punishments.
Long after the end of the rebellion, troops continued to round
up the malcontents and, although no military deaths were recorded,
they hunted down suspected rebels for four days after the battle.
The military at Parramatta were preparing to hang one in ten of
the rebel convicts as punishment for the rebellion before Governor
King stopped them. Rebels John Burke and Bryan McCormack
were reprieved, detained at the governors pleasure; but four others
were punished with the dreaded maximum sentence of 500 lashes
and exile to the Coal River chain gangJohn Griffin, Neil Smith,
Bryan Burne and Connor Dwyer. David Morrison, Cornelius Lyons
and Owen McDermot each received 200 lashes, while twenty-three
rebels were also exiled to Coal River.
The British may have won the battle at Castle Hill (and would
also win at Eureka in 1854), but they never fully quashed the
Irish spirit. Although history may have vindicated their sense of
oppression, many of the nineteenth-century Irish political prisoners
of New South Wales paid dearly for their aspirations.
Battle stats
Winners: New South Wales government troops, led by Major George
Johnston
Losers: Rebel leader Phillip Cunningham and his 200-strong rebel force
Rebel death toll: 23
Result: The British colonial government crushed the colonys worst Irish
political revolt with, in Governor Philip Gidley Kings words, The most
lasting good effect
9
Eureka Rebellion,
3December 1854
THE BLOODY BATTLE
FOR DEMOCRATIC
RIGHTS
That this meeting being convinced that the obnoxious
licence fee is an imposition and an unjustifiable tax on free
labour, pledges itself to take immediate steps to abolish the
same by at once burning all their licences. That in the event
of any party being arrested for having no licences, that
the united people will under all circumstances defend and
protectthem.
We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each
other and fight to defend our rights and liberties. Amen.
Resolution and Loyal Oath sworn under the Southern Cross at the
pre-battle meetings of the Ballarat Reform League, 30 November 1854
J
ust when the battle seemed to be going his way, with his rebels
shooting the officer leading the government troops attacking
their stockade, rebel leader Peter Lalor let out a piercing scream
and dropped his rifle. He had been hit.
Stepping back in agony from the barricade his men were vigor-
ously defending, he saw to his horror that his left arm had been
shattered and was hanging uselessly at his side.
The heavily armed redcoats and police were getting closer by
the second, threatening to breach the barricades and massacre his
10
poorly armed minersyet he, their elected leader, could do nothing
to stop the overwhelming assault. Knowing what government troops
had done to the last Irish leader who rebelled against authority in
the name of freedom, Lalor knew he had to escape.
Every Irishman in Australia was brought up on the story of New
South Wales troops holding out an olive branch on the battlefield
to the 1804 Vinegar Hill leader, Phillip Cunningham, tricking him
into walking away from the protection of his men with the promise
of negotiations. The British had kidnapped him, massacred his rebels
and dragged him off to a storehouse where they hanged him from
a staircase without even the pretence of a trial. That was only 50
years ago, under the same sort of British colonial government now
operating in Victoria.
No, Lalor, who was originally from Raheen, County Laois in
Ireland, knew he could not trust the British forces about to take
They might have had a
good cause but the rebel
goldminers defending
the Eureka Stockade at
Ballarat in 1854 did not
stand a chance when the
well-armed and ruthless
government troops attacked
on Sunday at dawn,
scaling the barricades and
sending the protestors
fleeing. Painting by J.B.
Henderson, SLNSW
Eureka Rebellion, 3December 1854
11
the stockade and massacre his brave freedom fighters. There would
be no mercy shown at the end of their bayonets, especially for
the Irish rebel leader. He was a wanted man and would not last a
minute. Shattered arm or no shattered arm, he had to escape before
a surging wave of soldiers broke through the barricades.
The battle
It was Sunday, 3 December 1854, and this battle was being fought
on the goldfields of Ballarat, Victoria, between Peter Lalor and
his band of goldminers sheltering in a makeshift fortressthe
Eureka Stockadeand the freshly arrived forces of the British
colonial government of Victoria, troops from Melbourne with
police in support.
The government forces had crept out of their nearby camp under
the cover of darkness and quietly assembled within striking distance
of the stockade by 3 a.m., when they started their surprise attack.
These troops were just as ruthless as Major Johnstons had been
in 1804, cunningly waiting till most miners had left the stockade
on Saturday night to return home to families and attend church on
the Sabbath. Although 800 miners had been guarding the stockade,
only 200 had stayedincluding Lalorin case of attack.
Captain J.W. Thomas now began advancing stealthily towards
the stockade leading his party of 276 men, all armed to the teeth
with the latest weapons. They included 152 infantry, 24 cavalry
and 100 mounted and foot police.
The troops had timed their attack well, as most of the remaining
miners were sound asleep, but one alert sentry saw their shadowy
shapes and fired a shot.
Captain Thomas warned his men: We are seen. Forward and
steady, men! Dont fire, let the insurgents fire first. You wait for the
sound of the bugle. Meanwhile, the miners woken by the sentrys
shot leapt to their feet, groped for weapons and rushed to man the
barricade with rifles, revolvers, cutlasses, swords, pikes, pitchforks
or whatever they could lay their hands on.
12
Just 300 metres short of the stockade, Thomas ordered his
centre section to prepare for a full frontal assault, one section to
advance on the right flank and another on the left, to prevent
minerssuch as Lalorescaping. He also ordered a final section
to remain behind as reserves.
Then the troops charged, running across the open ground
straight for the makeshift fortification which they could just see
in the dark, along with the glint of the gun barrels and blades
brandished by determined defenders. These defenders waited until
the troops got to within 150 metres of the stockade and then
opened fire, sending a scattered volley into the uniformed ranks,
felling several men, who fell clutching their wounds.
Taking aim at an officer directing the troops, one of the miners
shot Captain Henry Wise, who stumbled wounded to the ground.
Picking himself up, the bleeding captain bravely pushed on only to
be shot again, a wound that would prove fatal eighteen days later.
The miners let out a whoop of joy. Their first hit at officer
level. Things were looking good. The army bugler then sounded his
long-awaited signal and the disciplined troops opened fire in the
pre-dawn light, from the front and both flanks, pouring lead into the
stockade and the poorly armed souls defending their wooden fort.
Miners lucky enough to have rifles or revolvers tried to shoot
back; others, like the Irish pikemen, had to wait for hand-to-hand
combat. But the miners had neither the training nor the weapons
of the troops and could not stop them targeting miner after miner,
filling the stockade with wounded and dying men.
Firing his rifle at the fast-approaching troops, Lalor was shouting
encouragement to his men when he was shot in the left arm and
knocked to the ground. Knowing he would be a prime target once
the troopers scaled the stockade, Lalor took refuge under a pile of
timber, then called out to a couple of comrades to help whisk him
away before it got light. Amid the smoke, noise and confusion of
the battle, the two smuggled their wounded leader out through an
opening at the rear of the stockade.
Realising they were overwhelmed, Lalor urged others to escape.
But it was too late. When the troops scaled the barricades they shot
13
or bayoneted any miners resisting them. Captain Thomas demanded
the miners surrender. Routed, they threw down their arms.
By the time the troopers let uptwenty-five minutes after
the battle beganthey had killed fourteen miners outright (most
of whom were Irish) and wounded another eight who later
died of wounds. They also wounded twelve others (including
Peter Lalor), who all escaped and recovered, and also captured
100 prisoners.
After the battle the government forces killed at least two more.
Witnesses said some of the troops ran amok and killed two
bystanders before destroying the miners tents and property. The
miners were so outclassed that defenceless women ran forward and
threw themselves over the injured to prevent further indiscriminate
killing by the troops.
Some of the wounded fled to surrounding bush, where they
died a lonely death without being counted in the toll. The official
record of deaths in the Ballarat District Register shows twenty-seven
names associated with the stockade battle at Eureka.
By 8 a.m. Captain Pasley, the second-in-command of the British
forces, sickened by the carnage, saved a group of prisoners from
being bayoneted and threatened to shoot any police or soldiers who
continued with the slaughter. But some soldiers and police did go
wild, destroying tents and property without reason, bayoneting the
wounded and even shooting two innocent bystanders. Because of
this aftermath, some witnesses called Eureka a massacre.
Lalor certainly agreed, writing:
As the inhuman brutalities practised by the troops are so well
known, it is unnecessary for me to repeat them. There were 34
digger casualties of which 22 died. The unusual proportion of the
killed to the wounded is owing to the butchery of the military and
troopers after the surrender.
The prisonersat least 100, with some witnesses claiming
114were marched off to a government camp about 2 kilometres
The unusual
proportion of
the killed to the
wounded is owing
to the butchery of
the military and
troopers after the
surrender.
14
away, where they were kept in an overcrowded lock-up before being
moved to a more spacious barn next day.
The battle might have been overwhelmingly one-sided and brief,
but the miners put up a brave fight in their short-lived attempt to
defend their stockade and the call for freedom that the fortress
represented. They did better than their Irish predecessors at Vinegar
Hill in 1804.
Thomas imposed martial law, and all armed resistance collapsed.
News of the massacre spread quickly to other goldfields and to
Melbourne, turning a crushing government victory over a minor
insurrection into a public scandal, with widespread condemnation
of the governments action and support for the diggers demands
for freedom and democratic rights.
This crisis started after gold was discovered in Ballarat in 1851, the
year the colony of Victoria was separated from New South Wales,
inspiring free men to migrate to Australia from around the world. As
free souls, many of these new arrivals took a stand against Britains
dictatorial control of the colony of Victoria.
Used to governing penal colonies, the British government treated
the free people of Victoria almost as if they were convicts too. The
goldminers, mainly penniless men seeking their fortunes, wanted
to dig for gold without having to pay the expensive licence fee
introduced from September 1851 onwards. When the Victorian
lieutenant governor, Sir Charles Hotham, who was only appointed
in June 1854, visited the gold diggings soon after his arrival he
demanded all diggers pay a licence without exception, increased the
fee, stepped up the inspection system to twice a week and ordered
his inspectors to arrest and imprison diggers found without alicence.
This and other harsh treatment inspired a meeting on
11November 1854 when thousands of miners created the Ballarat
Reform League to campaign for reforms. They elected a team
of leaders with a seven-man executive. Their demands included
abolition of the licence, as many had not found gold and had
15
no way to pay the fee. They also called
for universal suffrage, voting by ballot,
annual parliaments, payment of MPs and
revision of laws relating to Crownland.
Their leaders included Peter Lalor,
Frederick Vern, and George and Raffaello
Carboni, who organised a meeting with
the lieutenant governor. Hotham prom-
ised they could have a representative in
the Legislative Council, but then sent
more troops to the diggings to enforce
his draconian demands. It was looking
more like war every day.
Short-lived though it was, the battle
had actually started a few days before
with a preparatory skirmish on the gold-
fields in late November when a group of
the miners had seen Captain Wise and
some troops delivering wagons with guns
and ammunition to the government military camp. When they
insisted on inspecting the load to make sure he was not delivering
a cannon to be used against them, he said they were nothing but
a parcel of rebels not worth talking to. They charged the wagons
and overturned one.
When troops set upon the miners, those who had got hold of
guns fired at the troops, wounding some of the soldiers and their
drummer boy, who some reports say died from his wounds. This
confrontation inspired the government in Melbourne to dispatch
a field gun to help subdue the miners.
In response, on 29 November the miners convened a rally at
Bakery Hill, where they unveiled a new flag, the Southern Cross.
They also passed a resolution:
That this meeting being convinced that the obnoxious licence fee
is an imposition and an unjustifiable tax on free labour, pledges
itself to take immediate steps to abolish the same by at once
Having recently arrived
from England to govern the
unruly colony of Victoria,
Sir Charles Hotham was no
match for the democratic
sentiments of the free-
spirited diggers who had
flocked to the goldfields
from around the world
and who soon forced him
to accept their demands
for reform. Cartoon in
Melbourne Punch.
16
burning all their licences. That in the event of any party being
arrested for having no licences, that the united people will under
all circumstances defend and protect them.
German-born rebel leader Frederic Vern proposed the miners start
burning their licences and fly their home-made flag in defiance at
the diggings from then on.
This defiance inspired the government to order goldfield
commissioner Robert Rede and a fellow officer to conduct a digger
hunt, arresting all those without licences. The officials met nothing
but resistance on their rounds, however, as diggers threw insults and
stones at them, provoking the commissioners to read out the Riot
Act. They managed to capture six token prisoners whom they took
off to prison. A line in the sand had been drawn.
On 30 November the Ballarat Reform League appointed Peter
Lalor as commander-in-chief of the miners, who agreed to form
an army for the revolution. Lalor hoisted the new Southern Cross
flag permanently and demanded all members of this new military
association to swear a loyal oath under the flag: We swear by the
Southern Cross to stand truly by each other and fight to defend
our rights and liberties. Amen.
This oath, which at least 500 men swore, echoed the catch-cry
of the Vinegar Hill rebels 50 years earlier, who went into battle
declaring Death or Liberty.
As a last chance Lalors representatives visited the government
camp and demanded the release of the six miners arrested. When
it was refused, the miners basically declared war against the govern-
ment. Lalors army then started constructing a stockade on 30
November, and, gathering as many weapons and as much ammuni-
tion as they could, began to train and waited for the battle to begin.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because it was in a great cause,
as ordinary people who believed in justice and the principles
they were fighting for sacrificed their lives for a higher ideal. The
revolt also inspired the government to conduct a Commission of
Inquiry that ruled against the governments handling of the crisis.
Death or Liberty.
17
Its recommendations included replacing the miners licence fee
with a much cheaper annual Miners Right, which also permitted
the holder to vote in colonial elections. Mining wardens replaced
the gold commissioners, and police numbers were cut drastically.
Not only did the goldminers force the government to reform
the draconian licence system, they also in the long term helped the
people of Victoria achieve major democratic reforms. In turn, the
other colonies and eventually Australia as a whole benefited from
these reforms.
The Ballarat Reform League had enjoyed great success and,
twelve months after the Eureka battle, all but one of its demands
had been granted. The Legislative Council was expanded to allow
representation for the major goldfields and Peter Lalor himself
was elected to represent Ballaratgoing from rebel leader to
parliamentarian. He went on to become Speaker of the Legislative
Assembly of Victoria.
This was a big political breakthrough and led to universal suffrage
for white males. These breakthroughs also reflected contemporary
English Chartist demands such as one man, one vote, universal
suffrage, regular elections, secret ballots and payment for members
of parliament.
The reforms also led to suffrage for white women by 1903, with
Aboriginals joining them in 1967.
By world standards these reforms were unprecedented. Ordinary
people had challenged an autocratic government and succeeded.
Eureka was the start of the end for British rule of the colonies,
which had begun with the First Fleet settlement in 1788. No wonder
Eureka is seen as the birth of democracy in Australia; because
those ordinary rebels at Ballarat together developed the vision
that helped transform penal colonies into the free and democratic
states of Australia.
Postscript
After Lalor escaped the battle at Eureka a doctor amputated his
arm. He was hidden from police by local supporters, including a
18
schoolmistress, Alicia Dunn, whom he later married. Police hunted
him for some time, nailing up Wanted posters around the colony
and offering a reward of 400 for his capture along with George
Black, one of his comrades, but as the public mood swung against
the government Lalor was exonerated.
Apart from being the leader of the rebels, Peter Lalor was also
the visionary author of the oath of allegiance used by the miners
at the Eureka Stockade. In the years that followed the battle, he
could never find it within himself to forgive those government
representatives who were carrying out their orders, saying:
There are two things connected with the late outbreak (Eureka)
which I deeply regret. The first is, that we should have been forced
to take up arms at all; and the second is, that when we were
compelled to take the field in our own defence, we were unable
(through want of arms, ammunition and a little
organisation) to inflict on the real authors of
the outbreak the punishment they so richly
deserved.
Although elected unopposed in the 1856
Victorian elections as the Eureka hero, his
parliamentary policies were not consistent
with the peoples champion who won demo-
cratic rights at Eureka. For example, he later
opposed a bill to introduce full white male
suffrage in the colony.
During a speech in the Legislative Council
in 1856 he tried to explain his limited vision
of democracy:
I would ask these gentlemen what they mean
by the term democracy. Do they mean
Chartism or Commun ism or Republicanism?
If so, Inever was, Iam not now, nor do I ever
intend to be a democrat. But if a democrat
Despite losing his left
arm in the bloody battle
at the Eureka Stockade,
the leader of the rebel
miners, Peter Lalor, helped
introduce democratic
reforms in the colony
of Victoria, got elected
to Parliament, pursued
a distinguished political
career and became Speaker
of the House. Painting by
Annie C.H. Thunder, SLV
19
means opposition to a tyrannical press, a tyrannical people, or a
tyrannical government, then I have been, I am still, and will ever
remain a democrat.
He eventually became Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of
Victoria. Despite his successful political career, historians have
accused him of hypocrisy. Rather than being the champion of the
ordinary working man, as his folk hero status implied, they say he
was a political opportunist who put self-interest ahead of the rights
of the workers.
Of about 100 diggers detained after the rebellion, thirteen were
charged with high treason and brought to trial in Melbourne. The
public took the side of the miners throughout their trial, ensuring
all were acquitted. In fact a public meeting accused the government
of unjustified force against the miners, and the Colonial Secretary
was asked to resign.
Even a brief description of these acquitted men gives an idea
of the variety of ethnic and national backgrounds involved in the
uprising: James Beattie, William Molloy, John Phelan, Henry Reid
and Michael Tuohy all came from Ireland, as did Timothy Hayes,
chairman of the Ballarat Reform League, and John Manning,
a Ballarat Times journalist; James McFie Campbell was black,
and hailed from Kingston, Jamaica; the Italian Raffaello Carboni
was Lalors lieutenant and, speaking several European languages,
had taken charge of the diggers from that continent; Thomas
Dignum was a Sydney native; John Joseph, an African-American,
was from New York City; Jacob Sorenson, who was Jewish, came
from Scotland; and Jan Vennick was born in the Netherlands.
After hearing the evidence for the first rebel, John Joseph, the
jury quickly returned a verdict of not guilty; the court eruped in
wild cheering. Joseph was carried around the streets of Melbourne
in a chair in triumph by more than 10,000 people.
Under the auspices of Victorian Chief Justice Redmond Barry,
who later condemned bushranger Ned Kelly to death, the trials
have on several occasions been called a farce. The goldfields
20
commissioner, Robert Rede, was quietly removed from the camps
and reassigned to an insignificant position in rural Victoria.
The Royal Commission conducted by W.C. Haines also took the
side of the miners rather than the government. It was so scathing in
its assessment of all aspects of the administration of the goldfields,
and particularly the attack on the Eureka Stockade, that the govern-
ment had to hang its head in shame. The commission concluded:
There was at Eureka a needless as well as a ruthless sacrifice of
human life regardless of whether victims were innocent or guilty,
and perpetuated even after all resistance had disappeared.
Meanwhile, in 1855, Lalors nemesis, Sir Charles Hotham, fell
ill and died, perhaps exhausted by his battle with the visionary
Lalor and his futile attempt to stop the rising tide of inevitable
democratic reform.
Battle stats
Winners: Victorian government troops
Losers: Goldminers on Ballarat goldfields
Toll: In the battle the government troops killed 14 miners outright and
wounded 8 who later died later of wounds, a total of 22 dead. Govern-
ment troops also wounded 12 others, including Peter Lalor, who survived.
After the battle government troops killed at least 2 innocent bystanders.
They also captured about 100 prisoners. The rebel miners killed a British
army officer, Captain Henry Wise, and 5 privates
Result: The miners forced the government to reform the licence system
and these reforms in turn facilitated the introduction of democratic
elections and the extension of the right to vote. Within two years these
reformers had helped persuade the colony to adopt a constitution that
enshrined the basics of democracy
21
AUSTRALIAS FIRST
VICTORIA CROSS
During the action at Vredefort on the 24th July, 1900,
Captain House [sic] went out under a heavy cross fire
andpicked up a wounded man, and carried him to a place
ofshelter.
Citation for Australias first Victoria Cross winner, Captain Neville Howse, 1900
S
eeing the bugler fall as he tried to sound the retreat for the
embattled Australian infantry column, Captain Neville Howse
grabbed a spare horse and, shouldering his surgical bag, galloped
forward through the hail of bullets onto the front line.
Leaping off his mount, the thirty-seven-year-old medical officer
knelt beside the badly wounded bugler.
Then, under deadly fire from the Boers defending Stinkhout-
boom, he stopped the bleeding, bound up the gaping wound in the
buglers abdomen and turned for his horse.
As he reached for the reins, a Boer bullet found its mark and
the horse dropped with a strangled dying grunt. What now, Howse
thought, bullets flying all around him. Nothing for it but to run.
Bending, he lifted the moaning bugler onto his back, told him
to hold on and staggered back through the continuous fire to
the safety of the rear compound. Laying him out on a makeshift
operating table, the exhausted doctoronce medical officer at
Orange Hospital in New South Walesperformed life-saving
surgery on the young buglers perforated bladder.
22
Howses heroism earned him not only Australias first Victoria
Cross, but also the only one ever awarded to an Australian medical
officer.
The battle
It was 24 July 1900 and Howse and his comrades were fighting with
the New South Wales Mounted Rifles and Army Medical Corps
under the British forces in the Battle of Stinkhoutboom in South
Africa, against Britains rival colonists, the Boers, descendants of the
Dutch who had first settled the cape in the seventeenth century.
They were well inland, fighting to drive the Boers north from
Orange Free State territory coveted by the invading British, 10kilo-
metres south of the Vaal River and 70 kilometres north of Kroonstad.
Now, as part of the British attempt to drive the Boers inland,
Captain Howse and his comrades had pursued one of the leading
Boer commandosthe basic military unit of Boer militialed
by General Christiaan de Wet north towards the Boer hinterland
of Transvaal.
Even though his horse
was shot down when he
charged into battle to
save a wounded bugler,
Captain Neville Howse,
a medical officer, lifted
the wounded man onto
his back, returned to base
and treated his patient on
the spot. He was awarded
the VC for his efforts,
Australias first. Painting
by William Dargie, AWM
23
They were headed beyond the town of Vredefort and into the
Reitzburg Hills, but the British, with the Australian contingent,
wanted to stop de Wet reaching the Transvaal republic.
The men of Brigadier General C.P. Ridleys British Mounted
Infantry Brigade (which included the Australians), were like blood-
hounds following a scent once they heard de Wet had passed through
the town of Vredefort on 23 July, heading for the shelter of the
Reitzburg Hills beyond the town, gathering horses, men and supplies.
The British and Australians chased de Wet, until they found
the Boer leaders rearguard at a farm called Stinkhoutboom (near
Vredefort) along with six wagons of grain, which they attacked and
captured, also taking several Boers in the farmhouse.
De Wet and his men heard the shooting, so the general sent a
crack unit called Danie Therons Scouts back to engage the British.
De Wet brought in still more Boer troops and orchestrated such
a vicious counterattack that it took the severely tested British and
Australians by surprise. Brigadier General Robert Broadwoods men
were forced to pull back to regroup.
The Australians got more than they bargained for in this
counter attack when the Boers began using two artillery pieces
they had hidden in the bush.
Several hundred men from both sides fought for more than an
hour, sometimes just 200 metres from each other. The Boers used
their artillery well and quickly pushed back the mounted Australian
infantry.
It was then that the bugler sounded the retreat, after which they
withdrew at full pelt, taking with them their captured wagons, and
Howse dashed forward to reach the wounded man.
Soon the Australians returned with two field guns from Ridleys
brigade and began shelling the Boers, with great success. Then it was
the turn of the Boers to retreat, leaving with seventeen casualties,
including two killed.
The British emerged on top, but at the cost of thirty-nine
casualties, with three South Australians reportedly killed and
several wounded (the South Australians were fighting as part of the
BritishAustralian force).
24
The bugler was not the only lucky man that day. Captain Alfred
Edward Marston Norton, thirty-one, of the 4th South Australian
Imperial Bushmen, escaped death when bullets passed through the
middle of his forage cap and lodged in his boot heel. Like Howse,
Nortons horse was also shot dead and fell on him, badly crushing
his leg. He was repatriated to South Australia, where he had surgery
on his leg and later took command of the training camp for the
5th South Australian Imperial Bushmen.
What became the Boer War had been brewing since the Napoleonic
wars of the early 1800s, when the British tried to occupy the
Dutch-held southern tip of Africa. Once the British got a toehold,
the disputed territory had been shared between British colonies
and the independent republics of the Dutch-Afrikaans-speaking
settlers, known as Boers.
As the years went by, to escape British rule many Boers moved
north and east to settle new lands that became the Boer republics
of the Transvaal and Orange Free State.
The well-armed Boer
soldiers defending their
South African territory
against British invaders
proved a formidable
enemy because they
knew the countryside,
were skilled horsemen,
and were prepared to
fight to the death. AWM
25
The relationship between the British and the Boers had worsened
when Britain extended its control by annexing the area of Natal in
1845. Tensions remained high, and in 1880 there were battles in
which the Boers inflicted several costly defeats on the British army,
enabling the most northerly republic, Transvaal, to maintain its
independence.
But once gold and diamonds were found in the Boer republics
in the 1880s, large numbers of British subjects joined a rush into
the Boer territories in search of their fortunes. Fearing a British
invasion on the back of this development, the Boers attacked first
in order to forestall any impending British landing. Britain, keen
to gain access to the mineral-rich territories, declared war.
Thus began the Boer War, also called the South African War,
in October 1899, between Britain and the two Boer republics of
Orange Free State and Transvaal.
As part of the British Empire, the Australian colonies offered
troops who signed up out of loyalty to Britain for the war in South
Africa. Australians served in contingents raised by the six colonies
or, from 1901, by the newly formed Australian Commonwealth.
Believing it would be a
great adventure and a
chance to prove their loyalty
to the mother country,
men from the different
colonies in Australia
wasted no time enlisting
for service in South Africa,
with thousands signing
up within weeks of the
outbreak of war between
Britain and the Boers. SLV
26
Many Australians also joined British or South African colonial
units in South Africa.
The outbreak of war had long been expected in Britain and
Australia. Believing conflict to be imminent, Queensland offered
troops, and Britain also requested the participation of New South
Wales and Victoria. Each ultimately sent between four and six
contingents.
Australians served mostly in mounted units formed in each
colony before despatch, or in South Africa itself. The Australian
contribution came forward in waves of recruitment. The first were
the contingents raised by colonies in response to the outbreak of
war in 1899, which often drew heavily on the men in the militia
of the colonial forces. The second were the bushmen contingents,
recruited from more diverse sources and paid for by public subscrip-
tion or wealthy individuals.
The third were the imperial bushmen contingents, which were
raised in ways similar to the preceding contingents but paid for by
the British government. Then came the draft contingents, by the
state governments after Federation on behalf of the new Common-
wealth government which was proclaimed on 1 January 1901.
The first groups arrived in South Africa between November
1899 and March 1900; the second between December 1899 and
February 1900; the third between April and May 1900; and the
fourth between May and June 1900. Further contingents did not
reach South Africa until MarchApril 1901, while three more did
not embark until 1902 and arrived too late for any serious action.
Some were still at sea when the war ended on 31 May 1902.
Colonial troops were valued for their ability to shoot and ride,
and in many ways performed well in the open war on the veldt.
There were significant problems, however, with the relatively poor
training of Australian officers and the hastily raised contingents.
These were problems common to troops sent from all around
the empire.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because an Australian won the
Victoria Cross for the first time, displaying real heroism and
Colonial troops
were valued for
their ability to
shoot and ride.
27
compassion. When Captain Neville Howse braved enemy fire to
rescue a bugler, he set a high standard for all Australian soldiers to
follow from that day on.
The battle also helped turn the tide of war Britains way. Victories
such as the defeat of de Wet and his formidable Boers on their home
ground strengthened Britains position increasingly until the Boers
sued for peace in 1902.
The Australians participation at Stinkhoutboom was a rewarding
one, but it was just one of the many battles in South Africa that
could also be considered great. In fact, from 1899 to 1901 Austral-
ians fought in dozens of hard engagements.
Postscript
Howse, who always complained of weak lungs, was lucky to have
made it to Stinkhoutboom, let alone win a VC. Just after reaching
Cape Town on 18 February he contracted typhoid fever and was
hospitalised for eight weeks. He was also lucky to survive the war;
not long after the Stinkhoutboom action he was taken prisoner
by the Boers.
He was soon released as a non-combatant and went on to a
brilliant military career that took him to Gallipoli and beyond.
On 14 August 1914, aged 50, soon after the outbreak of World
War I, he joined the AIF Army Medical Corps as a lieutenant colonel
and commanded a small unit accompanying the Australian Naval
and Military Expedition Force to New Guinea. Later travelling to
Egypt, he worked on arrangements for evacuation and treatment
of the wounded for the forthcoming Gallipoli offensive.
He found the existing medical arrangements to be wholly
inadequate and agitated strongly for better planning, though
with limited success. Howse landed at Gallipoli at 7.22 a.m. on
25 April. The medical facilities, swamped by three to four times
the number of casualties estimated, were inadequate and so he
personally commandeered every available boat to evacuate the
wounded from the beach.
28
Charles Bean wrote that the co-ordination and manner of the
evacuation of the wounded proceeded almost entirely from the
vigorous, capable, and ambitious personality of Howse. Howse
won the Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) for this work.
On 8 August Howse received a shoulder wound while super-
vising an advanced dressing station during the Battle of Lone Pine.
In one twelve-hour period he treated hundreds of wounded and
was later mentioned in the despatches of General Sir Ian Hamilton,
commander of the Allied forces at Gallipoli. On 11 September
he became Deputy Director of Medical ServicesANZAC, then
temporary surgeon-general and Director of Medical Services for
the AIF overseas on 22 November.
He also supervised medical arrangements for the final evacu-
ation from the peninsula. In June 1916 he told the Dardanelles
Commission considering the failure of the Gallipoli campaign that
the officers responsible for the campaigns medical planning were
guilty of criminal negligence.
On 1 January 1917 he was knighted. Entering politics after
the war, he served in the Nationalist government as Minister for
Defence and Health in the 1920s, fighting for improved repatriation
services for Australias veterans.
He died in September 1930, aged 63, leaving a wife and children.
Battle stats
Winners: British forces assisted by Australians: Brigadier General C.P.
Ridleys Mounted Infantry Brigade; and New South Wales Mounted
Rifles and Army Medical Corps, along with the 4th South Australian
Imperial Bushmen
Losers: Boer forces
Toll: British casualties 39, reportedly including 3 South Australians killed
and several wounded; Boer casualties 17, including 2 killed. In the Boer
War (18991902), an estimated 16,500 Australians fought, of whom 282
died in action or from wounds sustained in battle, 286 died from disease
and another 38 died of accident or unknown causes, a total of 606
Result: This battle drove the Boers further north, increased British control
over the Orange Free State and helped turn the tide of war against
the Boers, eventually enabling British forces to gain the upper hand to
negotiate the peace in May 1902
29
Sydney battles Emden,
9 November 1914
THE ROYAL
AUSTRALIAN NAVYS
FIRST SINGLE-SHIP
ACTION AND KILL
Warmest congratulations on the brilliant entry of the
Australian Navy into the war, and the signal service
rendered to the Allied cause and to peaceful commerce
bythe destruction of the Emden.
Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, 1914
T
he first that Captain John Glossop knew about the terrible
mistake he had made was when the salvo of shells screaming
through the air hit HMAS Sydney, killing four sailors and wounding
a dozen more. It was only then that he realised he had underesti-
mated the German raider, Emden. One more strike like that could
sink his brand-new ship, part of an escort for troop transports
taking Anzacs to Gallipoli.
Yet he could not work it out. Looking across the wide blue
expanse of the Indian Ocean, he tried to fathom how the German
shells could have reached his ship.
It was still 10,500 yards (9.6 kilometres) from Emden whose
gunshe had been toldcould not even reach 9500 yards (8.7
kilometres). In fact, thats why he had planned to sail just short of
30
9500 yards before opening fire, believing he
would still be outside the range of the Germans.
What Glossop did not know was that the
Germans had cunningly modified the eleva-
tion mountings on their guns since the range
data had been published, and could now fire
their shells much furtheras they did again
and again, hitting his ship repeatedly, forcing
Glossop to retreat as fast as he could.
By the time Glossop had manoeuvred
his ship back out of range, however, Emden
was shooting off a salvo every six seconds,
and fifteen shells of the many fired had hit
HMAS Sydney. These shells damaged the
fore upper bridge and destroyed both vital
range-finders, along with the range-finding
operator and one of the guns. The shells had
also started a fire among the cordite charges,
which the crew had to extinguish in seconds
or lose the ship.
Glossop was well aware of the responsibility resting on his
shoulders as he was fighting the first battle for the Australian
navyfounded just three years earlier in 1911. Nevertheless, he
would have his work cut out to regain the initiative in this engage-
ment because he had already suffered sixteen casualties and had no
range-finders.
The battle
It was 9 November 1914 in the Indian Ocean, 2800 kilometres
north-west of Perth, near the Cocos Keeling Islands. Captain John
Glossop was trying to stop the notorious German light cruiser SMS
Emden, which had destroyed a number of Allied ships in the region
and was a deadly menace to troopship convoys bound for Gallipoli.
Emden had left a trail of destruction behind herincluding
the nearby British cable and radio station on Direction Island
The captain of HMAS
Sydney, John Glossop,
fought back after his ship
was shelled by the German
raider SMS Emden at the
start of the battle and
skilfully outmanoeuvred
and outgunned the enemy
ship, to record the first
victory of an Australian
naval vessel. Portrait by
James Quinn, AWM
31
in the Cocos group, which was a critical component of Allied
communication in and across the Indian Ocean.
As it turned out, Captain Glossop was able to pull a rabbit out
of the hat because the larger HMAS Sydney (5400 tonnes) was not
only faster than the light cruiser Emden (3600 tonnes) but her guns
were bigger. So even without the range-finders he was confident
of approaching Emden again and engaging her in battle. After all,
Glossops ship could do 27 knots compared with Emdens 17 and
Glossops guns fired 6-inch shells that weighed 45 kilograms against
the 17-kilogram shells from Emdens 4.1-inch guns.
But despite the superiority of HMAS Sydney, Glossop knew that
the captain of Emden, Karl von Mller, was a crafty operator. For
a start, he had added a fake fourth funnel to his raider to make it
look like the British cruiser HMS Yarmouth.
After being hit by Emden at 9.40 a.m., Glossop quickly sailed
off to the north-east towards one of the island in the Cocos group,
North Keeling Island. He was racing ahead of Emden, which was still
trying to attack his ship. Glossop then positioned his ship north of
Emden so that when the German cruiser caught up and was within
range, Glossop was able to fire quickly at the enemy. Range-finders
or no range-finders, Glossop started shelling Emden as they both
sailed towards North Keeling Island on classic zigzag courses to get
into striking positions, then sail away to escape being hit.
Although his gunners missed with their first salvos because
they did not have the range-finders, they soon worked out how
to compensate and Glossop started winning the second stage of
the battle from a comfortable distance, manoeuvring much more
effectively and hitting Emden with shell after shell, each doing much
more damage than Emdens shells had done before.
Glossops gunners pounded the smaller enemy ship for about
forty minutes, hitting the Emden with at least 100 shells that
completely destroyed and disabled the ship, its weapons and its crew
as Emden sailed her zigzag course towards North Keeling Island.
First Glossops shells destroyed the voice pipes that von Mller
used to give orders to the gunners, then the wireless room, the
32
electric command transmission to the guns, the steering gear and
most of the guns.
By 11 a.m. Glossop knew he had won the battle because von
Mllerknowing he had lostran his ship aground on the reef
at North Keeling Island. Emden was on fire, and steam and smoke
enveloped the vessel. The German captain had no option if he
wanted to save his men. Glossops shells had pierced his hull and
the ship was sinking, and above decks the forward funnel and
foremast were shot down. Most of von Mllers crew lay dead or
groaning with wounds.
After inspecting Emden later, Glossop said:
My God, what a sight! Her captain had been out of action 10
minutes after the fight started from lyddite fumes, and everyone
on board was demented by shock and fumes and the roar of shells
bursting among them. She was a shambles. Blood, guts, flesh and
uniforms were all scattered about. One of our shells had landed
behind a gun shield, and had blown the whole gun crew into
one pulp. You couldnt even tell how many men there had been.
They must have had forty minutes of hell on that ship . . . and the
survivors were practically madmen.
There was not much left
of the German cruiser
Emden after HMAS Sydney
had pounded the enemy
ship with a series of salvos,
forcing it onto a reef off
North Keeling Island, in the
Cocos archipelago. AWM
33
But even after running his ship aground, the determined von
Mller would not give up and still insisted on flying the German
flag. So Glossop signalled in the international code, Will you
surrender? But the Emden replied in Morse code: What signal?
No signal books. Glossop, by now losing patience, replied, Do you
surrender? Have you received my signal? But as von Mller did not
reply this time Glossop sent two more salvos into Emden, killing
twenty more Germans, saying later he felt like a murderer having
to do this to the bloody wreck with its wounded crew.
But it had the desired effect and a German sailor quickly climbed
the damaged mast and pulled down the flag. At last von Mller
had admitted defeat. So Glossop captured the enemy ship, taking
the survivors from Emden.
Within days of World War I starting on 4 August 1914, Australia
offered troops and naval vessels to help Britain in her fight against
Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When the first of
these troops set sail for the Middle East, bound for Egypt en
route to Gallipoli, the naval vessels were assigned to escort ships
transporting Australians and New Zealand troopsthe Anzacs.
Although the Royal Australian Navy had been established only in
1911, the new nation had taken delivery of enough British ships
launched in 1913 to provide the escort. The convoy that set out
from Australia included four cruisers as escorts: HMAS Melbourne,
HMS Minotaur, the Imperial Japanese Navys Ibuki ( Japan being
one of the Allies) and the pride of the Australian naval fleet, HMAS
Sydney under Captain John Glossop, RN.
Any captain that sank Emden would have a real feather in
his cap because the light cruiser had such an illustrious history.
Launched in 1908, Emden became part of the German East Asia
Squadron based at Tsingtao (now Qingdao) in China. After
war broke out, Emden, under Korvettenkapitn (Lieutenant
Commander) Karl von Mller, was sent towards the Indian Ocean
to raid Allied shipping, which is when the cunning Mller put
34
in a fake fourth funnel that made the ship look like the British
cruiser HMS Yarmouth.
Emden certainly had it coming, because she had left a trail of
destruction in her wake. Within three months, between August
and October 1914, Emden sank or captured twenty-one merchant
vessels and warships. She had also shelled and damaged British
oil tanks at Madras, India, and captured the collier Buresk with
her cargo intact, crewing her with German seamen to accompany
Emden as a supply vessel. Emden also accounted for an obsolescent
Russian heavy cruiser and a French destroyer off Malaya at the
Battle of Penang on 28 October. By early November at least 60
Allied warships were hunting Emden.
But when Emden reached the Cocos Islands at 6 a.m. on
9 November to destroy the communications base on Direction
Island, the Eastern Telegraph Company staff quickly realised they
were under attack and sent a message saying, Strange ship in
entrance, and SOS, Emden here. When a German shore party of
43 seamen under Kapitnleutnant (First Lieutenant) Hellmuth von
Mcke landed with three boats to destroy the base, the civilian staff
on the island offered no resistance. In return, Mcke promised not
to shoot down the 54-metre radio tower onto their tennis court.
Mission completed, Emden signalled the collier Buresk to join her.
Meanwhile, by lucky coincidence HMAS Sydney and the convoy
were only 80 kilometres away. The Anzac convoy picked up the
distress message from the communications base on Direction Island.
The leader of the Anzac convoy, Captain Mortimer Silver,
RN, captain of HMAS Melbourne, decided to detach Sydney in
response to the SOS at 7 a.m. The commander of Ibuki pleaded to
go on the mission, but Silver refused because the RAN ship was a
state-of-the-art light cruiser, commissioned in 1913 and commanded
by Glossop, a well-regarded Royal Navy officer.
Before long, Glossops smoke was seen on the horizon by lookouts
on Emden, whose crew knew an unfriendly ship was on the way
from intercepted radio signals. Mller had no choice but to raise
anchor and engage the Australian cruiser, even though this meant
he had to leave Mcke and his landing party behind.
35
Sydney won the engagement decisively. She was of course larger,
faster and better armedeight 6-inch guns compared with Emdens
4.1-inch gunsso Glossop used his speed and superior guns to
good effect. Glossop was cheated of a second prize, though, because
when Sydney pursued Emdens support vessel, Buresk, he found it
had been scuttled.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because the Australian navy had won
the first battle it fought with an enemy ship. HMAS Sydney defeated
Emden decisively. Australians had proven their prowess in battle.
Glossop had also demonstrated his fighting skills, recovering
from the initial surprise attack through an intelligent manoeuvring
and firing strategy.
He also praised his young and inexperienced crew for fighting
bravely: They speedily settled down. The hail of shell which beat
Although their ship was
damaged, the jubilant
crew of HMAS Sydney
celebrated when they
won the first great battle
of World War I by sinking
the Emden off the Cocos
Islands in 1914. AWM
36
upon them was unceasing, but they paid as little heed to it, as if
they had passed their lives under heavy fire instead of experiencing
it for the first time.
Britains First Sea Lord, Winston Churchill, also thought it
was a great battle, sending a message soon afterwards: Warmest
congratulations on the brilliant entry of the Australian Navy into
the war, and the signal service rendered to the Allied cause and to
peaceful commerce by the destruction of the Emden.
After his great victory, Glossop then collected the survivors
from Emden and sailed as fast as he could for Colombo, Ceylon
(present-day Sri Lanka), to catch up with the convoy transporting
the Anzacs towards Egypt, from where they would sail to Gallipoli.
Postscript
Although it was a clear victory, the English-born Captain John
Glossop was criticised for being caught by Emdens first salvo.
He nevertheless was appointed CB (Companion of the Order of
the Bath) after destroying the Emden, and awarded the Japanese
Order of the Rising Sun and Frances Lgion dHonneur. He was
promoted Rear Admiral in 1921 and became a Vice Admiral on
the retired list in 1926.
Even so Glossop was actually very lucky to get away with the
mistake he made. He should not have assumed the Emdens range
was so limited and should not have taken the risk to get so close
before he started firing.
He was also very lucky that the first shell that destroyed his
range-finders and killed the operator did not actually explode. If
it had, the damage may have been so bad it might have ended the
battle right then. In fact, only five of the fifteen German shells that
hit Sydney exploded.
The convoy was also lucky because the Emden could easily have
intercepted one or more of the thirty-eight ships of the convoy
transporting 30,000 Anzac troops.
History almost repeated itself in 1941. In World War II, HMAS
Sydneys successor met the disguised German raider Kormoran,
. . . The hail of
shell which beat
upon them was
unceasing, but
they paid as little
heed to it, as if
they had passed
their lives under
heavy fire instead
of experiencing it
for the first time.
37
again in the Indian Ocean. The Australian ship sailed too close
again before opening fire, and the German ship again got in first
with a deadly salvo. The two ships fought a fierce battle, but this
time the Germans got their own back, sinking Sydney with the
loss of all 645 on board. The battered Kormoran burned and sank
soon after, but 317 Germans in lifeboats managed to make it to
the Australian coast.
Glossop also made another mistake, for after rescuing 230 Emden
survivors for transport to Colombo, he did not chase the Emden
shore party on Direction Island till next morning and Mcke and
his men escaped on a stolen boat.
They seized the 125-tonne three-masted schooner Ayesha,
moored in the lagoon at Direction Island, and audaciously sailed
it to Padang on Sumatra in the neutral territory of the Dutch East
Indies. They linked up with a German merchant vessel and sailed
to Turkey via the Red Sea, arriving on 5 May 1915 (just after the
Anzacs escorted by HMAS Sydney had landed at Gallipoli). Mckes
men then travelled overland to Germany and rejoined the war effort.
Battle stats
Winner: Royal Australian Navys HMAS Sydney, Captain John Glossop
Losers: German light cruiser Emden, Captain Karl von Mller; the support
vessel Buresk
Toll: HMAS Sydney suffered 4 men killed and 12 wounded. Emden lost 134
killed and 64 wounded from a total complement of 360
Result: The RAN cleared the Indian Ocean of a deadly menace that was
sinking Allied ships in the region
38
Gallipoli landing,
25 April 1915
AUSTRALIAS GREATEST
BATTLE
The feat that will go down in history is that first Sundays
fighting when three Australian brigades stormed in the
face of heavy fire tier after tier of cliffs and mountains to
reach the heights above the beach.
Charles Bean, official war correspondent, The Sydney Morning Herald,
15May 1915
O
rdered to advance forward and not get held up by the fire
of Turkish defenders on the beach, Captain Eric Tulloch, a
brewer from Ballarat fighting with the Western Australians of the
11th Battalion, was feeling very pleased with himself.
Commanding B Company and leading about 60 men, he had
climbed far inland on the Gallipoli peninsula, dodging enemy bullets
as he scrambled over ridge after ridge with his mens blazing guns
sending Turks fleeing. He had reached what he reckoned to be the
top of his objective, Battleship Hill.
From here he had a commanding view. Looking west, he could
see the boats still landing troops down on the beach at Ari Burnu,
from where he had come. Looking east he saw the other side of
the peninsula and the sparkling waters of the Dardanellesthe
campaigns eventual objective. Some of his men had been shot
on the way up from the beach, but it was just 9 a.m. and having
39
landed in the pre-dawn light, Tulloch felt he had made pretty good
progress. So far so good.
He looked around expectantly for the supporting troops who
were meant to secure the ground that he and his forward party
had captured, so he could lead his men towards the next hill the
11th Battalion was meant to capture, Chunuk Bair. But they were
nowhere to be seen and Tulloch was worried. He did not want to
be cut off by Turkish troops moving in behind him.
Taking his chances anyway, he started leading his men across
the hilly ground through the scrubby bush towards Chunuk Bair,
but no sooner had they started than Turkish machine gunners dug
in at Chunuk Bairperhaps with reinforcements by nowbegan
raking them with a murderous fire.
As he and his men hit the deck, Tulloch realised this was worse
than anything else so far. Not only that, apart from the Turks ahead,
Tulloch suddenly realised other Turks had moved into position on
his right and then, God forbid, on his left too.
Having cleared the beaches
around Ari Burnu of
Turkish defenders, 16,000
Anzacs managed to land
by boat on the first day
at Gallipoli where against
the odds they established
a formidable beachhead
from which they could
not be dislodged. AWM
40
Any moment they would be surrounded. They were so far from
the beach now that without supporting troops he and his men
would not have a chance. The Ballarat boy was not one to give up
lightly, but he now knew that they had to get the hell out of there.
The battle
It was 25 April 1915 at Gallipoli, where Anzac forces had just landed
at dawn on the beach at Ari Burnu on the west of the Gallipoli
peninsula. Their purpose was to drive the defending Turks back
inland so they could advance up the peninsula, take Constantinople
and force Turkey to surrender.
The British commanders believed the Anzacs would succeed
because they had just landed no fewer than 16,000 of them on
the beach with orders to advance inland and capture a series of
objectives. The British felt doubly confident because they had
also landed an Anglo-French force at the bottom of the Gallipoli
peninsula that was meant to advance north up the peninsula before
linking up with the Anzacs to drive the Turks ahead of them to
Constantinople.
Tulloch, who did manage to retreat to safety with most of his
men before the Turks closed in around him at Battleship Hill, was
just one of many brave soldiers spearheading the advance. Private
Arthur Blackburn, an Adelaide solicitor with the 10th Battalion, had
also charged a long way inland, reachingand perhaps advancing
beyonda hill called Scrubby Knoll, with Lance Corporal Phil
Robin, a banker from South Australia. Blackburn and his comrade,
who was killed three days later, may have penetrated even further
inland than Tulloch, but as Blackburn said it was also too dangerous
to wait around for support troops to secure the newly won ground.
We pushed on after the enemy but travelling across this valley
was a decidedly lively time as the scrub was full of snipers and every
little while a bullet would come closer than pleasant, he wrote.
Inevitably, out on their own, far from the beach and unsupported,
Blackburn and his comrade also had to retreat, driven in by the
enemy who were coming to the attack in force.
41
Lieutenant Ivor Margetts, twenty-four,
a teacher from Hobart, also got a long way
inland, even though he had been forced to
start down at the beach by scaling almost
perpendicular cliffs about 200 feet [60
metres] above sea level and then on our
hands and knees we climbed to the top of
the first ridge. Margetts got past The Nek,
but had to turn back after his commander,
Colonel L.F. Clarke, was killed while writing
a despatch to be sent back to the beach.
Clarkes second-in-command, Major Elliott,
was badly wounded and shouted to Margetts:
Dont come here! Its too hot!
Other athletic warriors who got a long
way inland included Captain Joseph Peter
Lalor of the 12th Battalion, the grandson
of the leader of the 1854 rebellion at the
Eureka Stockade, who landed complete with
ceremonial family sword, and also made it
to The Nek. Lieutenant Alfred Shout, a Sydney carpenter with the
1st Battalion, reached a hill known as Baby 700 but would never
leave the peninsulahe died helping capture Lone Pine in August,
winning a Victoria Cross and becoming the most highly decorated
soldier at Gallipoli.
All these courageous forward scouts had to retreat for the same
reason: the plan designed for the landing was of little use. The
terrain was very difficult, with steep cliffs. Once over the cliffs it
was a confusing maze of ridges and gullies and hills and valleys.
Soldiers scattered in all directions on landing, battalions got
mixed up, commanders were killed, men were making decisions on
their own and, even if they got far inland against the odds, there
were no support troops to secure the land they had captured and
so they were forced to retreat.
But they achieved something the Anzac forces never achieved in
the remaining eight months at Gallipolithey penetrated further
Not only was Private Arthur
Seaforth Blackburn, 10th
Battalion, one of the first
soldiers to land at Gallipoli,
but like the athletic Eric
Tulloch, 11th Battalion, this
Adelaide solicitor got a long
way inland on that first
day, reaching Scrubby Knoll
before being forced back
after a decidedly lively time
by defending Turks. AWM
42
inland than anybody else and way beyond the limited front line
that would soon be established once the Turks moved back down
the cliffs as close as possible to the invading Anzacs.
These valiant soldiers had already had a long day by the time
they got to their highest points inland, as the invasion had started
in the dark just after 2 a.m. on 25 April, when the first troops
earmarked to go ashore were woken and lined up on the decks of
the transport ships waiting off Gallipoli that had sailed overnight
from the Greek island of Lemnos.
Here, with the black sea lapping against the ships hulls, they
heard uplifting orders from Commander-in-Chief of the Anzac
forces, Lieutenant General Sir William Birdwood.
We are about to undertake one of the most difficult tasks any soldier
can be called upon to perform. Lord Kitchener [British Minister
for War] has told us he lays special stress on the role the army has
to play in this particular operationthe success of which will be a
severe blow to the enemy. It will be difficult, but it will go down in
history to the glory of the soldiers of Australia and New Zealand.
Suitably inspired, the first soldiers to get going were the 4000-
strong 3rd Brigade, the all-Australian unit led by Colonel (later
Major General) Ewen Sinclair-MacLagan, which included four
battalions of 1000 menthe 9th Battalion from Queensland,
the 10th from South Australia, the 11th from Western Australia
(Tullochs battalion) and the 12th, mainly from Tasmania.
The second wave consisted of the 1st and 2nd Brigades, also of
about 4000 men each, which, added to the 3rd Brigade, provided
a total of 12,000 Australians landing on day one. New Zealand
forces that also landed contributed another 4000 troops, bringing
the total to 16,000 Anzacs.
At 3.10 a.m., after the men were served a light breakfast and the
moon had set, their officers ordered them to climb over the rails and
into the landing boats. They collected their kits and slid silently down
the sides of the ships on rope ladders and sat waiting for a few minutes
before oarsmen pushed off and headed towards that fatal shore.
We are about to
undertake one of
the most difficult
tasks any soldier
can be called upon
to perform.
43
They tensed themselves up for the deadly mission. These shock
troops had been ordered to dash ashore when the boats struck the
beach, with bayonets fixed, to force the Turks out of their trenches
and bayoneting (first preference) or shooting those who fought back,
then chasing those who fled up the cliffs to the closest hilltops of 400
Plateau, Scrubby Knoll and Chunuk Bair to capture these positions.
Fortunately, nobody knew what a tall order this would turn out
to be, or that hundreds would be killed that day with even more
wounded. The ordinary soldiers who rushed ashore that day had
no idea of the historic nature of their mission. Some did not even
know what country they were attacking due to official secrecy, nor
who they would be fighting.
By 4 a.m., as the dawn started breaking with just the first faint
rim of grey light appearing over the black hills behind the beach,
the first boats, each carrying their thirty men, sailed silently towards
the hilly coastline, now silhouetted clearly by the low light of the
rising sun. Everyone held their breath. This was the first real action
for troops from the new Australian nation, founded in Sydneys
Centennial Park just fourteen years earlier.
Suddenly the leading boats scraped onto the rocky beach. They
had landed, and had just enough light to see the beachwhich also
gave the Turks enough light to begin firing at the arriving boats,
killing many where they sat.
In an instant all hell broke loose. In among the deafening roar
of enemy fire and the scream of shells, the first men of the 3rd
Brigade, shouting encouragement to each other, jumped onto the
beach, leaving behind their dead and wounded mates in the boats.
The first to land was Lieutenant Duncan Chapman, followed
closely by Colonel Harry Lee, Major James Robertson, Major Alfred
Salisbury, Captain J.F. Ryder, and medical officer Captain Graham
Butler, with the men of A Company, 9th Battalion, 3rd Brigade.
Some jumped onto the stony beach, but some who jumped
into the deep water at the stern of the boats drowned. With their
heavy knapsacks and loaded down with all their kit, they just sunk
like a stone, Corporal Ted Matthews, a signalman who landed that
morning, told me many years later.
44
Despite enemy fire from the dark shore, the 2nd Brigade followed
hot on their heels, then the 1st Brigade.
As the first Anzacs dashed across the narrow beach the Turks
increased the hail of fire coming from trenches near the beach and
up in the hills, hitting them with rifle and machine-gun bullets and
shrapnel. Many were shot on the beach, which was soon scattered
with bodies of the dead and others writhing in their last agonies as
their blood stained the stones and the gentle waves lapping along
the shore turned red.
Some were lucky. Matthews, a Sydney carpenter, was hit by
shrapnel the moment he jumped from his boat. The shrapnel, he
said, came flying through the sky from Turkish cliffs high above and
landed on his left breast. Thump! He fell to the beach, stunned.
I thought I was done for, he said later, like all the other poor
blighters lying on the beach bleeding to death. But he lived because
the shrapnel had lodged in a leather diary in the top left breast
pocket. Oh, an inch either side of me scrapbook and I would have
been a goner, Matthews told me in an interview 80 years after his
miraculous landing. If my mother had not given me that little diary
I would have been killed, then and there.
Some soldiers of the 3rd Brigade made it across the beach to
the overhanging cliffs, where they huddled together, clutching their
rifles with their knapsacks still on their backs. Now what? After
catching their breath they began to climb the steep cliffs. Many
dropped their heavy packs at the base of the cliff so they could
climb up the sandy slope, pulling themselves up by the branches
of scrubby bushes.
Soon they were rushing Turkish trenches, bayoneting or shooting
the Turks and smashing Turkish guns so they could never be used
again. Many Turks fled from this wild and savage Anzac inva-
sion. On and on up those awful cliffs they charged through the
dense scrub, where every few metres a Turk jumped out with his
bayonet ready.
Many were shot trying to climb the steep, crumbling scrub-infested
cliffswhich I scaled only with great difficulty while researching
this book. Most soldiers did make it, but othersespecially those
45
who refused to dump their packswere shot
while climbing.
As the strongest, like Tulloch, Blackburn,
Margetts and Lalor, penetrated further inland
before retreating, the main body of troops tried
desperately to establish a beachhead behind
them. Having captured the first line of trenches
nearest to the beach, then the second and the
third which were even higher up the cliffs,
these troops finally succeeded in securing
enough territory for this beachhead not long
after the full light of day lit the bloody scene.
But Blackburn, Tulloch, Margetts and Lalor
reached strategic positions on the Gallipoli
peninsula that the Anzacs would never reach
again in the eight-month campaign. In August
the Anzacs would try again to take the noto-
rious Nek, but would fail while losing hundreds in the attempt.
Back on the main beach, despite the most valiant efforts of
the 16,000 men who landed, by the end of the first day the main
force had only been able to secure a little way up those steep cliffs
and along valleys either side against the fierce Turkish opposition.
By nightfall on 25 April they occupied only a square kilometre of
land, with their front line less than 900 metres in from the sea. The
extent of the territory captured was disappointing.
In fact, aware of the difficult terrain and great loss of life, Bird-
wood considered evacuating the troops, sending a message that night
to the command centre on the transport ships suggesting that if they
were going to evacuate, they should do so sooner rather than later.
The terrain was worse than anticipated because the British had
landed the Anzacs at the most hilly part of the coastline, rather
than the flatter area that Birdwood had picked. They had landed
me about a mile and a half north of where I intended our first
disembarkation should take place, he said.
But the Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Expedi-
tionary Force, General Sir Ian Hamilton, who was leading the
Although the Anzacs had to
fight a great battle with the
enemy after they landed
to capture the Turkish
trenches, they managed to
secure a foothold before
the end of the first daya
feat soon celebrated by
Australian publications
like The Sydney Mail.
46
campaign from the safety of his ship off the beach and had no
idea of the rugged cliffs, refused to consider the suggestion and
so ordered the men to dig in and await further orders. And from
that moment we became Diggers, said Matthews. That is where
the term Diggers came from.
Meanwhile further south down the peninsula at Cape Helles,
the British landing had been much worse, as they ran into heavy
machine-gun fire from the start. The British-led Allied forces, which
included soldiers from France and India, met with extremely fierce
resistance and a great loss of life. Nevertheless the Anglo-French
forces were still able to entrench on some beaches, although they
had to evacuate others the following day.
After the outbreak of war in August 1914 Turkey joined forces with
Germany against Britain and her allies. The British First Sea Lord,
Winston Churchill, initially had a Plan A for defeating Turkey by
sea. He sent a fleet of Allied ships into the Dardanelles Strait to sail
north to shell Constantinople (Istanbul), then capture the capital.
The Turks stopped these ships with mines and fire from the shore,
sinking some of the vessels and inflicting a great loss of life.
Churchill developed a Plan B to attack Constantinople by
land that involved landing Anzac forces on the western side of the
Gallipoli peninsula and Anglo-French forces on its southern tip.
Once they secured their beachheads the troops would then march
north together to take Constantinople. Churchill ordered the troops
to assemble at the nearby island of Lemnos, where they would sail
in a fleet of 200 troopships to Gallipoli for the landing. It was the
largest fleet ever to attempt an opposed landing up to that time.
The landing may have looked good on paper, but Churchill never
took account of the tenacity with which the Turks would resist an
invasion nor the resolve of the German officers commanding the
defence of the peninsula.
Churchill could have learnt from the failed sea invasion just
how determined and well prepared the Turks were, but he assumed
47
they would be a pushover by land even if they were not by sea.
Yet the Turks had formidable leaders, commanded at Gallipoli by
the senior German officer in Turkey, General Liman von Sanders;
the senior Turkish commander was Mustafa Kemal (later Kemal
Ataturk). Churchill and his underlings also failed to take account
of the difficult terrain.
As it turned out, it was a minor miracle that the Anzacs were
able to establish a beachhead at Gallipoli despite the difficult terrain
and constant fire from Turkish defenders well positioned on top
of rugged cliffs rising steeply from the narrow beach of Ari Burnu.
It was also a minor miracle that the Anzacs were not dislodged,
managing instead to hold their lines until they decided to leave of
their own accord eight months later.
Although Gallipoli is only a footnote in the general history of
World War I and contributed little if anything to the Allied war
effort, the landing against the odds became an important battle
for Australians and New Zealanders because of the bravery of the
landing soldiers and their tenacity in holding on to their precarious
position at Anzac Cove.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because it was Australias first
appearance in a global war. The nation was only created on
1 January 1901 and so this was its first test on the world stage;
the soldiers had done the nation proud.
The Anzacs were also part of what was then the largest
amphibious landing in history, an achievement that became a model
for the British evacuation of Dunkirk in World War II.
The top brass certainly considered it a great battle. In his official
dispatches, C-in-C General Sir Ian Hamilton, who watched the
action from his ship, Queen Elizabeth, said all the arrangements
worked without a hitch and were carried out in complete orderliness
and silence.
The moment the boats touched land the Anzacs leapt ashore
like lightning and each man launched straight with his bayonet at
the enemy. So vigorous was the onslaught that the Turks made no
attempt to withstand it and fled from ridge to ridge, pursued by the
All the arrange-
ments worked
without a hitch
and were carried
out in complete
orderliness and
silence.
48
Australian infantry. Although he did not mention the actual death
toll, Hamilton did admit that casualties had been deplorably heavy.
Most of all, Gallipoli is held in high regard in Australia and New
Zealand because the Anzacs were able to climb the sheer cliffs at
Ari Burnu and establish a beachhead in the most difficult terrain
and against great odds through sheer guts and determination.
Despite fierce Turkish opposition, 12,000 Australians and 4000
New Zealanders managed to land, all in the first twenty-four hours.
As the greatest Gallipoli authority, Charles Bean, concluded
in his official history of World War I, nothing can alter what
happened now; Anzac stood and still stands for reckless valour in
a good cause, for enterprise, resourcefulness, fidelity, comradeship
and endurance that will never admit defeat.
Thanks to Bean and other writers, the Gallipoli landing passed
into legend and today is known as one of the greatest battles in
Australian historyif not the greatestand is celebrated with
annual pilgrimages to Anzac Cove that grow in numbers every year.
Finally, it was a great battle because the nation paid such a great
price: 8709 Australians died in the campaign, helping to enshrine
Gallipoli as a foundation legend for a new nation.
Postscript
Despite the glowing mythology surrounding Gallipoli in the popular
mind, the landing was a tragic comedy of errors. The British landed the
Anzacs on the wrong beach, the plan of attack was hopeless once the
reality became apparent, the terrain was impossibly difficult, battalions
scattered everywhere and it was almost every man for himself.
A senior officer, Lieutenant Colonel Rosenskjar of the 26th
Battalion, also revealed other mistakes in his official report, saying:
The larger boats had not even reached the beach, grounding in
3ft. of water. The men on leaving the boats were often in water up
to their waists. Turks had concealment whereas Australians were
faced by precipitous ridges and tortuous ravines with confusing
scrub-covered gullies which formed their first battlefield.
49
The Anzacs faced an impossible task even for the best-trained
troops in the world, because the ground was also unknown to
the invading army. The Anzacs had expected to find a low sandy
beach with cover on landing. Instead, they found themselves in
the wrong place with the Turks using machine-gun fire killing or
wounding many. And although some positions were captured, the
troops were too scattered to make progress.
The British had landed the Anzacs at Ari Burnu, where the cliffs
are very steep, about 2.4 kilometres north of the intended landing
place, Gaba Tepe, where there are no steep cliffs and it is much
easier to walk inland from the beach. Hamilton even admitted this.
At first, he said, he had aimed for a safe landing spot, explaining
that a rugged and difficult part of the coast had been selected for
the landing, so difficult and rugged that I considered the Turks were
not at all likely to anticipate such a descent. While he admitted his
plan went wrong, he claimed the mistake turned out for the better
by saying the actual point of disembarkation was rather more than
a mile north of that which I had selected, but it proved itself to be
a blessing in disguise, inasmuch as the actual base of the force of
occupation has been much better defiladed from shell fire.
He conceded that it increased the initial difficulty of driving
the enemy off the heights inland, but the cliffs were so sheer at
Ari Burnu and Turkish opposition was so strong that the Anzacs
suffered a large and unnecessarily high loss of life.
Bean claimed this mistake may have been lucky because had
the troops landed where they were meant to at Gaba Tepe the
results could have actually been worse as the Turks who must have
heard we intended landing there, had made that place exceedingly
strongso I doubt if we could have landed there.
And it was a mistake not to leave. The British commanders
should have accepted Birdwoods suggestion that they evacuate the
day after they landed, because he knew the campaign was doomed.
His recommendation was refused and it would be another eight
months before higher military authorities agreed with him after
finally visiting the battlefield to see for themselves.
The Anzacs had
expected to find a
low sandy beach
with cover on
landing. Instead,
they found
themselves in the
wrong place with
the Turks using
machine-gun
fire killing or
wounding many.
50
The Turkish commander, Mustafa Kemal, later Kemal Ataturk,
who went on to found the modern secular state of Turkey, proved to
be a formidable foe (rather than the pushover Churchill predicted);
likewise the highly skilled German officers such as von Sanders, who
had been training the Turks since Turkey joined the war on their side.
Truth was certainly the first casualty of war at Gallipoli, because
although Bean reported the brave deeds of the Anzacs and helped
elevate them to heroes, in fact they failed to invade Turkey, could not
advance from their beachhead, and achieved little (apart from tying
up German and Turkish forces, keeping them from the Western
Front), and they eventually had to retreat.
Although Beans newspaper reports were routinely censored,
his personal diary revealed how badly he thought the campaign
was really going.
The saving grace in the end was the skilful evacuation led by
an Australian, Brigadier General Cyril Brudenell White, who got
thousands of men off the beach without losing a manwhich
prompted Matthews to claim if we had of had an Australian in
charge, Gallipoli would not have been a failure. Some scholars say
the Turks allowed the Anzacs to leave because they had formed
great respect and affection for their visitors, especially at the front
line, where enemy soldiers had regularly exchanged presents.
A total of 50,000 Australians had served on the Gallipoli
peninsula by the time of the evacuation in December 1915, of
whom 8709 had died. This upset the nation, whichnot surpris-
inglyvoted in referendums against conscription being introduced
the following year and again in 1917 while the Anzacs fought in
their new battlefields on the Western Front.
It was just as well these referendums were defeated because
Gallipoli was a picnic compared with the Western Frontthe
real battlefield of World War Iwhere the slaughter was five time
worsemore than 46,000 were killed in France and Flanders.
Other nations also paid a high price for Churchills Folly. New
Zealand lost 2701, the British 21,000 and the French 10,000, not to
mention thousands killed in supporting forces from British colonies
such as India. The Turks lost at least 86,000.
51
Bean, who conceived of and helped set up the Australian War
Memorial, had the biggest part in creating the legend of Anzac,
turning the defeat at Gallipoli into a triumph.
Tulloch survived the war, only to be murdered by a burglar
who broke into his St Kilda home in 1926 and killed the unarmed
veteran when Tulloch surprised him.
Blackburn went on to the Western Front where he won the
Victoria Cross at Pozires before returning to Australia where he
became an MP. He also served in World War II and, in spite of being
taken prisoner, he survived the conflict and lived to the age of 67.
Margetts also survived that first terrible day, but the Eureka
Stockade rebellion leaders grandson, Peter Lalor, was shot advancing
at Gallipoli. His body was never found.
Thanks to his trusty notebook, Ted Matthews not only survived
Gallipoli after serving the entire eight months but also lived to 101,
dying in 1997, by which time he had become the worlds last survivor
of the Anzac and other Allied forces who landed that first day.
After I introduced the then prime minister John Howard to
Matthews, Howard was so taken by this historical treasure that he
ordered a state funeral for him, even though Matthews last words
to me were: Whatever you do, dont let them glorify my part at
GallipoliI was just an ordinary signalman and the whole thing
was a terrible failure.
Battle stats
Winners: The Turkish forces of Mustafa Kemal, supervised by Germanys
Liman von Sanders
Losers: British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, which included Allied
troops along with the Anzacs
Toll: The Australians lost several hundred on the first day and a total of
8709 killed during the whole campaign; the News Zealanders lost 2701
dead in the same period
Result: The British, Allied forces and Anzacs captured and maintained a
beachhead at Gallipoli for eight months until they decided to evacuate.
During this occupation they diverted German and Turkish forces away
from fighting on the Western Front, thus helping the Allied war effort
in the main theatre of the war
The whole thing
was a terrible
failure.
52
The sinking of Australias
Gallipoli submarine,
2530April 1915
THE SUB THAT RAN
THE GAUNTLET
Within seconds the engine room was hit and holed in three
places. Owing to inclination by the bow, it was impossible to
see the torpedo boat through the periscope, and I considered
an attempt to ram would be useless. Itherefore blew the
main ballast and ordered all hands on deck. Assisted by
Lieutenant [Geoffrey] Haggard, Ithen went round opening
all tanks to flood the sub. [Lieutenant John] Cary, on the
bridge, watched the rising water to give warning in time
for our escape. But then came a shout from himHurry,
sir, shes going down.
Lieutenant Commander Henry Stoker, commander of AE2, 1915
H
is submarine shuddered as it was hit by a torpedo, and
Lieutenant Commander Henry Stokers immediate thought
was to dive for the bottom and escape the Turkish torpedo-boat
chasing him.
He couldnt ram the enemy ship with his damaged sub, but if
he could only dive fast enough into the murky waters of the Sea of
Marmara he could evade the Sultan Hissar and its deadly torpedoes.
Stoker would do anything to keep his valuable submarine out of
the hands of the Turks and avoid capture.
53
But turning around to give the order to submerge again, he saw
to his alarm sea water was pouring in through a gaping hole in the
engine room, which had been badly damaged. Not only was his
engine now out of action, he now only had seconds to get his crew
out of the submarine before it sank.
Taking his chances with the Turkseven though they might
machine-gun his crew to pieces when they showed themselveshe
ordered all hands on deck to surrender. Then, even though it could
provoke worse punishment, Stoker decided to scuttle his sub to
keep it out of enemy hands. He stayed below, secretly flooding the
subs tanks.
As captain he wanted to be last to leave the sinking vessel anyway,
but with water pouring into his beloved AE2 he would now have
to run for it and beg to be taken on to the Turkish boat before his
sub went down.
The battle
It was 25 April 1915 when this battle got under waythe same
day Anzac troops landed on the western beaches of the Gallipoli
The loss of HMAS AE2 in
Turkish waters was the
final blow for the Australian
submarine fleet after its
sister sub AE1 had been
lost while patrolling off
New Guinea in 1914. The
wreck of the AE2 was found
by divers in 1998. AWM
54
peninsula. The troops planned to attack Constantinople (Istanbul)
overland fighting their way up this peninsula, but there was also a
sea route to Constantinople along the Dardanelles Strait between
the peninsula and the mainland which passes through the Narrows
and into the wider Sea of Marmara.
HMAS AE2 was bravely trying to help with that bloody battle
by sneaking around the eastern side of the same peninsula, attacking
the Turks from the rear by destroying transports before they could
ferry more troops across the Sea of Marmara and also distracting
any warships shelling Allied troops landing on those beaches.
The hazardous mission was directed by top British naval officers
anxious to stab Turkey in the back. Admiral John de Robeck told
Stoker that if AE2 got through, then there is nothing we will not
do for you. Stoker was ordered to sink any mine-laying ships he
saw in the Narrows and, as the landings were due at dawn the next
The HMAS AE2 submarine
mission was highly
dangerous because this
tiny vessel had to set off
from an Allied island base
opposite the southern tip
of the Gallipoli peninsula,
travel north through
the heavily defended
Dardanelles and into the
Sea of Marmara. But she
made it, the first Allied
sub to get through. AWM
55
day, to generally run amok around Cannakale to cause maximum
disruption to the Turks.
It was a tall order and a dangerous one for a tiny submarine and
inexperienced crew in the narrow confines of enemy-infested waters.
Leaving her base near the mouth of the Dardanelles, AE2 started
early so she could reach the entrance to the mighty waterway at 2.30
a.m. under cover of darkness. At first AE2 was able to sail along
on the surface under cover of darkness, sailing between the land
either side where lights could be seen from fortifications, streets
and the homes of Turkish families. Stoker noted that the moon
had just set and searchlights played across the dark waters, but:
As the order to run amok in the Narrows precluded all possibility
of making the passage unseen, Idecided to hold on the surface as
far as possible.
Then, at 4.30 a.m., about the same time as the first of the Anzacs
landed on the beaches under fire from the Turks, the enemy guarding
the Dardanelles spotted the sub. Stoker said a gun opened fire at
about one and a half miles [2-kilometre] range . . . I immediately
dived and . . . proceeded through the minefield.
So far so good. AE2 dodged that first enemy fire and sailed
submerged, covering an impressive 10 kilometres of the 60-kilometre
channel. It got lighter until by 6 a.m. AE2 reached Chanak, the
narrowest part of the strait, and Stoker saw the first target he
could run amok withthe Turkish gunboat Peyk I Sevket. There
might have been enemy ships all around him, but Stoker coolly
lined up the Turkish boat, fired off a torpedo and hit the bulls-eye
before escaping.
The Turks, alerted to the immediate presence of a deadly subma-
rine in their midst, now hunted AE2 in earnest. Forts on either side
sprang into action. Heavy fire opened up from Fort Chemenlik at
Cannakale and from Kilitbahir on the other side of the Narrows,
while gunboats and destroyers criss-crossed the surface.
Luckily the shore batteries were too far away for accurate
shooting, but in the excitement Stoker ran his submarine aground
directly under a Turkish fort, which luckily was unable to lower its
guns to range on AE2. After four anxious minutes exposed on the
56
surface, the submarine worked itself off the shore while shells fell
all around it, and slid back into deeper water
Stoker immediately submerged and continued bravely weaving
his way through a web of lines tethering the mines that filled
the waters of the Dardanelles, trying not to hit the bottom but
nevertheless grounding from time to time, and bouncing towards
the surface now and then, yet making steady progress towards the
Sea of Marmara.
Soon after another grounding and a return towards the surface,
Stoker realised he had passed through the Narrows successfullybut
he was surrounded by enemy ships.
When his periscope was sighted by a Turkish battleship firing
over the peninsula at British positions, there was only one thing
he could do: dive to the bottom.
By this stage many Turkish ships were on the lookout for
AE2. They could not find the submarines position when it was
submerged and it could attack only when it surfaced. On the
other hand, submarines passing through the Dardanelles needed
to surface frequently to take accurate bearings from landmarks,
otherwise they risked running aground. Feeling he had sufficient
data for his course, Stoker now headed the AE2 down the straits
past Nara Burnu at some depth before he risked further observations
at periscope depth.
Coming back up once more, Stoker saw they were well past the
Narrows, but the Turks saw him too and the chase resumed. Diving
deep again, the next time AE2 surfaced Stoker saw straight ahead
two Turkish tugboats with a cable stretched between them to catch
the submarines conning tower.
Stoker took AE2 to the bottom and settled the vessel there with
engines off. They did not have enough power left in the batteries
to get through to the Sea of Marmara, and recharging them would
require running on the surface under diesel power.
It was 8.30 a.m. on 25 April 1915. As the Anzacs tried to advance
up the cliffs of Gallipoli, these sailors of the Royal Australian Navy
were almost through the Dardanelles and into the Sea of Marmara
where they could really have a go at Johnny Turk.
57
Stoker spent the rest of that first Anzac Day sitting on the
bottom, hoping the ships searching for him would give up. It was
Sunday so, at about the time most Christians would have been
going to church back home, Stoker held prayers then gave the crew
a chance to sleep.
Overhead they could hear the Turks looking for them and later
something being towed from the surface hit the side of the vessel.
Leaks were bringing significant amounts of water into the bilges
and this water, if pumped out, could reveal their position because
it contained large amounts of oil. All day the crew worked carrying
water to other parts of the submarine.
At 9 p.m. Stoker finally brought AE2 back to the surface, where
he saw his strategy of laying low and hiding had paid offno enemy
ships were in sight. They had spent more than sixteen hours under
water. The air become so stale in the submarine that a match would
not burn for more than a fraction of a second.
Undeterred by the failure
of British submarines to
penetrate the Dardanelles,
Lieutenant Harry Stoker,
front row centre, bravely
steered his little HMAS
AE2 submarine through
to the Sea of Marmara,
aiming to torpedo enemy
ships transporting
Turkish reinforcements
to Gallipoli. AWM
58
The crew were hurried up top for gulps of fresh air and Stoker
restarted the diesel engines, moving ahead to charge the batteries.
Travelling through the night and against all odds, Stoker and his
crew made it through the Dardanelles and into the Sea of Marmara
by the early hours of Monday 26 Aprila major breakthrough.
The AE2s wireless operator repeatedly beamed a message back
to the invasion fleet to say they had made it through the Narrows
and were into the Sea of Marmara, but no answer was received and
AE2 ran on into the night.
Unknown to Stoker, AE2s message had been heard and news of
the submarines success conveyed to the top commanders. After the
war Stoker was told by Admiral Roger Keys of the morale-boosting
effect of the news, as General Sir Ian Hamilton (Commander-in-
Chief, Mediterranean Expeditionary Force) had been pondering
whether to evacuate the Anzacs. Charles Bean noted in his diary that
news of AE2s breakthrough arrived at headquarters on Gallipoli
at about 2.30 a.m. on 26 April 1915. An Australian soldier ashore
on that night also said later that the following message was posted
at Gallipoli: Australian sub AE2 just through the Dardanelles.
Advance Australia. It was indeed a great morale booster.
Now the excited Stoker planned to claim a few scalps. From the
morning of 26 April and for the next few days, AE2 hunted for
Turkish ships in the southern Sea of Marmara. She may not have
run amok, but she certainly made her presence felt and deeply
rattled the Turks.
AE2 boldly sailed along on the surface, with Turkish fishing
boats all around, as Stoker set out to deter Turkish shipping from
sailing out south through the Dardanelles with reinforcements for
Gallipoli. At one point the cunning Stoker even took AE2 back
below the top reaches of the Dardanelles then travelled up through
them again with his periscope up, trying to convince the Turks that
yet another submarine had broken through the Narrows.
It is a pity Australias original fleet of two subs was not still
together. AE1 had been lost off New Guinea the previous year.
Just after he tried to create the impression there was another
sub with him and just when things were getting too hot, a second
Australian sub
AE2 just through
the Dardanelles.
Advance Australia.
59
Allied boat did arrive. Inspired by Stoker, the British submarine
E14, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Edward Boyle, had
also got through the gauntlet of the Dardanelles and now joined
AE2 to help attack enemy shipping.
Stoker and his men were greatly relieved to see friendly faces:
Five days, about, had passed since we had entered the Dardanelles,
vouched for by our experiences, the only true recorders of times
every varying flight. As one by one the five days had slipped by,
the habit of thinking we were alone became so ingrained that
realisation of the reverse brought very pleasant surprise.
The two sub captains agreed to run amok together the next day.
With double the strength they could really hope to claim some
scalps, but next day, 30 April, the torpedo-boat Sultan Hissar, with
a gunboat in support, spotted AE2 and forced Stoker to dive as
quickly and as deeply as possible.
Then something went wrong and AE2 began to rise uncontrollably,
surfacing with its bow sticking out of the water less than 2kilometres
from the torpedo-boat. The submarine had hit swirling patches of
denser water that caused it to lose its capacity to stay in balance.
An alarmed Stoker tried to dive again, but AE2 was still out of
control and headed well below its maximum permitted depth. There
was now the danger it would be crushed by the weight of water, so
Stoker ordered full speed astern and blew air into his main ballast
tanks. AE2 responded, and this time her stern broke the surface in
full view of the Turkish torpedo-boat.
The Sultan Hissar immediately launched a torpedo, which hit
and blasted a hole in AE2s engine room.
Stoker had hoped to use his sub to ram the enemy, but that was
now out of the question and he decided to surrender. He ordered
his crew on deck immediately, telling them to scramble on board
the Sultan Hissar alongside, then scuttled AE2 before the Turks
could stop him.
Within seconds the engine room was hit and holed in three
places, Stoker noted.
60
Owing to inclination by the bow, it was impossible to see the
torpedo boat through the periscope and I considered an attempt to
ram would be useless. Itherefore blew the main ballast and ordered
all hands on deck. Assisted by Lieutenant [Geoffrey] Haggard,
Ithen went round opening all tanks to flood the sub. [Lieutenant
John] Cary, on the bridge, watched the rising water to give warning
in time for our escape. But then came a shout from himHurry,
sir, shes going down. As I reached the bridge the water was about
two feet from the top of the conning tower.
Stoker got out in the nick of time and, as he boarded the Sultan
Hissar, he had the satisfaction of watching his sub sink to the
bottom in 55 fathoms. He had done his duty as every captain
wished to do on surrendering, cheating the enemy out of taking
his vessel as a prize.
The AE2 went down at 10.45 a.m. on 30 April 1915, sliding
to the bottom of the Sea of Marmara about 6 kilometres north of
Kara Burnu.
Although the Turks herded him and his crew off to a prisoner-
of-war camp for the rest of the warat least none of them had
died in this battle.
Once the war got going, Britains First Sea Lord, Winston Churchill,
and British naval commanders asked Australia to put all its weight
behind the Gallipoli campaign.
Initially Churchill tried to attack Constantinople by sending
an Anglo-French fleet of ships up the Dardanelles on 18 March
1915. The Turks defeated this fleet convincingly, however, with
mines, shore batteries and warships. It was a great blow to the
British war effort.
So Churchill decided to attack Constantinople from the land,
with the Allied forces (including the Anzacs) landing on the
Gallipoli peninsula. At the same time he wanted to keep trying
Hurry, sir, shes
going down.
61
to attack the Turks from the sea, so he turned his attention from
surface ships to submarines for the next round.
Australia had two submarines in its fleet at the outbreak of World
War I on 4 August 1914. In September AE2 proceeded with AE1
to capture German New Guinea as part of the Australian Naval
and Military Expeditionary Force. Together the subs helped force
the surrender of the Germans, but then the AE1 disappeared off
the coast of New Guinea.
In October AE2 sailed first to Suva, Fiji, then to Sydney and on
to Albany, Western Australia. She was then assigned to the Gallipoli
campaign and on 31 December 1914 left Albany under tow by SS
Berrima as part of a troop convoy across the Indian Ocean, arriving
at Port Said, Egypt, on 28 January 1915. AE2 was ordered to join
the British 2nd Submarine Flotilla on the island of Tenedos and
proceeded to take part in patrols.
Recently built in Portsmouth, the AE2 was a modern E class
submarine. It had diesel engines rather than petrol, better batteries
with a longer range submerged and twice the number of torpedoes
of earlier models.
Four British E class submarines were serving off the Dardanelles,
but Stokers AE2 was chosen to try to break through and operate
in the Sea of Marmara. He was warned the strong south-running
current meant he would have to run at full speed, rapidly draining
the batteries.
Stoker was not the first to try, however. On 17 April 1915,
Lieutenant Commander Theodore Brodie tried in E15 but was
caught in a violent eddy off Kepez Point and forced ashore. Brodie
and six of his crew were killed by a Turkish shell and the rest of the
crew were captured. British gunboats sank the submarine to stop
it falling into enemy hands.
It was against that background of failure that Stoker and the
crew of the AE2 were asked to show it could be done.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because the AE2 had succeeded in
penetrating deeply into the Dardanelles through the difficult and
62
dangerous Narrows into the Sea of Marmaraa major harbour for
the Turks and the heart of enemy territory.
The AE2 certainly got a lot further than any of the ships of
Churchills invasion fleet of British and French ships that tried to
penetrate the Dardanelles in March.
The news that Stoker had successfully reached the Sea of
Marmara was a great boost for the Australians landing at Gallipoli
on the western side of the peninsula, and he was later awarded the
DSO for his achievement.
The main effect the submarine battle had on the Gallipoli
campaign was to cause some havoc. Charles Bean concluded that the
activity of vessels such as AE2, E11 and E14 completely disrupted
Turkish sea communications, forcing reinforcements to be sent
overland, which meant they took much longer to reach the front
lines on Gallipoli. Food and other stores were still brought by sea,
but in small ships forced to hug the coast and move only by night.
Bean said that because of these submarines the supply of Turkish
armies on Gallipoli was, for the whole of the campaign, an acutely
anxious problem.
If communications by sea had been completely severed, the
Turkish army would have faced catastrophe. In this Allied attack
on the Turks, the AE2 had led the way.
Postscript
It was actually a big risk to commit AE2 to a dangerous mission
because it was the only surviving Australian submarine. The loss
of AE2 left Australia with no submarines.
Although the AE2 pioneered the path through the Dardanelles
and the Narrows and was first into the Sea of Marmara, Stoker only
won a Distinguished Service Order. While he was clapped into
the POW camp, Britains Lieutenant Commander Edward Boyle
and his crew steered the E14 back through the Dardanelles and
surfaced near a French battleship off Cape Helles. These heroes
were escorted to the island of Imbros, where they were cheered
round the fleet for a daring cruise in the Sea of Marmara in which
63
they sank several ships. Boyle received the Victoria Cross and each
member of his crew was decorated with a lesser award.
The commander of the E11, Lieutenant Commander Martin
Nasmith, was also awarded the VC after he continued the submarine
campaign against Turkish shipping in the Marmara. While Boyle
and Nasmith were justifiably feted, Stoker and his crew began three
and a half years of captivity in Turkish prisoner-of-war camps.
While the two British subs caused more damage than Stoker,
they could not have succeeded without Stoker blazing the trail.
He did not even receive his Distinguished Service Order till 1919.
After many years of searching by Turkish and Australian divers,
the wreck of AE2 was discovered in 1998 in the Sea of Marmara
near where it sank.
Battle stats
Winner: Turkish torpedo-boat Sultan Hissar
Loser: Australias submarine AE2, under Lieutenant Commander Henry
Stoker
Toll: Loss of the AE2; no casualties at sea, but three of the crew died in
POW camps
Result: Australians pioneered the route through the Dardanelles into the
Sea of Marmara, enabling other submarines to follow and sink Turkish
supply ships and warships shelling their forces at Gallipoli
64
AUSTRALIAN
BASTARDS REPULSE
MASSIVE TURKISH
COUNTERATTACK
The ground was simply covered with dead between the
trenches at various points and after the days work of
burying, estimates of 12,000 Turks killed have been
made . . . Amongst this awful mass of dead Turks were
some of our boys who had been killed on the 1st and 2nd
days fight and had lain there since . . . The bodies were
horrible to look at being black and swelled up, stretching
out the clothing and in many cases when they were touched
fallingtopieces.
William Dexter, Anglican chaplain, 24 May 1915
L
anding in the enemy trench alone with nothing but his rifle
and fixed bayonet, Private Albert Jacka, a twenty-two-year-old
Victorian forestry worker, realised with horror there were at least
ten armed and angry Turkish soldiers waiting to kill him.
Without thinking Jacka raised his rifle, pulled the trigger and
shot the nearest Turk, reloaded quick smart, shot the second, the
third, the fourth and emptied his magazine into the fifth, who
fell dead on the pile. Jacka leapt over the bodies and plunged his
bayonet into a startled sixth Turk, pulled the bloody blade out
of the collapsing body with the twist he had been taught and
65
plunged it into a seventh Turk standing
frozen in fear. Turning to the final
three, Jacka paused. They all had their
hands up and were saying something
like Finish Turk!
At that moment Anzac reinforce-
ments arrived, led by Lieutenant K.G.W.
Crabbe. Looking up from the trench,
his rifle with its bloodied bayonet still
pointed at the Turks, Jacka reported: I
managed to get the beggars, sir.
He certainly had got them, and also
a Victoria Crossthe first Australian
VC of World War I. But he was
lucky, because thousands of Turks had
attacked along the Anzac beachhead
that day, in their biggest counterattack
of the Gallipoli campaign, killing well
over 100 Anzacs.
The battle
It was 19 May 1915 at Gallipoli when Turkish forces, eager to
smash the Anzac invasion, charged down from the heights over
the beaches in massive numbersfour divisions, or about 40,000
soldiers. Screaming their war criesand, bizarrely, accompanied by
a military bandthey charged the Australian trenches.
This was the biggest battle the newly arrived Anzacs had fought
at Gallipoli in the few weeks since they had landed. They had
not had enough time to really dig in and could easily have been
forced back down to the beach and into the sea if the Turks had
concentrated their attack at a single point on the fragile Anzac line.
The Turks, led by German generals, were certainly determined
to expel the bastards once and for all. The day before the attack,
the Turks had sent a Morse code warning: We will put you into
the seas tomorrow, you Australian bastards. Big guns we will give
Albert Jacka found himself
alone when he jumped into
a crowded Turkish trench
at Courtneys Post, but
he managed to shoot five
Turks, bayonet two others
and capture three more,
winning a Victoria Cross and
inspiring recruiting posters
which soon appeared all
around Australia. SLV
66
you; we will give you mines, you Australians bastards. Although
its source could not be authenticated, it certainly put the 12,500
Anzacs on full alert.
Jacka played a key role in stopping this massive assault by the
Turks, whose spearhead troops, carrying rifles with fixed bayonets
and throwing bombs (hand grenades), broke through the Anzac
front line just near Courtneys Post, which was held by Jacka and
the 14th Battalion.
Seeing the Turks in a forward trench firing at the Anzacs just
up the hill from Courtneys Post, Jacka charged straight towards
the trench with four other Australians. Two of his comrades were
wounded, forcing them all to retreat. His commanding officer,
Lieutenant Crabbe, and the two remaining soldiers then distracted
the Turks in the enemy trench while Jacka dashed across no-mans-
land and came at the trench from the other end. That was when
he killed five, bayoneted two and took three prisoners.
The German officer in charge of the Turkish forces, Otto Liman
von Sanders, had planned the enemy attack for just before first
light and ordered the 40,000 Turkish infantry to line up right
along their front line. In some places the two front lines were very
close to each other, just several metres apart, especially at the top
of Monash Valley (Courtneys Post included).
But many Turks were getting ready to attack from the strategi-
cally valuable 400 Plateau, where their trenches were hundreds of
metres inland from the Anzacs with nothing but open no-mans-land
between them. Strangely, von Sanders did not order an artillery
barrage to soften up the Anzacs before the Turkish charge, which
enabled Anzacs to stay in their trenches rather than hiding in
dugouts to avoid the shells.
Then, at 3.20 a.m., some keen-eyed Anzacs spotted the fixed
bayonets of Turkish soldiers glinting in the moonlight as they
prepared to climb over their parapets and charge. Rather than
waiting, the Anzacs leapt up first in the growing light, climbed on
to their own parapets and began shooting at the Turks.
The pre-emptive strikes worked, with the Anzacs furiously
reloading with five-round clips as fast as they could to shoot into
67
the Turkish ranks, killing and wounding hundreds before it got
lightthen thousands with the help of daylight. The Anzacs had
the upper hand and some said later it was easier than shooting
kangaroos back home.
A lance corporal reported:
About 3.30a.m. word came along that the enemy were advancing . . .
the Turks came on in twos and threes up the gully and over the
ridge, but did not succeed in reaching our parapets. There were
hundreds of them in the scrub just below us and we poured in a
heavy rifle fire supported later by artillery. The Turks left about
200 killed in front of our trenches . . . the three chaps in the same
recess as me were shot dead and I had three bullets through my cap.
The Australians had got off lightly, with 160 killed and 468
wounded. Sadly, one of those killed was the highly popular John
Simpson Kirkpatrick, the man with the donkey. After the 25 April
landings, Simpson rescued hundreds of wounded men, carrying
them from the front line on his donkey. He was shot dead by
machine-gun fire even as he led his donkey up towards the front
to collect another wounded soldier.
Major General William Bridges, the first Australian to reach
general officer rank, was another casualty, mortally wounded by
a Turkish sniper on 15 May. King George V, aware of Bridges
imminent death, knighted him on 17 May; he died a day later, the
highest-ranking officer killed at Gallipoli. His comrades respected
him so much that they sent his body back to Australia, a mark of
respect that was hardly ever paid to anyone who died in a foreign
war. But as Bridges chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Cyril Brudenell
White, said, he was respected for his capability of leading troops
in the field, and his calm judgement and imperturbability in times
of stress were most inspiring.
By the end of the Turkish counterattack, which fizzled out before
lunch on 19 May, the Turks had suffered at least 10,000 casualties,
of which at least 3000 were killed, the bodies littering the ground
in front of the Anzac front line. Turkish officers appeared above
The Turks left
about 200 killed
in front of our
trenches . . . the
three chaps in the
same recess as me
were shot dead and
I had three bullets
through my cap.
68
their trenches with white flags and started burying their own dead.
Turkish doctors also emerged and started treating and recovering
Turkish wounded. This unilateral initiative was unprecedented
and dangerous as the Anzacs could have shot the rescue parties.
Taking a chance, the British general who had taken command of the
Australian 1st Division, Harold Hooky Walker, went out to meet
the Turks in no-mans-land, gave them cigarettes and suggested an
official truce be negotiated to bury all the dead. He then ordered
the Turks back into their trenches before firing resumed.
The truce was declared on 24 May, and Australian war corre-
spondent Charles Bean noted it would improve life in the trenches
as some of our men were actually sick because of the stench. The
Australians then buried their dead on their half of no-mans-land,
while the Turks did the same on their half, with men from both
sides exchanging cigarettes.
The Anzacs repulsed the
major Turkish counterattack
on 19 May, killing an
estimated 3000 Turks
and capturing many
prisoners of war. AWM
69
According to Bean, the British commander of the Anzacs,
Lieutenant General Sir William Birdwood, together with Major
General Godley and Colonel Monash, walked about studying the
terrain for battles to come, as did Turkish officers.
Private James Lennie added:
The Turks flew the white flag with the Red crescent which is equal
to our red cross. As the Turks wanted to bury their dead our Heads
gave them permission. But instead of Burying the unfortunate dead
they were picking up rifles and ammunition so our boys would
not stand that.
As soon as the last body was buried, signals were exchanged and,
as the truce ended, both sides started shooting again.
The campaign to capture the Gallipoli peninsula was part of
the British governments bigger strategy. First Sea Lord Winston
Churchill wanted the Allies to conquer Turkey, an ally of Germany,
so Allied forces could invade Europe through the back door in
the east and attack Germany from there as well as from the west.
Churchill had also ordered an attack by sea against Constantinople
(present-day Istanbul) which had failed earlier in the year, so Plan
B was an attack on land. He hoped British and Allied forces could
land on the western shore of the Gallipoli peninsula, then advance
up the peninsula to capture Constantinople.
But Churchill had not taken account of the strong defences to
the south of Gallipoli where the British and French forces landed,
nor the terrible terrain where the Anzac forces landed, which was
far too steep for an invasion.
Since the Anzacs had arrived at Anzac Cove on 25 April, the
Turks had launched a series of half-hearted counterattacks against
hard-won positions that were fiercely defended by the Anzacs.
The Turkish fire took a heavy tollbut nothing on the scale of
the 19 May assault.
70
For their part, the Anzacs had tried to advance up the steep cliffs
and ridges, especially in the first few weeks, but in vain. Precious
little ground changed hands. It really was a stalemate. In fact, the
front line changed little for the whole eight months the Anzacs were
there. The strategic positions already carried names or nicknames
by which they would be known for the rest of the campaign.
Allied advances were also limited by the withdrawal of the warships
of the British fleet, which had been shelling the Turkish positions.
The 19 May battle was notable because it was Turkeys biggest
assault. It also included a truce, which was most unusual and matched
only by the unofficial Christmas truce in Flanders on the Western
Front in 1914, when British and German soldiers exchanged gifts,
showed family photos, shared drinks and even played footballand
engendered a standing order that it must never happen again.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because the Anzacs, although heavily
outnumbered 12,500 to 40,000, repulsed a determined Turkish
counterattack aimed at driving them off the cliffs and back into
The best way for the Anzacs
to win the trench warfare
at Gallipoli was to do what
Jacka didscramble out of
their own trenches, charge
across no-mans-land,
capture an enemy trench
and thus push the front
line further forward. NAA
71
the sea. They bravely took the initiative and attacked the Turks
head-on before the Turks could charge, inflicting an estimated
10,000 Turkish casualties, including 3000 killed, with relatively
light losses themselves. By successfully defending the beachhead
at Anzac Cove they proved the Australian bastards could not be
put . . . into the seas.
It was also a great battle because the valour of Private Albert Jacka
secured Australias first Victoria Cross of Gallipoli and World WarI.
After the deaths of so many Anzacs at the landing on 25 April, it
was a great morale boost to the Australians soldiers and also the
anxious people back home.
The remarkable truce was also a rare act of humanity, compassion
for the living and respect for the dead that would not be repeated
in this war.
Postscript
The Turkish counterattack confirmed that the thousands of Turks
entrenched in the hills above the Anzacs would make it almost
impossible to take the cliffs or penetrate further inland, let alone
capture the Gallipoli peninsula or march on Constantinople. The
Anzacs were stuck in a stalemate. Before the end of the year they
would have to withdraw, leaving all the ground they had won and
their comrades buried in it behind for ever.
As for Albert Jacka, he went on to the Somme, on the Western
Front, where he fought even more heroically, was promoted to
captain and appointed the 14th Battalions intelligence officer. He
became one of the most decorated Australian soldiers of World
War I. Despite many wounds, he fought bravely and skilfully at
Pozires, attacking a German strong point and capturing 50 pris-
oners, winning the Military Cross in a deed Charles Bean described
as the most dramatic and effective act of individual audacity in the
history of the A.I.F.
He also fought well at Bullecourt, earning a bar to his Military
Cross. By then Bean said he had become Australias greatest frontline
soldier and his face was used on recruiting posters around Australia.
72
Jacka was wounded so seriously near Ploegsteert Wood and
was so badly gassed at Villers-Bretonneux in 1918 that he had to
retire from fighting. Although he received a red-carpet welcome
when his ship docked in Melbourne, where he was greeted by the
governor-general and drove at the head of a convoy of 85 cars to
the Town Hall, his life began falling apart soon after.
The electrical goods importexport business Jacka set up with
former comrades failed during the Depression and his wife, Frances
Veronica Carey, a typist from his office with whom he had adopted
a daughter, left him for a richer man.
Having never recovered his health from gassing and multiple
wounds, Jacka died in 1932 of chronic nephritis. At least 6000
people filed past his coffin when it lay in state in Anzac House,
eight Victoria Cross winners carried it at the service and 1000
returned soldiers led his funeral procession before thousands of
onlookers as it moved to St Kilda Cemetery where he was buried
with full military honours.
Battle stats
Winners: Anzacs
Losers: Turkish forces
Toll: Anzac casualties about 160 killed and 468 wounded; Turkish casualties
about 10,000, including about 3000 killed
Result: The Anzacs successfully repulsed a massive Turkish counterattack,
defended their beachhead at Anzac Cove and proved they could not be
thrown into the sea; but as they also knew they could not attack uphill
and dislodge the Turks this 19 May battle confirmed that Gallipoli was
indeed a stalemateand would remain so until the evacuation in
December 1915
73
THE GREATEST
BASTARD IN THE
WORLD
The KING has been pleased to award the Victoria Cross
to Captain Alfred John Shout, 1st Battalion, Australian
Imperial Force. For most conspicuous bravery at Lone Pine
trenches, in the Gallipoli Peninsula. On the morning of the
9th August, 1915, with a very small party Captain Shout
charged down trenches strongly occupied by the enemy,
and personally threw four bombs among them, killing eight
and routing the remainder. In the afternoon of the same
day, from the position gained in the morning, he captured
a further length of trench under similar conditions, and
continued personally to bomb the enemy at close range
under very heavy fire until he was severely wounded, losing
his right hand and left eye.
Citation for Captain Alfred Shouts Victoria Cross, 1915
L
eaping into the Turkish trench, Captain Alfred Shout real-
ised that he and his comrades were heavily outnumbered.
Undaunted, he charged down the trench and, despite the risks
involved in handling so many of the primitive grenades he was
carryingknown as bombshe threw one after another among
the startled Turks, killing eight and routing the remainder. Most
soldiers threw only one bomb at a time, but Shouts blood was up,
74
he was out in front of his men and he had to take
this vital trench. So far, so good: he cleared the
trench and claimed it for the Anzacs.
That afternoon, still fired up, Shout and another
captain assembled a party of eight men to carry more
sandbags and extra bombs to attack Turks who had
recaptured part of the trench lines. Running forward
as the sandbag carriers built barricades behind him,
Shout was clearing the Turks with splendid gaiety
throughout the assault, laughing and joking and
cheering his men on.
Then Shout lit three bombs simultaneously for
a final charge to stop Turkish soldiers hindering the
construction of the last barricade, right up against
the enemy front line. The gallant officer success-
fully threw two at the Turks, but the third bomb
exploded as it was leaving his hand, wounding him
dreadfully.
The battle
Shouts action occurred on 9 August 1915, the fourth day of the
battle for the Turkish lines at Lone Pinenamed for the single tree
growing therewhich had started at 4.30 p.m. on 6 August. The
assault on the impregnable Turkish position was launched from
Anzac Cove, 500 metres below Lone Pine, by the men of the 2nd,
3rd and 4th Battalions of the 1st Australian Brigade, which was
followed into battle by the 2nd and 3rd Brigades. Within half an
hour they had seized their objectives.
The leading Anzacs reached the Turkish trenches in minutes,
surprising the enemy. Blocked by fences and trench roofs made of logs,
the Anzacs fired through gaps, tore the logs apart, jumped into the
trenches and shot or bayoneted the Turks in hand-to-handfighting.
As Private J.K. Gammage reported: We felt like wild beasts,
but were calm and never fired reckless but were deliberate . . . we
rushed them out of their 2nd and 3rd line of trenches in half an
Having already fought
in the Boer War, Captain
Alfred Shout, a Sydney
carpenter, distinguished
himself at Gallipoli by
winning a Military Cross for
leading a difficult bayonet
charge soon after landing
and a Victoria Cross at
Lone Pine for killing eight
Turks and capturing a
heavily defended trench.
He was killed in this battle
when a bomb (grenade)
exploded in his hand. AWM
75
hour. The bombs simply poured in and as fast as our men went
down another would take his place. Soon the wounded were piled
up three or four deep . . . the moans of our own poor fellows and
also the Turks we tramped on was awful.
The Anzacs gained a foothold against all odds in the first series
of trenches. With the help of reinforcements, they fought hard
over the next few days to take more trenchesand, eventually,
they held Lone Pine.
On both sides the toll was in the thousands, according to the
official Australian war correspondent Charles Bean, who was
wounded in the right leg while watching the battle that day. He
wrote: The dead lay so thick that the only respect which could be
paid to them was to avoid treading on their faces ... you could not
tell the difference between our dead and Turkish dead because their
The Anzacs valour at Lone
Pine became the stuff
of legend: capturing the
covered heavily fortified
Turkish trenches, advancing
the front line and winning
seven Victoria Crosses
in the one battle. NAA
76
faces went so black. The Australians lost more than 2200 men in
five days of fighting, the Turks almost 7000.
Lone Pine was one of the most desperate and bloody engage-
ments at Gallipoli, as an anonymous soldier confirmed after the
battle: The conditions are unspeakable. The dead, Turkish and
Australians, are lying buried and half-buried in the trench bottom,
in the sides of the trench and even built into the parapetof all
the bastards of places this is the greatest bastard in the world.
Signaller R. Stanley believed the Anzacs were in Lone Pine to
stay. At 4.30pm we opened a terrific bombardment on Lone Pine,
from 100 guns and Howitzers, 4 cruisers 3 monitors and several
destroyers pour in a terrific fire, he wrote.
Lone Pine position is absolutely ploughed up. At 5.30 a signal is
given, the firing ceases abruptly and the 2nd Brigade charge the
position, and reached the Turks 3rd line of trenchesthe Turks
having to be bombed and bayoneted out of their trenchesThe
overhead covering having to be lifted off their trenches so as our
men could get at them. Turks counterattacks and shell fire bravely
withstood by the remnants of the 2nd Brigade. All night the Turks
try to regain their lost position, but fail their bomb attacks being
exceptionally bad.
Despite the initial success, Australian casualties had been heavy,
and the 1st Battalion was now ordered forward to meet the expected
Turkish counterattack. The battle descended into bitter, savage
fighting over the following days, predominantly in the form of
deadly bombing duels with grenades, the Australians mainly using
jam tin bombs made on the beach at Anzac Cove.
Captain Alfred Shout excelled at bombing. At 9 a.m. on 9August
the 1st Battalion relieved the 3rd Battalion at Sasses Sap on the
Lone Pine front line; at the same time, the Turks attacked and
recaptured a significant portion of this trench. Captain Shout and
Captain Cecil Sasse gathered three men to carry sandbags as they
charged down the trench to try to retake it. The two officers ran at
the head of the party, with Sasse firing his rifle while Shout hurled
77
bombs. The group advanced until they had retaken about 20 metres
of the line, when the sandbags were used to make a barricade. Sasse
was credited with killing twelve Turkish soldiers during the action
and Shout with eight, while forcing the remainder to flee.
That afternoon the pair assembled eight men to carry sandbags
and extra bombs and, side-by-side, Sasse and Shout ran forward
ahead of the sandbag carriers, moving in short bursts and building
a barricade each time they halted.
At their final attempt Shout was mortally wounded after the
third of three bombs he had lit blew up prematurely. The explosion
shattered his right hand and part of the left, destroyed his left eye,
cut up his face and burnt his chest and leg. Despite the severity of
his injuries, Shout maintained consciousness and was dragged out
of the firing line, where he remained cheerful, drank tea and sent
a message to his wife.
The Allied forces were trying to capture the heights above Anzac
Cove and the battle for Lone Pine, halfway up the slope from the
beach, was an essential step. It was the biggest Allied offensive
against Turkish defenders at Gallipoli.
The British War Council still believed the Allies could invade
the Gallipoli peninsula successfully. Allied commanders, including
General Sir Ian Hamilton (Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean
Expeditionary Force) and his staff officer, Lieutenant Andrew Skeen,
devised a bold but complicated strategy. Their main objective was
to capture the Sari Bair Ridge, including the towering Hill 971
which, at 971 feet (296 metres) was the commanding peak above
Anzac Cove. From that vantage point, they would be looking down
on the Turks.
The British landed about 20,000 reinforcements, under Lieu-
tenant General Sir Frederick Stopford, north of Anzac Cove at
Suvla Bay to secure the foothills just inland. His troops planned
to capture the Sari Bair Range from the north-west, a move that
the Turks would not expect.
Shout maintained
consciousness and
was dragged out
of the firing line,
where he remained
cheerful, drank tea
and sent a message
to his wife.
78
At the same time, Anzacs of the 4th Brigade under Brigadier
General John Monash would capture Hill 971, and New Zealand
troops would capture Chunuk Bair (which scouts claimed was poorly
defended), with the hill Baby 700 as a supplementary objective. To
achieve these goals, they had to distract the Turks with diversionary
battles, and Lone Pine was one of these. The first diversion would
take place south at the Anglo-French beachhead of Helles, which,
with all its unburied bodies and sickness combined with the
extreme summer heat, smelt like an open cemetery according to
one infantryman. The second diversionary attack would be at Lone
Pine opposite the Anzac Cove bridgehead. The third, by the Light
Horse on the strongly defended Nek, was scheduled for the day after
the Lone Pine attack, 7 August. The whole August offensive would
be a make-or-break attack with 100,000 Allied troops fighting in
five different places.
However, the brilliant Turkish military leader, Mustafa Kemal,
had anticipated much of this strategy and prepared for months
with reinforcements and stronger defences. Well defended by the
Turks, and with a steep and hilly terrain, the hills above Anzac Cove
proved virtually impregnable (although the Anzacs held onto Lone
Pine until December 1915). Fortunately, the British War Council
and Allied commanders learnt their lesson. This was the last big
life-wasting offensive of the Gallipoli campaign.
The objectives may have been unachievable, but the battles
produced exceptional warriors, especially Shout.
Winning a VC at Lone Pine was not his first act of heroism.
Born in New Zealand in 1882, the son of English-born cook John
Shout and his Irish wife Agnes, Shout served with distinction in
the Boer War of 18991902, in which he was wounded twice. At
Thabaksberg Shout was mentioned in despatches for retrieving
a wounded man under heavy rifle fire; he was later promoted to
sergeant.
After the war, Shout emigrated to Australia with his wife and
daughter, working in Sydney as a carpenter when he enlisted. Posted
to the 1st Battalion as a second lieutenant under the command of
Lieutenant Sasse, he distinguished himself landing with the first
79
waves at Gallipoli when he was soon in the thick of the fighting
and led a charge of 1st Battalion men to Baby 700 after a request
for reinforcements. Shout was the last to abandon this forward
position when the Turks counterattacked, then led 200 men to
reinforce Lieutenant Colonel George Braunds position at Russells
Top on Walkers Ridge, where he served until 27 April without rest.
Despite being wounded early in the action, Shout refused to leave
the front line and, as the Turks closed in on his trench, he led a
bayonet charge against them.
Although wounded a second time by a bullet in the arm that
rendered it useless, he still refused to leave until wounded a third
time. Having also carried several wounded men out of the line,
he was awarded the Military Cross for conspicuous courage and
ability at Walkers Ridge. After suffering another bullet wound to
his arm he was patched up and rejoined his unit fifteen days later
when he was mentioned in the despatch of General Hamilton, and
was promoted to captain on 29 July.
Lieutenant Shout was a hero, a 1st Battalion soldier confirmed.
Wounded himself several times, he kept picking up wounded men
and carrying them out of the firing line. I saw him carry fully a
dozen men away. Then another bullet struck him in the arm, and it
fell useless by his side. Still he would not go to the rear. Iam here
with you boys, to the finish, was the only reply he would make ...
Alittle later Lieutenant Shout was wounded again, and fell down.
It was cruel to see him. He struggled and struggled until he got to
his feet, refusing all entreaties to go to the rear. Then he staggered
and fell and tried to rise again.
At last, continues the same account, some men seized him and
carried him away, still protestingjust as he was when carted away
at Lone Pine.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because it was the first significant
breakthrough achieved by Anzacs since they had established their
hard-won beachhead more than three months earlier. Since then,
Wounded himself
several times, he
kept picking up
wounded men and
carrying them out
of the firing line.
80
they had been pinned down on the beach and an adjacent area
inland of about a square kilometre. But by capturing Lone Pine
they had advanced the front line significantly.
It was also a great battle because the Anzacs fought so skilfully,
so bravely and with such persistence that seven men won Victoria
Crosses in the one battle. It was the biggest clutch of VCs won at
Gallipoli and the first since Albert Jacka had won his for capturing
a trench single-handed in May. There would only be one other at
Gallipoli for the Anzacs, for Hugo Throssell at Hill 60.
Apart from Shout, the VC winners at Lone Pine were Corporals
Alexander Burton and William Dunstan, Lieutenants William
Symons and Frederick Tubb, and Privates Leonard Keysor and
John Hamilton.
Postscript
The Anzacs may have taken Lone Pine and won seven Victoria
Crosses, but it cost more than 2000 men their lives, including Shout,
who died from his injuries. Unfortunately on 15 August officials
advised Rose Shout that her husband had only been wounded
again (she had already received notification of his 27 April wound).
Although army records showed Shout died on 11 August, these
records were wrongly altered showing him Not Dead, and that he
was on board the ship Thermistocles and returning to Australia. The
Australian press published news of the heros return, claiming that
he would arrive in Sydney mid-Septembermuch to the dismay
of his wife, who by then had finally been told by the army that her
husband was dead.
Shout was the most highly decorated Australian soldier
at Gallipoli, winning the Military Cross at the landing, being
mentioned in despatches twice, and then receiving the Victoria
Cross posthumously for Lone Pine. Until 2006 Shouts medals,
including his Victoria Cross, remained in the possession of his
family, the only one of the nine VCs won by Australians at Gallipoli
not in the collection of the Australian War Memorial. On 24 July
2006 the medals were auctioned and the VC fetched a record A$1.2
81
million, paid by Australian media owner Kerry Stokes who then
donated the VC to the War Memorial.
Lone Pine was the only success during that much-anticipated
August offensive. The attacks on Chunuk Bair and Hill 971 came
unstuck when Allied units lost contact with one another. General
Stopfords 20,000 British reinforcements failed to advance after they
landed at Suvla Bay, a failure Australias Lieutenant Colonel Carew
Reynell blamed on the incompetence of British officers and men.
According to Reynell, who was later killed at Hill 60:
British reinforcements are the absolute bally limit. A more miser-
able, useless lot of Devils I cant imagine. They seem to have no
spirit or pride of any sort ... one could do more with one battalion
of Australians or New Zealanders than 5 battalions of these men,
whose officers are a wretchedly incompetent lot.
General Hamilton must have agreed, as he sacked Stopford
for failing to advance. Winston Churchill described Stopford as a
Thousands of combatants
died in the fighting at Lone
Pine, but because it was
too dangerous to retrieve
the dead, the corpses
had to be left unburied
in no-mans-land. AWM
82
placid, prudent, elderly English gentleman, saying the 61-year-old
was too old and had never commanded troops in battle. Hamilton
could not have been much better, as he was later sacked as well.
Australias last living Anzac who had landed on the first day of
Gallipoli, Corporal Ted Matthews, blamed the damn fool British
for most failures when interviewed by the author in the late 1990s.
When that fool Tommy general landed on the beach at Suvla,
instead of coming to help us he ordered his men to stop for a cup of
tea and you could see them playing football on the beach, Matthews
said. So the Turks had plenty of time to get reinforcements to
block their advance. If we had had an Australian in charge we
would have won more battles like Lone Pine, and Gallipoli would
not have been a failure.
Battle stats
Winners: Anzac forces, who won seven Victoria Crosses between them
Losers: Turkish forces
Toll: Australian casualties 2277; Turkish casualties 5000
Result: Anzacs captured the Turks forward trench of Lone Pine in a rare
but costly victory at Gallipoli
83
The Nek, Gallipoli,
7 August 1915
SLAUGHTER ON THE
TENNIS COURT OF
DEATH
It was a deed of self-sacrifice and bravery that has never
been surpassed in military history, the charge of the
Australian Light Horse into certain death at the call of their
comrades needs during a crisis in the greatest battle ever
fought on Turkish soil.
Charles Bean, official war correspondent, The Sydney Morning Herald,
27August 1915
A
s hundreds of gallant young Light Horse troopers lay dead,
or shot to pieces and crying out for help, on the bloody
battlefield in front of his trenches, Lieutenant Colonel Noel Brazier,
commander of the 10th Light Horse Regiment, bellowed frantically
at Colonel John Antill. This is sheer bloody murder, he shouted,
begging Antill to call off the futile assault before another wave of
young men rushed to their deaths.
But Antill, a Boer War veteran used to bloodshed, and temporary
commander of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade, refused. He believed
troopers in earlier waves had reached the Turkish trenches across
no-mans-land and planted marker flags to proclaim they had
made it.
84
So Antill ordered more men over the
top into a hail of enfilading machine-
gun fire. This was the third attack wave,
consisting of troopers of the 10th Light
Horse Regiment from Western Australia.
Brazier, also a West Australian, had
desperately wanted to save the lives of
his men and those of the fourth wave,
which included the distinguished fighter
Hugo Throssell.
The first two waves, Victorians of
the 8th Light Horse Regiment, had
been utterly slaughtered, so Brazier
was right to be distraught. But when he
searched for the only officer who could
overrule Antill, the brigade commander
Colonel F.G. Hughes, he was nowhere
to be found. In a bitter irony, Hughes
had gone forward to assess the situation
and had decided to end the assaults,
eventually managing to halt most of the
fourth wave.
The battle
It was 7 August 1915 and the Battle of The Nek was being fought
as part of the campaign to drive the Turks back to Constantinople
(now Istanbul), which the Allies hoped to capture. Two regiments of
Hughes 3rd Light Horse Brigade mounted the attack on the enemy
trenches, the 8th (Victorian) and 10th (Western Australian). The
Light Horse troopers had been dispatched to Gallipoli in May as
infantry reinforcements, sadly leaving their horses in Egypt.
The battle for The Nek had started a vital seven minutes late,
because the officers commanding the naval bombardment and the
assault troops had forgotten to synchronise their watches. The
barrage ended seven minutes before the assault took place, giving
As he watched wave after
wave of the young men of
the Light Horse going over
the top to certain death,
Lieutenant Colonel Noel
Brazier did his best to stop
the carnage. But as he
was not the commanding
officer, he did not have
the final say. AWM
85
the Turks plenty of time to get back into their trenches for the
attack that was clearly coming.
The attack was scheduled to start at 4.30 a.m. The 8th and 10th
Light Horse regiments were to advance on a front about 80 metres
wide in four waves of 150 men each, two waves per regiment. Each
wave would advance two minutes apart. The distance they would
have to travel to reach the Turks was only 27 metres. Coloured
marker flags were carried to be planted once they reached and
captured Turkish trenches.
When the first wave of 150 men from the 8th Light Horse
Regiment, led by their commander, Lieutenant Colonel A.H. White,
hopped the bags, they were met with a hail of machine-gun and
rifle fire. Within thirty seconds, Whitewho had only ten minutes
earlier shaken Antills handand all of his men were shot to pieces.
Almost unbelievably, one or two fast sprinters had reached the
Turkish trenches to plant some flags, although they were quickly
shot or bayoneted by the Turks.
The Turkish machine gunners combined were firing at least 5000
rounds a minute, with streams of bullets severing some of the mens
legs completely. Despite this, the second wave of 150 from the 8th
followed the first wave without hesitation two minutes later and
met the same fate, with almost all the men cut down by heavy rifle
and machine-gun fire before they got half way.
Witnesses confirmed the carnage with men sinking to the
ground as though their limbs suddenly became string. Sergeant
C.C. St Pinnock wrote that the Turks
were waiting ready for us . . . we did not get ten yards. The second
line came on and got the same reception, and so on until the whole
of the 8th and 10th were practically wiped out. Really too awful
to write about. All your pals that had been with you for months
and months blown up and shot out of all recognition. There was
no chance whatever of us gaining our point, but the roll call after
was the saddest, just fancy only 47 answered their names out of
close to 550 men. Isimply cried like a child. It is really too awful.
I got mine shortly after I got over the bank, and it felt like a
86
million ton hammer falling on my shoulder. However, Imanaged
to crawl back and got temporarily fixed up till they carried me to
the Base Hospital.
Second Lieutenant W.M. Cameron noted:
The eighth Regt. was the first out. We saw them climb out and
move forward about ten yards and lie flat. The second line did
likewise; meantime the Turkish fire increased in intensity, and as
they rose to charge the Turkish machine-guns just poured out lead
and our fellows went down like corn before a scythe.
Then it was the turn of the third wave and the 10th Light Horse
Regiment took its place on the fire steps. That was when Brazier
tried to persuade Antill to call off the attack, but the acting brigade
commander believed his commander, Hughes, had gone forward
to lead the advance on the battlefield. So Antill ignored Braziers
plea, sending 150 men over the parapets to almost certain death.
When this third wave went over the top and the assault came
to a quick end as before, Lieutenant Andy Crawford recalled: I
could see the Turks standing up two deep in their trench. I could
The light horsemen did not
have a chance. According
to war correspondent
Charles Bean, they were
ordered to charge across
an area of open ground the
size of a tennis court with
Turkish machine gunners
shooting straight at them;
not surprisingly hundreds
were killed. Painting by
George Lambert, AWM
87
see one soldier firing over another chaps shoulder. Many men
of the third wave launched themselves out of the trenches then
tried to dive for cover, having performed their duty to attack but
having no ambition to commit mindless suicide by charging clearly
impenetrable defences. Among the many who died were Harold
Rush, aged twenty-three, who felt certain he would be killed and
said to his mate beside him: Goodbye cobber, God bless you. The
words were inscribed on his headstone.
Finally Braziers pleas reached the ears of Hughes, who by then
had decided to call off the attack. Sadly, some of the fourth wave,
men of the 10th Light Horse led by Major Scott, did not hear this
new order to stand down and went over the top anyway. Others
on the far right were so psyched up that they rose and rushed over
the parapet without any orders, just in the expectation of the order.
Some officers knew Brazier was trying to have the attack called
off, but the troopers did not. At the last minute Scott managed to
stop some men leaving the trench, but the slaughter of the fourth
wave had begun because of the tragic confusion.
Fortunately, others were spared. Thinking he was going to
die, Trooper Jack Cox said he had been lost in my own thoughts,
thinking about my wife with whom I had never really known the
joys of married life and my time in similar battles in the Boer War.
Then Cox had seen an officer doing a lot of talking on a field phone
before he replaced the receiver, look down the line and broke into
a smile, shouting: Stand down, men!
By 4.45 a.m. the ridge was covered with fresh killed and wounded
Australian light horsemen. Most of the dead would remain where
they fell right up to the evacuation of Gallipoli in December 1915.
This battle was part of the much bigger picture of the Allied
campaign to invade the Gallipoli peninsula and drive the Turks back
to Constantinople. The Nek (a word of Afrikaans origin meaning
mountain pass) was a narrow ridge that the Allies had been trying
to take since they landed at Ari Burnu on 25 April 1915. The strip
88
of land was indeed a bottleneck, connecting the Anzac trenches on
a ridge known as Russells Top to a hill called Baby 700 on which
Turkish defenders were entrenched.
It was a deeply flawed plan. As official war historian C.E.W.
Bean noted:
Going forward here would be like trying to attack an inverted
frying pan from the direction of its handle. The width of The Nek
was about 30 metres and from the Turkish lines, about the size of
three tennis courts. Into this, the 3rd Brigade of the Australian
Light Horse was commanded to go.
The High Command picked August for a make-or-break assault
against the Turks. For the three months since the 25 April landings,
the Anzac beachhead had become a stalemate. This August offensive,
which became known as the Battle of Sari Bair, was intended to
break the deadlock by capturing the high ground of the Sari Bair
range and linking the Anzac front with a new landing to the north
at Suvla Bay.
In addition to the main advance north out of the Anzac perim-
eter, supporting attacks were organised, such as the 6 August assault
The gallant bushmen of the
Light Horse had enlisted to
ride the wonderful horses
they had brought with
them into battle, cavalry-
style, but at the last minute
they were ordered to leave
their horses in the Mena
training camp in Egypt
and go to Gallipoli, where
they would fight on foot.
89
on Lone Pine. The attack at The Nek was also meant to coincide
with one by New Zealand troops on nearby Chunuk Bair during
the night. The light horsemen were to attack across The Nek to
Baby 700 while the New Zealanders descended from the rear onto
Battleship Hill, the knoll next above Baby 700, to catch the Turks
in between.
But by the morning of the 7th the reason for attacking The Nek
had evaporated. The attack from the rear of Baby 700 was delayed
when the New Zealanders failed to reach Chunuk Bair, which meant
the Turkish machine guns could fire unopposed across The Nek.
Unbelievably, Major General Sir Alexander Godley, commander
of the New Zealand and Australian Division, which included the
3rd Light Horse Brigade, decided the attack should proceed simply
because it had been planned. The bloody battle became known as
Godleys abattoir.
Charles Bean considered the charge at The Nek the most sense-
less and tragic waste of Australian lives at Gallipoli. In the end the
scale of the tragedy at The Nek was the result of the ineptitude
of two Australian officers, Hughes and Antill. Hughes, a militia
officer, also assigned too much responsibility to his regular army
subordinate Antill. But Antill had the authority to call off the attack
after the slaughter of the first wave, let alone the second, but he
wanted to push on.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because it demonstrated the bravery
of the Light Horse. As Charles Bean said: It was a deed of self-
sacrifice and bravery that has never been surpassed in military
history, the charge of the Australian Light Horse into certain death
at the call of their comrades needs during a crisis in the greatest
battle ever fought on Turkish soil. As the West Australian trooper
and Nek survivor Len Hall told the author during an interview
in the 1990s: We were meant to be mounted Light Horse riding
into battle and fighting from the saddle, so it was so much harder
running across open ground carrying a fixed bayonet as our main
weaponwed never bargained for that.
90
Bean later explained it was like asking men to run from the
back line at one end of a tennis court towards the back line at the
other end, lined with Turks shoulder to shoulder with machine
guns blazing. Bean, who also said he heard a tremendous fusillade
break out, wrote in his journal: God help anyone that was out in
that tornado.
The casualties were also proportionally high enough for it to
be called a great battle. Of the 600 Australians from the 3rd Light
Horse Brigade who took part in the attack, there were 372 casualties;
234 out of 300 men from the 8th Light Horse Regiment, of whom
154 were killed, and 138 out of the 300 men from the 10th, of
whom 80 were killed.
The Turkish losses were negligible, for the Australians ran with
bayonets fixed on rifles that were not even loaded. Some reports
say the Turks lost eight men.
Postscript
Brazier had been right to try to stop a battle he could see was
senseless. From the starthe said in his official reportthere was
a murderous machine-gun and rifle fire upon our parapets and the
men could not advance, so he referred the matter to Brigade HQ
but was ordered to advance at once.
Even after the next wave was held up the persistent Brazier
again referred matter to H.Q. but was told to advancebut as the
fire was murderous, again referred matter personally to Brigadier.
Finally, when he once again reported the fire as deadly and the
casualties as very heavy, we were ordered to retire. The saddened
Brazier concluded: The attack seemed premature and in view
of the heavy machine-gun fire, should have been held upand
many valuable lives saved. The compassionate Braizer went on to
command Light Horse forces in Palestine and to this day is regarded
as one of the best commanders in the history of the 10th Light
Horse Regiment.
Antills decision not to stop the waves of men attacking because
he believed marker flags had been raised was confirmed in a Turkish
The attack seemed
premature and in
view of the heavy
machine-gun fire,
should have been
held upand
manyvaluable
lives saved.
91
article published after the war, in which Turkish soldiers at The
Nek said a couple of troopers with a marker flag did make it to
the Turkish trench and momentarily raised the flag before they
were killed.
But in contrast, a simultaneous attack by the 2nd Light Horse
Regiment, 1st Light Horse Brigade, at Quinns Post against a
Turkish trench system known as The Chessboard was abandoned
immediately after 49 out of the 50 men in the first wave became
casualties. In this case, the regiments commander had not led the
first wave in so was able to make the decision to cancel.
Like Antill, the officer who had the final say at The Nek was a
Boer War veteran, Major General Alexander John Godley, whose
father had fought in the Crimean War and who failed to realise that
the invention of the machine gun had rendered the cavalry charge
obsolete. Hughes, his ageing and sickly Australian subordinate,
should not have had direct command and should never have left
brigade HQ during the battle. Unsurprisingly, he was sent back to
Australia several weeks later.
Braziers comrade, Hugo Throssell, a West Australian farmer who
went over the top towards the end, did survive that fool charge, as
Throssell called it when nine officers and 73 men of his regiment
were killed within minutes. Throssell went on to win a Victoria
Cross at Hill 60. After the war he married the Australian author
Katharine Susannah Prichard, with whom he started a family. Like
so many heroic fighters at home on the battlefields he was unable
to adjust to civilian life and killed himself in 1933, perhaps haunted
by images of the slaughter of his mates at The Nek.
When Commonwealth burial parties returned to the peninsula
in 1919 after the war ended, the bones of the dead light horsemen
still lay thick on the ground. The Nek Cemetery now covers most
of no-mans-land at the tiny battlefield and contains the remains
of 316 Australian soldiers, most of whom fell during the 7 August
attack. Only five men could be identified, including Harold Rush.
The battle is depicted in the climax of Australian director
Peter Weirs 1981 movie Gallipoli. Weir was inspired by the story
of trooper Wilfred Harper, who was seen sprinting towards the
92
enemy like an Olympian. However, while Weir depicted British
officers sipping cups of tea on the safety of the beach as they sent
waves of Australians to their deaths, Australian officers were actually
in charge.
Battle stats
Winners: Turkish forces
Losers: Anzacs of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade and its 8th and 10th regiments
Toll: Australian casualties 372 (including 234 killed); possible Turkish casual-
ties 8
Result: The Turks successfully defended their positions at The Nek, demon-
strating the impossibility of the Anzacs capturing the heights of Gallipoli
93
AUSTRALIAS BLACKEST
BATTLE
The first wave went down like wheat before the reaper with
scores of stammering German machine guns spluttering
violently, filling the air with bullets riddling the tumbling
bodies and cutting men in two before they hit the ground
yet the line kept on going.
Sergeant Walter Downing, 20 July 1916
O
n the morning of 19 July, in broad daylight, Major General
James McCay ordered his 5th Division of Australian soldiers
to rise out of their trenches and charge across open ground to attack
the enemy trenches at Fromelles, northern Francemanned in one
place by the twenty-seven-year-old Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler, a
message runner of the 16th Battalion of Bavarian Reserve Infantry,
and his German comrades.
One of Australias most seasoned officers, Brigadier General
Harold Pompey Elliott, apprehensively watched his 7th Battalion
as they responded to the order, launching themselves across a
400-metre-wide stretch of no-mans-landtwice the width recom-
mended for an attack. To Elliotts horror he saw and heard an
explosion of machine-gun bullets roar across this open ground
like a wildfire straight into the chests of his men. This was exactly
what Elliott had feared. With dozens of German machine gunners
firing from hidden trenches his men now stood no chancethis
was mass murder in broad daylight.
94
Elliott had advised McCay (or MCay,
as he signed himself ) against mounting this
attack in broad daylight. Elliott also showed a
disbelieving headquarters staff officer a map of
the trenches marked with locations of German
machine gunners and urged him to warn the
British Empire Forces Commander-in-Chief, Sir
Douglas Haig. But the attack still went ahead.
Sadly not many of the Australians charging
across the open paddock with their Lee-Enfield
.303 rifles made it, because the Germans, who
had seen the Allied troops gathering, suspected
they were coming. As Hitlers 16th Bavarian
Reserve Infantry Battalion history reported
afterwards:
Whenever a soldier was wounded or shot another
took his place against the breastworks, staring
with burning eyes through the smoke and dust of
the fiery explosions so they would not miss the moment when the
English attacked. Every man who loyally watched in this firestorm
was at that time the personification of the German army on the
Western Front.
Many soldiers, such as Private George Edward Bonney of 32nd
Battalion, who went over the parapet in the first wave, were killed
by machine-gun fire before they had taken more than a few steps.
Many fell back into their own trenches, including Bonney, who was
perhaps the first man killed.
The battle
The Battle of Fromelles, which also involved Britains 61st Divi-
sion, was designed to distract the Germans and stop them from
sending reinforcements further south, where the bloody Battle of
the Somme had started on 1 Julythe day the German machine
Australias Brigadier
General Pompey Elliott
tried hard to stop the
British commanders from
ordering hundreds of
Australian soldiers to charge
in broad daylight across
no-mans-land at Fromelles
against entrenched
German machine guns;
nobody listened to him.
95
gunners slaughtered more than 20,000 British soldiers, historys
worst one-day battlefield toll. In other words, Fromelles was just
part of a bigger picture.
Despite the great odds at Fromelles, some of Elliotts ferocious
fighters not only got across no-mans-land through the hail of
machine-gun bullets but also into the enemy trenches. For a moment
Elliott even believed his men had captured all their objectives
because none had returned. Soon enough he found out why they
hadnt come back: all were either dead, wounded or captured.
Australian soldiers did take the first German trench, but then
deserted it in order to take the second one as ordered. Unfortunately,
this second trench turned out to be nothing but a shallow drainage
channel through the fields. Now they were in big trouble, in full
view of the Germans. Even as the Australians tried to create shelter
by stuffing sandbags with mud, the Germans crept back into their
first line of trenches and so cut off the Diggersa nightmare
scenario in any battle.
To make matters worse, in the middle of the battle, the British
generals, alarmed by this new slaughter, changed their minds about
sending the scheduled second Allied wave. Amessage to this effect
was sent to McCay. Unfortunately the slow-witted McCaylater
nicknamed the Butcher of Fromellesdid not cancel the Australian
half of the assault. He hung on to the message for nearly an hour
without passing it on, by which time Pompey Elliotts Australians
had left the trenches and mounted another impossible charge.
The Diggers who werent aware the action had been abandoned
realised it only when they saw other soldiers running back to their
lines. By that time there was nothing else for it but to run back
too, in broad daylight, under machine-gun fire and trying to leap
over that first trench, now reoccupied by the Germans. Soon there
were hundreds and hundreds of Australians lying dead or dying in
no-mans-land, the wounded begging to be rescued. However, even
though a truce to bring in the wounded and dead was possiblea
young British private dodging through shell holes looking for his
officer met a German officer who suggested itJames McCay
refused to defy standing orders and permit it.
96
Nevertheless, many Australian soldiers took matters into their
own hands. Under fire they scoured the shell holes of no-mans-
land for their mates. Sergeant Simon Fraser, a large, strong and
brave forty-year-old Victorian farmer, rescued more wounded than
anybody else over the next three days. His reputation was surpassed
only by Gallipolis Simpson and his donkeyPrivate John Simpson
Kirkpatrick.
The attack on Fromelles was the brainchild of Britains Boer War
veteran, Lieutenant General Sir Richard Haking, who commanded
XI British Corps. The plan was to push back the Germans and
capture the Sugarloaf salient opposite the southern end of II
Anzac Corps positions south of Armentires. Hackings record as
a commander was already poor. He had lost a series of battles costing
thousands of livesLoos, Aubers Ridge and Boars Headand was
also known as Butcher Haking among the troops. The British were
just not learning from their mistakes.
But if the Battle of the Somme was devastating for the British,
this first real action involving Australians on the Western Front
was equally devastating for Australia. It was arguably the worst day
in Australias history. In twenty-four hours during this baptism of
blood over 1920 July, 5533 Australians were killed, wounded or
taken prisoner.
The death toll of 1917 Australians well exceeded the 750 killed
at the Gallipoli landing. While 8709 men were killed during the
Gallipoli campaign, that was over a period of eight months, not
one day. In fact, Fromelles was the worst Australian single days
toll of either world war, including 19 November 1941 when the
Germans sank HMAS Sydney off Western Australia with the loss
of all 645 crew.
Yet when Haking was told the British had suffered 1547 casual-
ties and Australians 5533, he replied: I thought it did both the
British and Australian divisions a lot of good. Disgusted at the
battles outcome, Australias war correspondent, Charles Bean, wrote:
The scene in
the Australian
trenches, packed
with wounded
and dying, was
unexampled in the
history of the AIF.
97
The scene in the Australian trenches, packed with wounded and
dying, was unexampled in the history of the AIF.
Bean blamed British planning. Too many cooks spoilt the deadly
broth, he said, as the battle was
suggested first by Haking as a feint attack; then by Plumer as part
of a victorious advance; rejected by Munro in favour of attack
elsewhere; put forward again by GHQ as a purely artillery
demonstration; ordered as a demonstration but with an infantry
operation added, according to Hakings plan and through his
emphatic advocacy; almost cancelledthrough weather and the
doubts of GHQand finally reinstated by Haig, apparently as
an urgent demonstrationsuch were the changes of form through
which the plans of this ill-fated operation had successfully passed.
Although he eventually developed grave doubts about the plan,
Britains top commander, Haig, still ordered the attack.
In all the confusion among the leaders nobody thought to
ask if the Australians were actually capable of confronting the
As well as trenches, German
defences at Fromelles
included this blockhouse.
One of is defenders was
the twenty-seven-year-old
Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler,
who was serving with a
Bavarian regiment. Hitler
returned to this blockhouse
as the Fuhrer during World
War II to show the media
where he had fought. AWM
98
battle-hardened Germans. With little warning the inexperienced
Australian troops were ordered to attack in broad daylight without
proper training or briefing. Many went over the top without
helmets and some even threw grenades without withdrawing the
pins. Poor marksmen killed comrades with friendly fire, while others
died when they ran out of ammunition.
After this terrible blunder, Bean complained that the British
GHQ reported the fight as simply a short sharp incident, most
unwisely calling it some important raids. This not only insulted
the 1917 Australians killed but also deceived the British and Allied
forces and their people back home, as it was meant to do.
In his official British account of Fromelles, the historian Sir James
Edmonds concluded: To have delivered battle at all after hurried
preparation, with troops of all arms handicapped by their lack of
experience and training in offensive trench warfare, betrayed a grave
underestimate of the enemys powers of resistance. Unofficially,
Edmonds simply told Bean: I dont think Haking was much good
at all.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because in their very first major battle
on the Western Front Australians demonstrated great courage (as
they had at Gallipoli the previous year) in the face of impossible
odds. It was also a great toll, worse than any battle at Gallipoli, with
5533 casualties, of whom 1917 were killed in that first daylight
charge into murderous machine-gun fire aloneAustralias worst
one-day killing field ever. As Corporal (later Lieutenant) R.H.
Knyvett, reported, If you had gathered the stock of a thousand
butcher shops together it would give you a faint conception of the
shambles those trenches were in.
It was also a great battle because of the selfless behaviour of
men like Fraser. When the British Lieutenant General Sir Richard
Haking and McCay refused the Germans suggestion of a truce Fraser
ignored orders not to rescue the wounded and repeatedly crept over
the top and onto the corpse-littered battlefields. The key moment
was when one wounded 60th Battalion soldier called out as Fraser
dragged another wounded man past him: Dont forget me, cobber.
99
Fraser nodded and, having noted the wounded soldiers position,
returned through the withering enemy fire to rescue him. Perhaps
one of the best outcomes of this useless battle is a statue of Fraser
with this soldier across his shoulders. It was erected at Fromelles
and unveiled for the 80th anniversary in 1998 by one of the 1916
veterans, Eric Abraham, who wept openly.
Postscript
Of course nobody could have realised that Lance Corporal Adolf
Hitler would later lead Germany into World War II. At Fromelles
he was just one German soldier among many. Yet even though he
was sheltered by a concrete blockhousenow a tourist attractionit
was theoretically possible for a keen-eyed Australian sniper to have
taken a pot shot that could have changed the course of history.
Hitler never forgot his heroic role in this battle, returning in June
1940 on a promotional tour to unveil a plaque commemorating
his 1916 role.
But repelling the offensive was an easy task for Hitler and his
comrades, who not only suspected an attack because the Allied
forces were moving into trenches opposite their lines but were also
helped by the hopeless planning of the Allies. The Germans won
When the Australian
soldiers left the safety of
their trenches at Fromelles
for their first great battle
on the Western Front, they
faced German machine
gunners who mowed
down nearly 2000 of them
in the hopeless charge.
100
hands down, and 80 per cent of 5th Division flanking battalions
and 76 per cent of all assault battalions became casualties. The
depleted 5th Division was undermined as a fighting force for
months; while the British also suffered heavy losses setting back
their future operations.
The Germans later ignominiously paraded 400 captured
Australians through the nearby town of Lille. When Elliott was
confronted with the massive casualties list after the battle he wept,
believing Australian lives had been sacrificed on the altar of British
incompetence. Disillusioned and unable to cope after the war, Elliott
would eventually take his own life.
Four hundred soldiers killed at Fromelles lay where they fell for
nearly three years till the end of the war, when they were buried,
unidentified, in a mass grave. There are 1299 names on the local
cemetery wall listing Australians simply as missing.
In the lead up to the 90th anniversary of the battle, Melbourne
teacher Lambis Englezos campaigned to have the missing soldiers
remains located and properly buried, and his work led to the
discovery of a mass grave where the Germans had buried 191
Australian soldiers and some British dead. By the 94th anniversary of
the engagement, in July 2010, the final reburial of these lost men was
carried out with full military honours. Even though many soldiers
have no individual headstones, thanks to Englezos the remains of
many of the missing have now been located and buried with honour.
Battle stats
Winners: German forces (which included a young Adolf Hitler)
Losers: British and Empire forces, including the Australian 5th Division
Toll: Australian casualties 5533 men (including 1917 killed); British 61st
Division suffered 1547 casualties; the Germans were said to have suffered
casualties of about 1000
Result: The Germans defended their front line at Fromelles and Australians
learnt how dangerous fighting on the Western Front was compared to
Gallipoli
101
THE WORST KILLING
FIELD OF ALL
On that sector [Pozires Ridge] the German artillery was
free to concentrate as its commanders desired. At Bulle-
court, Messines, Ypres and elsewhere Australian infantry
afterwards suffered intense bombardment, but never
anything comparable in duration or effect with this. On
that crowded mile of summit Australia lost 23,000 officers
and men in less than seven weeks; and the Windmill site
(which now belongs to Australia)at Poziresmarks a
ridge more densely sewn with Australian sacrifices than
any other place on earth.
C.E.W. Bean, Official History of Australia in the War of 19141918
W
ith the bloody massacre at Fromelles just a few days before
still fresh in his memory, Private John Leak, 9th Battalion, a
rough and ready twenty-four-year-old teamster from Rockhampton,
always knew it would be tough-going wresting this village of Pozires
from the Germans.
Squirming forward from his trench, Leak could see the enemy
machine-gun nest blocking the advance. He couldnt throw his
bombs (hand grenades) that far, so the only thing left was to charge.
Leaping from his trench, he ran forward across no-mans-land
through intense machine-gun fire.
Nearing his target, he hurled the three bombs he carried at the
emplacement, killing most of the machine gunners, then jumped
102
into the post and bayoneted the three remaining gunners. Standing
on the parapet, he called his comrades forward.
But the Germans had already seen Leak killing their comrades
and called in reinforcements, hitting the advancing Australians
with overwhelming firepower and claiming their machine-gun post
back again. The Australians were forced to withdraw in stages, but
Leak was always the last to leave, throwing bombs to protect his
retreating comrades and encouraging them to try again and again
in their see-saw battle until Australian reinforcements arrived. The
strengthened AIF force then finally captured the machine-gun post
again, as well as the surrounding German trenches, pushing the
enemy back east.
Not surprisingly, Leak was awarded the Victoria Cross. His
citation proclaimed: His courage and energy had such an effect
on the enemy that, on the arrival of our reinforcements, the whole
trench was recaptured.
The battle
It was 23 July 1916 on the Western Front and the Australians were
helping to attack the village of Pozires to the north of the Somme
River as part of the British General Sir Douglas Haigs latest plan
to win the Battle of the Somme.
Haig wanted the AIF to help the British capture Pozires because
it housed a formidable German garrison north of the Somme.
British forces had tried to take the village but had little to show
for it, Bean reported, apart from the crumpled bodies of British
soldiers left hanging in the German wire.
Now the Allies hoped to destroy the Germans based in this
ruined village in an assault that would last thirteen days.
Lieutenant General Sir William Birdwood (the popular Birdy,
who had commanded the Australians at Gallipoli), commander of
I Anzac Corps and in charge of the AIFs fighting at Pozires, used
troops from Australias 1st and 2nd Divisions, with troops from
the 4th Division relieving towards the end. Birdwood ordered
Australias 1st Division (commanded by Major General Harold
103
Walker) to spearhead the attack with troops of its 1st and 3rd
Brigades. They marched through the cobbled streets of Albert,
10 kilometres west of Pozires, looking up as they passed the
half-ruined cathedral from whose shell-hit tower a gilded statue
of the Virgin Mary hung precariously over the town square. Some
prayed the statue would not fall, as it was rumoured the Allies
would lose the war if it did.
They advanced up the slight rise to Pozires from the south,
hoping on the way to capture the outer trenches known as Old
German Lines 1 and 2.
For days the British had delivered the usual bombardment to
soften up the Germans, who fought back with artillery, including
poison-gas shells, which some Australians experienced for the
first time.
Allied forces, including Australian units, started attacking in the
early hours of 23 July. Australian soldiers soon captured the outer
German trenches defending Pozires, reaching the outskirts of the
village and forcing German soldiers to retreat to a second German
line of defence that ran along a ridge 600 metres behind the village
called Pozires Heights.
Leak was not the only soldier determined to avenge Fromelles.
A twenty-three-year-old lawyer, Lieutenant Arthur Seaforth Black-
burn of the 10th Battalion (a veteran of the Gallipoli landing), led
Before the Allied infantry
charged the village of
Pozires, the gunners
manning the artillery
batteries fired off a series
of barrages at the enemy
trenches aimed at softening
up the defending Germans.
104
50 men in charges that drove Germans from their main outer trench
system surrounding Pozires. After many attempts he captured
the trenches, winning a Victoria Cross in the process. His cita-
tion proclaimed: By dogged determination he essentially captured
their [250-metre-long] trench after personally leading four separate
parties of bombers against it. Then, after crawling with a sergeant
to reconnoitre, he returned, attacked and seized another 120 yards
of trench. Blackburns platoon leader, Sergeant Robert Inwood, was
killed in the action.
Others who seized the opportunity to fight in a way that had
not been possible at Fromelles included Private Thomas Cooke,
thirty-five, of the 8th Battalion, who armed himself with a Lewis gun
and defended a dangerous part of the line on his own. Then he dug
in to deliver covering fire for a party of his comrades whose advance
was halted by heavy enemy fire, even though his exposed position
made him a sitting duck. He kept shooting until inevitably he was
riddled with bullets himself. His Victoria Cross citation reads:
He did fine work but came under very heavy fire, with the result
that he was the only man left. He still stuck to his post and
continued to fire his gun. When assistance was sent he was found
dead beside his gun. He set a splendid example of determination
and devotion to duty.
Sergeant Claude Charles Castleton, twenty-three, of the 5th
Machine Gun Company, 5th Brigade, 2nd Division, also made the
supreme sacrifice when his division was pinned down by machine-
gun fire. His unit withdrew before dawn, with many wounded in
no-mans-land who Castleton would not leave. The citation for his
Victoria Cross said:
Sergeant Castleton went out twice in face of this intense fire and
each time brought in a wounded man on his back. He went out
a third time and was bringing in another wounded man when he
was himself hit in the back and killed instantly. He set a splendid
example of courage and self-sacrifice.
Sergeant Castleton
went out twice in
face of this intense
fire and each
time brought in a
wounded man on
his back.
105
Australias first Gallipoli VC winner, Albert Jacka, also wanted
to make up for the disastrous defeat at Fromelles.
When a party of Germans with Australian prisoners in tow
lobbed a bomb into his dugout, he rushed angrily up the steps
firing his revolver and killed the German guarding the entrance.
With the help of surviving Australians from his dugout he attacked
the German detachment, fighting like a wild cat with his blood up
according to Charles Bean. Jacka and his men not only freed the
Australian prisoners but also captured 50 German soldiers.
Although badly wounded, the hero of Gallipoli had turned
the tables and once again set an inspirational example to his men.
Jacka won an MC for this feat, but many said it should have been
a bar to his VC.
Australian forces then beat back spontaneous counterattacks,
making it the most successful part of the British armys offensive in
the area at the time and a much better planned battle than Fromelles.
As Bean reported: The Australian troops, as they smoked
German cigars or donned the shiny, black, spiked German helmets,
were aware they had achieved a striking success. A main buttress
of the German line on that battlefield had been broken. At least
for the moment. The Australians had done their bit, but because
the British Fourth Army had failed to penetrate the German lines
east of the Australian attack, Haigs dream of a major breakthrough
had been thwarted.
The hard-won ground turned out to be hard to keep. Incensed
by the Australian capture of Pozires, the Germans tried to get the
village back the next day by mounting major retaliatory attacks and
launching massive barrages of shells, which lasted for days, pounding
the recently won Australian position into a pulp.
Retaliating from their shattered trenches, the Australians tried
to secure the elusive Old German Lines 1 and 2 in which the
remaining Germans hung on. It was a titanic, see-sawing fight,
Bean reported, of bombs being brought up to the front line at the
double, machine-guns being brought up at the double and strings
of men going up to feed the melee.
106
But it became a stalemate, so both sides resorted to relentless
shelling with their big guns. Bean said it was as bad as the worst
days at Verdun or on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
Soon, Harold Walkers 1st Division had suffered 5285 casualties
and could not go on.
Before dusk on 4 August, Allied forces, which had probably
fought harder for this position than any other so far on the Western
Front, captured Old German Lines 1 and 2the latter being taken
by Captain Maitland Foss, who had led the first Australian raiding
party in June.
Then, after their fiercest and most sustained fighting in the war
so far, troops from three Australian divisionsthe 1st, 2nd and the
relieving 4thfinally captured the elusive ridge of Pozires. They then
held it despite artillery barrages and continual counterattacks, along
with the village and the remains of its notorious windmill, which
had provided an aiming point before it was shot from its mound.
This worst of all battles may have been won but the horrors
continued to haunt those who had helped win Pozires. Lieutenant
Alec Raws wrote:
The great horror of many of us is the fear of being lost with troops
at night on the battlefield. We were being shot at all the time. It was
awful but we had to drive the men by every possible means and dig
ourselves. The wounded and killed had to be thrown to one sideI
refused to let any sound man help a wounded man. The sound
man had to dig and I said any man who stopped digging would
be shot. Iwas buried twice and thrown down several timeburied
with dead and dying. The ground was covered with bodies in every
stage of decay and mutilation and struggling free from the earth,
I would often pick up a body beside me, to lift him out with me,
and find a decayed corpse. I pulled a head offand was covered
with blood. The horror was indescribable. Its all nerveonce that
goes one becomes a gibbering maniac.
Captain E.J. Rule said survivors retreating from the battle looked
like men who had been in hell ... drawn and haggard and so dazed
107
that they appeared to be walking in a dream and their eyes looked
glassy and starey.
They were, Charles Bean added, strangely quiet . . . like boys
emerging from a long illness.
But the most graphic account of that Pozires battle was written
by the 3rd Battalion machine gunner Private Percy Smythe, who
wrote down exactly what he saw over the many days he fought.
After tea some of us were sent with magazines to the 1st Bn dump
behind the firing line but took the wrong trench. There were parts
of dead bodies sticking out of the ground, and we knew they were
Germans by their boots. Farther on there were dead Tommies
lying here and there, just tossed up on the parapet out of the way
and there left to decay. Farther on still they were not even shifted
from where they had been killed. In one place half-a-dozen had
apparently been killed by the one shell, although they must have
been dead for over a week, they were still lying, sitting, or reclining
in grotesque attitudes of death, their bodies and faces black, bloated
and swollen, and the flesh beginning to rot and fall apart. They were
grouped about the trench; we had to step between and over them.
Further on we came across a couple of 11th Bn men lying dead on
After months of heavy
artillery barrages, villages,
roads and surrounding
forests were reduced to
devastated wastelands.
With thousands killed
at Pozires, this was the
place war correspondent
Charles Bean said was
more densely sewn with
Australian sacrifice than
any other place on earth.
108
the road, covered over with waterproof sheets and just left there.
Ones head was lying in a pool of blood, only recently being killed.
One of the chaps suggested dumping the magazines in a conven-
ient place and going back, but I would not hear of it. Found the
dump at last, put our magazines there . . . beside our dump lay a
dead artilleryman with a great gash in his stomach, all his mouth
shattered, a hole through one hand, the other wrist chopped about.
His face and hands were a sickly yellow.
While coming back a large piece of shell casing whirred past
within a couple of yards of me and my mate Winder said his nerves
were all upset and that he had to hold himself under restraint,
and he was itching to bolt for life away up the valley. No, I said.
Were not going to squib it. Went down by the road. The two
dead men were still lying there in the same place . . . being very
tired and sleepy, Idozed off, leaning doubled up against the wall of
the dugout. Awakened by a great noise ... one end of the dugout
had been blown in, burying me up to the armpits. Got my head
out and called for someone to come and dig me out; a couple of
chaps soon turned up with shovels. ... Aman in the next dugout
was killed by the same shell, but feeling very tired, Igot in with the
corpse to try and get a little sleep. At any other time it would have
given me the creeps, but the close proximity of that grim object
did not keep me awake long and I slept soundly.
Awaking some time later, Smythe found
all the officers . . . were either killed or wounded. There were a
number of dead men all along the trench, some having been thrown
up on the parapets. One chap was lying in the bottom of the trench
buried to the neck, and with all the top of his head blown away.
Another was crouching on his hands and knees in a shallow side
trench, killed while trying to get away from the shrapnel.
Heard our boys had advanced to between the second and
third German lines, as ordered. Occupying part of the village of
Pozires . . . found a small piece of shrapnel sticking into my leg
through the puttee.
109
A man came staggering along . . . Theres a
battalion buried on the left! A party of men were
promptly sent with shovels to their rescue. Perce
Morgan was killed during the night. He was buried
to the neck, and while they were digging him out
another shell came and blew his head off. ... Freddy
Lax was horribly mutilated, being cut in halves and
one part of him thrown up on one side of the trench,
and the other part thrown up on the other side, earth
and debris flying skywards on all sides. A coal-box
exploded back along the communication trench . . .
We could hear a couple of choking voices calling for
help. Started digging for all I was worth above where
I could hear one fellow groaning and gasping . . .
The chap I was digging for recognised my voice and
called me by name, and I located one hand, the fingers of which
were just protruding from the mass of earth. Soon found his face
and scraped the loose earth away.
The extreme physical exertion and the mental strain were not
without their effect, and my nerves were already a bit shaky but,
after smoking a cigarette which I got from one of the chaps there,
seemed to feel much better. A German prisoner was brought in,
and his thin drawn face was white and haggard, he looked indeed
an object for pity. He sank down on the ground just out of the
communication trench. Sgt Millard wanted to go out and kill him,
but we all cried him down, for in our own affliction we could
well sympathise with a fellow-sufferer, even though he was one
of our enemy.
We were all afraid, every man of us, but we still stuck to our
post. It seemed to be the limit of frightfulness. Flesh and blood
could hardly stand it any longer, it was obviously only suicide to
stay there, we cried out for orders as we did not know what to do.
But, as no orders were forthcoming, we stayed there, in constant
expectation of being buried or blown to pieces.
It was a terrible experience. By this time my nerves were pretty
well gone, and I wished I could be killed outright and have done
After witnessing the
terrible carnage at Pozires,
the keen-eyed Second
Lieutenant Percy Smythe
of Gladesville, New South
Wales, sat down with
his diary and wrote one
of the most graphic
accounts of any battle
written of World War I.
110
with it. Of course I said a good many silent prayers during the
night . . . it was a veritable death-trap, it was Hell.
But finally left the trench and ran out between the craters and
amongst the piles of broken bricks and splintered timber which
had once been Pozires. Just a small portion of a wall still remained
standing, but otherwise there did not appear to be left one brick
upon another . . . it presented a pitiful scene of desolation.
The Australians were still licking their wounds from the 19 July
massacre at Fromelles when they stepped forward to fight the Battle
of Pozires, which was part of the wider Battle of the Somme being
waged to push the Germans back east. The British forces were of
course licking much worse wounds, having suffered historys worst
single-day battlefield tollmore than 20,000 deadat the start of
the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916.
Hell had indeed unleashed the unprecedented fury of modern
weaponry. By now thousands of young soldiers had climbed out of
the trenches and rushed across open ground to their deaths against
merciless machine-gun firea weapon that Haig, Commander-in-
Chief of British and Empire forces, still underrated. He had hoped
his great offensive would drive the Germans from the higher ground
that gave them the huge strategic advantage of looking down on
the Allies, but the Germans could not be moved.
Against this background, the victory at Pozires was an important
morale boost. It was only one victory, but it showed that success
could be achieved. It did not immediately help achieve victory in the
overall planthere would be many more battles before the Allies
finally won the Battle of the Somme in 1918but after the failure
of Fromelles it demonstrated the fighting value of the Australians.
The AIF suffered its worst overall toll from a single battle at
Pozires: 23,000 casualties from seven weeks of battle, including
6741 dead.
In his official history, Charles Bean said that even after the
slaughter of Fromelles the Australians did not know before theBattle
The AIF suffered
its worst overall
toll from a single
battle at Pozires:
23,000 casualties
from seven weeks
of battle, including
6741 dead.
111
of Pozires how bad it would be compared to the rest of the war, or
have had any idea that of all the great battles of the next two and a
half years, the fight that now lay ahead of the AIF (1st, 2nd and 4th
Divisions) was in several ways the hardest experienced by the AIF.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because the Australians captured
the village of Pozires which the British had failed to take, thereby
showing that even formidable battles against entrenched German
forces could be fought and won. It was also the only victory along
that part of the front line.
The AIF certainly made up for the defeat at Fromelles. The
Australians won against formidable oddsthe heaviest artillery,
bombardment, bombing and machine-gun and rifle fire to date
surviving the most horrific conditions. The deeds that won Victoria
Crosses in the battle were some of the most gallant of the war.
It was also a great achievement for the Australians just to hold
their positions after taking Pozires because the Germans mounted
large counterattacks for days to win back the village.
Finally, it ranks as a great battle because of the great loss of life.
To paraphrase Bean: There was no other place on earth so densely
sewn with Australians bodies sacrificed to a cause.
Postscript
The Allies may have captured Pozires against great odds but they
paid their highest ever price in human lives.
As for the surviving Victoria Cross winners, some fared better
than others after the battle. Leak was wounded three times and gassed
once before the wars end. He was sentenced to life imprisonment
after being convicted of desertion in 1917. Had the English-born
Leak been serving in the British army, he would almost certainly
have been shot, but his life sentence was reduced to two years
imprisonment, and that was suspended.
He was also accused of entering sergeants mess and demanding a
drink then neglecting to obey orders to leave the Mess, and so served
fourteen days detention. Throughout 1917 Leak was charged with
112
being absent without leave on at least six occasions, but he served
less than a month in prison. On 25 April 1918Anzac Dayhe
went absent without leave again for four days and was fined eleven
days pay. In June he was accused of insolence to an NCO.
Returning to Australia on his own after the war just days after
marrying Ruth Chapman, with whom he had been living when
on leave in Cardiff, Wales, he married again in 1927 and fathered
seven children. Returning to Rockhampton to find the locals had
put on a red-carpet welcome home party for him at the railway
station, he took one look at the reception committee, jumped on
a train travelling south and never returned.
He never joined the RSL or marched on Anzac Day, saying: I
dont believe in war. In 1951 he wrote to the army seeking payment
of a war gratuity that he had not claimed in 1919. The old soldier,
by this time ailing and bankrupt, included his service number and
his decoration, but not his return address, so the application was
marked No address supplied, and no effort was made to track him
down. Desperate for money, Leak drifted around Australia, working
in Victoria and Western Australia before settling in South Australia,
where he died in 1972.
Blackburn, the lawyer who fought so hard at Gallipoli and
Pozires, was evacuated a few months after Pozires and discharged
A twenty-four-year-
old teamster from
Rockhampton, Queensland,
Private John Leak, seen
here with his girlfriend and
British admirers, won his
Victoria Cross at Pozires
by charging through
machine-gun fire across
no-mans-land, throwing a
fistful of bombs (grenades)
into a German machine-
gun nest, then leaping
in to bayonet the three
remaining gunners. AWM
113
in 1917. Returning to the law, he served in the South Australian
Parliament as a National Party member.
He joined up in World War II and led the 2/3rd Machine Gun
Battalion in the Syria campaign in 1941. The following year he was
promoted to temporary brigadier and in February landed in Java,
in what is now Indonesia, in command of Blackforce, an assorted
group of 3000 Australian soldiers separated from their units that
were ordered to help the Dutch fight the Japanese just after the
fall of Singapore.
Less than ten days later, in March 1942, the US, British and
Australian units operating under Dutch command were ordered to
surrender. Blackburn spent the rest of the war in POW camps in
Singapore, Japan, Korea and Manchuria. After the war he worked for
the RSL. He died in 1960, survived by his wife and four children.
Although Australia celebrated Albert Jacka as the face of Gallipoli
and the nations greatest front-line soldier, he was one of those war
heroes who found it difficult to adjust to civilian life. He got into
financial difficulties during the Great Depression, lost his wife to a
richer man, and died early of chronic kidney inflammation.
Percy Smythe, who wrote one of the most graphic battle accounts
of Word War I, not only survived the Battle of Pozires, but also
went on to win the Military Cross in recognition of exceptionally
good and gallant work at the 1918 Battle of Mont St Quentin.
When the advance was held up by machine-gun fire, he rushed
forward under heavy fire and captured the enemy machine gun
and three of its crew. Having survived the horrors he had described
in his diary at Pozires, it seemed Smythe could survive anything.
Battle stats
Winners: British and Empire forces, including Australians of the 1st, 2nd and
4th Divisions deploying various brigades, including the 1st and the 3rd
Losers: German forces
Toll: Over the extended period of fighting: Australian casualties 23,000,
including 6741 dead
Result: The Allies captured and held the village of Pozires, a rare break-
through that helped progress the advance in the Battle of the Somme
114
First Bullecourt,
11 April 1917
BETRAYED BY
BRITISHTANKS
Such was the first battle of Bullecourta glorious failure;
glorious because the Australians were asked to do the
apparently impossible and they did it. They penetrated
the great Hindenburg line, and held it for hours. It was
an ill-conceived venture, and the lives of good Australians
weresacrificed.
Lieutenant Colonel Raymond Leane, commanding officer,
49th Battalion AIF
M
ajor Percy Black stood up on the battlefield and looked to
his right and left. All around him flew a hail of bullets as
his men tried desperately to penetrate the barbed wire standing
between them and the second line of German trenches defending
Bullecourt, northern France. The murderous machine-gun fire cut
men down on all sides as others, lying on their sides, hacked at the
wire with bayonets. Some tried to cross it, leaping the strands, to
become either hopelessly entangled or shot down and left to hang
on the barbs.
Major Black, a seasoned soldier, a company commander in 16th
Battalion and known in the Western Australian goldmines as a
tough miner and prospector, had taken the first line of German
trenches and captured 60 enemy.
115
Now he had the second line in his sightsenemy fire or no
enemy fire. Black found an opening in the deadly wire and bravely
leapt up to direct his men through the gap. He turned to a runner
with a message for headquarters: First objective gained, pushing
on to second.
Then he dropped to the ground, shot through the head.
A horrified Captain Mad Harry Murray, Blacks best friend,
pushed past his dead mate, determined to take the second trench
line. Wild with anger, there was no stopping Murray, the leader of
A Company in 13th Battalion. He charged across the battlefield, in
and out of trenches, leading a party of exhausted soldiers to occupy
Blacks target trench.
Murray won a bar for his Distinguished Service Order for taking
and keeping the trench against determined German counterattacks.
His citation says he
led his men with great courage and skill through 1200 yards of
shell and machine-gun fire and he and his company still kept on
although they lost 75% of their strength before reaching the second
objective. Captain Murray . . . went along the whole frontage, 900
yards, organising the defence, always encouraging the men of all
units by his cheerfulness and bravery, and always moving to the
points of danger. When the bomb supply was running out and the
men gave ground, he rallied them time after time and fought back
the Germans over and over again.
The battle
This was the First Battle of Bullecourt, in the Somme, on 10 April
1917. The attack was set for 4.30 a.m. to take advantage of the
pre-dawn darkness. Although they had troops fighting in related
battles around Arras the British commanders deployed their Third
and Fifth Armies to serve alongside the Australian 4th Division in
this Bullecourt battle. Major General William Holmes, commander
of the 4th Australian Division, assigned his 4th and 12th Brigades
with a number of battalions within these brigades. Astonishingly,
116
the British commander of Fifth Army, Major General Sir Hubert
Gough, did not request an artillery barrage despite the dense lines
of barbed wire protecting the German trenches. Instead, Gough
would rely on twelve tanksregarded as new and experimental
weaponsto break down the German wire and clear a path for
the infantry.
Tanks had been used tentatively at the Somme but were still slow,
mechanically unreliable, vulnerable to artillery fire and operated by
inexperienced crews. In spite of protests by Anzac leaders, Gough
was determined to send Australian soldiers across no-mans-land
and towards the Hindenburg Line with tanks alone.
The men of the 4th Division reached their jumping-off positions
well before 4.30 a.m. It was bitterly cold and a thin layer of snow
lay on ground. They waited for the tanks to arrive and drive a path
through the German defences. Australian infantry had never seen
tanks before and were curious to see the steel beasts in action.
The Diggers were ready to attack right on zero hour. But the
tanks were nowhere to be seen. The attack was put back to 5 a.m.
Dawn was not far off and soon it would be light enough for the
Germans to spot them. Five oclock came, but still no tanks.
Major Percy Black, a
tough prospector from
the Western Australian
goldfields, achieved the
impossible by charging
through a hail of machine-
gun fire at Bullecourt to
capture a well-defended
German trench along
with 60 prisoners only to
be shot in the head just
as he started out for the
next trench. Painting by
Charles Wheeler, AWM
117
The infantry soon learnt the tanks were still at least an hour
away. They had become lost and were moving slowly, their crews
confused and exhausted. When there was just enough time to get the
men safely back to their lines the attack was cancelled and the men
began their slow return just as the sun appeared over the horizon.
Lieutenant Colonel Ray Leane watched them trudge back: Cold,
and fed up, officers and privates casually withdrew like a crowd
leaving a football match.
The failure of the tanks to arrive on time did little to inspire the
Australian infantry with any confidence in their ability to penetrate
the Hindenburg Lines defences. They must have been surprised,
then, to learn later in the evening that an attack following the very
same plan had been rescheduled for the next morning.
Having retreated behind their lines from forward trenches the
previous dawn, the sleep-deprived Australians were exhausted when
they arrived at their jumping-off position for the second time in
twenty-four hours. Returning to the front line, Private Denver
Gallwey of the 47th Battalion wrote:
I carried my rifle in my left hand, just holding it by the sling and
trailing the butt through the mud. It was too much energy to carry
it any other way. Knees were giving way, and I was plodding on
like in a dream . . . Of what use would I be to fight to-night? My
body was in a wretched state of weakness.
It was now 11 April 1917 and, once again, the troops crouched
and lay in the snow, waiting for the tanks. An order for machine
guns and artillery to cover the noise of the approaching tanks
had been misunderstood and the relatively quiet night was shat-
tered as the sound of their engines alerted the Germans to the
imminent attack.
This time the tank crews enjoyed only slightly more success:
by 4.45 a.m. four of the twelve tanks were in position. The others
had broken down, got lost or stuck in the mud, or been destroyed
by artillery. Despite this and knowing that uncut barbed wire lay
ahead of them, Major Percy Black (the bravest man in the AIF,
Of what use
would I be to fight
to-night? My body
was in a wretched
state of weakness.
118
according to Murray) rallied his troops by yelling, Come on, boys,
bugger the tanks!
As soon as the Australians left their trenches the massacre
commenced, the enemy lining his parapet and shooting them
down like rabbits. Lots of them reached the wire, but had to bunch
together and they fell in heaps on the wire and in front of it.
Without an artillery barrage or adequate tank support the barbed
wire stood, giving the German machine gunners the freedom to
sweep no-mans-land. As one Australian soldier put it, the wire
seemed to swarm with fireflies where the bullets glanced from it.
The German zigzag trenches performed their deadly function,
forming choke points and forcing men to bunch up. According to
Sergeant William Groves, the men poured into the zigzag passages
in dense columns to be mown down so that their shattered bodies
pile up at the entrances.
Remarkably, the Australians broke through the wire and took
the first and then second German lines. With neither artillery nor
tank support, they breached the Hindenburg Line, believed by the
German High Command to be impregnable. Vicious hand-to-hand
combat followed, Australians and Germans fighting face-to-face in
the trenches and dugouts, using bombs (hand grenades), bayonets,
entrenching tools and their bare hands.
Unable to be resupplied or reinforced, it was not long until the
Australians were taking ammunition from the dead and searching
German bodies for hand grenades. The Germans soon realised
the Australians were short of munitions. With German reinforce-
ments on the way from the nearby town of Riencourt, German
commanders knew it was only a matter of time until they regained
the Hindenburg Line.
The Australians had two choices: stay where they were to be
killed or captured; or retreat. The prospect of retreating was not
pleasant. The bodies of those killed and wounded earlier in the day
littered the way back to the Allied trenches and the Germans were
perfectly placed to shoot down anyone showing his head.
Every man for himself , cried Murray. According to his recom-
mendation for the DSO, when there was no alternative but to
119
surrender or withdraw through the heavy machine-gun fire, Captain
Murray was the last to leave his position. Sergeant Leslie Boully
was another man who refused to surrender and led his men out
into no-mans-land. According to his recommendation for the
Distinguished Conduct Medal, when the situation became hopeless
on account of the exhaustion of the ammunition supplies he refused
to surrender and led the balance of his men out of the trenches and
back to our lines.
Though many did return to the Australian line to take on the
Germans another day, many were cut down by machine-gun bullets
and shrapnel in this final stage of the battle. As the 13th Battalion
unit history recorded: Thus it was that, after fighting heroically for
seven hours, dozens of splendid men were killed returning.
Bullecourt was part of the on-going bloody Battle of the Somme,
in which the British and Allied forces were trying to drive the
invading Germans back east along the valley of the River Somme,
from whence they had come. And it was getting tougher. While
the German army had spent the last six months of 1916 fighting to
defend their Somme front line, its engineers had worked ceaselessly
to construct a formidable trench system several kilometres behind
it. Known as the Hindenburg Line, this was to be Germanys last,
and strongest, line of defence.
Although the Allied offensive on the Somme had not produced
the breakthrough hoped for, the bitter and bloody fighting had
worn the Germans out. By early spring 1917, as one of the harshest
winters in years waned, the Germans abandoned the front they had
shed so much blood to hold and retreated to the security of the
Hindenburg Line.
Not only did this tactical retreat throw the Allies plans for major
new offensives along the Somme into disarray, it also meant the
Germans now manned a seemingly impregnable defensive position.
It was shorter and straighter than their previous line, so fewer men
would be needed to hold it.
120
Two lines of deep trenches had been dug and
reinforced. Concrete shelters and machine-gun
nests had been placed in strategic positions, and
thousands of kilometres of barbed wire had been laid
before it in a zigzag pattern. Any attacker would be
funnelled into the vee of the zigzag and exposed
to concentrated machine-gun fire.
Yet the Allies began pursuing the retreating
Germans almost immediately and, between March
and April 1917, were involved in some short but
fierce encounters, often in villages that had been
left booby-trapped by the enemy. By April the
Australians found themselves facing the small town
of Bullecourt, and the Hindenburg Line itself.
The man who had been behind the attack on
Bullecourt, and who was largely to blame for the poor
organisation, was Britains Fifth Army commander,
General Sir Hubert Gough, a Boer War veteran
and cavalryman. Gough had a reputation for being impulsive and
underestimating the Germans. Even though it lay just behind the
Hindenburg Line, the Englishman had convinced himself Bullecourt
was a weak point and ripe for the picking.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because the Australians had done
what others thought impossible: they had penetrated and heldif
only for a short timeGermanys formidable Hindenburg Line,
and without the usual artillery barrage or the support of the tanks.
It was also a greatly significant battle because apart from the
great loss of life, a record number of Australians were taken prisoner.
More than 3000 Australians were killed or wounded, including
twenty-eight officers, while approximately 1170 were captured.
It also ranked as a great battle because the Australians, in
particular the late Percy Black and the inspirational Harry Murray,
had again fought with bravery and determination, even when
the odds were stacked heavily against them. As the Australians
commander General Sir William Birdwood wrote on the day of
Horrified by his best mate
Percy Blacks death at
Bullecourt, Captain Mad
Harry Murray charged
forward against heavy
enemy fire and captured
the second trench Black
had been aiming for.
The bar he won here
for his DSO helped him
eventually become
Australias most decorated
soldier in World War I.
121
the battle, we have no cause to be disheartened at having failed
to retain our footing in the face of overwhelming odds. Rather
we can feel proud of the magnificent bravery displayed. Indeed,
Australias official war correspondent Charles Bean was right when
he wrote that, although they had not held the Hindenburg Line, the
Australians had secured, not without valuerespect for themselves
and their countrymen among all who knew the true story.
Postscript
Although the Hindenburg Line had been penetrated by the dogged
persistence of the Australian soldiers, it had not been held for long,
due chiefly to Goughs poor planning. According to Charles Bean,
everyone was aware that the 4th Australian Division had been
employed in an experiment of extreme rashness, persisted in by the
army commander after repeated warnings, and that the experiment
had failed with shocking loss. Indeed, the battle was used later as
an example of what not to do.
Captain Mad Harry Murray, who would finish the war as
Australias most highly decorated soldier, said, Bullecourt was the
worst stunt I was ever in, and concluded, This was not war it was
murder. He said, The high command had blundered and the men
had to pay the price. In fact, The whole thing was as hopeless as
the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava.
For Australian prisoners the suffering did not end with the
battle, as when they reached Lille, behind German lines, they were
paraded through the streets to Fort Macdonaldknown as the
Black Hole of Lillewhere they were split into parties of about a
hundred. Each group was thrown into a cold and damp dungeon,
where they were given neither straw nor blankets, and fed with
one slice of bread daily, with only coffee substitute to drink.
Their captors said they were being punished because the British
army, in defiance of conventions, was working German prisoners
within the range of German guns. Until the British moved German
prisoners back from the danger zone the Australian prisoners
would be given minimal food, no soap, no beds, no towels and
122
no boots, and they would also be used to carry out work under
heavy shell fire. Private Leslie Pezet reported a German officer
warning, You are punished because England refuses to listen to
our appeals . . . we are going to punish you further by sending you
to our firing line where you will get killed and wounded by your
own English shells. Indeed, several Australians died, some from
hardship and mistreatment and others from British shells until
mid-July, when they were withdrawn behind the lines. Charles
Bean claimed the brutal methods of the Germans in retaliation
had little effect except to win for their whole people a reputation
which, in this generation at least, will continue to do great harm
to their country.
Battle stats
Winners: German forces
Losers: British forces, and the 4th and 12th Brigades and a number of their
battalions of the Australian 4th Division
Toll: Australian 4th Division forces suffered heavy losses: 4th Brigade
2340 casualties, 12th Brigade 950 casualties; as well, 28 officers and
approximately 1170 men were taken prisoner of war, the largest number
of Australians captured in a single battle in World War I. The British
forces also suffered a large number of casualties and most of their 12
tanks were also disabled
Result: Germans preserved their Hindenberg Line for the moment
It was a minor miracle
that the Australians broke
through the Hindenburg
Line at all during the
first Battle of Bullecourt
because they had been let
down by both the artillery,
which failed to provide
the covering barrage,
and the much-heralded
British tanks, most of
which got bogged in the
mud or were destroyed
by German fire. AWM
123
Second Bullecourt,
317 May 1917
THE STOUTEST
ACHIEVEMENT OF THE
AUSTRALIAN SOLDIER
IN FRANCE
Never yet since their arrival in France had any of the
Australian divisions been employed in large operations
in which the ultimate objective was really attainable with
the means used for attaining it. Such successes as they
had achieved had been won by troops persisting, through
the sheer quality of their mettle, in the face of errors.
The Second Bullecourt was the most brilliant of these
achievements.
L
ieutenant Rupert Mick Moon of the 58th Battalion, leading
a small party in an attack against a concrete machine-gun
position between two German trenches, had advanced only a short
distance before he was hit in the face and fell to the ground. His
troops faltered. Pulling himself up, he called to his men: Come on
boys, dont turn me down!
Moon, a twenty-four-year-old bank clerk, was less than 168
centimetres tall and slightly built. Some sources say Harold Pompey
Elliott, his brigadier, doubted whether he would make a good officer.
124
Elliott thought he was too timid to
be a good leader in the field. Moon
would prove him wrong.
After rallying his men and
renewing the assault on the machine-
gun nest, Moon saw some Germans
leaving their position. Chasing them
with a Lewis gun, he emptied it into
the fleeing enemy.
Hit again, this time in the
shoulder, he still did not stop. Seeing
a mass of Germans rushing into
dugouts where they could regroup,
Moon quickly ordered his men to
direct their fire at the entrances,
hoping the tactic would stop
them escaping and force them to
surrender. It worked. Moons haul of
prisoners was one of the best by any
lieutenant of the wartwo officers
and 184 men emerged to be taken back behind the Australian line.
Receiving yet another wound, Moon joked with his men about
the fact that, even though he had been wounded three times, none
was a Blightya wound serious enough to send a soldier back to
England to recuperate.
Suddenly a shot rang out and stopped Moon mid-sentence. He
fell back, hit in the face again. This was the Blighty: his jaw and
twelve teeth were smashed, yet only when he was satisfied that the
position would be held did he leave the battlefield, blood streaming
from his face.
Before being carted off that day Moon captured no fewer than
four machine guns and 186 men. Awarded the Victoria Cross, his
citation stated his bravery was magnificent and was largely instru-
mental in winning a fight against superior numbers, safeguarding
the flank of the attack on Bullecourt and gaining 184 [sic] prisoners
and 4 machine-guns.
Twenty-four-year-old bank
clerk Lieutenant Rupert
Mick Moon won his
Victoria Cross at the second
Battle of Bullecourt when,
despite being wounded
three different times,
he helped capture four
machine guns and 186
German prisoners of war.
He was forced to retire after
being shot in the face.
125
The battle
It was 3 May 1917. Three weeks had passed since the first bloody
and disastrous attempt by the Allies to take the small town of
Bullecourt, just east of the Hindenburg Line. For this second
attempt, among other forces the British commanders used their
own British 62nd Division supported by Australias 1st, 2nd and
5th Divisions with a number of their brigades, including the 5th
and 6th. The British were attacking the village from the west and
the Australians from the east.
France had not long emerged from one of the coldest winters
on record. With the warmer spring weather, the snow Australian
soldiers had encountered in the first assault was gone. Now, as they
stared at the German trenches in the pre-dawn darkness, it was
across a no-mans-land of bare, damp earth and the seasons first
splashes of grass. They waited for the artillery barrage that would
open their second attempt to take the German position, and many
prayed things would be different this time. They had lost so many
of their mates.
Unlike that first attempt, Anzac commanders had rejected
outright a proposal by Britains Fifth Army commander, General
Sir Hubert Gough, to again use the unreliable tanks for cover and
support as they advanced across no-mans-land. They also insisted on
a heavy artillery barrage to soften up the Germanssomething that
had not been done last time. Hearing the roar of the British barrage
must have bucked up the spirits of the men at their jumping-off
positions. At least they must have felt more confident than those
ill-fated comrades who had gone into battle weeks earlier with no
barrage and only four tanks to support them. Indeed, Private Billy
Williams of the 2nd Division listened to the barrage and wondered
how a flea could come through it unscathed.
The Australians left their trenches right on zero hour3.45 a.m.
The German machine guns immediately raged from Quanta
village on the Australians right flank that had largely escaped the
bombardmentand Bullecourt itself on the other. Captain Vivian
Smythe of the 24th Battalion, originally from Kogarah, in Sydney,
gave the best account of the early stages of the battle.
126
Five minutes before time word was passed down the line to get
ready, almost before it reached the last man the sky, low down
behind us, burst suddenly into a flickering blaze of light as the
guns woke suddenly to life. In a few seconds a torrent of shells
screamed overhead and burst like a sparkly of jewels in front. We
rose and moved slowly forward, fixing our bayonets as we went.
We overtook the barrage near the wire but within a few seconds it
shifted on and was now concentrated on the famous Hindenburg
line a hundred yards ahead.
Before this the slowly advancing waves had been seen by the
defenders and a continuous crackle of machine-gun bullets whipped
and tore the air around us. But not for that, would the advance
party stop. Calmly and coolly the men picked their way through
the blasted wire and absolutely ignored the frantic machine-guns.
Once through the wire we were supposed to lie down and wait
until the barrage lifted, but with the enemy so close in front few
thought of anything but getting at him and so they pressed on
through our own barrage and were fighting in the front line three
minutes before the barrage lifted. As soon as the trench was cleared
up we pushed along to both flanks to connect up with or assist
the people attacking on either side.
Meanwhile the other waves had passed through and soon the
success signal was seen from the second line. Following the slowly
advancing barrage, the last wave of our battalion steadily advanced
and at the scheduled time signalled its occupation of our fullest
objective.
Once again the Australians had overcome dense barbed wire,
deep trenches and heavy machine-gun and artillery fire to penetrate
Germanys formidable Hindenburg Line. All that was left to do now
was to hold the ground they had won and link up with the British
soldiers attacking on their left flank.
The battle soon became a siegethe Australians desperately
trying to hold on, the Germans desperately trying to bomb them
out. Captain Stanley Savige of the 24th Battalion wrote:
Men fought until
they dropped.
127
Men fought until they dropped. Some badly wounded popped
themselves into position and continued to fight. Before long we
extended our foothold, and success rested on the knowledge that
the small isolated groups, many without leaders, would fight on.
One only remembers, from the blur of fighting, when ones head
was dizzy, gallant men firing rifles until the barrels were hot and
throwing bombs until their arms were numb . . . on that day every
man was a hero.
Australias 1st Division relieved the men of the 2nd the next day.
The fresh troops dug in and for the next two weeks held the trenches
that had been taken on the first day, despite determined counterat-
tacks by the Germans. It was during this period that Rupert Moon
and his men captured 186 Germans and four machine guns, winning
the Victoria Cross. Moon, however, was not the only Australian to
be awarded the VC for his actions during Second Bullecourt.
On 6 May, six days before Moons attack, twenty-three-year-old
Corporal George Howell of the 1st Battalion spotted the enemy
trying to outflank his battalion. Without
orders Howell jumped onto the parapet
and, although under heavy bomb attack
and sustained rifle and machine-gun
fire, rushed the Germans, throwing his
bombs (hand grenades) as he ran along
the enemy trench. When he had used up
all his bombs, Howell continued along
the parapet, attacking the enemy with
his bayonet until he fell, wounded, into
the trench.
The whole battalion watched Howells
attack, and his comrades soon came to his
support, driving the Germans from the
trench. This allowed the Australians to
launch a counterattack and push the enemy
from their original position. According
After going over the top of
their trenches just before
dawn, Australian soldiers
fought so well at the
second Battle of Bullecourt
that they managed to
break through and secure
a permanent foothold
inside the impregnable
Hindenburg Line which
they then held with
their British comrades.
128
to his citation, apart from its great value tactically, his example
had a great effect in inspiring other men and undoubtedly was
greatly responsible for the enemys being driven back immediately.
His heroism landed Howell in hospital for months with at least
twenty-eight separate wounds.
After the British and Australian soldiers fought through the
ruins of Bullecourt to link up and create a united front, it became
clear to the Germans they would not be able to recover the trenches
and ground they had lost. On 17 May they blew up their dugouts,
filled in their trenches and withdrew from Bullecourt.
The failure to take Bullecourt first time around in April when the
artillery barrages were non-existent and tank support collapsedand
the huge losses incurred in tryinghad neither deterred Britains
Fifth Army commander, Lieutenant General Sir Hubert Gough,
nor changed his way of thinking. Presumably believing that surprise
didnt play much of a role in modern warfare against deep trenches,
machine-gun nests and endless barbed wire, Gough decided to
deploy the 62nd British Division along with the Australians against
Bullecourt and the Hindenburg Line once again.
Strategically, Second Bullecourt was of course part of the bigger
picture in which the British and other Allied forces were trying to
push the Germans back east along the Somme River valley. The
Australians were being used to assist the French and British forces,
as a large offensive had been launched by the French just to the
south of Bullecourt and the British were still trying to take Arras
to the north.
This second battle was initially postponed, however, because
of a German counterattack at Lagincourt, a village on the edges
of Bullecourt, on the same day. Fortunately the delay afforded the
Allies more time to plan the battle, something that had not occurred
before the previous attempt. Areplica of the battlefield was created
for a rehearsal. Marked with lines of tape that represented trench
locations, it was used to give soldiers a better feel for the ground
129
across which they would attack. Men carrying flags represented
the creeping barrage. The brigades practised the assault for days,
culminating in a full rehearsal.
The problem with all this planning, however, was the clever
German reconnaissance. As Australias official war correspondent
Charles Bean recounted:
On May 2nd a German aeroplane was hit by fire from the ground
and landed in the forward area. Australians running from all
directions crowded round the plane to find both German airmen
alive, though one was seriously wounded. The other asked at once
What time is zero? Captain McDonald of the 20th Battalion
answered himTheres no zero! Were not thinking of attacking.
Oh, we know you are, was the retort. What time do you start?
Despite this German intelligence, thanks to better planning,
the artillery barrage and the refusal to rely on new fangled tanks,
the Australians had succeededfighting alongside their alliesin
wresting a strong point from the enemy. They had now, after weeks
of bitter and persistent fighting, second time around, penetrated
and, most importantly, held the Hindenburg Line. It was a stepping
stone, a heart-rending and long-awaited victory in the on-going
series of battles for control of the Somme valley.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because the Australians had, through
sheer will and persistence, played a major role in penetrating and
holding the heavily fortified Hindenburg Line. Even though they
had enjoyed strong support from the British barrage this time, they
had still taken the German armys last and strongest line of defence
against stiff odds through great fighting. According to Bean,
Goughs insistence upon again attempting to reach Riencourt and
Hendecourt, and upon again throwing his flank into the re-entrant
between Queant and Bullecourt, loaded the second operation
with two of the difficulties of the first, but by sheer spirit the 6th
Australian Brigade succeeded and held on.
Areplica of the
battlefield was
created for a
rehearsal. Marked
with lines of tape
that represented
trench locations,
it was used to give
soldiers a better
feel for the ground
across which they
would attack.
130
Even the German command commented on the determination of
the Australians compared to their British masters. In his diary entry
for 5 May 1917, Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria wrote that
according to unanimous descriptions from the front, the English
troops show themselves far less tough to repulse than formerly,
with the exception of the Canadians and Australians, who are on
all sides praised for their bravery and skill.
It was also a great battle, however, due to the great toll. Allied
casualties ran to more than 14,000, including 7482 Australians and
some 6800 British. Over the course of both battles at Bullecourt
the Australians suffered more than 10,000 casualties.
It was a great battle because of the role it played in wearing
down the German army. The German 27th Division lost 2276
men, the 3rd Guard Division 1146 and the Lehr Division nearly
2000. British Empire Forces Commander-in-Chief, Field Marshal
Sir Douglas Haig, wrote on 12 May 1917: The capture of the
Hindenburg Line east of Bullecourt, and the manner in which it
has been held . . . will rank high among the great deeds of the war
and is helping very appreciably in wearing out the enemy.
Germanys defence strategy relied on their confidence in the
impregnability of the Hindenburg Line. The Australian and British
forces seriously undermined this confidence when they captured
and consolidated a foothold on it.
Postscript
For all the blood shed at Bullecourt in April and May 1917, the
taking of this French village and a section of the Hindenburg Line
had little impact on the outcome of the war. Neither the French
nor British offensives which the Bullecourt campaign was intended
to support proved decisive. In fact, while Australians were dying
at Bullecourt, Haig was already planning his next big offensive,
hundreds of kilometres away at Ypres.
Though the ground won at Bullecourt was built into the Allied
front line, not much else happened there for the rest of the year. The
Australians were withdrawn from the line in May 1917 and moved
The capture of the
Hindenburg Line
east of Bullecourt,
and the manner in
which it has been
held . . . will rank
high among the
great deeds of the
war and is helping
very appreciably
in wearing out
theenemy.
131
north to Belgium. The next point at which Bullecourt saw any real
action was in 1918, when the German army, embarking on their
Spring Offensive, advanced swiftly through France, and retook the
village with relative easemuch to the disappointment of all those
soldiers who had fought so hard at such great cost to capture it.
The battles for Bullecourt, however, did see a shift in the way
Australian soldiers were used and led for the rest of the war. At
Bullecourt, large numbers had been slaughtered in rushed, poorly
planned and over-ambitious actions.
Impressed by the Australians penetration of the Hindenberg Line
in the first battle and the capture of the village in the second, Bean
referred to Bullecourt as the stoutest achievement of the Australian
soldier in France, also noting that fortunately, it was the last such
achievement. Australians fought through appalling conditions again in
1917 and 1918, but never again did the chief difficulties throughout
seem to be attributable to faults of the British Command. When
next the Australian infantry divisions entered battle they found their
actions directed by higher leadership of a strikingly different order.
Bullecourt ended a bloody chapter in the history of the AIF. Gone
were the days of attacks for which the objectives were unimportant
and the planning inadequate; gone were the days of the useless
slaughter of Australians at places such as Fromelles and Pozires.
The battles for Bullecourt are remembered in the little French
village today, which has a life-size statue of an AIF digger, an annual
Anzac Day service and a hotel with an Australian name.
Battle stats
Winners: The British 62nd Division and the Australian 1st, 2nd and 5th
Divisions, including their selected brigades, namely the 5th and 6th
Losers: German forces, especially the 27th, 3rd Guard and Lehr Divisions
Toll: 7482 Australian casualties, along with heavy casualties suffered by
both British and enemy German forces
Result: The Australians played a major role in the capture of Germanys
most heavily fortified line of defence, but the capture of Bullecourt had
little impact on the outcome of the war as the village was retaken by
the Germans in March 1918
132
TUNNELLING TO
VICTORY
But the mines we dug Fritz out of at Messines would make
you marvel because the Germans boasted we could never
dig them out of those deep dugoutsyet we have done it.
And I went down some of these dugouts which are more
than seven feet deep and fashioned into a real home for
Fritz lit by electricity with mirrors, maps and pictures
on the walls. Fritz must have planned to stay at Messines
because he had cosy bunks and tables and chairs like any
family home. But no matter how deep their shelters were
atMessines we succeeded in digging him out.
Jack Foster, stretcher-bearer, 47th Battalion: diary entry
C
aptain Robert Grieve, twenty-seven, watched aghast as heavy
machine-gun fire cut half his 37th Battalion men down as they
scrambled through a gap in the wire. Grieve spotted the German
pillbox carving up his unit, a firestorm of bullets pouring from it.
Calling for help above the roar of battle and groaning men, he
ordered a mortar and machine-gun squad to attack the concrete
monster up the hillthen saw the squad had all been cut down as
well. What now, he thought. Then, Damn it!
He bolted straight for the pillbox and, single-handed, while
under continuous fire from two machine guns in the pillbox, hurled
his bombs (hand grenades) through the slits into the enemys laps,
immediately killing both crews and silencing their guns. Grieve then
133
doubled back to reorganise the remnants of
his shattered company, and finally reached
his original objective in his part of the
battle for Messines.
This bold act won him a Victoria Cross,
his citation reading: Captain Grieve, by his
utter disregard of danger, and his coolness
in mastering a very difficult position, set a
splendid example, and when he finally fell
wounded the position had been secured
and the few remaining enemy were in
full flight.
Fired up by the vast underground
explosions that had just blown the German
positions sky high, Grieve was one of the
Australians spearheading the above-ground
assault to drive the startled Germans east,
away from Ypres. His victims in the pillbox
lived through the massive explosions only
to die from his bombs.
Other Germans sheltering inside concrete blockhouses had not
survived the explosions, as Major General Charles Tim Harington
discovered when he flung open a door expecting a fight:
On entering a concrete dugout I found four German officers sitting
at a tableall dead, killed by the shock. They might have been
playing bridge. It was an uncanny sight, not a mark on any of them.
I can see their ghastly white faces as I write.
Grieve was not the only brave soldier determined to capitalise
on the massive blasts that had routed the Germans. Advancing
towards Messines, Private John Carroll, twenty-five, of the 33rd
Battalion fighting nearby at St Yves, rushed a German trench from
which enemy marksmen were killing his comrades, and bayoneted
four of the enemy. He killed another German soldier after noticing
a comrade in difficulties grappling with him.
Once the explosives were
detonated blowing up
the German positions,
Captain Robert Grieve,
twenty-seven, left, won
his Victoria Cross by
charging through heavy
fire straight at a pillbox,
throwing in some bombs
(grenades), and killing
two machine-gun crews
before leading his men
forward to capture a trench
from the enemy. AWM
134
Not content with that, he continued fighting well out ahead
of his comrades, protecting them with great determination and
courage until he came across a machine gun being operated by
four Germans in a shell hole. He jumped into the enemy nest and,
again single-handed, attacked the entire squad, killing three of the
men and capturing their gun. Swinging around after this, he saw
two of his comrades buried by a shell burst and, in spite of very
heavy shelling all around him and constant machine-gun fire, he
managed to dig them out.
As the citation for the Victoria Cross which he won confirmed,
. . . during the 96 hours the battalion was in the line, Private Carroll
displayed most wonderful courage and fearlessness.
The battle
It was 7 June 1917 on the Western Front in Flanders, Belgium.
The battle began at 3.10 a.m., the long-awaited moment when
tunnellers detonated the explosives planted in nineteen different
mines under the German positions defending Messines. The Allies
believed this would dislodge large numbers of Germans and make
it easier to drive the remainder back east.
The explosions were certainly effective, according to Military
Cross winner Lieutenant Rupert Charles Jones of the 33rd Battalion,
who said:
I was in a dugout at battle headquarters connected to one of the
mine galleries. We were only 500 yards from the mines and the
tremendous explosion rocked the dugout from side to sidewe
thought it would cave in but luckily the workmanship was good.
The timbers held and we are able to tell the tale. A single flaw in
the timbering would have meant burial for us. As it was, the lights
were blown out by the back blast and earth shaken down through
the timbers and iron rails supporting the dug out.
The Allies had already carried out their preparatory bombard-
ment on Messines from 31 May, keeping it up for seven days, and
135
now the Germans had just been hit by 455 tonnes of ammonal
explosive from below. The British general in charge of Messines,
the British Second Army commander, Major General Herbert
Plumer, now ordered his troops to capture the German-occupied
WytschaeteMessines Ridge and straighten out the salient (bulge
in the lines) south of Ypres, thus protecting Ypres by pushing the
German front line further back east, away from the town. From their
high point on the ridge the Germans overlooked British positions.
Immediately the explosions did their work, the British sent
out three corps, including II Anzac Corps commanded by the
controversial General Godley, who had proved so incompetent
at Gallipoli. His corps included the British 25th Division, Major
General John Monashs 3rd Division and the New Zealand Divi-
sion. The Australian 4th Division, commanded by Major General
William Holmes, who would be killed himself the following month,
provided support troops for the battle.
On top of their explosions, the Allies also threw 2266 big guns
and howitzers, 438 trench mortars and 454 Vickers machine guns
When the mines containing
455 tonnes of explosives laid
under the German positions
at Messines were detonated
the sound could be heard
in England. Enemy soldiers
were blown sky high and
heavy pillboxes like this
one were uprooted. AWM
136
into the attack on the German front
and rear positions. Then 80,000 infan-
trymen advanced to capture many of
the numbed and devastated Germans.
Germanys Major Walter Kranz,
watching in disbelief from the safety of
the second German front line, said the
explosion looked like nineteen gigantic
roses with carmine petals, or enormous
mushrooms which rose majestically
out of the ground and then split into
pieces with a mighty roar, sending up
multi-coloured columns of flame mixed
with a mass of earth and splinters high
in the sky.
The advancing Allies soon captured
the ridge, with 7500 Germans surren-
dering immediately. Afterwards, 10,000
Germans were posted as missing.
Fortunately for the Allies the blast
had hit the enemy just as the Germans
were massing men to relieve front-line
troops, destroying both groups.
Australians were surprised to see such a proliferation of German
concrete blockhousesthe first of these pillboxes many had seen. But
soldiers like Grieve and Carroll also overcame the post-detonation
counterattacks by Germans still entrenched in these pillboxes.
Not all the Australians had it easy as they attacked, and General
John Monashs 3rd Division unknowingly advanced into deadly
phosgene shells as they went through Ploegsteert Wood, which
gassed about 500 of the men, while hundreds more were hit with
shrapnel. Other Australians were hit by friendly fire from Allied
batteries mistaking the Aussies for Germans. Holmes 4th Division
also had to cover for British forces that were delayed.
Another witness, Jack Foster, a stretcher-bearer with the 47th
Battalion, wrote:
Australian soldiers pose
at the entrance to a mine
shaft near Messines.
Professional miners
from Australia, Britain
and Canada tunnelled
for two years under
German positions then
laid down explosives in
nineteen mines which
they detonated on 7 June
1917, killing and wounding
thousands of Germans
before the infantry then
captured Messines. AWM
137
We took a lot of prisoners who were mighty glad to be taken. We
had the tanks with us and they put the wind up Fritz alright and
no wonder, they are ghostly looking things. We also put a very big
barrage of shells of all shapes and sizes onto his trenches to chop up
his barbed wire and it looked like the world was coming to an end.
It was hard to believe anybody could survive that barrage. Yet we
crept forward as far as we dared just short of our barrage, laid face
down and waited for the barrage to move further forward which it
did as perfectly as if it was coming from one gun. But the suspense
was terrible lying there waiting for the barrage to move forward
and the roar of the shells is terrible for they are only just skimming
over your head. Then we jumped up and charged Fritz before he
knew what was happening and killed him with our bayonets and
bombs. Then suddenly our boys were all standing there proudly
smoking cigarettes and joking all talking as if they had only been
practising because our boys do not take things as seriously as Fritz.
In 1917 the Allies were fighting one of the biggest campaigns of
the Great War, the Third Battle of Ypres. This for the Australian
forces was really a series of five smaller battles, which together
saved this strategically important medieval town and pushed back
the German front line.
Before the five battles could start the Allies had to mount a
preparatory battle against the German-occupied ridge-top village of
Messines nearby, which the Allies believed could best be captured
from underground by blowing it up with explosives. Messines
became a major victory for the Allies, and in particular for the
tunnellers, who had dug beneath the German positions for two
years and planted nineteen (by some counts, twenty-two) mines.
The Allies won three of the five follow-up battles, which were,
in order, Menin Road, Polygon Wood and Broodseinde, but lost
at Poelcappelle and the infamous Passchendaele. British Empire
Forces Commander-in-Chief Sir Douglas Haig believed he could
best wear down the Germans by fighting them in Flanders. His
138
main objective was a strategic high area in southern Belgium held
by the Germans, Gheluvelt Plateau, which had been fought over
since October 1914. Haig put Herbert Plumer, commander of
Britains Second Army, in charge of executing the all-important
preparatory battle for Messines. Plumer was not a swashbuckler
but an older general with a more cautious approach and a desire
to care for his men. Plumer declared the best strategy would be a
step by step approach with a good deal of preparation and heavy
artillery bombardment, followed by limited advances. It certainly
worked at Messines, even if it took two years.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because the untried mines which
the British, Canadian and Australians miners had been laying
underneath the German positions for two years detonated so well.
It was at that time historys largestand in military terms, most
deadlyman-made explosion. Many English people reported
hearing the boom in the east of England.
It was one of the most satisfying victories in the war so far and
especially for 1917, because Plumers Second Army had won at the
relatively small cost of 11,000 casualties, only 10 per cent of whom
were killed, according to most accounts. It certainly paid to dig
tunnels: in fact, the Germans now feared more tunnel explosions
under their positions and deserted other locations just in case.
The tunnellers were delighted with their success. Oliver Wood-
ward from the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company, who dug under
one of the German positions known as Hill 60, which he helped
blow up was decorated by the Prince of Wales. He said:
Our tunnelling efforts succeeded beyond our wildest expectations
as not only were we able to dig silently and keep the secret from
the Germans even as we penetrated below their lines, but the mines
we laid also succeeded in destroying all the enemy positions that
had been targeted.
It was also a turning point from the enemys point of view, as
more Germans started contemplating defeat. General Hermann
139
von Kuhl (chief of staff to Crown Prince Rupprecht), who was
commanding their forces at Messines, revealed there was such a
shortage of men that they could not switch soldiers from place to
place as attacks occurred. With manpower shortages and the risks
of moving about, the Germans used dogs to deliver some rations,
water, medical supplies and ammunition.
Lieutenant Rupert Charles Jones, MC, reported that the contro-
versial and tight-lipped General Godley, congratulating the Allied
forces on a job well done, said Australias 9th Brigade
is worthy to rank with any of the Brigades in the AIF or in any
force in the Empire and with the Brigades that landed at Gallipoli
or fought in the Somme . . . and I want to tell you how proud the
people of Australia will be when they hear of your performance.
Postscript
Unfortunately, due to poor British leadership, the Allies failed to
capitalise on the victory at Messines by grabbing the territory that
was theirs for the taking now that the Germans were routed. This
was a wasted opportunity for which the Allies would pay dearly at
Passchendaelethe Germans were given precious time to regroup.
Messines did also come at a price for Allied forces, especially in
II Anzac Corps, which suffered 13,900 casualties, greater than all
the British casualties from their two corps in the battle. The 3rd
Division, under Major General John Monash, suffered 6800 of the
Australian casualties.
Grieve was also lucky to get his VC because all his superiors
were killed in the action, so his recommendation for the medal
had to come from the men fighting under hima most unusual
and lucky result. The wound he received from a sniper in the VC
action caused him to be hospitalised in Britain for six months,
then when he came back to the front he got double pneumonia
and trench nephritis and had to return to Australia in May 1918.
He married the Australian army nurse who had cared for him, and
died in 1957.
I want to tell you
how proud the
people of Australia
will be when
they hear of your
performance.
140
Private John Carroll was lucky to survive the war, being wounded
in the chest in July 1917 and again in October at the dreadful
Battle of Passchendaele. After the war he returned to Perth and,
while working on the railways in 1927, lost a leg in an industrial
accident. He attended Victoria Cross Centenary celebrations in
1956, and died in 1971.
The Australian feature film, Beneath Hill 60, made in 2010, was
inspired by the events at Messines.
Battle stats
Winners: British Allied forces, including Australias 3rd and 4th Divisions
and especially the British, Australians and Canadian tunnellers
Toll: II Anzac Corps casualties 13,900twice the casualties of the two
British corps involved; within these numbers the 3rd Australian Division
suffered 6800 casualties (nearly two-thirds of the 3rd Division), with
many gassed. The Germans suffered an estimated 23,000 casualties,
7548 of them missing
Result: Allied forces successfully detonated historys largest mine explosives
and with a follow-up offensive captured the WytschaeteMessines Ridge,
denying the Ypres high ground to the Germans
141
Polygon Wood,
26 September 1917
PREMONITIONS OF
DEATH AT POLYGON
WOOD
No doubt youve heard the sad news which I cabled to the
Rev Morris of Stans deathbefore we went out in the night
of the 25th Stan had an idea that something was going to
happen to him, and he gave a letter to one of our boys to
have posted for him in England . . . Ithink it was to a girl
in Wauchope . . . he did not want it censored and persuaded
one of the officers to put his name on it to get it past the
censors. He went out cheerful as ever a man could, espe-
cially when he had an idea he was going to his doom.
Robert Westall Marchment, brother of Stan Marchment, 5th Division,
killed in action at Polygon Wood
T
he tree stumps and shattered timber covering Polygon Wood
helped hide the German pillboxes until bursts of lethal
machine-gun fire lashed into the Anzacs of the 31st Battalion.
Private Patrick Joseph Bugden and his mates cursed as they real-
ised that repeated shelling over earlier weeks and the vast creeping
barrage that launched their attack had done little to silence the
German guns.
Bugden called out to his pinned-down mates: Come on, lets
get the blighters. His nerves were rattled. He had had enough, and
142
now it was a case of dying for sure in a shell hole or taking some of
the enemy with you even if you were killed trying to push through.
Bugden collected a small party to attack the first of these strong
points, armed himself with bombs (hand grenades), then ran, leading
the men forward under intense fire. He closed on the pillbox and
began hurling bombs through the slits in the concrete, silencing the
machine guns and calling for the surviving Germans to come out with
their hands up. As they staggered out, some of Bugdens comrades
took them back to the Allied lines at the point of a bayonet.
Then the twenty-year-old private did it again. Seeing the advance
was still held up by a strongly defended pillbox, he called for more
volunteers. Again in the face of devastating fire, this time also from
German soldiers defending the pillbox, Bugden led his party right
up to it and once again threw in some bombs, killing or wounding
most of the German machine gunners and capturing the survivors.
As Bugden moved forward with his fellow soldiers to battle the
Germans all around him, he saw the capture of an Anzac corporal
who had become detached from his company. Single-handed he
rushed to the rescue, shooting one of the prisoner escorts and
bayoneting the remaining two, and freed the corporal.
Not content with his effort so far, Bugden then turned to
Against heavy enemy fire,
Australian soldiers led
the advance at Polygon
Wood, throwing bombs
(grenades) into German
pillboxes, killing the enemy
machine gunners inside,
and then planting their
victory flag on the top.
Lieutenant A.V.L. Hull, who
hoisted the Australian
flag, was killed in action
three weeks later. AWM
143
rescuing wounded menignoring the storm of shell and machine-
gun fire that raged around him as he rescued another five soldiers.
Then, as the Australians penetrated deeper into Polygon
Woodinspired greatly by Bugdenthe seemingly tireless private
volunteered for more and more dangerous missions until, showing
an utter contempt and disregard for danger and always foremost in
volunteering for any dangerous mission, it was during the execution
of one of these missions that this gallant soldier was killed. He was
awarded a Victoria Cross posthumously.
It was little wonder the Australians were having such an impact
on the assault on Polygon Wood, with men like Sergeant John
Dwyer, twenty-seven, of the 4th Machine Gun Company among
the ranks, as well as Bugden. Dwyer, who commanded a Vickers
machine gun, also rushed forward to silence one of the deadly
German machine guns. When he was pushing hard to keep forward
of enemy positions as they were trying to capture a commanding
spot, he noticed an enemy machine gun firing on the right flank
and causing casualties. Unhesitating, he turned his Vickers on the
enemy gun and fired point-blank, killing the gun crew. He then
seized the German gun and, ignoring German snipers, carried it
back across the shell-swept ground to the Allied front line, then
set it and his Vickers on the right flank of the brigade, doubling
the strength of his machine-gun post.
Sergeant Dwyer commanded these guns with great coolness and,
when the enemy counterattacked, he was active in repulsing them.
On one occasion the following day his Vickers gun was destroyed
by shell fire, so he took his gun crew back to headquarters through
an enemy barrage, found a reserve gun and rushed it quickly back
into the front line, earning a Victoria Cross for his bravery and skill.
The battle
It was September 1917 just outside the German strong point of
Polygon Wood, near Ypres, Flanders, which the AIF was determined
to help the British forces capture while there was a break in the
incessant rain.
144
They were on a roll, having already helped capture Menin Road
(their first battle in this series to save Ypres) and also just taken
the nearby Glencorse Wood south-west of Polygon with the New
Zealanders in a preparatory action.
The British High Command assigned the 4th (under Major
General Sinclair-MacLagan) and 5th (under Major General J.J.
Talbot Hobbs) Australian Divisions to the Polygon Wood assault.
There were anxious moments just before the main Allied attack
because the Germans launched their own attack on the British X
Corps, just south of the 5th Division. Luckily the British forces
helped especially by the Australian 15th Brigaderepelled most
of the Germans making the assault.
Nevertheless, at 5.50 a.m. on 26 September, the British artillery
gunners began shelling the German positions at Polygon Wood,
providing a creeping barrage that the two Australian divisions used
to advance in the centre of an Allied front line that stretched for
nearly 10 kilometres. This barrage also helped the battered British
X Corps which had been assigned to this battle, but which had been
attacked by the Germans the night before the advance on Polygon
Wood had begun. Some of the Australians had come to the aid of
the British during that night and helped them regain their start
line for the Polygon Wood battle, just in time.
Using the first light of day, the Australians rushed forward
1500 metres through what was left of a former forest plantation
and towards the hill in the centre of Polygon Wood, hoping the
barrage had destroyed the German dugouts and trenches and forced
the enemy back.
As usual, however, they met stubborn resistance from the German
machine-gun posts, but the best of the Australian fighters, like
Bugden and Dwyer, quickly came to the fore and silenced the German
machine gunners. Inspired by such acts of heroism, the men of the
AIF quickly captured not only all their own objectives, often in
bloody battles at close quarters, but also some of the British objectives.
It was a bad day for machine gunners, and Stan Hastings March-
ment, who had a premonition of his death according to his brother,
Robert, who was fighting nearby, was indeed killed.
145
Robert wrote to their family that He and three other boys
were with their Gun digging a position for the Gun when suddenly
the Germans sent over a barrage of fire from their heavy batteries
into Glencourse [sic] Wood, where Stan and his mates were, and
got all four of them. But of course Stan was not the only loss, as
Robert wrote:
Glencourse Wood turned out a veritable hell for our boys and
not only us but many other good Australian Fathers, Mothers,
Sisters, Sweethearts and Brothers will also get very sad news from
that encounter, but we can safely say that although our casualties
were heavy, we made the Germans pay three times as great as they
were just simply mown down like hay before the Reaper with our
artillery and machine-gun fire.
Robert also had a bad feeling on the day:
I knew something had happened to him [Stan] before I was ever
told, something seemed to tell me there was something wrong,
and I was continually asking the boys if they had heard anything
of him and although they knew they would not tell me at first.
But when I heard next morning I just laid down and howled
like a kid.
No German will even get any pity from me and I hope never
to see one again in Australia otherwise he and I may get into a
real fight. But we are doing well and Fritzs are coming over in
the hundreds with their hands up, they simply wont fight but it
is their Artillery that is catching us . . . If it was man-to-man we
would be in Berlin in a week.
At least the body of Stan Marchment was found and could be
buried, unlike many others in the terrible infernos of World War I.
Private Ernest Michael Penny, twenty-two, from the 29th Battalion
from New South Wales, who was blown to smithereens at Polygon
Wood, as his comrades put it, has no known grave but, like so many
others, is remembered at the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres.
We can safely say
that although our
casualties were
heavy, we made the
Germans pay three
times as great as
they were just
simply mown down
like hay before
the Reaper with
our artillery and
machine-gun fire.
146
Polygon Wood was part of the grand plan by British Commander-
in-Chief, General Sir Douglas Haig, to win back Flanders. It was
just another battle in the series orchestrated by his Second Army
commander, General Sir Herbert Plumer, to push the Germans back
from Ypres and save that strategically important town.
Polygon Wood was a stepping stone after the great successes
of Messines and Menin Road. It was mounted as another test that
confirmed that Plumers step-by-step strategy was working, thanks
largely to the fighting prowess of the AIF, which had also been
forced to capture territory on behalf of the battered British X Corps
which had been unable to achieve all its objectives.
For the Allies, this was the third victory in a row in what was
to be called Third Ypres (the victory of the infantry which had
The Germans shelled the
Belgian town of Ypres
repeatedly because British
forces were using it as
their base for mounting
attacks, such as the battle
at nearby Polygon Wood.
The cathedral was just one
of many fine old buildings
reduced to rubble.
147
attacked Messines after the tunnellers blew up the German positions
was the first, and a victory at Menin Road on 20 September 1917
was the second). Polygon Wood was just a little further inside the
German lines. The Allied forces took great heartthey had now
gained three victories out of three battles in a row. Plumers step
by step plans had been put in place after the stunning victory at
Messines and called for the capture of five targets: Menin Road,
Polygon Wood, Broodseinde, Poelcappelle and Passchendaele.
It was also a strategic breakthrough for the Allied forces because
now their plan was to push the German front line further back to
the east, away from Ypres. It was difficult to win any enemy-held
territory in 1917 (which was the worst year for Australians, who
suffered 20,000 casualties). Looking ahead, this plan to push the
Germans back east would prove difficult to implement successfully,
as the Germans had dug in so deeply and their occupied land was
infested with deadly machine-gun nests. So Polygon Wood was a
feather in the cap of the Allies, especially for their hard-fighting
AIF, whose men probably realised that this string of victories would
not last.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because the Australians helped the
British X Corps at the start and end of the battle, and won against
the odds, fighting their way through shattered forests and uphill
against German machine-gun nests blocking their way at every turn.
This great fighting by the AIF aided the British forces in
consolidating Haigs grand plan to clear Flanders of Germans.
They helped to demonstrate that the step-by-step strategy could
work. The Australians also picked up two Victoria Crosses in the
process, for Bugden and Dwyer.
It was also a great setback for the Germans. Faced with such
tenacious fighting men, Germanys General Hermann von Kuhl
revealed: The fighting strength of the numerous German Divisions
has been used up and it was proving difficult within the entire area
of Crown Prince Rupprechts Group of Armies to replace them
promptly with fresh Divisions.
148
Postscript
It was a clear-cut victory, but it still cost the
Australians an alarming 5770 casualties, many
of whom were killed. The fact that the British
X Corps could not fight as effectively along-
side the Australians as planned because of the
surprise German attack the night before meant
the Australians had to capture the objectives
assigned to the British, and this added to the
Australian casualties.
Bugden, from South Gundurimba near Lismore
in New South Wales, was a champion athlete and
had a great sporting career ahead of him. He had
distinguished himself during training at Enoggera
after enlisting in Brisbane. He is buried at Hooge
Crater Cemetery in Belgium, near where he fell.
Although a labourer in Queenstown, Tasmania, before he
enlisted, Dwyerwho was promoted to lieutenant after Polygon
Woodhad an unusually successful post-war life. He married,
had six children, set up his own sawmill and was elected to the
Tasmanian parliament as the ALP member for Franklin in 1931,
retaining the seat until he died in 1962.
History has not recorded whether the love letter written by
Stan Marchment ever got through to his girlfriend in Wauchope;
but as it was approved by an officer it was more likely than not to
have reached her.
Battle stats
Winners: British forces, including the AIF, especially the 4th and 5th
Australian Divisions
Toll: Australian casualties 5770. British X Corps also suffered heavy casual-
ties as did the defeated Germans
Result: The AIF helped the British forces win the third battle in a row in
the step-by-step strategy, protecting Ypres from German attack
Private Patrick Bugden won
his Victoria Cross at Polygon
Wood by killing or capturing
enemy machine gunners
in two pillboxes then
shooting one German and
bayoneting two others who
had captured his corporal,
before rescuing five
wounded men all trapped
in dangerous situations. He
was shot dead as he tried to
rescue a sixth man. AWM
149
ATTACKING FORCES
MEET HEAD-ON
An overwhelming blow had been struck, and both sides
knew it ... For the first time in years, at noon on October
4th on the heights east of Ypres, British troops on the
Western Front stood face-to-face with the possibility of
decisive success.
S
tuck between the German pillboxes and machine guns of
Broodseinde Ridge, Sergeant Lewis McGee, a twenty-nine-
year-old train driver from Tasmania, knew his platoon would suffer
heavy casualties if they stayed where they were.
One pillbox, just 50 metres ahead over open ground, was
proving particularly troublesome. Looking at the faces of the men
under his command, McGee took a deep breath and, according
to his citation for the Victoria Cross, rushed the post armed only
with a revolver. He shot some of the crew and captured the rest,
and thus enabled the advance to succeed. Throughout the whole
Operation, his bravery and coolness stood out as a splendid example
to everybody.
As a result of the actions of men like McGee, the Allies pushed
the Germans back further beyond Ypres on 4 October 1917 and
captured the ridges in front of Broodseinde where, for the first time
since May 1915, they caught sight of the Flemish lowlands, land
which thus far had escaped the ravages of war.
150
For his actions that day McGee
was awarded the Victoria Cross, as was
his fellow Australian, Lance Corporal
Walter Peeler.
The battle
On 4 October, under a grey and drizzly
Belgian sky, Allied troops shivered
as they prepared themselves for the
attack. British, Australian and New
Zealand troops prepared for action.
Most of them hugged the ground in
shallow shell holes and jumping-off
trenches. Zero hour was 6 a.m., when
they would launch their advance
towards the German position under
the cover of a protective creeping
artillery barrage.
At about the same time, an observer
set off to make his way to a shell-hole
observation post behind the battlefield. Trudging through a narrow
communication trench, he saw white flares float dreamily over
the German lines and thought they looked dull and glazed like
fishes eyes.
At 5.20 a.m.forty minutes before the attack was to beginthe
observer saw the Germans send up a yellow flare, and another, then
another, until there were sheaves of them filling the sky. Suddenly a
German artillery barrage began to come down on the Allied soldiers
waiting silently for zero hour. According to the observer, the barrage
was really heavycrump, crump, crump, crump, crump, like empty
biscuit-tins banging down into the valley ahead.
He believed the Allied attack had been discovered. It hadnt.
What the observer couldnt know was that the Germans were about
to begin their own attack, on Zonnebeke, a small village on the
Australian front line. By sheer coincidence the German assault had
Despite heavy enemy fire
which reduced the ground
to a black moonscape,
the Allies won the battle
at Broodseinde, drove the
German front line back
east, and captured a ridge
from which the Germans
had been shelling Ypres,
Allied positions and the
surrounding countryside
or what was left of it.
151
been set for 6 a.m. on 4 October, the time the Australians were due
to attack from the opposite direction. The observer was watching
the Germans preliminary bombardment.
Most of the barrage fell on the 1st and 2nd Australian Divisions.
They, too, thought they had been discovered, but under the terrific
bombardment there was nothing they could do but find cover and
wait. As Bean wrote:
Most of the men, lying in their shell-holes with their waterproof
capes drawn over their heads against the rain, simply had to endure
it. When a shell burst in an unoccupied shell-hole, it usually did
little damage; when it burst in an occupied one, the men there
were killed.
Just as the German barrage stopped at 6 a.m., the British guns
started. Finally out in the open, the Australians had hardly gone
100 metres when they saw what looked to be men carrying fixed
bayonets ahead. One can imagine their surprise, straining their eyes
to see who these ghostly figures were, coming towards them in the
darkness. Who were they? Australians? Germans?
When the shadowy figures fired a few times and fled the Austral-
ians realised they had encountered Germans in no-mans-land, and
returned fire. Some of them, yet to realise they were facing Germans
in the dim light, yelled at those beside them to stop shooting. Mind
your own bloody business! was the response.
It was not long until the fleeing Germans ran past their comrades.
The English are coming! they yelled as they kept running. The
Australians pursued the retreating Germans with great enthusiasm.
According to Bean,
it was always difficult to keep Australians from following an
enemy who was on the run and numbers of men from the leading
companies went on, chasing the Germans over the hilltop. Many of
the troops, indeed, failed to notice the thin bursts of the protective
barrage and, seeing through them the heavy artillery barrage still
advancing, continued to follow it until recalled.
152
The fighting became much tougher
when the Allies reached those monstrous
pillboxesthey seemed to spit fire at them
from all directions. But through vicious
hand-to-hand fighting and the heroics of
men such as McGee and Peeler, the German
pillboxes were taken, one by one, and the
Allies gained the upper hand. Indeed, Peeler,
a blacksmith from Castlemaine in Victoria,
killed nine Germans who were sniping
Australians, and captured a machine-gun
crew, killing ten more Germans in the
process. According to his citation, Peeler
displayed an absolute fearlessness in making
his way ahead of the first wave of the assault
and the fine example which he set ensured
the success of the attack against a deter-
mined opposition.
By midday the Allies had taken Brood-
seinde Ridge. All combined forces had
fought well; the British Second Army had
advanced on a front of 13 kilometres with
the help of Australians and New Zealanders in I Anzac Corps and
also II Anzac Corps fighting side by side for the first time. The
British, Australian and New Zealand forces fought as one well-oiled
machine, which was unstoppable. Bean thought that, had the
Australians been allowed to go further, they could have done so,
but the orders were to dig in. They secured and strengthened the
new position under cover of the last two and a half hours of the
protective barrage. For the first time in more than two years, this
important high ground was in the hands of the Allies.
The Third Battle of Ypresthe massive Allied effort to drive the
Germans from the heights of the Ypres salientbegan in July
A machine gunner, Lance
Corporal Walter Peeler from
Castlemaine, Victoria, of
the 3rd Pioneer Battalion,
won his Victoria Cross
by relentlessly leading
attacks against a series of
enemy machine-gun posts
at Broodseinde, until he
had dispatched at least
30 Germans and opened
the way for the advance.
Despite being wounded,
he later enlisted for World
War II, understating his
age, then spent three and
a half years as a prisoner
of the Japanese. AWM
153
1917. By late September the German front line had been pushed
steadily back into Belgium, and the Germans were in a state of
disorganisation and disarray. The Allies string of successes even
had the German High Command questioning the effectiveness of
their defensive combat strategy.
The Allies, used to being bogged down and slaughtered as they
had been on the Somme battlefields, were starting to experience
the unfamiliar sensation of optimism. In fact, the Australian 56th
Battalion had even asked not to be relieved at one point, preferring
the activity at the front to the monotony of constant shelling in
the support area.
After their triumph at Polygon Wood in September 1917, the
next objective Australian soldiers would be involved in fighting for
was the most important: Broodseinde Ridge, heights from which
Once the Germans started
using poisonous gas on
the Western Front, Allied
soldiers had to wear
gasmasks. The deadly fumes
could waft across from
the enemy lines at any
moment, silent and invisible.
154
the Germans had a commanding view over the Allied position at
Ypres. Broodseinde had been in enemy hands since 1915 and was
the gateway to Passchendaele, another key Allied objective.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because for the first time in years, on
the heights east of Ypres, the Allies on the Western Front were on
the brink of a decisive success. The Germans had been overwhelmed
at Broodseinde and they knew it. They had been driven from one
of the most important positions on the Western Front, one which
had given them a sweeping view of the Allies positions around
Ypres. Indeed, the Australians were astonished by what the Germans
had been able to see from the ridge. As we gazed back over the
country, one battalion historian wrote, we could see plainly the
movements of our own units . . . Guns, transport and men were
all exposed to the splendid observation from this position. It was
a prize worth having.
The defeat of the Germans seemed to confirm what many were
thinking, or at least hoping: that the spirit of the German army had
been broken. The history of the German 5th Foot Guard Regiment
calls it the hardest day yet experienced by the regiment in the war.
The German official history called it the black day of October 4th
and, as Bean wrote, the recent German decision to hold the front
line in greater strength had merely resulted in the destruction of
the troops placed there.
And an unknown German officer revealed:
After crawling through the bleeding remnants of my comrades
and through the smoke and debris, wandering and running in the
midst of the raging gunfire in search of refuge, Iam awaiting death
at any moment. You do not know what Flanders means. Flanders
means endless human endurance. Flanders means blood and scraps
of human bodies. Flanders means heroic courage and faithfulness
even unto death.
Conversely, the victory at Broodseinde greatly lifted the spirits of
the Australians. They had experienced failure at Gallipoli, had been
Flanders means
heroic courage and
faithfulness even
unto death.
155
misused at places like Fromelles and Bullecourt and had suffered
huge casualties at others such as Pozires and Mouquet Farm. Now,
after a so-far-successful Ypres campaign, they were confident the
Germans would soon be pushed out of France and Belgium. Indeed,
Bean tells the story of a group of Australians who captured a pillbox
at Broodseinde. Among the booty were two carrier pigeons. One
was released with a message for the Germans: Deutschland uber
Alles. Ha! Ha! We dont think!
The next objective, the small village of Passchendaele, now lay
ahead of them. Had the weather favoured the Allies there is little
doubt the town would have been taken quickly and decisively.
Unfortunately, it didnt. Heavy rain began to fall before the Austral-
ians had even consolidated at Broodseinde, turning the battlefield
into a sea of mud. The scene was set for one of the wars greatest
tragedies: the Battle of Passchendaele.
Postscript
Five days after the battle, the Australians took advantage of their
position on the ridgeline to raid Celtic Wood, which lay just south-
east of the 10th Battalion. The raid was intended as a diversion to
distract the Germans from the impending attack on Passchendaele.
The Germans, however, were on their guard. Two days earlier men
from 11th and 12th Battalions had raided the same wood, causing
casualties and taking several Germans prisoner.
At dawn on 9 October Lieutenant Frank Scott led 85 men
into the wood. They disappeared. Only fourteen unwounded men
returned to the Australian lines. Military history researchers Tony
Spagnoly and Ted Smith had by the time of publication accounted
for 48 of the raiders, but the fate of the remaining thirty-seven
remains a mystery to this day.
Stretcher-bearers entering the wood under Red Cross flags on
the day of the raid were shot at and forced to retire. No graves
were ever found (either during or after the war), and the Germans
produced no record of prisoners. The German regiment facing the
Australians made no mention of the raid in their unit diary.
156
Nobody knows what happened to those thirty-seven men,
whose remains may still lie somewhere under the eastern slopes of
Broodseinde. If they were taken prisoner there was no record of it
by the Germans, who were diligent about such things.
Spagnoly and Smith suspect the Australians met their fate in a
more ominous mannerperhaps from battle-weary Germans taking
revenge on the Anzacs for recent humiliating defeats, then covering
it up by not recording it.
The mystery of their deaths ensures the name Celtic Wood will
live on in Australias consciousness as a ghostly question mark. If
those men do lie in an unmarked mass grave in the now pastoral
setting of modern-day Broodseinde, at least they are not forgotten.
As Lieutenant Halliday, a British poet killed at Ypres in 1917, wrote:
Unknown! Ah, no! thy name still lives,
For one has seen thee fall,
And marked this sacrifice made,
The debt of love so nobly paid,
Faithful to Freedoms call
Unknown, and yet . . . well known.
Battle stats
Winners: Allied forces: British, Australian and New Zealand
Toll: Although British casualties were also significant, Australian casualties
were 6500; New Zealand casualties 1700
Result: Allied forces displaced Germans from an important position on the
Western Front, where the enemy had been able to see clearly and shell
Allied positions around Ypres
157
Passchendaele,
12 October 1917
THE BLOODY
MUDDYHELL OF
PASSCHENDAELE
Passchendaele was almost as disastrous as Bullecourt with
its own special horrormud.
Captain Harry Murray, 13th Battalion, Australias most decorated World
War I soldier
W
ith his boots stuck in a muck of mud and unable to see
much up the hill towards Passchendaele village in the
pouring rain, Captain Clarence Smith Jeffries of the 34th Battalion
made the snap decision to bolt straight for the red tracers flashing
out of a pillbox in the mist. Leaning down to pull his boots
out of the black sucking holes, he ordered a sodden party of his
men to follow him for higher ground and staggered towards the
cracking sounds of machine guns. Oh my God, he thought as
he got closerthere are two of the blighters! Two grey concrete
monsters of death crouched in the mud. Still, nothing for it now,
his party were out on their own, his men depended on him and
it was either kill successfully or be killedso Jeffries would tackle
the pillboxes one at a time.
Leaping insanely at the jaws of the first pillbox, screaming
abuse at the top of his voice and throwing bombs (hand grenades)
into the darkened slits, Jeffries wounded or killed so many of
158
the occupants the survivors flung up their
hands and surrendered, handing over their
machine guns.
Not a bad haul, the pumped-up Jeffries
thought: four machine guns and thirty-five
prisoners now standing stuck in the mud
themselves in the pouring rain.
Jeffries called out to his men, glancing
nervously over his shoulder at that second
pillbox still spitting out red tongues of fire,
ordering some of them to escort the pris-
oners back behind the lines. But he knew he
had to knock out that other pillbox quick
smart. The captain ordered a small party to
follow him up the mud-soaked hill, under
extremely heavy machine-gun fire towards
the pillbox he could see through the mist.
Having done it once Jeffries believed he
could do it again. He staggered as fast as
he could through the mud right up to the
pillbox, throwing bombs as he went through the slits at the startled
Germans and again screaming abuse. Some of the Germans were
killed by his bombs, some threw down their arms immediately
however this time one of the German machine gunners took aim
at Jeffries and shot him dead at the pillbox.
But Jeffries had won this round, and his party of men forced the
remaining Germans to come outside where they stood with their
hands up, cowering. This time Jeffries and his men had captured
two machine guns and thirty more prisoners. Now the advance
could proceed towards Passchendaele.
He made the supreme sacrifice, but as the citation for the
Victoria Cross he won says: This gallant officer was killed during
the attack, but it was entirely due to his bravery and initiative that
the centre of the attack was not held up for a lengthy period. His
example had a most inspiring influence. Captain Clarence Smith
Jeffries was just a couple of days short of his twenty-third birthday.
The young Captain
Clarence Jeffries from
Newcastle, New South
Wales, won his Victoria
Cross in the great Battle of
Passchendaele by charging
two pillboxes, capturing
six machine guns and
taking 65 prisoners before
he was shot dead. AWM
159
The battle
It was 12 October, pouring with rain, and the Australians were
fighting in the battle for the German-held village of Passchendaele,
Flanders, with Captain Jeffries performing his inspirational feats
east of Augustus Wood.
The battle began despite the rain that had been falling since the
start of October. Rain or no rain, the commander of the British
Second Army, General Sir Herbert Plumer, ordered the attack to
begin with an Allied barrage at first light. As he explained to the
troops, it was part of his step-by-step strategyhe believed it was
better to fight a series of small battles, of which Passchendaele was
the latest, rather than one large one. Unfortunately, three days
earlier, Plumers small battle at Poelcappelle had been a disastrous
defeat because the Allies had become bogged in mud.
Nevertheless, he sent in two divisions from II Anzac Corps,
Major General John Monashs 3rd Division with the New Zealand
Division to advance on the right flank, and a brigade of the 4th
Australian Division, in support of five British divisions.
The conditions were hopeless, but the Australians, having just
been defeated at the smaller action at Poelcappelle, were determined
to win this one, alongside their British allies. However, if they had
no chance at Poelcappelle because of the torrential rain, glue-like
mud and stinking, diseased pools of water all over the battlefield,
they would have even less chance of taking the more heavily soaked
Passchendaele.
In fact, when the infantry were ordered forward, some troops
could simply not move because their feet were stuck in the mud.
Many lost balance with all their kit and fell over. It was impossible
for horses or motor vehicles to move the heavy guns and ammuni-
tion. The mud could become like quicksand and swallow up horses,
mules, wagons and even heavy artillery.
So the preliminary barrage was wasted. It also obliterated the
remains of the village, turning everything into a brown, barren
moonscape. Soldiers could no longer decipher the treeless terrain.
Monashs 3rd Division was certainly paralysed by the conditions,
as were most of the British divisions and also the New Zealanders,
160
who were pinned down by enemy fire from entrenched pillboxes.
Incredibly, some of Monashs soldiers, dragging each leg out of the
muck, were able to creep along under the Keiberg ridge then drag
themselves forwards to the outskirts of Passchendaele. That is when
Jeffries won his VC. In another part of the battle the great warrior
Captain Harry Murray of the 13th Battalion fought so well he was
mentioned in despatches for distinguished and gallant services and
devotion to duty.
Some Australians on the right got closer to the edge of the ruined
village thanks to the support of a brigade of the 4th Australian
Division on their right, but none of the others could get through
the mud to reinforce them.
Eventually the British divisions and all the Australians and New
Zealanders had to retreat. No matter how brave, they could not hope
to take the village because the rain and mud stopped any hope of
Perhaps more used to
wintery conditions than
the Australians, the
Canadiansseen here
marching out of Ypres
to relieve the Diggers in
October 1917managed
to capture Passchendaele
where the Australians
had failed. AWM
161
reinforcements and the artillery could not fire as the gunners lacked
all knowledge of how the front stood. So wisely, the mud-crippled
warriors retreated.
In spite of the chaos, some individuals were lucky. One such
soldier was John Patrick Cooper, a stretcher-bearer of the 6th
Australian Field Ambulance Unit. He reported the barrage opened
up at 6.00am and there was fierce fighting for Passchendaele Ridge
with more than enough casualties to keep him busy. As a stretcher-
bearer he was lucky to survive that day of constant slaughter as
he and three others were running across no-mans-land carrying a
badly injured man to the field hospital when one of them trod on
a mine. After the dust settled, he was the only one who had not
been blown to smithereens.
Other lucky men included Private Robert Mather, 30th Battalion,
a twenty-three-year-old coalminer from Kurri Kurri in the Hunter
Valley of New South Wales, who decided to desert a shell hole close
to the enemy where he had been told to man a listening post. He
said it was getting far too hot, the shell hole was half full of water
and was too far in advance of our front line and so I decided to
bolt for better covereven though I could be court-martialled for
disobeying orders. The Germans bombarded the shell hole seconds
after he left and, although he was reprimanded and ordered to
return, he had saved his own life as the shell hole had disappeared
off the face of the earth.
Private Harry Hill, a labourer from Brungle near Tumut, New
South Wales, of 36th Battalion was also lucky only to be wounded
in the left arm by machine-gun fire in the fierce fighting at Pass-
chendaele. He was also lucky to be strong enough to make it back
to his lines as, he wrote, Men could not be spared for stretcher
bearing unless collecting those absolutely mangled, so walking
wounded had to make their own way to the rear from the bloody
battlefield. His wounds also ended his active service.
Others were not so fortunate. John Bathurst Ison of the 3rd
Battalion was killed in absolutely the worst conditions ever for
mud and shell fire, according to his best mate, Sergeant Major P.
Kichington, who wrote advising next of kin:
162
It was the worst battle ever experienced where everyone on the
post became casualties and they were so blown up by shells that
I was unable to obtain any personal effects that Jack had on him.
He told me the night before that he felt this would be his last
time in the line, even though it was his first trip to the line since
Bullecourt and he had only just got back from leave in England.
You have no idea of the troops suffering summer and winter, rain,
mud and coldit really is a mercy for God to take us and I assure
you, I have often asked God to take me from this life.
Across no-mans-land, the Germans hated the rain and mud of
Passchendaele just as much as the Australians, as one of the officers,
Werner Beumelberg, reported:
For half an hour a day in a major battle it was possible to fight
then after that the men were in a state of near unconsciousness,
lying in puddles of mud, occasionally endeavouring to crawl into
areas that were less fired upon and the constant terror of being
mutilated or killed.
By now, even the great German General Ludendorff was admitting
that, in these conditions, it was no longer life at all, just unspeakable
suffering.
The Commander-in-Chief of British Empire Forces, General Sir
Douglas Haig, still believed he could best wear down the Germans
by fighting them in Flanders. His key objective was to capture a
vital German-held area of southern Belgium, Gheluvelt Plateau, as
it commanded sweeping views of the terrain around much of Ypres.
The little village of Passchendaele (perched on an advantageous
ridge) was the fifth and most difficult of the objectives in the
Third Ypres series of five battles involving the Australians, where
once again the Allies were trying to push the Germans back east
to protect Ypres.
163
Passchendaele, a small village 11 kilometres east of Ypres, was
actually the final goal of this Third Ypres campaign. Haig also
needed to establish a new front line as far east as possible before
the anticipated arrival of additional German troops on the Western
Front from Germanys Eastern Front, Russia by now nearing collapse
and in the throes of revolution.
Haig was also swapping his leaders around. He put Britains
Second Army commander, General Herbert Plumer, 60, in charge of
the preparatory battle, Messines. Then he put the younger General
Sir Hubert Gough, 47 (Fifth Army), in charge of the follow-on
battles. But with Goughs successive defeats in these battles, Haig
placed Plumer, the victor of Messines, in command. Unfortunately
Plumer started the Passchendaele campaign far too late in the season.
Winter had set in and the Germans had time to regroup.
Having lost touch with
reality, British commanders
ordered Allied soldiers
to keep fighting even in
the impossibly muddy
conditions that developed
as winter set in. Not
surprisingly, the Australians
lost this particular
battleWe died in Hell,
one soldier wrote, they
called it Passchendaele.
164
In time, Passchendaele would become a name that would send
more shudders down the spines of the World War I veterans the
author interviewed than the 1916 massacres at Fromelles or Pozires,
or the debacle of the first Bullecourt battle. Passchendaele was a
hopeless mission in appalling conditions in which countless soldiers
were massacred unnecessarily. As one of the soldier poets observed:
We died in Hell, they called it Passchendaele.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because the Australians fought hard,
winning a Victoria Cross in the worst conditions of any battle so
far in World War I. They showed their bravery and persistence
repeatedly throughout the battle despite the disgusting filth in
which they were asked to fight, live and sleep. Some of them
reached the Passchendaele heights and held their position for a
while, but mainly they wore down German resistance and paved
the way for fresh Canadian troops, who later finished the job of
capturing the village. Some members of I Anzac Corps provided
support on the Canadians southern flank early in November for
this successful assault.
It should also be considered a battle of great significance because
so many Australians were killed and wounded. The heavy losses hit
Major General John Monashs 3rd Division in particular, with 3000
casualties. The losses were especially hard for Monash to take as
he believed that to boost the AIFs morale, he needed to feed the
men on victory, not defeat. Brigadier General Charles Rosenthals
4th Division also suffered 1000 casualties.
Postscript
History writes Passchendaele off as a defeat, but although the
Australians and New Zealanders and their British and Empire
comrades may have failed to capture Passchendaele, all was not
lost. The Canadians whom Plumer ordered in next succeeded by
10 November, although it cost them 2238 casualties, of whom 734
were killed. Tragically the Germans would take back Passchendaele
with their 1918 Spring Offensive in about six months.
We died in Hell,
they called it
Passchendaele.
165
Yet this Pyrrhic victory aside, Passchendaele was one of the
worst setbacks on the Western Front for the Allies and Australians.
The estimated Allied casualty tollincluding killed, wounded,
missingin the Third Battle of Ypres from 31 July through to
6November was enormous: 244,897 British (including Australians
and other Empire forces) and 8525 French. The Germans suffered
230,000 casualties.
The stand-out Australian hero of Passchendaele, Jeffries, from
Newcastle in New South Wales, had already been wounded in
the thigh at Messines in June 1917 and promoted to captain only
four months before his VC action. He was buried where he fell,
now Tyne Cot Cemetery, near Passchendaeleone of hundreds of
thousands of soldiers in probably the largest cemetery in Flanders,
where a pillbox still sits on the hillside, and which I filmed for the
Winning World War I television documentary. Jeffries had no other
family, and his medal was given to Newcastle Cathedral where it
was displayed for many years.
Battle stats
Winners: German forces (at least until the Canadians captured
Passchendaele)
Losers: British forces, including the Anzacs
Toll: The two divisions of II Anzac Corps (General John Monashs 3rd Division
and the New Zealand Division) suffered about 3000 casualties each, and
the 4th Division lost about 1000. The British also suffered heavy losses
Result: The British and Anzac forces were so badly beaten in this battle
and lost so many men and had such poor morale that they were retired
from battle for the rest of the year
166
Beersheba,
31 October 1917
HISTORYS LAST
SUCCESSFUL CAVALRY
CHARGE
Men, youre fighting for water. Theres no water between
this side of Beersheba and Esani. Use your bayonets as
swords. Iwish you the best of luck.
Brigadier General William Grant, giving orders to the 12th Light Horse
Regiment, 31 October 1917
F
eeling his horse shudder under him as the Turkish bullet
ploughed into the charging steed just 40 metres short of
the first enemy trench at Beersheba, Major Cuthbert Murchison
Fetherstonhaugh slipped his feet back out of the stirrups and leapt
off the crashing animal as it hit the ground.
It was every troopers nightmare, to lose his mount in a charge
against heavy fire, but he must not be crushed under it as wella
sitting duck for enemy machine guns. Rolling clear of the groaning
horse now writhing on the ground, he pulled out his revolver and
put a bullet straight into his beloved animals head.
Now what? Hed never lost his mount in the Boer War, nor
been so exposed at Gallipoli. But on the ground though he was,
the seasoned veteran was still leading his meneven if most of
them were still mountedso quick as a flash he sprinted through
the hail of bullets to the trench he had been making for.
167
Reaching the edge, the bushman from the outback jumped in
among the startled machine gunners and riflemen and emptied his
revolver into the nearest group of Turks, who fell at his feet.
Tossing his empty weapon aside, he clenched both fists for
hand-to-hand combat, but as he lunged forward his legs would not
carry him. Collapsing to the bottom of the enemy trench, he saw
that he had been shot through both legs.
The battle
It was 31 October 1917 in Palestine. This great Australian charge
was supervised by Lieutenant General Harry Chauvel, commander
of the Desert Mounted Corps, who put Brigadier General William
Grant in command of the battle. Grant ordered the Australian light
horsemen to assemble behind rising ground 7 kilometres south-east
Having grown up on horses,
learnt to shoot from the
saddle and developed a
devil-may-care bravery,
Australian bushmen were
ideally suited to take part
in historys last great
successful cavalry charge at
Beersheba, here recreated
for the 1940 movie, Forty
Thousand Horsemen.
168
of the little desert town of Beersheba, where they waited in silence.
The men of the 4th and also the 12th Light Horse Regiment (with
the 11th in reserve) got ready to charge, their thirsty horses dying
for a drink. Fetherstonhaugh was ordered to lead men of the 12th
Regiment.
Their objective was to capture the Turkish stronghold of Beer-
sheba with its vital water. They knew the fate of their horses and
the entire Middle East campaign depended on their charge being
successful. They had to get to that water in the wells at Beersheba.
The horses, on which they depended so heavily, had not had any
water for thirty hourstime was running out. They had to take
those wells by nightfall before the horses started to die of thirst,
and before any Turkish reinforcements crept in overnight.
From the crest, Beersheba was in full view. Their route lay down
a long, slight slope which was devoid of cover. But between them
and the town lay the enemy defences. The 4th was on the right;
the 12th was on the left. They rode with bayonets in hand. Each
drew up on a squadron frontage. Fetherstonhaugh and all his men
in the 12th and those in the 4th knew that only a wild, desperate
charge could seize Beersheba before dark.
When Grant gave the order to advance, they started walking,
then trotting before accelerating to a canter, then breaking into a
gallop within minutes, deploying at once into artillery formation
with 5-metre intervals between horsemen.
Once direction was given, the lead squadrons pressed forward.
They galloped like wide, breaking waves over the ridge and down
the gentle slope towards Beersheba, the Turkish trenches of the
garrison spread out in front of the town. As soon as the surprised
Turks saw the charging Australians, their artillery opened fire,
sending shrapnel high into the air, while Turkish machine guns
also opened up against the lead squadrons.
But the Light Horse galloped too rapidly for the artillery gunners
and riflemen in the trench lines to adjust their sights and soon their
fire was passing harmlessly overhead. British batteries of the Royal
Horse Artillery also shelled the Turkish artillery before they could
do much damage and soon put them out of action.
169
The Turkish machine gunners and infantry in the trenches
increased their rifle fire as the Light Horse charged towards them,
but the Turks were bewildered by the speed of the attack and soon
were firing wildly over the heads of their galloping targets.
Despite having the advantage of heavily defended trenches, the
Turks could not stop the brown and khaki waves.
Within minutes the first Australians reached the outer trenches
and jumped their mounts over them. Many of the Light Horse were
country blokes used to jumping wombat holes and leaping off their
horses to run down and stab wild pigs, so they had little trouble
jumping trenches surrounding Beershebanor fighting the Turks
in the trenches hand-to-hand.
This was when Fetherstonhaughs horse was shot and when he
charged the trench on foot and grappled with the Turks until he
too was shot. I got a bullet through both thighs, it made a clean
hole through the left but opened out a bit and made a large gash
through the back of the right which will take a little while to fix
up, he reported.
Despite some losses, men of the 4th took the trenches and the
enemy soon surrendered. Meanwhile, Fetherstonhaughs 12th rode
on into the town. While the 4th Light Horse Regiment dismounted
at the trenches and tackled this first objective on foot, many of the
12th Light Horse Regiment rode right past and took the town.
Once in Turkish lines some men of the 4th dismounted to kill
or capture the Turks with their bayonets. A few who reached the
trenches first and whose blood was up captured whole trenches
of Turks on their own. Overpowered and shocked, the Turkish
garrison threw up their hands quick smart, as one Light Horse
trooper reported.
With the 4th keeping the Turks in the trenches occupied,
the 12th rode straight through the town centre to secure the all-
important wells vital to the survival of the horses, who had earned
the right to quench their thirst many times over.
So the men of the 4th and 12th had captured the coveted
Beershebaand the strategic wells where, after thirty dry hours,
they gave their horses a well-earned drink. Mind you, they were just
Igot a bullet
through both
thighs, it made a
clean hole through
the left but opened
out a bit and
made a large gash
through the back
of the right which
will take a little
while to fix up.
170
in time because the Turks, and their German masters preparing for
the worst, were about to poison and blow up all the wells and then
retreat to a safer position. Captain Jack R. Davies of 12th Light
Horse, who took command after Fetherstonhaugh was wounded,
won a Military Cross and was the first man into Beersheba, said:
Providence guided me that day and I rode into the town as if I knew
all the roads leading into it. Ithink I can say quite without fear of
contradiction, that I was the first officer, or man into the town,
but really it was only just easy going once we passed the trenches.
The charge, he said,
was the best run I ever had, from start to finish it was just about 6
miles [10 kilometres]. 1st half mile at walk and slow trot, getting
into line. Two squadrons each in line with 5 yards between each
man and 300 yards from A Squadron back to B (my squadron).
The next mile I should say was a trot, then the fire started and we
went at it hell for a split, we struck the trenches 1 miles from the
town, some of the riders went over them ... some went round them
. . . we were the lucky men and rode practically straight through.
Ive seen some surprised people, Davies wrote,
but those Turks were certainly not expecting us, just then. Though
I have no doubt they thought wed be along on foot some time that
night. The greater majority were evacuating the place and we were
rounding up as many as we could handle. The 4th Light Horse
got about 350 prisoners on the right of the town, we in the 12th
also took many prisoners after the charge was over and I counted
my little lot of prisoners and sent them away under escort (it was
a beautiful moonlight night and I counted them like a lot of sheep
. . . reaching 647 privates and 38 officers).
But the Light Horse were lucky the wells had not been sabotaged,
as Captain Davies said:
171
I began to think it was time
to go home, then I sighted
another troop that had come
around the right of the town,
so we just grafted as many as
we could and made back to
the wells which was what we
were really after as the whole
troop engaged were depending
on them for water. Johnny [the
Turks] got out in such a hurry
that although he had the wells
and the Railway Station and
the approaches to the town
mined and ready to blow
up, he forgot to detonate the
charges, or when he tried and
they failed to explode properly,
he did not try again.
Trooper Edward Dengate,
who said they had been ordered
to capture Beersheba at all costs, recalled the highlights of historys
last great cavalry ride:
We went at em even though the ground was none too smooth,
which caused our line to get twisted a bit ... then Captain Davies
let out a yell at the top of his voice that started us all. We spurred
our horses . . . the bullets got thicker, three or four horses came
down, other horses with no riders on them kept going, the saddles
splashed with blood, here and there a man running towards a dead
horse for cover, the Turks trenches were about fifty yards on my
right, I could see the Turks heads over the edge of the trenches
squinting along their rifles, a lot of the fellows dismounted at that
point ... but most of us kept straight on. Some of the chaps jumped
clear over the trenches in places, some fell into them ... although
The Australian Light Horse
had to capture Beersheba
because it was the only
place for miles around that
had water for the horses.
Fortunately they got to the
wells before the enemy
poisoned the water.
172
about 150 men got through and raced for the town, they went up
the street yelling like madmen.
Private Walter Keddie said of this great ride:
Yes, we were all at the gallop yelling like mad, some had bayonets
in their hand others their rifle then it was a full stretch gallop at
the trench . . . the last 200 yards or so was good going and those
horses put on pace and next were jumping the trenches with the
Turks underneath . . . when we got over the trenches we went
straight for the town.
And that was how the Australian Light Horse captured the
strategic but well-defended, water-rich desert town of Beersheba in
one of the greatest charges in historyas it turned out, historys
last successful cavalry charge.
The charge on Beersheba was part of the wider British offensive
collectively known as the Third Battle of Gaza. Turkish forces held
the line from Gaza near the coast to Beersheba, about 46 kilometres
to its south-east. The Allied forces held the line of the Wadi Ghuzzer
from its mouth to El Gamly in the east. The positions were not
continuous trench lines but a succession of strongposts. Both sides
kept their strength in front of the city of Gaza.
The capture of Beersheba eventually enabled the British Empire
forces to break the Ottoman line near Gaza on 7 November 1917
and advance into Palestine, with the Allies capturing Gaza the
following month and unlocking the whole Turkish defensive posi-
tion in southern Palestine. Jerusalem was captured in December as
a Christmas present for the British people, which British Prime
Minister Lloyd George had requested.
In this way the Allied forces expelled the Turks from the
Holy Land, the Australian Light Horse going on to help clear
173
Syria and Lebanon of the enemy and finally capture Damascus
(although Lawrence of Arabia claimed the glory for liberating
the Syrian city).
Although Australias Lieutenant General Harry Chauvel super-
vised the great charge at Beersheba, he did have to answer to the
British commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, General
Allenby. But Chauvels man, Brigadier General William Grant, gets
the credit for directing the battle on the ground. The 4th and 12th
Regiments of the Light Horse were part of nearly 12,000 Australian
light horsemen serving in the Middle East. Many were as brave and
skilful as Major Fetherstonhaugh, who won a Distinguished Service
Order for his work at Beersheba.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because the victors knew, as they
watered their horses at the hard-won wells, that the Australian Light
Horse had galloped into history, with such a clear-cut, decisive
victory.
It was also a great battle for the young nation of Australia. Many
Australians lived and worked in the bush and had developed a
formidable culture based around the horse, so to use the horse to
defeat an enemy was a very Australian achievement.
In this victory the riders had also created great romance. As the
great World War I writer Trooper Ion Idriess put it: At a mile distant
their thousand hooves were stuttering thunder, coming at a rate
that frightened a manthey were an awe-inspiring sight, galloping
through the red hazeknee to knee and horse to horsethe dying
sun glinting on bayonet points . . . .
The success of the great charge was in the shock value, and
the sheer speed at which they captured Beersheba before the
town or nearly all its vital water wells could be destroyed by the
retreating Turks.
The Light Horse were not issued with swords like British
cavalrythey were actually mounted infantry rather than cavalry
so it was the first time the Light Horse had won by charging with
their bayonets being used like swords. The Light Horse were also
They were an
awe-inspiring
sight, galloping
through the red
hazeknee to
knee and horse to
horsethe dying
sun glinting on
bayonet points . . .
174
heralded as brave horsemen because they managed a long, dry and
dangerous ride over open desert.
It was also a coup for these country stockmen used to chasing
runaway cattle over rough terrain. The charge at Beersheba was
in fact the sort of riding they had enlisted for and which was
a long-overdue event, especially for those who had to put their
horses aside and leave them in Egypt while they fought on foot
at Gallipoli.
The last surviving rider in this battle, West Australian light
horseman Len Hall, told me during a face-to-face interview in the
1990s that he had been looking forward to riding in a charge like
Beersheba since the start of the war.
That was what we had been trained forthats why we enlisted
and what the Army promised us; and we had been so disappointed
when the top brass ordered us to leave our horses in Egypt when
we were transported to Gallipoli. I felt quite naked without my
horse, called K6, which I had got from the cattle baron Sid Kidman.
And although we fought welland I was a machine gunner at that
bloody massacre at the Nekwe could not wait to show what we
could do once we were reunited with our horses.
Like Fetherstonhaugh, Hall lost his horse.
Oh, the charge went well enough at Beersheba, we won that stunt
hands down; but it was just very sad for me because my horse was
shot as I approached the Turkish trenches and when he fell under
me I jumped clear quick smart to see if I could save him, but he
was a goner. Even in the middle of the battle with blokes dying
all around me I broke down and wept for K6as Id lost the best
friend I ever had.
But even though it cost a lot of horses and thirty-one men their
lives, the Australians had still won the day and at the same time
had broken through the eastern front line of the Turkish defences,
which the Turks never managed to repair.
175
Postscript
Major Cuthbert Fetherstonhaughs DSO citation states:
This officer was with his squadron when it came in touch with
the enemy trench which formed the main defences obstructing the
attack. The enemy opened a very heavy rifle fire and machine-gun
fire. Major Fetherstonhaugh, quickly summing up the situation,
with great gallantry charged full at the trenches, mingling with
the leading squadron and thereby making the pressure so heavy
as to quickly overcome the enemy and so enable the assault to
be carried forward successfully to Beersheba. This officers horse
was shot from under him about 40 yards from the trench but he
continued to lead his men forward using his revolver with good
effect until wounded in both legs.
But as official war correspondent
Charles Bean wrote:
A South African veteran and fine
soldier, his first thought was for
his wounded horse and he quickly
put the animal out of pain with
a shot from his revolver before
he rushed on to the trench and
emptied his weapon into the
nearest Turks before falling, shot
through both legs.
Beersheba was just one achieve-
ment in a lifetime of achievements
for Fetherstonhaugh, a grazier from
a property near Coonamble, New
South Wales, who grew up with
horses and was well equipped to
help lead the charge at Beersheba.
He served in the Boer War, then at
Never one to give up,
after his horse was shot
during the dramatic
charge at Beersheba, the
bushman Major Cuthbert
Fetherstonhaugh, seen here
with his first wife Victoria,
won his DSO by leaping into
an enemy trench, emptying
his revolver into the nearest
group of Turks and then
attacking them with
clenched fists until they
shot him through both legs.
176
Gallipoli, where he was promoted captain before joining the 12th
Light Horse in Palestine. He was promoted major on 24 April 1917
before he helped lead the charge at Beersheba.
Apart from winning the Distinguished Service Order for his
heroic action, he was also later mentioned in despatches. In 1919
he returned to Australia suffering from malaria and went back to
his property. At the age of 63 he enlisted for World War II, serving
with the Australian Military Forces (AMF) as a lieutenant colonel
until he died in 1945.
His Beersheba comrade, Davies, described him as, a great old
bird, son of the old man who drove horses four in hand in the
old days. Winning a DSO for his heroism thoroughly deserved, a
recognition for the splendid cool way he deployed the Squadron
in action at Beersheba.
There were many decorations handed out at Beersheba, with
two other men also winning a DSOLieutenant Colonel Donald
Cameron aka Long Don, and Major Eric Hyman, who with a few
others accounted for 60 dead Turkswhich was not bad seeing that
they were in the open and the Turks were in a beautiful trench,
according to Davies.
A great victory though it was, it did cost the lives of thirty-one
men killed in action, with another thirty-six wounded. Those who
died included some originals from the brigade who had enlisted in
1914, such as Edward Cleaver and Albert Tibbie Cotter, a famous
Australian cricketer.
Battle stats
Winners: Australian Light Horse, 4th and 12th Regiments; with the 11th
Regiment in reserve and also other supporting Allied forces
Losers: Turkish forces and their German officers at Beersheba, with the
Australians capturing more than 1000 prisoners
Toll: Australian casualties, 31 killed and 36 wounded
Result: The Light Horse captured Beersheba and got control of the vital
wells, which undermined the control of the area by the Turks, who
were soon defeated at Gaza then started withdrawing north through
Palestine, losing the war the following year
177
Villers-Bretonneux,
2425 April 1918
ANZAC DAY REVENGE
When the sun rose on the third anniversary of Anzac Day,
it looked down upon the Australians in full possession of
the whole town [Villers-Bretonneux] and standing upon our
original lines of twenty-four hours before, with nearly 1000
German prisoners to their credit.
Major General John Monash, Villers-Bretonneux, 1918; The Australian
Victories in France in 1918
B
adly wounded and bleeding profusely, Lieutenant Clifford
William King Sadlier, twenty-five, of the 51st Battalion,
reached a clearing in the woods on the 13th Brigades left flank
and spotted the enemy machine guns that were taking a dreadful
toll of Australian lives.
It was sheer madness to charge across open ground at positions
full of Germans bent on killing him and manning not one but two
machine guns, but Sadlier persuaded his bomb section to take the
risk. With a wild yell to inspire the boys, he launched the assault.
Against all odds Sadlier and his small party reached the machine
guns, killing the startled German crews and capturing the guns.
Swinging around at the sound of another machine gunthere
seemed no end to the damn thingsSadlier used the fitful light
of German flares to look for his men. But they were all either dead
or wounded. He was the last man standing.
178
There was nothing for it if he was going to clear the way for the
brigade to advance. He would have to risk it. Armed only with his
revolver, he sprinted into the timber, found the nest and attacked
it, killing the crew of four. Sadlier, a travelling salesman before
the war, had now succeeded in silencing all three machine guns,
opening the way for his men to advance towards their objective,
Villers-Bretonneux.
Exhausted, he fell back against a tree. He had lost most of his
bombing party and now, in the last desperate skirmish, had been
wounded yet again, this time badly.
The battle
It was 25 April 1918, the third anniversary of Anzac Day, and
Sadliers charge was part of a counterattack to capture the Somme
village of Villers-Bretonneux and stop the German push towards
Amiens.
The Australians were determined to honour the deaths of their
Anzac mates killed at the Gallipoli landing three years ago to the day.
Attacking before dawn
the morning after the
Germans had audaciously
captured Villers-Brettoneux
from under their noses
the Australian and Allied
forces caught the enemy
by surprise and retook the
village by daybreak. Painting
by Will Longstaff, AWM
179
The battle started the day before Anzac Day when the Germans
had the audacity to invade and snatch the strategically prized
Villers-Bretonneux from British forces. Having bombarded the
British-held village all night, four German divisions attacked in
the early morning mist of 24 April, not only with crack infantry
but also, for the first time in this type of attack, with three tanks.
The Allies responded with three tanks of their own, managing to
block the enemy in historys first tank versus tank battle. Despite
the Allied efforts, German infantry captured the village.
After a hurried conference, commanders of the British 8th
Division decided to retaliate as soon as possibleideally before
dawnusing two brigades of Major General Ewen Sinclair-
MacLagans Australian 4th Division: the 13th Brigade, led by
Brigadier General William Glasgow, and the 15th Brigade,
commanded by Brigadier General Harold Pompey Elliott, who
had led so effectively at Fromelles in 1916. It would be a stiff job,
according to Major General John Monash, because the Germans
had quickly organised a defence of Villers-Bretonneuxthe place
would be thick with machine guns, and mustard gas lingered in
the woods around the village.
In this Allied counterattack, the AIF would have to fight hand-
to-hand with bayonets in the darka supreme test of morale. But
the Australians would certainly be fired up for the attack on the
eve of Anzac Day, as would their British comrades who had also
suffered grievous losses at Cape Helles on the Gallipoli peninsula.
All vowed to recapture Villers-Bretonneux to honour the comrades
who fell on Anzac Day.
Starting at 10 p.m., the Allies attacked in the half moonlight. For
the Germans the unconventional night attack came as a complete
surprise, because the Allies had forgone the usual softening-up
artillery barrage for exactly that reason.
Creeping through the dark, with Elliotts men north of Glasgows
men and Villers-Bretonneux to the north-east, it seemed like a
sensible plan, but unfortunately Elliotts men ran straight into
Germans hiding in the woods and had to fight violently to overcome
them and reach the village outskirts. Nevertheless, by shooting
180
or bayoneting the enemy in desperate combat in the dark, the
Australians battled their way east in a wide arc.
Caught napping, the Germans did not have a chance. Most of
the enemy fought hard to defend the village, waking up in their
machine-gun positions and opening fire randomly or coming out
of billets in the village and shooting wildly at the Australians in
the early light, killing and wounding many. Other Germans, still
exhausted from capturing the village so recently, came out of their
bunkers with hands up ready to quit.
By mid-morning it was a decisive victory, as Gunner Albert Jones
of the 5th Division, Australian Field Artillery, noted on 25 April:
Australians and Tommies hopped over and retook the village
quick smart, and before long a large number of prisoners started
coming forward. The casualties were heavy in the batteries, mules
and men. The Villers-Bretonneux battle saw great acts of selfless
bravery from the Australians, such as those by Sergeant Charles
Bishop, a veteran of the bloody struggle at Pozires and a winner
of the Military Medal at Ploegsteert Wood.
His comrade, Sidney Jones, who was asked to write a report
recommending Bishop for another decoration, said:
Suddenly Sgt Charles Bishop saw the likelihood of his company
being cut off, which would have meant them being caught in
a trap and made into a graveyard by the enemys machine gun
fire. Forgetful of self in the face of the cruellest fire and rapidly
getting a few men together whose confidence he had gained Sgt
Bishop held the enemy at bay upsetting all German plans and thus
saving his company. After this stunt he was admired by all officers
and men in his battalion for his sterling bravery, leadership and
determination. As an eye witness, I feel sure he was worthy of it
all, for no human courage could have reached greater heights than
Sgt Bishop showed.
With victory assured some of the more entrepreneurial soldiers
turned their attention to the spoils of victory. Private Edwin Huck,
who was fighting with a West Australian battalion, had a good
No human
courage could have
reached greater
heights than Sgt
Bishop showed.
181
Anzac Day, he said, because he was paid
40 francs, and despite wintry conditions our
canteen arrived loaded with supplies having
parked overnight near an Aerodrome with
great battles being fought nearby at Villers-
Bretonneux. Hucks luck improved even
further after his West Australian battalion
regained Villers-Bretonneux because he
then slept in an abandoned cottage which
French owners had just left, enjoying a
feather bed, the familys food, wine, beer,
champagne and lots of souvenirsgood
fun indeed!
By April 1918 the Allies were concentrating on turning back the
great Spring Offensive of the Germans, and they hoped that by
capturing villages like Villers-Bretonneux they could draw a line in
the sand and say: No further east. The British forces also wanted
to capture Villers-Bretonneux to save the vital railhead town of
Amiens. As long as the Germans occupied Villers-Bretonneux
they could look down on Amiens and shell the old town with its
precious cathedral.
The Allies also needed a victory because the fifth year of the war
had begun so badly for them. The Germans successfully mounted
a Spring Offensive, within weeks capturing most of the territory
the Allies had gained at such great sacrifice in 1916 and 1917.
Because of Russia withdrawing from the war following Lenins
October Bolshevik revolution of 1917, the Germans were a much
more formidable force now with troops, arms and ammunition
from their Eastern Front. And, fearing their numerical advantage
could be undermined when fresh American troops arrived in great
numbers, the Germans struck quickly. They also wanted to harness
support from their increasingly half-hearted and war-weary partners,
Austria-Hungary and Turkey.
A fluent French speaker,
Private Edwin Huck from
Western Australia had
an advantage when they
liberated villages like Villers-
Bretonneux, because he
could read the labels and
enjoy the best of the
vintage wine left behind by
the departing Germans.
182
Now, under the resolute control of Erich Ludendorff, Quarter-
master General of the German army, they were determined to bring the
war to a close as quickly as possible. At the start of 1918 the Germans
had taken back Messines, Menin Road, Polygon Wood, Broodenseide,
Passchendaele in Flanders and villages such as Bullecourt in the
Somme. Then in April 1918 they recaptured strategic villages such
as Villers-Bretonneux. No wonder Britains Commander-in-Chief, Sir
Douglas Haig, said the Allies had their backs to the wall.
Nevertheless, the balance was tipping against the Germans. The
Allied war production machinefuelled by traditional British
industrial mightwas now functioning more efficiently, producing
increasingly deadly weapons and ammunition. As 1918 unfolded,
Allied numbers were being bolstered by American soldiers. The
tired and dispirited French army, which by now had lost more
than a million men, was flagging, with mutinous troops deserting
in increasing numbers.
But the fighting spirit and skills of the all-volunteer AIF was
greater than ever because at last they were starting to win battles. The
Australians who resented years of British command also appreciated
the increasing power being given to Australian commanders. By May,
The Australian forces were
exhilarated after expelling
the Germans from the
ruined but strategically
valuable village of Villers-
Bretonneux on Anzac Day
1918, exactly three years
after they had landed
at Gallipoli. AWM
183
the five divisionsfour of the Australian Corps in Flanders and
the fifth in the Sommewere being commanded by an Australian.
Unlike conscripted soldiers the Australians wanted to be there and
this commitment fuelled their fighting prowess. The AIF was the only
all-volunteer army in World War I. These divisions provided about
100,000 eager soldiers. Together they were a force to be reckoned
with and greatly feared by the enemy. Corporal Ted Matthews, who
landed at Gallipoli on the first day and fought in the Somme, told me
that German prisoners of war said they only really feared two types of
soldiers, the Scots, who always fought to the death, and the Australians.
As the Australian commander, Monash, said in his book, The
Australian Victories in France in 1918, these experienced, skilful
and tenacious soldiers who had been fighting since 1915 were as
good as any other nation.
Once it was united under a single command in 1918 with all the
necessary army services, the splendid troops of the Australian Army
Corps successfully fought operations of the grandest scale achieving
brilliant successessuccesses which far overshadowed those of any
other earlier period of the war.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because the Australians fought
so tenaciously they helped win a decisive victorythe capture of
strategically vital Villers-Bretonneux. Inspired by Anzac Day, they
and the British moved at lightning speed, and overnight reversed
the German capture of the village.
As General Sir Henry Rawlinson, commander of Britains Fourth
Army, said: During the Summer of 1918 the safety of Amiens has
been principally due to the determination, tenacity and valour of
the Australian Corps.
This victory became a turning point for the AIF and provided
a springboard for bigger and better things. These future victories
would include Hamel on 4 July 1918 and Amiens on 8 August,
after which Monash would be knighted.
Villers-Bretonneux revealed what this well-oiled AIF machine
was capable of, after three and a half years of hard fighting.
184
Postscript
It might have been a heartening victory, but in recapturing the
village of Villers-Bretonneux the Australians suffered 1469 casualties.
Glasgows 13th Brigade alone lost 338 men, mainly through gas.
Lieutenant Sadlier was wounded so badly that he had to be
invalided home. But he maintained his military interest, serving as
a lieutenant in the Australian Military Forces for seven years, and
working in the RSL and for the Repatriation Department. He was
awarded a full military funeral when he died on 28 April 1964 and
his ashes are interred at the Karrakatta Cemetery, Perth.
Now that they were liberating occupied territory, the Australians
had a new problemhelping to feed French civilians. But they did
this well in Villers-Bretonneux, according to Margie Duval, who
was eight at the time. The author met her while leading a Western
Front Battlefields Tour in 2006. Then in her late 90s but still hale
and hearty, she remembered well the Australians bringing food
supplies into the village, especially a leg of mutton which one digger
gave to her grateful family.
The Australians also had another problem
AIF souvenir hunters and/or scavengers. One
of the worst was Barney Wild Eyes Hines,
who, since a narrow escape at Passchendaele in
October 1917 (when his Lewis machine-gun
crew was wiped out), had developed the art of
souveniring to such an extent that he was known
as the Souvenir King of the AIF.
Having souvenired valuables from dead
German soldiers since the Polygon Wood battle
of 1917 and been photographed by comrades
with his haul, Hines had become a wanted man
in Germany because one of the photographs
had been shown to Kaiser Wilhelm, who felt so
insulted he offered a reward for the capture of
Hines. The wild-eyed larrikin of Irish descent had
reputedly also captured 63 Germans at Octagon
Trench by throwing his favourite weapon, a Mills
Although badly wounded,
Lieutenant Clifford Sadlier,
twenty-five, a travelling
salesman who had signed
up with the 51st Battalion,
won his Victoria Cross
by killing three separate
machine-gun crews with his
rifle, revolver then bayonet,
so his men could advance
on Villers-Bretonneux.
185
bomb, into a small enemy fort. The Germans, emerging with their
hands up, were relieved of their watches, money and metal badges
before being escorted back to Allied lines.
At Villers-Bretonneux Hines raided houses, collecting so much
wine and vintage champagne (some dated 1870) that he threw a
party in one of the houses where he dressed up his fellow soldiers
in top hats and dress suits that he had also souvenired. As if in
revenge, retreating Germans shelled the house, bringing the maverick
Hines to the ground with a wound over one eye and a lung full
of gas. Temporarily blinded, Hines was carted off to hospital at
Etaples which was then coincidentally bombed by German aircraft,
causing hundreds of casualties. Although Hines received a shrapnel
wound in one heel and was still suffering from the earlier wounds,
he dragged himself out of the hospital bed and, using a broom
as a crutch, spent the night helping carry other wounded men to
safety. Perhaps that was why military authorities turned a blind eye
to his pilfering.
Battle stats
Winners: British and Allied forces, including Australians, especially 4th
Division troops (13th Brigade) and 5th Division (15th Brigade)
Toll: Australian casualties 1469. British losses were also heavy as were
those of the defeated Germans
Result: The Australians helped Allied forces displace the Germans from
the strategic village of Villers-Bretonneux, overlooking the vital town
of Amiens. This Anzac Day victory embellished the AIFs reputation
186
Hamel, 4 July 1918
BLOODING THE YANKS
IN A TURNING-POINT
BATTLE
This was the best strategy we had planned out so far and
it worked. No battle within my previous experience passed
off so smoothly, so exactly to timetable or was so free of any
kind of hitch. It was all over in 93 minutes. It was the perfec-
tion of team work, it attained all its objectives, yielded great
results and gave us possession of the whole Hamel valley.
Lieutenant General John Monash, 1918, commander, Australian Corps
A
s he crept through the early dawn light alone towards the
enemy front line near Hamel, northern France, Lance
Corporal Thomas Leslie Jack Axford, twenty-four, of the 16th
Battalion could just see the outline of a German machine gun firing
at one of the Australian platoons trying to climb through enemy
barbed wire so they could advance on the village.
Looking across, he realised his comrades were unable to move.
The Germans had already killed the commander, a sergeant
major and a Lewis gun team. The enemy machine gunners had to
be stopped.
Without a thought for himself, Axford charged the Germans
from the flank and, according to his citation for the Victoria Cross,
threw his bombs amongst the German machine-gun crews, jumped
into the trench, and charged with his bayonet. Unaided he killed
Hamel, 4 July 1918
187
10 of the enemy and took six prisoners. He then threw the German
machine-guns over the parapet, and called out to the delayed
platoon to come on. He then rejoined his own platoon, and fought
for the remainder of the operation.
Axfords single-handed action was typical of the inspired
Australian fighting that day and just one of many brave deeds that
earned a Victoria Cross. These Australian heroes not only helped
Lieutenant General John Monash win the Battle of Hamelthe
first offensive action of World War I for many monthsbut they
also taught the newly arrived American troops how to fight and
win. In fact Hamel turned out to be the biggest turning point in
the final year of this dreadful war.
The battle
It was 4 July 1918 on the Western Front, where trench warfare had
cost the Allies hundreds of thousands of men dead and wounded
since 1914. But on this auspicious day, American Independence
Just 93 minutes after
attacking the village of
Hamel in the pre-dawn
light, the Australians
had won the battle and
were able to tend to their
wounded. The decisive
victory took three minutes
more than General Monash
predicted. Painting by
Will Longstaff, AWM
188
Daydeliberately chosen for the battle by Monash who wanted
to teach the newly arrived Americans how to fightthere was a
new mood in the air: victory.
Monash, the recently installed commander of the Australian
Corps, also used the big day to pioneer his new approach of all
arms warfare, which proved to be a stunningly effective strategy.
In fact Monash used this battle to rewrite the textbook for the age
of mechanised warfare.
The Americans, learning the finer arts of war for the first
time on the Western Front, served under Australias 4th Division
commanding officer, Major General Ewen MacLagan, who spread the
load by using troops from 2nd Division (6th Brigade), 3rd Division
(11th Brigade) and his own 4th Division (4th Brigade).
The first part of Monashs meticulous planning for Hamel was
the steady procession of RAF aircraft which he ordered to fly on
a series of missions over the main front and also in diversionary
raids, dropping hundreds of 25-pound (11-kilogram) bombs over
the night of 34 July, before the main assault, to get the Germans
used to constant attack.
Next were the new-fangled tanks he sent in to help with the
assault. Once these new Mark V tanks came to within half an hour
of the German lines, he signalled that the artillery barrage should
begin, so as to mask the sound of the tanks creeping into position
right in front of the German trenches. Monash also sent troops to
initiate a diversionary engagement at a village nearby, to trick the
Germans into thinking that any activity they may have detected
was related only to this false attack.
Then, having done all this preparation, just before dawn, at 3 a.m.
on 4 July, and with a helpful shield of mist, his infantryAustralian
and American soldiersstarted to advance across no-mans-land,
letting the artillery barrage lead them forward as it rolled ahead of
them across the field. By now the soldiers had learned to appreciate
the tanks trundling beside or in front of them, crushing most of the
wire and stopping hailstorms of machine-gun fire, as they moved
down to the village at the bottom of a shallow valley beside a stream.
Hamel, 4 July 1918
189
This was when Axford helped that platoon get
through the barbed wire and advance with the rest.
The infantry were also very well supplied.
Monash, who had seen the Mark V demonstrated
only months before, now used the tanks to carry
ammunition and rations forward and casualties
to the rear. As the battle progressed and the line
moved forward, the infantry would put markers
on the ground to guide aircraft dropping more
ammunition.
The Germans were dug in and alert, but the
all-arms assault on that sector took them by
surprise, and was so effective that they could not
fight back against planes, tanks, heavy artillery
and determined infantry. Right across the line of
battle, as it got lighter, Australian battalions and
American companies shot or captured the enemy
until they reached the first German trenches.
Relentlessly they drove the Germans back until they reached the
trenches in front of the village, which they captured easilythe
defenders had fled.
Monashs new strategy had inspired some great fighting. Private
Henry Harry Dalziel, twenty-five, of the 15th Battalion, a former
fireman with Queensland Railways on the CairnsAtherton route,
was another soldier who did his bit and was suitably rewarded,
winning a Victoria Cross. His company met with determined
resistance from a strong point which was strongly garrisoned,
manned by numerous machine-guns, and undamaged by our artillery
fire, his citation reports.
It was also protected by strong wire entanglements. A heavy
concentration of machine-gun fire caused many casualties, and
held up the advance. His Lewis gun having come into action had
silenced enemy guns in one direction, but an enemy gun opened fire
from another direction. Private Dalziel dashed at it, and with his
revolver killed and captured the entire crew and gun, and allowed
A Queensland railway
fireman, Private Henry
Dalziel, twenty-five, of the
15th Battalion, won his
Victoria Cross by charging
alone against enemy
machine-gun posts, killing
or capturing enemy gunners
with just his revolver and
opening the way for his
comrades to advance.
Although wounded in the
hand and ordered to retreat,
he kept firing his machine
gun until he was shot in
the head and repatriated to
hospital in England. AWM
190
our advance to continue. He was severely wounded in the hand,
but carried on and took part in the capture of the final objective.
He twice went over open ground under heavy enemy artillery and
machine-gun fire to secure ammunition, though suffering from
considerable loss of blood. He then filled magazines and served
his gun until severely wounded through the head.
Corporal Walter Ernest Brown, thirty-three, of the 20th
Battalion, also won a VC not far away in a follow-up skirmish
near Villers-Bretonneux. Alerted by a sergeant who had spotted
snipers, he lay in wait for half an hour trying to find them. As he
moved forward he eventually spotted enemy fire from behind a
mound of dirt about 60 metres away. Hearing that it had been
decided to rush this post, Corporal Brown on his own initiative,
crept out along the shallow trench and made a dash towards the
post, his citation reads.
An enemy machine-gun opened fire from another trench and
forced him to take cover. Later he again dashed forth and reached
his objective. With a Mills grenade in his hand he stood at the
door of a dugout and called on the occupants to surrender. One
of the Germans rushed out, a scuffle ensued, and Corporal Brown
knocked him down with his fist. Loud cries of kamerad! were
then heard and from the dugout an officer and 11 other ranks
appeared. This party Corporal Brown brought back as prisoners
to our line, the enemy meanwhile from other positions bringing
heavy machine-gun fire to bear on the party.
Although inexperienced, the men of the American 33rd Division
fought bravely and seemed keen to learn as much as they could
from the battle-hardened Australians.
With skilled fighters like these complementing his all-arms battle
tactics, it was no wonder Monash won the Battle of Hamel. At the
planning sessions he calculated that capturing the village would take
90 minutes. He was just three minutes out: it took 93 minutes.
Hearing that it
had been decided
to rush this post,
Corporal Brown on
his own initiative,
crept out along
the shallow trench
and made a dash
towards the post.
Hamel, 4 July 1918
191
In addition to securing the village, he succeeded in pushing
a 6-kilometre stretch of the Allied front line further east into
enemy territory by 2 kilometresthe first such territorial gain for
some time.
The Australians and their American protgs inflicted 2000
German casualties, of whom a staggering 1500 were captured, along
with 200 machine guns, trench mortars and anti-tank weapons. The
Australians suffered 1062 casualties, the Americans 176.
In May 1918 Monash had been appointed commander of the
new Australian Corps, which consisted of five fighting divisions.
Finally, a substantial Australian force was united under an Australian
commander. It was an unprecedented opportunity, and Monash was
keen to show how well his army could fight.
He was also well equipped to win this turning-point battle,
having led troops in so many engagements since the first day at
Gallipoli. Those skills honed in battle complemented his civilian
On 4 July, American
Independence Day,
Australian forces led US
soldiers into their first
major battle of the war,
teaching them to fight
in trenches like this one
they captured together
in front of the ruined
village of Hamel. AWM
192
experience as a highly competent civil engineer
used to planning major projects, involving many
participants and complex preparations.
I personally explained every detail of the
plan and assured myself that all present applied
an identical interpretation to all orders that had
been issued, he wrote. This achieved unprec-
edented and successful cooperation between
infantry, machine-gun companies, artillery,
tanks and the RAF.
Monash assembled the latest technology
for Hamel. He used aircraft for photographic
reconnaissance flights, to drop propaganda
leaflets behind German lines to weaken resolve,
and then to drop bombs. He used 60 Mark V
tanks manned by the British 5th Tank Brigade.
And he also made sure his infantry were well-
fed and rested before they went into battle.
Monashs strategy of choosing 4 July for the
blooding of the Yanks paid off as the American
troops were fired up by their Independence
Day, and this seemed to inspire the raw soldiers
to fight well.
Hamel was an ideal environment to test Monashs strategies.
The village, which I visited in 1998, lies at the bottom of a small
valley nestling snugly on a creek surrounded by trees. In some ways,
it is a sitting target.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because it was the first successful
offensive of 1918. The victory became a turning point because it
convinced the Allies they could attack instead of simply defend,
which they had been doing since the great German Spring Offensive
early in the year.
It was also a great battle because Monash introduced a template
for the art of modern warfare. In 1918 the British High Command
used the template as a blueprint for the future by sending copies
Lieutenant General John
Monash brilliantly employed
a new, all-arms strategy at
Hamel, deploying planes,
tanks, heavy artillery and
infantry. This approach
became a template for
all future battles. NAA
Hamel, 4 July 1918
193
of Monashs battle plan to all the generals in the British army, who
were encouraged to use it as a guide.
It was also a great battle for Australian history because it was
planned and led by an Australian, Lieutenant General John Monash.
In true egalitarian Australian style he introduced democratic briefing
sessions where all ranks could offer their contribution.
And it was a great battle because an Australian general led
American troops into battle, many for the first time. Monash was
asked by US General John Pershing to take four companies from the
US 33rd Division into battle, which is why he decided to fight the
battle on the anniversary of the 1776 Declaration of Independence.
Many higher authorities also thought it was a great battle. British
Prime Minister Lloyd George sent a telegram saying: Warmest
congratulations on brilliant successes of Australian forces under
your command. The victory achieved by your troops is worthy to
rank with the greatest achievements of Australian armies. Later he
added: Monash was the most resourceful General in the whole of
the British army.
British Commander-in-Chief Sir Douglas Haig also sent a
telegram: Warm congratulations to you and all those under your
command including the 33rd American Division on the success
which attended the operation carried out this morning and on the
skill and the gallantry with which it was conducted.
Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes, who had inspected the
AIF before the battle with Deputy Prime Minister Joseph Cook,
said Monash was no swashbuckler nor was his plan that of a bull
at a gate. It was enterprising without being foolhardy, and he was
the only General who seemed to give due weight to the cost of
victory in human lives. This stamped him in my mind, Hughes
said, as an outstanding figure in WW1.
Britains leading historian of the twentieth century, A.J.P.
Taylor, described Monash as the only General of creative origi-
nality produced in the First World War. Finally the French High
Command was so pleased it organised a party, with the Prefect
of the Somme Department putting on a feast at the town hall for
Monash and other leaders who had helped liberate Hamel.
194
Postscript
With its tactical alignment of infantry, armour and air power,
Monashs Hamel strategy proved a great template for war. Ironically,
however, this blueprint, developed by a German-speaking son of
Prussian migrants, was later adopted successfully by Hitlers Nazi
Germany and became universally known as Blitzkrieg.
Axford, who was also awarded a Military Medal in September
1918 for bravery at Hbuterne, also on the Western Front, must
have been a glutton for punishment. Although he married happily
in 1926 and settled in Perth, as soon as World War II broke out he
enlisted again. Later when offered a trip back to the battlefields
for a Victoria CrossGeorge Cross reunion in London, he jumped
at the chanceonly to die on the return flight, between Dubai and
Hong Kong, on 11 October 1983.
Dalziel, who had already served with the 15th Battalion at
Gallipoli before fighting on the Western Front, where he had been
wounded at Polygon Wood in October 1917, had only resumed
duty a month before Hamel. His skull was smashed by a snipers
bullet during the battle, exposing his brainan injury so severe
doctors expected him to die within an hour.
Yet after treatment in Britain, he was shipped home in January
1919, having received 32 bullet wounds during the war. He married
in 1920 and took up a soldier settlement block in New South Wales,
but left his wife to run the farm while he worked in a Sydney factory
then mined for gold at Bathurst. He became a published songwriter
and artist before dying on 24 July 1965 and being cremated with
military honours.
Although Monash went down in history as the first Australian
to lead Americans into battle, he was lucky to get away with it.
Pershing changed his mind at the last minute about his soldiers
being involved and demanded they be pulled back. Monash agreed
to order some back but refused to pull out the rest, because by then
the Americans were in front-line trenches.
Hamel was just the start for Monash, who went on to win more
battles with his new all-arms lightning strike surprise strategy.
Hamel, 4 July 1918
195
Monash recorded another personal victory at Hamel even before
the battle began. Influential journalists Keith Murdoch and Charles
Beanthe latter would later write the official history of Australias
involvement in World War Iwanted to promote Major General
Cyril Brudenell White for command of the Australian Corps,
instead of Monash, who was Jewish. Monash was senior, but White
was Beans friend and confidantand Bean was reflexively anti-
Jewish, in keeping with prevailing ethos in the English schools
and Oxford college at which he was educated. Murdoch and Bean
actively lobbied Prime Minister Billy Hughes in favour of White.
But Hughes visited Britain and France just before Hamel, and
in France he canvassed Monashs British and Australian military
colleagues. When he realised the very high regard they had for
Monash, Hughes wasted no more time in confirming his appoint-
ment. To his credit, later in life Bean admitted that he had been
wrong to oppose Monashs appointment.
Battle stats
Winners: Australian forces (2nd Division 6th Brigade, 3rd Division 11th
Brigade and 4th Division 4th Brigade); also the American 33rd Division
and British 5th Tank Brigade
Toll: Australian casualties 1062; American casualties 176; German casualties
2000, including 1500 captured
Result: The AIF spearheaded a turning-point victory over the Germans. In
just 93 minutes the AIF introduced a new battle strategy that changed
the Allies style of fighting and ironically was also required reading in
German military schools in the lead-up to Word War II
196
THE BLACK DAY OF
THE GERMAN ARMY
The battle for Amiens will be a glorious and decisive victory,
the story of which will re-echo throughout the world, and
will live forever in the history of our homeland.
Major General John Monash, commander, Australian Corps,
7August1918; battle orders issued to officers and men the night
beforethe Battle of Amiens
L
ieutenant Alfred Edward Gaby, a twenty-six-year-old Tasmanian
farmer of the 28th Battalion, frantically searched for another
gap in the wire. The D Company commanders men were unable
to advance, because every time they tried to get through the only
breach visible they were met with a hail of German bullets.
Leaving the safety of his trench and running along the parapet
alone, keeping his head down and dodging bullets, he dashed madly
up and down until at last he spotted a small opening. Right, he
thought, Ill squeeze through this while Fritz is shooting at my mates.
Seconds later he had hopped the bags and began sprinting, on
his own and with revolver cocked, at the enemy machine-gun post.
The Germans soon spotted Gaby and turned their guns on him, but
it was too late. The mad Australian kept going as the machine-gun
and rifle fire that should have cut him down left him untouched.
The incredulous Germans saw him approach unscathed, Gabys
astonishing luck unnerving them as he reached their strong point
and started firing at point-blank range. Letting out a yell, he emptied
197
his revolver into the garrison, driving the crews from their guns.
In the end no fewer than 50 of the enemy, who had been manning
four machine guns, threw up their hands.
Admittedly the war was nearly over and many Germans were
looking for opportunities to surrender, but this was still an amazing
haul for one soldier armed only with a pistol.
Having cleared the way for his comrades to get through the
gap, Gaby quickly called his men forward and detailed some to
take the prisoners back to the lines while others followed him to
his final objective. Within minutes Gaby and his emboldened men
captured this German position, playing a vital part in breaking
through the enemy lines and helping the Allies win the Battle
of Amiens. Indeed, by the end of the dayas a jubilant Monash
commentedthe Allies had punched a 12-mile [19-kilometre]
long hole in the German front line.
The Allies had to win the
Battle of Amiens because
the Germans had been
shelling this vital railhead,
threatening to undermine
their transport network and
destroy their main base for
operations in the Somme.
198
The fearless Gaby was killed by a sniper just three days later as
he walked along the Australian line, encouraging his troops in yet
another attack against heavy German opposition. He was awarded
a posthumous Victoria Cross for his repeated acts of bravery.
The battle
It was 8 August 1918 and Gaby was fighting in the biggest and most
decisive battle of the yearthe long-awaited Allied offensive from the
cathedral railhead town of Amiens, with a million men taking part.
Although commonly called the Battle of Amiens, it is also known
as the Second Battle of the Somme. Monash had sent an inspiring
message to his battle-weary troops the night before, saying:
For the first time in the history of this corps, all five Australian Divi-
sions will tomorrow engage in the largest and most important battle
operation ever undertaken by the corps. They will be supported
by an exceptionally powerful artillery and by tanks and aeroplanes
on a scale never previously attempted.
He hoped every Australian soldier will worthily rise to so great
an occasion.
Working closely alongside British leaders who were devising
strategies for all Allied forces, including British, French and Cana-
dian troops, Monash planned the battle for his Australian Corps
along the lines of his 4 July 1918 Hamel victory. He allocated four
of his five divisions for the assault (the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th) with
the 1st Division in reserve.
For maximum effect he ordered the divisions to leapfrog one
another as they advanced, so that as each division achieved its
objective another would pass through captured ground and press
further into enemy territory. He ordered each division to advance
over the unprecedented distance of at least 2 miles (3.2 kilometres)
each. They were mainly advancing east along todays N29 road from
Amiens, which follows an old Roman road through flat country
dotted with forests.
For the first time
in the history
of this corps, all
five Australian
Divisions will
tomorrow engage
in the largest and
most important
battle operation
ever undertaken
bythe corps.
199
Just before dawn, Monash wrote in his diary: In black darkness
1,000,000 infantry are deployed over 12 miles [19 kilometres] of
front. They stood at the ready, then with a mighty roar more than
a thousand guns begin the symphony and a great illumination lights
up the eastern horizon and the whole complex organisation began
to advance.
The battle had begun, with historys largest artillery barrage
preparing the way for the tanks and infantry.
One of Monashs artillery men, Gunner Basil Helmore of the
4th Artillery Brigade, reported:
Reveille went at 4am on the eventful day. The morning was misty
and in the dim light we packed our blankets & gear on the wagons
& had breakfast in preparation . . . we were travelling mobile one
blanket per man & only necessary gear . . . in the distance muffled
by the misty atmosphere we could hear the rumble of the barrage
which we knew was smashing the enemys lines and opening the
way for the great advance. At 6.30am the column filed out of the
lines up the bank towards the battle . . . along the high road from
Amiens to Villers-Bretonneux, one of those long poplar lined
straight thoroughfares of France which leads right through to
St. Quentin . . . looking back one could see the majestic outlines
of the grand old cathedral wreathed in the morning mist & one
felt a glow of pleasure that its deliverance from danger was being
put into operation that very moment with the road full of traffic
going into battle.
His comrade, Gunner Albert Jones of the 5th Division, Australian
Field Artillery, added:
The stunt opened at 4.20 and Aussies had a walkover. We followed
up with ammo to establish small dumps ahead of guns. All objectives
taken although the Tommies got held up at Bray with Fritz having
taken that village backbut the Yanks attacked in the afternoon
and took it for them. Myself I had a very rough 24 hours, got home
to bed at 8 oclock having just escaped a bomb from an aeroplane.
200
Jones saw prisoners coming in by the thousands and thousands and
lots of dead Hunsa gruesome sight although very light casualties
amongst Australians and Canadians.
Sergeant E.B. Stanburys 3rd Division Signalling Company
confirmed they had caught the enemy napping. The Germans were
just rubbing the sleepy dust out of their eyes when all hell broke
loose on a front over a mile wide. We caught them with their pants
down. The noise was like all the thunder storms you ever heard all
rolled into one.
After the initial bombardment, the infantry advanced quickly
from 4.20 a.m., assisted by a thick fog. They reached the first
objective, the German trenches, by early morning and by afternoon
the second objective 3 kilometres further east. There was plenty
of brave fighting and when a comrade of Private Robert Matthew
Beatham, twenty-four, of 8th Battalion was shot in the leg, Beatham
charged forward, bombed the machine-gun crew responsible for
the attack, then helped his mate out of the line of fire. He charged
again and disabled another three machine-gun crews, killing ten
Germans and capturing another ten, helping his battalion advance.
This act alone would have been enough to earn Beatham the
Victoria Cross, but rather than rest, even though he had by then
been shot in the leg, he dashed forward and bombed another
machine-gun crew. This time, however, his luck ran out, and a
nearby German machine gun riddled his body with bullets.
Corporal Lawrence Bird of 17th Battalion fought bravely during
the advance on Lamotte-en-Santerre, east of Amiens, on 8August:
This NCO led his section with distinction, captured three enemy
strong posts and killed a number of the enemy, according to his
Military Medal citation. Cpl Bird displayed great leadership
throughout the attack and an utter disregard for personal safety.
This excellent conduct was a brilliant example to his men. No
wonder the Allies were winning the Battle of Amiens.
Private Edwin Huck described the advance as the biggest hop
over ever seen in France well supported by a stupendous barrage
. . . at about 4.15am we had all hopped over and were favoured
by a thick mist supported by a beautiful barrage by artillery and
201
Vickers guns reaching the first objective; old Amiens defence line
4000 yards away. He also helped capture plenty of prisoners and
souvenirs and whole batteries of guns along with Prussian cavalry
& armoured cars all by dinner time not to mention cookers and
tanks, bombs, shovels, machine-guns, watches, pistols etc.
It was a great but gruesome victory as Gunner Helmore reported
on reaching deep into enemy territory. Just an hour or two after, all
Hell had been let loose and we continued marching down the road
filled with seemingly endless stream of traffic in either direction and
one or two ambulances passed us & a batch of German prisoners
under guard looking very happy to be out of it. He saw
the German trenches ploughed up by shells and a few still shapes
in grey uniforms told the tale of our big barrage, surprisingly there
was no barbed wire, no support or reserve trenches, just a small
shallow front line as if the enemy feared no offensive from our
side or was planning an advance himself which was very different
to German defences at Ypres.
By the time the Allies were
mounting battles like
Amiens, they had assembled
the biggest guns ever
used in the war to provide
creeping barrages for the
largest number of troops
ever to advance in one
battleone million men.
202
Entering Fritzs land with very mixed feelings, Helmore noted,
abandoned gun positions with corpses littered about and blankets
strewn everywhere and old newspapers & letters scattered about,
which showed the gunners had been wakened early in the morning
to rush into the inferno of fire surrounding their doomed battery
and answer the SOS of their infantry. We could not repress a
shudder at the gruesome sights we saw there but it will not make
this account more attractive to describe them.
Nevertheless, this had been won easily, as Sergeant W. Athol
Blair reported: Fritz was attacked by all Aussie, Canadian, French
and British divisions and all objectives were taken. Yet Fritz is taking
his beating very quietly.
By nightfall it was all over. Most Allied forces reached their
final objective many kilometres east of where they had started, right
along the valley of the River Somme. The only Germans moving
west after this battle were prisoners of war, of which there was no
shortage: the Australians themselves took nearly 8000 prisoners, not
to mention 173 field guns in working order and countless machine
guns and mortars, as well as an unprecedented trophya massive
11-inch (28-centimetre) Krupp gun mounted on railway bogeys
and used by the Germans to shell Amiens.
The British High Command mounted the battle to break through
Germanys front line once and for all and to drive such a large
wedge between the enemy formations that the Germans would not
be able to link up again.
The Allies also wanted to protect Amiens from the incessant
German shelling threatening its important railway station and rail
lines. The five Australian divisions (of about 100,000 men, with a
maximum of 20,000 in each division) were, of course, only a small
part of a record-strength Allied force, with 50 British divisions
on the left flank and twenty-five French divisions on the right,
fighting with four Canadian divisions in consort. Monashs troops,
nevertheless, helped spearhead much of the attack. The AIF fought
203
better than most Allied armies because many of the Australians
(who were all volunteers) had been fighting for years, whereas
the British, whose Fourth Army was fighting at Amiens, included
conscripts, many with less experience than the Australians. The
French, whose First Army was fighting alongside the British and
Australians, were suffering from low moraleFrench soldiers had
mutinied repeatedly, and many were exhausted, having been on the
Western Front since August 1914.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because the Allies sent forth into
the fray one million menthe greatest number of Allied soldiers
ever used in a single attack. These men also achieved the greatest
knock-out blow in the wara blow that finally shattered and
scattered the Germans, who began to retreat from this time onwards.
The decisive action punched a hole in the German front that Fritz
was never able to repair.
It was a disaster for the German army, which suffered a staggering
27,000 casualties, including 16,000 prisoners. Allied forces had
captured an amazing 450 guns, a grievous blow to the Germans
ability to continue fighting.
In fact Germanys commanding officer, Erich Ludendorff,
admitted in his 1919 Memoirs: August 8 was the black day of
the German army in the history of the war. This was the worst
experience I had to go through. The official German account of
the battle confirmed:
As the sun set on 8 August on the battlefield the greatest defeat
since the beginning of the war was an accomplished fact . . . the total
loss of the formations employed in the Second Army is estimated at
650 to 700 officers and 36,000 to 27,000 other ranks. More than
400 guns, besides a huge number of machine-guns, trench mortars
and other war materiel had been lost . . . more than two-thirds of
the total loss had surrendered as prisoners.
After Amiens most of the German officers and some of the
lower ranks were resigned to the prospect of defeat. It now looked
August 8 was the
black day of the
German army in
the history of the
war. This was the
worst experience I
had to go through.
204
like the Allies could shorten the war by many months, ahead of the
original May 1919 British schedule for ending the conflict.
It was certainly a great battle for Monash. Just three days later,
on 11 August, King George V arrived at Amienscomplete with
sword, stool and cushionand knighted him on the field of battle,
the first time a modern-day king had knighted a warrior in battle,
and the last. It was well deserved, as Monashs troops captured more
territory, villages, prisoners, guns and ammunition per capita than
any other Allied divisions on the daystatistics later documented in
Monashs book, The Australian Victories in France in 1918. Monash
said the AIF punched above its weight in these final months of
the war, his five divisions representing less than 10 per cent of the
Allied forces yet capturing nearly 25 per cent of territory, prisoners,
arms and ammunition.
It was also the culmination of the modern weapons strategy
he had developed at Hamel in July 1918 by using exceptionally
powerful artillery, tanks and aeroplanes on a scale never previously
attempted. By then the Alliesincluding the AIFhad never been
in better and more experienced shape. The experience showed in the
pre-battle positioning of 430 new British tanks and heavy artillery
No reigning British
monarch had bestowed a
knighthood on a warrior
on the battlefield for
over 100 years when
King George V knighted
Lieutenant General John
Monash at Amiens for his
great leadership. It was also
historys last knighthood
bestowed in the field. AWM
205
without the Germans knowing, the commanders having masked the
sounds with aircraft noise as Monash had done at Hamel.
Monash wrote:
The twelve-mile hole driven right through the German defence
had blotted out, at one blow, the whole of the military resources
which it contained; while the resources of the Australian Corps
had suffered scarcely any impairment as a result of that glorious day.
The victory inspired our volunteer troops as it further demonstrated
their moral and physical superiority over the professional soldiers
of militarist enemy nations.
Monash, who had fought non-stop since day one at Gallipoli,
was by now the only original Australian brigade commander from
Gallipoli not killed or evacuated through wounds or physical
or psychological breakdown. He had written home earlier when
passed over repeatedly by the Allied Command,
saying my only consolation has been the sense of
faithfully doing my duty to my country, which
has placed a grave responsibility upon me, and
to my Division which trusts and follows me,
and I owe something to the 20,000 men whose
lives and honour are placed in my hands to do
with as I will.
Postscript
With battle still raging, Gaby, who was killed
by the sniper bullet just three days after he won
the Victoria Cross, had to be buried near where
he fell in Heath Cemetery, Harbonnires. It
was a sad end for a dedicated young man who
had served for three years in the militia while
working on his fathers farm in Tasmania, and
joined up as soon as he could because three of
his six brothers had served in the Boer War.
Twenty-six-year-old
Tasmanian farmer
Lieutenant Alfred Gaby won
his Victoria Cross by getting
through the wire east of
Amiens and attacking an
enemy garrison that had
been pinning down his men.
He captured four machine
guns and 50 prisoners
with his revolver. AWM
206
Rejected twice, he was finally accepted into the AIF in January
1916, and was then promoted to lieutenant by September 1917.
He had only just rejoined his battalion in time for his gallant role
in this pivotal battle, having been gassed in an earlier battle.
Beathams loss hit his family harder, perhaps, than mosthe
was one of four brothers killed out of seven who served from this
Victorian family; one of the three survivors was also lucky to return
home, having spent two years as a prisoner of war in the most
desperate conditions.
Amiens was a turning point for Australias reputation. Having
been ambivalent about the performance of the AIF for years, the
British High Command was now so pleased with their spearheading
role at Amiens that they authorised the AIF to pursue the Germans
eastwards more or less on their own. The skills of Monashs finely
tuned fighting force was then demonstrated over the next few weeks
as his five divisions all achieved victories separately.
A plaque in Amiens Cathedral records the heartfelt words of
the Bishop of Amiens, who in a special service in November1918
praised the Australians who took part in the battle.
Battle stats
Winners: British and Allied forces, numbering one million men, including
the AIF
Toll: Allied casualties 9000 in the initial battle of Amiens, including 2000
Australians; German casualties 27,000, including 16,000 taken prisoner
(Australians captured 7925 of them). Allied forces then suffered many
more losses between 8 and 14 August during follow-up battles, with the
AIF suffering a total of 6000 casualties (1st Division 1931; 2nd Division
1295; 3rd Division 1096; 4th Division 784; and 5th Division 886)
Result: The victory was so decisive that the Germans never recovered, and
losing the war became inevitable
207
Mont St Quentin and
Pronne, 31 August
3September 1918
THE GREATEST
MILITARY
ACHIEVEMENT
OFTHEWAR
From early dawn on Saturday 31 August, until the evening
of 3 September, three divisions of the Australian Corps
engaged in a heroic combat which will ever be memorable
in Australian history. At its conclusion we emerged
complete masters of the situation. Mont St Quentin, the
Bouchavesnes spur, the large town of Peronne and the high
ground overlooking it from the east and north-east were in
our possession.
Lieutenant General Sir John Monash, September 1918
S
ergeant Albert Alby Lowerson, a twenty-two-year-old dairy
farmers son from Myrtleford, Victoria, could see the men of
his 21st Battalion would never reach the hilltop village of Mont St
Quentin against the firepower of a dozen German machine gunners
in front of them.
The German gunners were packed into a huge shell hole with
support troops, who rained down stick grenades at any sign of
attack. Somebody had to have the guts to take them on before they
208
slaughtered more 2nd Division soldiers trying to
advance up the hill at the left of the village. Not only
that, thought Lowerson, who was on the same hill
but to the right of the village, there were also snipers
up the hill picking off the battle-weary Australians.
He had just ducked in time as a bullet whizzed past.
Even though his comrades were successfully
fighting their way up the hill on the right, he could
see that every foot of ground would be stubbornly
contested by the enemy on the left side of the hill.
So he rallied seven men for a storming party and,
directing them to attack the flanks of the German
position up the hill, rushed the centre of the
machine-gun nests himself under a storm of sniper
and machine-gun fire while throwing well-placed
bombs (hand grenades).
Thirty surviving, stunned Germans, already
reeling from the unexpected assault by the Anzacs,
surrendered with their twelve machine guns. Now it was safe for
the Australians on the left to advance. Lowerson, although bleeding
heavily from a gaping wound in his thigh, refused to leave the
front line until the prisoners had been removed and his position
consolidated to prevent any counterattack.
Finally, he allowed himself to be taken to an aid station but only
after helping to secure victoryand a Victoria Cross.
But paving the way for this advance was a team effort and,
inspired by Lowerson, Private Robert Mactier, twenty-eight, another
Victorian, could also see that bombing parties had failed to clear
several enemy machine-gun nests blocking his 23rd Battalions
advance towards Mont St Quentin. Mactier, a runner who had been
sent forward to investigate, climbed over a wire barricade, rushed
out of the trench and killed the machine-gun crew of eight men
with just a revolver and a handful of bombs.
After throwing the enemy gun over the parapet he moved to
another strong point 20 metres into enemy territory, jumped into
the middle of it and captured six men, who surrendered immediately.
Sergeant Albert Lowerson
led a storming party against
twelve machine guns, which
he captured along with
thirty prisoners, opening
the way for his comrades
to advance successfully
on Mont St Quentin. He
was awarded the Victoria
Cross for his actions. AWM
Mont St Quentin and Pronne 31 August3September 1918
209
With his blood really up now and adrenalin pumping, he charged
a third machine-gun post, bombing and shooting dead the gunners.
Mactier had already opened the way for his battalions advance,
but perhaps by now feeling invincible, he charged further up the
hill into a fourth enemy position. This time his luck ran out, and
he was killed immediately.
The battle
It was 31 August 1918 and these were the back-to-back battles
for Mont St Quentin and Pronne, in northern France, both part
of the Allied offensives on the Western Front in the late summer
of 1918. The Allies were pursuing the Germans, pushing them
back east, and the greatest obstacle to crossing the Somme River
in pursuit was Mont St Quentin which, situated in a bend of the
river, dominated the whole position.
Though only 100 metres high, the hill was key to the German
defence of the flat lands surrounding the Somme line at that point
and the last German stronghold, overlooking the Somme River
about 1.5 kilometres north of the town of Pronne.
The offensive was planned by the Australian Corps commander,
the newly knighted Lieutenant General Sir John Monash, who used
what he considered his best troops, the 5th and 6th Brigades of
Major General Charles Rosenthals 2nd Division. By now Monashs
men were moving along both sides of the Somme and he ordered
his troops to advance east towards Mont St Quentin, fighting
the retreating Germans as they went and capturing positions that
controlled river crossings.
A high-risk frontal assault that initially required the Australian
2nd Division to cross a series of marshes to attack the heights was
attempted, but failed when the assaulting troops could not cross
the marshes. After this initial setback, Monash used his divisions as
mobile troops, in the only free-manoeuvre battle of any consequence
by Australians on the Western Front. In the rear, other Australians
crossed the Somme by a bridge that Australian engineers had saved
and repaired.
210
On the night of 31 August, the Australian Corps crossed the
Somme River, with Rosenthals 5th Brigade leading off at first light
at 5 a.m.
The brigade was understrength but, despite being outnumbered,
the Australians fought their way up the hill against the entrenched
Germans defending the heightsmainly Germanys elite 2nd Guards
Divisionand broke through the enemy lines defending the lower
parts of Mont St Quentin.
This is when the actions of Lowerson and Mactier helped their
comrades gain the summit.
Demoralised by their losses, the Germans had surrendered or fled
down the hill towards the villages of Mont St Quentin and Pronne.
But by the time the Australians had secured the heights of Mont
St Quentin there were so few left they could not hold the position,
let alone capture the village of Mont St Quentin. When the Germans
saw this they regrouped and brought in a Guards reserve regiment
to counterattack and retake the village on the summit.
The Australians retreated down the hill but held their positions
just below, overnight. On 1 September the 6th Brigade relieved the
5th Brigade and, in bitter fighting, recaptured the summit.
From then on the Australians applied constant pressure. At the
same time the 14th Brigade of Major General Sir Talbot Hobbs 5th
Division captured the woods north of Pronne, driving the panicked
Germans before them. They next moved into the town, shooting
their way down the streets from house to house to the centre against
snipers and German strong points that refused to give up.
Rosenthals 7th Brigade and Hobbs 15th Brigade, known for
its legendary leader, Pompey Elliott, finished off the job.
Monash was right to say in his 1920 book, The Australian
Victories in France in 1918, that Australians were by now fighting
better than ever. As the 24th Battalion moved towards Pronne,
Lieutenant Edgar Thomas Towner MC, 2nd Battalion, Australian
Machine Gun Corps, saw a German machine gun causing heavy
losses among the advancing troops in a hamlet en route to Feuil-
laucourt, so he rushed the position and single-handedly killed the
crew with his revolver.
Despite being
outnumbered,
the Australians
fought their way
up the hill against
the entrenched
Germans
defending the
heights.
211
He then turned the machine gun on the German lines. Towner,
who was in command of No. 3 Section of the 7th Machine Gun
Company, saw German troops regrouping for a counterattack, so
he moved forward with several of his men, two Vickers guns and
the captured German machine gun, and brought the assembling
Germans under concentrated fire, inflicting many casualties and
taking many prisoners.
Aware that his section was running short of ammunition, Towner
dashed back across the fire-swept ground and found another German
machine gun, which he brought forward along with several boxes
of ammunition in full view of the enemy, enabling the stalled
Australian flanks to push ahead.
A bullet struck his helmet, inflicting a gaping wound to his scalp,
but he refused to be evacuated for medical treatment and continued
firing his machine gun as the German pressure increased, forcing
the Australians to retire.
After the Germans had put all the Australian machine gunners
out of action, Towner spotted a gun had been left behind. Alone,
he dashed out over no-mans-land and retrieved it and, using this
weapon, continued to engage the enemy whenever they appeared,
as his VC citation put it, and putting a German machine gun out
of action with accurate fire.
All night Towner continued to fight and . . . inspire his men as
they assaulted a heavily fortified crater on Mont St Quentins summit,
and repeatedly reconnoitred German positions to report on troop
movements. The next morning he helped repulse a large German
counterattack before he collapsed and was finally evacuatedthirty
hours after he was wounded in fighting that won him a Victoria Cross.
Lance Corporal William Kite, 56th Battalion, who had won
the Military Medal for carrying despatches through the heavily
shelled and gas-filled battlefields at Villers-Bretonneux, now added
a Distinguished Conduct Medal for his actions at Pronne.
According to his citation,
on four occasions he delivered important messages to company
commanders going through an intense barrage. His gallantry,
212
devotion to duty and anxiety to go forward were remarkable. In
several instances he had to crawl forward 300 yards to deliver his
messages. He also bandaged and at great personal risk carried a
wounded man back to safety on his own back under heavy fire.
Although weary from want of sleep, he repeatedly carried messages
to the front line, carrying bandages and dressing wounded men
lying in the open on the way at great personal risk then brought
back valuable information from his own personal observations.
He also guided three different companies to the front line one after
the other. For two days he had no sleep and on two occasions was
prostrated by pepper gas. I cannot speak too highly of this mans
courage and devotion to duty. The officer writing the citation was
right about Kites devotion to duty, because when World War II
began in 1939 Kite was one of the first to sign up.
Many were lucky after attacking Pronne. Lewis (incorrectly spelt
Louis when he enlisted) Arnold Sedunary, of the 8th Trench Mortar
Battery, reported he camped in French dugouts dodging bombing
all night but that a shell landed on top of dugout and we lost all of
our rations. But enemy now falling back from Peronne, despite their
bombers still being active. And the retreating Germans were still
active according to Corporal Albert Jones up on the forward line:
Fritz was sending over a lot of shells and we were pretty busy,
with five of our lot were killed and eight wounded from the 54th
battalion. There were some miraculous escapes for our team with
Fritz shelling all around.
The British Fourth Army commander, General Henry Rawlinson,
described the Australian advances of 31 August to 3 September as
the greatest military achievement of the war.
Looking back after the event, Monash attributed the success to
the wonderful gallantry of the men, the rapidity with which the
plan was carried out and the assaults sheer daring.
213
Although Monash paid tribute to Rosenthal, who was in charge
of the operation, Monash and his staff were responsible for the
conception of the project and the development of the plans.
The Allied victory at the Battle of Mont Saint Quentin dealt a
strong blow to five German divisions, including the German elite
2nd Guards Division. As the position overlooked much of the
terrain east of Mont St Quentin, it meant the Germans could not
stop the Allies west of the Hindenburg Line (the position from
which the Germans had launched their Spring Offensive).
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because now, with Monash feeding
the troops on victory, the Australians expected to win every battle.
Everything had come together. They had a brilliant leader in
Monash, were still all volunteers and many were in their fourth
Soon after capturing Mont
St Quentin, Australian
soldiers helped capture
Pronne, sending German
defenders fleeing in
house-to-house fighting
down the ruined streets.
214
year of fighting, so were experienced, competent, good shots and
hardened hand-to-hand fighters.
Admittedly the Germans were close to a spent force, short of
men, guns, ammunition and equipment. As a German soldier said
in Eric Maria Remarques novel All Quiet on the Western Front, in
September 1918:
Our artillery is fired out . . . we have too few horses . . . our fresh
troops are just anaemic boys in need of rest, who cannot carry a pack
but merely know how to die by the thousands. They understand
nothing about warfare, they simply go and let themselves be shot
down. The summer of 1918 has been the bloodiest and the most
terrible of the war . . . every man here knows we are losing the
war . . . still the campaign goes on the dying goes on.
Remarque was writing of his own experiences in the 2nd Guards
Reserve Division.
Australians were fighting at their absolute best and enjoying
a winning streak after years of hard fighting. War correspondent
Charles Bean wrote:
This brilliant action in whichwithout tanks or creeping barrage
the Australians, at a cost of 3,000 casualties, dealt a stunning blow
to five German Divisions coincided with a thrust by the British 3rd
Army and the Canadians towards Cambrai and gave Ludendorff
additional cause for retiring from the line of the Somme below
Peronne, where he had previously intended to hold on.
It was now becoming hopeless for the Germans, who retreated
to their old Hindenburg Linewhich itself was no longer intact
as the British had broken through near Bullecourt.
Postscript
When Monash told Rawlinson they had obtained a footing on
Mont St Quentin, Rawlinson was at first totally incredulous, then
The summer of
1918 has been the
bloodiest and the
most terrible of
thewar.
215
proclaimed the achievement would have a most important influence
upon the immediate future course of the war. Yet the very next
day, 1 September 1918, Australian forces also broke into Pronne
and took most of the town, which fell completely into Australian
hands the next day.
But victory or no victory, the fighting cost the Australians 3000
casualties and top fighters like VC winner Mactier their lives.
Even Lowerson, who had been dredging for gold at Adelong,
New South Wales, before joining up in 1916, carried the burden
of his many wounds until the day he died. He struggled to make a
go of farming on a small soldier settlers block after the war, trying
both dairy and tobacco.
He enlisted again for World War II, serving as a sergeant in a
training battalion before dying of leukaemia in 1945. The Myrtle-
ford townsfolk built and named the A.D. Lowerson Memorial
Swimming Pool in his honour.
His fellow VC winner, Edgar Towner from Queensland, went
bankrupt after the war trying to survive on the land, before being
forced to sell his property, Valparaiso. He never married or had
children, but a schoolboys essay in his birth town of Blackall
inspired local townsfolk to build a statue of him.
Today the Historical Museum in Pronne honours the great
fighting spirit of the Australians, who liberated their town, and
Mont St Quentin is overlooked by a memorial and a life-sized
statue of a 2nd Division soldier.
Battle stats
Winners: The AIF, 2nd Division
Losers: Germans, the elite 2nd Guards Reserve Division
Toll: Australian casualties 3000; the AIF took 2600 prisoners
Result: The AIF captured Germanys last strategic high point, Mont St
Quentin, delivering a stunning blow to five German Divisions
216
AGONYS END
The taking of Montbrehain was the last and one of the most
brilliant actions of Australian infantry in the First World
War. Yet it is difficult to feel that it was wisely undertaken.
The action cost some 30 officers and 400 men. Ten officers,
among them some of the best leaders in the 6th Brigade,
and many of the best NCOs and men, had been killed.
L
ess than 100 metres from their jumping-off trench, Second
Lieutenant George Ingram and his platoon were pinned
down by severe enemy machine-gun fire. Ingram, a carpenter from
Victoria, knew this German strong point, which had escaped the
Allied barrage, would hold up his platoons advance.
Grasping his rifle, he dashed out into the open and, according
to his citation for the Victoria Cross, rushed the post at the head
of his men. This post contained 9 machine guns and 42 Germans
who fought until our men were within 3 yards of them. They were
killed to a manLieutenant Ingram accounting for no less than
18 of them.
Almost immediately after taking the German position, Ingram
and his men came under fire from several other machine gunners.
Heavy casualties were sustainedthe company commander was
badly wounded, and the company sergeant major and several others
killed. Without the support of a barrage or tanks, Ingram quickly
seized the situation, rallied his men in the face of murderous fire
217
and, with magnificent courage and resolution, led them forward.
He himself rushed the first post, shot 6 of the enemy, and captured
a machine gun, thus overcoming a very serious resistance.
Ingram continued to take the fight to the Germans. He silenced
enemy fire coming from a quarry, took out another machine gun
entirely on his own, forced 52 Germans to surrender and then,
under heavy fire all the while, helped establish defensive posts.
According to his citation, throughout the whole day he showed
the most splendid qualities of courage and leadership and freely
exposed himself again and again with utter contempt of danger.
The battle
The attack would be uphill from the Allied-held village of Rami-
court, France, and was the kind that most Australian soldiers had
Much of the fighting
between the defending
Germans and advancing
Australian and Allied forces
in the AIFs last battle of
World War I was between
the machine gunners.
Montbrehain had been
occupied by the Germans
since 1915 and was infested
with machine-gun nests.
218
come to dread after their experiences on the Somme in 1916. They
knew that driving a narrow bulge into a German front line was not
a good idea: if the enemys artillery were not suppressed, it could
rain fire on the attackers from three directions.
Still, the two Victorian battalions and the Pioneers (who,
although more accustomed to trench digging than combat, had
been trained as infantry and were to be used in the attack) were
overflowing with confidence. Recent successes and the general war
news kept the troops in high spirits. The night before the attack
the men of B Company, 24th Battalion, were heard singing this
little ditty:
A takes the right flank,
D takes the left flank
But well be in Montbrehain before you . . .
Many Germans were
ready to come out of their
dugouts and surrender
by the end of the war
because they had run short
of food and ammunition.
Recruits were in short
supply too, and they
were getting younger
and younger as Germany
ran out of manpower.
219
The 2nd Division launched its attack at dawn, the 6th Brigade
spearheading the assault. Much to the dismay of the men, the
village was full of deadly machine-gun positions. However, as
the then newly knighted Australian Lieutenant General Sir John
Monash said, the gallant brigade dashed in with the bayonet and
methodically worked its way through the village to the eastern
outskirts. Despite a counterattack which developed about midday
and forced the Australians to yield about 400 metres, a battalion
from the 5th Brigade came to the rescue and helped regain the lost
ground despite heavy machine-gun fire.
The 5th Division Australian Field Artillerys Albert Jones, who
earlier in the year had feared that the German Spring Offensive
might turn the table against the Allies, must have now been more
confident of an Allied victory. He confirmed in his diary that the
Australians attacked on a wide front, got through the wire, all
objectives were taken and everything was going ok as far as the
stunt is concerned, although as always there is plenty of work for
the boys who are being kept busy.
German machine-gun fire did keep the boys busy, and there
were many casualties in this final Australian infantry action of the
war. Most tragically of all, some of the men who died that final day
had begun their fighting at Gallipoliincluding two mates, Harry
Fletcher and Austin Mahony.
But Australian soldiers took the village of Montbrehain convinc-
ingly on 5 October 1918, liberating many French civilians who had
lived under German occupation since the early days of the war. For
his actions during the Battle of Montbrehain, Ingram was awarded
the Victoria Cross.
Since halting General Erich Ludendorff s Spring Offensive at Villers-
Bretonneux, or VB, as they called it, Australian soldiers had played
a pivotal role in pushing the enemy back towards Germany. By now
some of the most experienced and revered soldiers on the Western
Front, they had advanced steadily from VB to Mont St Quentin
220
in five months of bitter fighting. East of Mont St Quentin lay the
small French village of Montbrehain, captured by the Germans
during their advance into France in 1914.
The British 46th Division had captured Montbrehain on
3October 1918, but had been driven out by fierce counterattacks.
Even though the village still lay in the hands of the Germans, the
men of the Australian 2nd Division were not expecting to be
called on to take it. In fact, on 4 October the 2nd Division was
looking forward to being withdrawn from the front line, preferably
to somewhere near the coast. Billy Hughes, the Australian prime
minister, had insisted that the exhausted and depleted 2nd Division
be given some well-earned rest.
However, realising he would not be able to relieve the 2nd
Division until nightfall the following day, the British General
Sir Henry Rawlinson had asked Monash to retain control of the
battle front for one day longer. According to Monash, Rawlinson
desired him to avail myself of the time to endeavour to advance
our line still further to the east. Monash selected Montbrehain as
a suitable objective, as it stood on a plateau and dominated any
further advance.
Expecting a good rest on 4 October, it must have come as a
surprise to the men of the 2nd Division when they were told they
were to attack Montbrehain the following day, along with British
forces46th Division of the IX Corpswho had also expected
to be relieved.
The two mates killed who had served at Gallipoli, Fletcher
and Mahony, had been close friends before the war, living in the
same boarding house near Melbourne University. They both went
to church on Sundays, but parted on the wayFletcher was a
Protestant and Mahony a Catholic. They enlisted together in
March 1915 and received consecutive serial numbers. They went
to Gallipoli together and even declined promotions to stay in the
same battalion.
Mahony grew up in Hansonville, in Victorias north-east. He
was dux of Wangaratta High School and topped the state in French
221
before going to Melbourne to work as a clerk in the public service.
He had a passion for playing Australian Rules football.
After being promoted to sergeant at Gallipoli then lieutenant the
following year, he won the Military Cross at Pozires. He inspired
other soldiers with his cool manner, even carrying a walking stick
into battle. Known to be lucky, it was football rather than enemy
fire that sent him to hospital: a sprained ankle kept him away from
the front for eight months in 1917 and early 1918. Not long after
returning to the front he was made a captain.
Harry Fletcher grew up in Eaglehawk, a suburb of Bendigo, and
became a teacher at Princes Hill, near Melbourne University, where
Fate struck a cruel blow at
Australias very last battle
of World War I when two
best mates from Victoria,
who had fought beside
each other since landing
at Gallipoli were both
killedCaptain John Harry
Fletcher, left, and Captain
John Austin Mahony, right.
Lieutenant Joseph Scales of
Mitta Mitta, Victoria, centre,
survived the war. AWM
222
he was studying for an arts degree. According
to his sister Annie, he had a good sense of
humour and was quite sporty. In 1915
Mahony and Fletcher were in the trenches
at Lone Pine, Gallipoli, when the Turks
began a howitzer bombardment. Fletcher was
wounded in the face and, according to family
sources, never again had to shave in that area.
Fletcher kept his sense of humour
throughout the Gallipoli campaign. After
having a hot bath on the Greek island of
Lemnos he wrote: After washing about half
an hour I found a singlet which I had lost a
couple of months ago. On peeling it off I had
to start and wash again.
When Fletcher and Mahony took part
in the attack on Montbrehain in October
1918, the war was almost over, and the Allied
soldiers knew it. One wonders whether the
troops dared to think of how it might feel to
return home. Mahony and Fletcherfriends
who had enlisted together, served at Gallipoli
and in France together, two men who enjoyed playing Australian
Rules football and a good jokewere killed at Montbrehain, on the
last day of fighting for the Australians in World War I. Mahony was
hit in the temple by a machine-gun bullet at about 8 a.m.; Fletcher
was hit about an hour later. Not long after their deaths, the rest of
the 2nd Division and Pioneers secured Montbrehain and put their
rifles down for the last time.
Fletcher and Mahony are buried in France.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE historically because the capture of
Montbrehain was the last and also one of the most effective feats of
arms by Australian infantry in World War I, and Lieutenant Ingram
was awarded the Victoria Cross for his brave deedsAustralias last
VC of World War I.
Lieutenant George Ingram,
a carpenter from Victoria,
helped Australian forces win
the Battle of Montbrehain
by leading a charge across
open ground, through
heavy fire, capturing
an enemy strong point
with nine machine guns,
personally killing eighteen
Germans, before capturing
a second nest on his own
and taking another 52
Germans prisoner. AWM
223
Australias war service, which started at the landing at Gallipoli
on 25 April 1915, was successfully completed. In fact the Australian
infantry handed the line over to the II American Corps after the
battle and, as Charles Bean said, was withdrawn almost to the sea
coast for a rest, which no one in France who knew the Australians
record begrudged. Despite the losses, the capture of Montbrehain
was another convincing victory for the Australians at their fighting
peak, reflecting their years of experience and skills as brave and
proficient soldiers. The Australians took 600 prisoners and, as
Monash said, after the battle the front line ran completely around
the eastern outskirts of the village of Montbrehain, the whole of
which was in our possession. The Australians had advanced the
Western Front line by 6 miles (nearly 10 kilometres) to the east of
Bellicourt and confirmed the irretrievable collapse of the whole of
Germanys Hindenburg defences.
The capture of Montbrehain also brought with it the long-awaited
liberation of civilians who had lived under German occupation since
1914. The German High Command had enough trouble making
sure its own army was fed during the war; one can imagine how
the people of a small French village must have gone short of the
necessities under occupation. As Lieutenant Joe Maxwell wrote, the
Germans imposed rigid discipline upon them and the fate of the
women was bound up absolutely in the degree of chivalry possessed
by the German troops which had garrisoned the village for so long.
Maxwell went on to tell the story of one villager who was
particularly happy to see the back of the Germans (and was not
shy in expressing it):
one womangaunt and old as one of the witches in Macbeth
shrieked shrilly: Vive lAngleterre. Her contempt for the German
prisoners going back was devastating. With an expression of
contempt, she pulled up her petticoats and exposed to them that
part of her gaunt old anatomy, on which nature had intended her
to sit. This time-honoured mark of contempt practised by many
women down the ages was more prolonged when she came opposite
to a group of German officer prisoners.
224
Postscript
Two days after the Battle of Montbrehain, British soldiers in France
read in the Paris edition of the Daily Mail that the German govern-
ment had asked for an armistice on the night of 3 Octobertwo
days before an attack that might not, perhaps, have been required.
Successful as the Montbrehain battle had been, critics questioned
its necessity. Charles Bean said it had appeared to have been carried
out simply to keep the troops of the 2nd Division occupied until
they were due to be withdrawn the next day. As Bean wrote after
the war, though the attack had been a success, the Australians
did not capture one hostile battery or let the cavalry through, nor
were they intended to do so. The action cost some 30 officers and
400 men. At such cost, at this stage of the war, Australian troops
could have achieved far-reaching results in any general attack.
Long after the war, questions remain. Many scholars felt the
battle was not necessary and, even if it were, that Australian units
exhausted and understrengthshould not have been used when so
many fresh American troops were available. Others say the battle
should not have been asked of men supposed to be on their way
to the rear for a long-needed rest the next day. Australian visitors
to France, standing beside the graves of Gallipoli veterans such as
Fletcher and Mahony, might well ponder these questions.
Battle stats
Winners: British forces, 46th Divison of 9th Corps along with Australians
in the 2nd Division, namely 5th, 6th and 7th Brigades
Losers: German forces, 400 of whom were taken prisoner
Toll: In addition to the British losses, Australian casualties were 430
Result: Fighting alongside British forces the Australian troops won their
last major battle on the Western Front and retired from fighting in
World War I
225
Capturing Tobruk,
2122January 1941
CAPTURE OF THE
ITALIAN FORTRESS
Thus, with its senior commanders captured, and more than
half of the fortress in the hands of an attacker who was
close enough to fire a rifle shot into the town itself, the
Italian garrison was not in the mood to offer even a token
resistance . . . From dawn onwards came reports from all
along the front that the Italians were intent on surrender.
Official History of Australia in the War 19391945
C
i rendiamo! Ci rendiamo! cried the Italian troops as the men
of the Australian 6th Division penetrated their front line
and pushed on towards Tobruk, the Italian armys supply base and
fortress in Libya. Having learnt the significance of ci rendiamowe
surrender in Englishthe Australians sent the enemy soldiers
behind their lines and charged on.
Major John Copland of the 2/4th Battalion, a thirty-five-year-old
from Manly, Sydney, was one of those men advancing through
the desert. He had just led a successful attack on an Italian post
on a road leading down to the port town of Tobruk when he was
approached by one of the Italian prisoners.
In broken English, the prisoner asked to see a senior officer.
Copland explained to him that he was the most senior soldier he was
likely to come across at that moment on the battlefield. The Italian
226
then led the major through a shallow trench and into a bunker.
Here, Copland was presented to another, much older, Italian.
The old man looked at Copland. Officer? he asked.
Oui, Copland replied, French being the only foreign language
he really knew much of. The old man nodded his head and, tears
forming in his eyes and rolling down his cheeks, handed Copland
his silver pistol, much like a humiliated Roman centurion might
have handed over his sword to a Gaul in ancient times.
Copland realised that this man must be the commanding officer
of the Italian forces at Tobruk, General Petassi Manella. Moved by
Manellas tears, Copland offered these words of comfort: Cest la
guerre.
Oui, Manella replied. Cest la guerre.
The battle
Manned by a strong force of Italian soldiers under the command
of General Manella, Tobruk had become a fortress for the Italians.
Designated as the defensive nerve-centre of their Libyan colony, it
provided a good shelter for battleships and submarines and allowed
After Major John Copland
led a successful attack on
an Italian post defending
Tobruk, helping his men
to enter the town where
Allied forces took thousands
of Italian prisoners, his
comrades from the 2/4th
Battalion captured the
municipal flag of Tobruk,
holding it up as a trophy
outside the town hall. AWM
227
the Italians to be reinforced and resupplied when necessary. It was
the perfect base from which to wage war in the desert.
Over the previous three decades the Italians had poured huge
amounts of energy and resources into constructing strong defences
on the outskirts of the town, including an anti-tank ditch, endless
lines of barbed wire, booby traps and fortifications from which men
could sweep the desert with their machine guns.
Rolling steadily west through Libya, the Australian 6th Divi-
sion, led by Major General Iven Mackay, soon found themselves
approaching the perimeter of Tobruk. It was January 1941, and
the men of the 6th Division were charged with penetrating the
perimeter, charging into Tobruk and occupying the town and its
harbour.
The first to move in was a small group from the 2/1st Field
Company. Just after midnight on 21 January 1941, these men set off
to crawl along the desert floor, their faces blackened with paint, to
find and de-louse the area of the mines and booby traps scattered
around the Italian defensive line. In silence, the sappers stealthily
got on with their all-important work.
The rest of the 6th Division waited behind the lines for the
attack, showing typical Australian calm. After watching the Austral-
ians prepare for the attack, Chester Wilmot, the Melbourne-born
ABC journalist, later reported to his listeners that the men might
have been more worked up before a football grand final.
At 5.40 a.m. the Allied artillery barrage began. As Wilmot later
described it, great clouds of dust like huge waterspouts marked each
explosion and in the still morning air these took some time to drift
away, so that for a few minutes they looked like silver poplars. This
arty, as the Australians called it, would provide cover for the sappers
still out in the open and smash the Italian barbed wire, clearing a
path for the Australian infantry.
The barrage ceased at 6.05 a.m. and, as the smoke cleared, the
assembled Australians began to make out the gaps in the defensive
wire. Suddenly a voice rang out from behind: Go on, you bastards!
And they did. Yelling as they charged, the Australians stormed
towards Tobruk.
Go on, you
bastards!
228
Stunned by the artillery barrage and terrified by these rampaging
Australians, Italian soldiers appeared from holes all over the desert
waving white handkerchiefs and crying Ci rendiamo! Ci rendiamo!
Radio announcers in Rome had for days been predicting that
Australian barbarians were about to be turned loose by the British
at Tobruk. These barbarians had indeed been turned loose, and the
Italians wanted no part of it.
Those posts that did offer any resistance were quickly silenced,
though many brave young Australians were cut down by Italian
machine-gun fire and tank blasts. One soldier, Sergeant Burgess
of the 2/8th Battalion, ran towards an Italian tank holding up the
Allied advance and, trying to heave up the lid to drop in a grenade,
was hit by a spray of machine-gun fire. As one of his mates wrote
in his diary, his last effort before he died was to struggle to put the
pin back and throw the grenade clear of his comrades.
It was during this advance that Copland captured the tearful
Manella. Even with Manellas surrender, however, pockets of resist-
ance remained, and spasmodic fighting continued during the day and
night. Although Manella had surrendered himself, he had refused to
order the surrender of the rest of the Italian force guarding Tobruk.
Soldiers fighting with
Australias 6th Division
dealt a huge blow to the
German/Italian strategy
for controlling North Africa
when they caught the
Italian garrison by surprise
and captured Tobruk.
229
It was the capture of yet another Italian commander the next day
that saw the Allies finally take control. On 22 January a group of
surrendering Italians approached two men of the 2/4th Battalion,
Lieutenant Hennessy and Sergeant Mills, who were both in the
advance guard of a party heading into the old Libyan town. Asking
their captors to follow them, the Italians led Hennessy and Mills to
Admiral Massimiliano Vietina, the commander of the naval garrison.
When it was offered first to him in surrender, Hennessy did
not accept Vietinas sword. He thought it more proper that his
CO, Brigadier Horace Robertson, take it. The men would wait
for Robertson.
The rest of the 6th Division didnt really care for such formalities.
As far as they were concerned, the supplies left in the deserted town
by nearly 25,000 Italians were more important. Among the spoils
were Italian cheese, red wine and fresh water, not to mention silk
shirts, blue cavalry cloaks and elaborate leather toilet sets.
While Hennessy, Mills and Vietina waited for Robertson to
arrive and formally accept the Italian surrender, one Australian did,
however, take it upon himself to perform a symbolic act to mark
the Australian triumph.
Climbing up a flagpole just off the main street of the old Italian
fortress, he hoisted and ran his slouch hat from the mast. The
Australians were in Tobruk.
The Italians had been at war with the British and Commonwealth
forces in North Africa since June 1940. Italian forces in Libya, an
Italian colony since 1912, had started what would become known
as the Desert War by attacking British troops stationed in Egypt in
the latter half of 1941. Benito Mussolini, also known as Il Duce,
the fascist dictator of Italy, wanted to push east from Libya through
Egypt, which for years had been home to a small contingent of British
troops, and take control of the strategically important Suez Canal.
After a series of skirmishes around the Libyan border, Mussolini
ordered a large and concentrated offensive into Egypt on 8 August.
230
Though initially successful, the Italian offensive was opposed by
British and Commonwealth forces in Operation Compass, a
large-scale counterattack designed to push the Italian army out of
Egypt and then Libya itself, on 9 December. The operation was
immediately successful: by 10 December more than 20,000 Italians
had been taken prisoner.
Advancing west along the North African coast from Egypt to
Libya, Australian men of the 6th Division soon found themselves
on the outskirts of Tobruk, an important Libyan port town with
a natural, deep and protected harbour, perfect for resupply and
reinforcement. This was the sole major harbour on that part of
the North African coast, and along with it came jetties, great depth
close to shore and one of the few reliable sources of fresh water for
nearly 1300 kilometres. Controlling the harbour would be of great
benefit to any army waging a war in the North African theatre.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because the Australian 6th Division
had, in little more than twenty-four hours of fighting, taken the
strategically important Tobruk with an emphatic victory over its
The Allied artillery played
a big role in the fighting
in North Africa, firing off
barrages through the night
to damage enemy positions
as much as possible and
forestall any counterattacks.
231
Italian defenders. The deep, natural and protected harbour that
made Tobruk such an excellent place to supply a desert warfare
campaign was now in the hands of the Allies.
The port could be used to deliver more food, weaponry and
munitions to the Allies, and this meant that they could continue
the attack on the Italians and drive them out of North Africa for
good. With control of Tobruk and its harbour, the British army
had the upper hand in the desert war.
It was also a great battle because not only had the Allies taken
Tobruk, they had also taken more than 25,000 prisoners. Their
haul of major weapons included 208 field and medium guns, 23
medium tanks and 200 vehicles. All this, and the battle had cost
the Australians just 355 casualties.
Tobrukthe Italian Tenth Armys strong point and fortress
in the deserthad been taken, along with the towns dejected
garrison. Thousands of weary Italian prisoners were sent back to
Alexandria as prisoners of war, their moraleand that of the Tenth
Armyshot to bits.
Although they were
outnumbered when
they attacked the Italian
garrison at Tobruk,
Allied forces not only
took this strategic port
town but also at least
25,000 easily captured
prisoners. AWM
232
Postscript
On 12 February 1941, a man in the military uniform of the German
High Command arrived in Tripoli, Libyas capital. Around his neck
hung the coveted Knights Cross, awarded to members of the Third
Reich for bravery and leadership in battle. It was General Erwin
Rommel, sent to Libya with his newly formed German Afrika Korps
to assist Germanys fledgling Italian allies and drive the British back
to Egypt and out of North Africa.
Taking advantage of the fact that Churchill had ordered the
British advance to stop at El Agheila, a small coastal town just west
of Tobruk and east of Tripoli, so that troops could be dispatched
to defend Greece from a German invasion, Rommel immediately
made plans for an offensive. Speaking to Italian commanders on
his arrival in Tripoli, Rommel was convinced that the desert allows
more scope for manoeuvre and a war of movement. But only the
offensive pays. We must strike where the enemy is least expecting
us by outflanking him.
Rommels advance started on 24 March with the capture of El
Agheila. Benghazi fell to the Axis forces not long after, and for a
while it looked like the new and fresh Afrika Korps would push on
and take back the ground captured by the Allies during Operation
Compass.
By early April 1941, Rommel and his army had surrounded
the port town. The epic eight-month siege of Tobruk was about
to begin.
Battle stats
Winners: The Australian 6th Division
Losers: The Italian Tenth Army, 25,000 of whom were taken prisoner
The toll: Australian casualties 355, including 49 killed
Result: The Australian 6th Division captured and held the strategically
important port town of Tobruk in an overwhelming victory over the
Italians. Tobruks Mediterranean harbour and fortress-like centre could
now be used by the Allies to support their campaign against Axis forces
in North Africa
233
The siege of Tobruk,
11April7 December 1941
ENTER THE RATS OF
TOBRUK
Therell be no Dunkirk here. If we should have to get out
we shall fight our way out. There is no surrender and no
retreat.
Lieutenant General Leslie Morshead, commanding officer, Australian
9thDivision
F
ixing bayonet to rifle, Corporal John Jack Edmondson of the
2/17th Battalion readied himself for the charge.
It was the night of 13 April 1941, and a party of German infantry
had broken through the Australian wire defences on the outskirts of
Tobruk, establishing a post with at least six machine guns, mortars
and two small field artillery pieces. Edmondson, an officer and five
privates now prepared themselves to counterattack with bayonets.
Leaping from his dugout, Edmondson, a twenty-six-year-old
from Wagga Wagga in New South Wales, made a run straight for
one of the enemy machine gunners. Shooting started and bullets
struck the Australian. Wounded in the neck and stomach, he made
it to the post and silenced the gunner with his bayonet.
Blood pouring from his wounds, Edmondson turned to see
his officer, Lieutenant Austin Mackell, several metres away strug-
gling with another machine gunner after driving his bayonet into
the Germans chest. It had stuck fast in his ribs and, still alive
and scrambling in shock and agony, the German grabbed hold of
234
Mackells legs, allowing another soldier to attack him and begin
choking him.
Hearing Mackells desperate cries for help, Edmondson imme-
diately came to his assistance and in spite of his wounds, killed
both the enemy. This action undoubtedly saved his officers life.
Edmondson died from his wounds not long after the successful
assault. As the London Gazette recorded on 1 July 1941, his actions
throughout the operations were outstanding for resolution, leader-
ship and conspicuous bravery.
The fierceness of the Australians bayonet charge forced the
German command to divert troops from their main attack on
Tobruk to reinforce those fighting against Edmondson and his
mates that night. Significantly weakened, the main attack failed and
the Germans were forced to retreat after suffering heavy casualties.
Jack Edmondson was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross,
making him the first Australian to receive this highest of honours
in World War II. Major John Balfe of the 2/17th wrote later to
Edmondsons mother: All can speak well of the dead, but I have
said of him while he was still alive, that he was a really decent, good,
clean chap. The first AIF VC. If ever there was a medal earned,
Jack earned this.
Corporal John Jack
Edmondson, twenty-six,
won his Victoria Cross when
he bayoneted a machine
gunner attempting to break
through the defences of
the Rats of Tobruk; then
despite severe wounds
he also bayoneted two
Germans trying to kill
his officer, saving the
officers life but dying of
his own wounds. AWM
235
The battle
In early April 1941 Lieutenant General Erwin Rommel and his
Afrika Korps had encircled the Australians defending Tobruk.
Knowing that taking control of the old Libyan town and its deep,
natural and protected harbour was essential to the success of Axis
forces in North Africa, he went about planning a major attack.
First, Rommel ordered the German and Italian troops under his
command to throw up as much dust into the air as possible by the
movement of tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery pieces, so as to
exaggerate the size of their force and strike fear into the hearts of
the Australian defenders. Second, he ordered his troops to position
themselves for a concentrated Blitzkrieg attack on the port town.
By 11 April 1941, Rommel had positioned his forces sufficiently
for an assault. He confidently expected an easy victory. But as
Rommels forces tried to penetrate Tobruks perimeter with tanks
and infantry, the Germans were repulsed and then utterly routed by
the doggedness of the Australian defence, which Rommel had failed
to anticipate. But the Australianswho were the only defenders
fought harder than any enemy Rommel had met. It was during
this April fightinglater to be known as the Easter Battlethat
Edmondson was killed. Yet hundreds of other Australian soldiers
also fought with equally selfless determination to fend off the Axis
attack.
In this first assault on Tobruk, the so-far-successful Blitzkrieg
tactics of the German army were no match for the tenacity of the
Australians. Chester Wilmot, an Australian war correspondent,
described the way in which German tanks and infantry were repelled:
The Australians lay low until the German infantry appeared in
the wake of the tanks. These were engaged by our fire with the
result the tanks were left to advance without the support they had
expected, and the further they advanced the more intense became
the bombardment they encountered. For here was the secret of our
defencea defence in depth. The combined force of our artillery
and tanks lay waiting for them. They were hit with every calibre
weapon at our command capable of damaging them. The fire of
236
our 25-pounders at point-blank range was particularly devastating.
As the enemy armour in retreat poured through the gap they had
made in our lines, they came under the fire of our Brens, mortars,
rifles and shells and terrible confusion resulted.
So ended Rommels first attempt at capturing the garrison, and
so Tobruk remained a thorn in his side, upsetting Rommels plans
for an attempt on Egypt and giving the Allies the time they needed
to plan a counter-offensive against the Axis forces.
While Rommels first assault on Tobruk failed to provide a
breakthrough, he did not give up. Tobrukand its Australian
defendersremained encircled and besieged. Fighting settled into a
pattern of attacks, counterattacks, night patrols, raids and skirmishes
by both attackers and defenders. No matter what Rommel tried
The Rats of Tobruk
managed to survive the
siege by General Erwin
Rommel and his hard-
hitting Afrika Korps because
they built impregnable
fortifications above
ground and, like rats, also
dug defensive shelters
underground. AWM
237
he could not get rid of the Diggers who had dug in like their
unmoveable Anzac predecessors at Gallipoli.
During one of these attacks on an Italian position, Sergeant
Ron Patrick of the 2/15th Battalion, who barely looked his age of
twenty-one and had been a clerk in a country store before the war,
won the Military Medal. As he explained:
I rolled over and pitched two grenades into the nearest trench
and made a dash for the end machine-gun. I jumped into the pit
on top of three Italians and bayoneted two before my bayonet
snapped. Igot the third with my revolver as he made for a dug-out
where there were at least two other men. I let them have most of
my magazine.
For eight long months the men of the Tobruk garrison,
surrounded by enemy forces, withstood tank attacks, artillery
barrages and daily bombings, and carried out their own ferocious
offensives. They endured the searing heat of the deserts days and
the bitter cold of its nights, hellish dust storms and the brackish,
warm water that was all they had to drink. They lived in dugouts,
and like rats, also in caves and crevasses.
Contact with the outside world was rare. One voice from outside
Tobruk the Australians heard quite regularly, however, was that of
a German propaganda broadcaster, speaking to them over the radio
in good English. Known to all Allied soldiers as Lord Haw-Haw,
this voice would drone on and on about the superiority of the
German forces surrounding Tobruk and the scanty chances the
towns defenders had of success.
According to Haw-Haw, Tobruk was now being held by the
sons of sheep herders and self-supporting prisoners of war, caught
like rats in a trap. Living like rats, he continued, theyll die like
rats. It didnt take long for the Aussies to adopt the name Rats of
Tobruk with a great sense of prideAustralian morale in the desert
had never been so high. Like the resilient vermin they were named
after, these rats of Tobruk could not be driven out.
Ijumped into
the pit on top of
three Italians and
bayoneted two
before my bayonet
snapped.
238
With every road into the garrison teeming with enemy infantry
and the harbour being bombed almost constantly, supplies were
scarce.
But the soldiers needed food and, thanks to the brave men of
the Royal Australian Navy, they did not go without. Although
Hitler would deride them as Australias old tin-cans and Lord
Haw-Haw would describe them as the scrap-iron flotillabecause
of the vessels ageAustralian ships such as the Voyager, Vendetta,
Vampire and Waterhen performed magnificently during the siege.
Navigating what was arguably the most dangerous stretch of water
in the world at that time, the scrap-iron flotilla would stop at
Tobruk, unload supplies and ammunition then take the wounded
off as quickly as they could.
In spite of their separation from Allied forces and encirclement
by the enemy, the Australians stuck together and held on. As Wilmot
wrote after the siege,
the spirit which has made Australia is the spirit which has held
Tobruk. The inspiring and binding force in Australian life isnt
traditionalism or nationalism or social revolution. Its quite a
simple thing. Henry Lawson called it MATESHIP . . . the spirit
which makes men stick together. In Australia, by sticking together
men have defied drought, bushfire and flood. In Tobruk theyve
scorned hardship, danger and death, because no Digger would
ever let his cobbers down. In Tobruk for the first time in this
war the Germans were thrust back by a spirit that even tanks and
dive-bombers could not conquer.
The 18th Brigade of the 7th Division was eventually pulled
out of Tobruk in August 1941 and sent to join the rest of its
division in Syria. The 9th Division followed in September and
October, handing Tobruk over to the British 70th Division. Only
one battalion, the 2/13th, remained. The convoy that was to carry
them off had been attacked by German aircraft on 25 October and
forced to turn back. So the 2/13th remained in Tobruk until the
239
siege was lifted in December, the only Australian unit to see out
the entire eight months of the battle.
By 7 December 1941chiefly as a result of Operation Crusader,
an Allied offensive that the Australian effort in Tobruk had made
possible, Rommel abandoned the area between Tobruk and the
Egyptian frontier and pulled his forces back to Tripoli.
Against great odds, the garrison had done its job and stopped
Rommel from taking Tobruk and charging into Egypt and beyond
to the Suez Canal.
Having arrived in Libya with his newly formed Afrika Korps to
prevent total Axis collapse in North Africa in 1941, Rommel did not
take long to take up the challenge. Operation Compass, the British
offensive into Libya, had been halted on the orders of Churchill
Despite their lack of
experience in desert
fighting, Australian
soldiers adapted to the
hot, dry conditions very
well. By holding Tobruk,
they helped stop General
Rommels Axis forces taking
over North Africa. SLV
240
just west of Tobruk, giving the German general the chance to strike
back at Tobruk.
Taking control of the Libyan towns harbour was essential to
Germanys North African campaign to drive through Egypt to
the Suez Canal. They had to capture the Italian Tenth Armys
old fortress.
Soon after the capture of Tobruk in January 1941, the Australian
6th Divisionwhose men had hoisted an Aussie slouch hat up a
flagpole in the middle of the townwere withdrawn from North
Africa and shipped to Greece, where they would be used to defend
against a German invasion. They were replaced by the 9th Division,
another force of Australians fresh from training in Australia, Britain
and Palestine keen to come to grips with the enemy and confident
they could give a good account of themselves.
Rommels drive into eastern Libya in the last week of March
caught the depleted British forces there by surprise. Rommel wrote
to his wife, Lu, on 3 April 1941,
we have been attacking . . . with dazzling success. The staff people
in Tripoli, Rome and possibly Berlin will be possibly astonished.
Ihave dared to proceed against earlier orders and directives, because
I saw an opportunity. The final objectiveplanned for the end of
Mayhas been reached. The British are on the run.
The 9th Division pulled back from Benghazi to the Tobruk
perimeter on 9 April, where it joined the 18th Brigade of the
Australian 7th Division. With Rommels tanks, artillery, mortars
and machine guns not far behind them, the Australians were
ordered to hold Tobruk until a force could be sent from Egypt
to relieve it.
On 11 April Rommel surrounded the perimeter and cut off
Tobruk from the rest of the Allied forces. The rest of eastern Libya
had fallen into Axis hands, and all that remained was the vital port
town and its Australian defenders. As Rommel prepared a major
assault, Churchill made his position clear: Tobruk was to be held
to the death without thought of retirement.
The British are on
the run.
241
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because the Australians had, during
an epic eight-month siege, played a major role in keeping Tobruk
and its harbour in Allied hands. Holding Tobruk was essential
to the Allies success against Axis forces in the desert. As the 9th
Divisions CO, Lieutenant General Leslie Morshead, wrote in 1947,
had there been no Tobruk, we would have lost Egypt and eventually
have been driven from the Middle East.
It was also a great battle because, more than just holding a key
position, the Australians had out-muscled and defeated a heavier
and numerically superior armoured force. Ward Miller, a colonel
working at the US Army Command and General Staff College,
wrote after having studied the battle in 1986:
The Australians epic stand at Tobruk had a major impact on the
war because the Germans suffered a serious and unexpected reversal.
The Tobruk garrison demonstrated that the hitherto successful
German Blitzkrieg tactics could be defeated by resolute men who
displayed courage and had the tactical and technical ability to
co-ordinate and maximise the capabilities of their weapons and
equipment in the defence.
Cut off at Tobruk, Australian soldiers withstood the harshest of
conditions and repeated attacks by a determined enemy and did not
once consider surrender as an option. Chester Wilmot put it like this:
the heroic defence of Tobruk is a notable military achievement and
a worthy addition to the long list of deeds of valour performed by
Australian soldiers . . . [the soldiers] real monument is their name
and their most honoured resting place is in the grateful hearts of
their fellow men.
Postscript
After consolidating his forces at their fallback positions of Gazala
and El Agheila, two small towns just west of Tobruk, Rommel and
his Afrika Korps swept east once more and, on 21 June 1942after
242
having put Tobruk under siege yet againtook the harbour town,
this time from a South African garrison.
Along with about 33,000 prisoners, 4 million litres of fuel and
2000 vehicles, the strategically important harbour itself fell into
the hands of Axis forces. Though Australian soldiers had gallantly
held the town and its harbour against Rommels onslaught in 1941,
it now belonged to the Afrika Korps. They would use it as a base
from which to launch another large-scale offensive into Egypt
Indeed, now that Tobruk was secure, Hitler ordered the Afrika
Korps to advance east and take Cairo and the Suez Canal. They
would, however, face the Australian 9th Division again as they
advanced towards Cairo, at a small and seemingly insignificant
Egyptian railway stop called El Alamein.
Battle stats
Winners: The Australian 9th Division and 18th Brigade of the Australian
7th Division
Losers: Lieutenant General Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps, including
its Italian allies
Toll: Australian casualties 3009, including 832 killed and 941 taken prisoner
Result: Despite his eight-month siege of Tobruk, Rommel failed to take
the port town and was eventually pushed back towards Tripoli by
counterattacking British forces. Having failed to wrest Tobruk from
the Australians, Rommels first attempt at advancing into Egypt and
capturing the Suez Canal failed
243
German raider sinks HMAS
Sydney, 19 November 1941
AUSTRALIAS WORST
NAVAL DISASTER
The Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney, which carried a
complement of 645 officers and men, was missing and
was presumed lost. The Sydney had been in action with a
heavily armed merchant raider which she sank by gunfire.
No subsequent communications had been received from
the Sydney, the information of the Australian Naval Board
having come from the survivors of the enemy vessel who
were picked up some time after the action.
The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 December 1941
H
aving got away with sinking lots of smaller merchant ships by
stealth, the captain of the disguised German raider Kormoran
knew he would be caught out sooner or later, especially now he
was sneaking along the Western Australian coast. But when he saw
the big Royal Australian Navy cruiser heading straight for him, he
realised his dirty game was up. Unless, that is, his clever camouflage
fooled this warship policing the Indian Ocean.
Captain Theodore Detmers did not want to fight, he knew
that much. The German High Command had forbidden fights
with naval ships. So he could not fight. His raider was too slow
and too small and his hidden guns were nothing like as powerful as
this state-of-the-art warship steaming towards him at great speed.
He would be slaughtered.
244
But it was also too late to run for it. If he had to fight, his only
chance was to lure HMAS Sydney so close that his smaller guns could
hit its nerve centrethe bridgelike the biblical David defeating
the giant Goliath by hitting him in the eye with a slingshot.
But Australians were not stupid. In fact, they had sunk the
German raider Emden in these waters in World War I. Detmers
had gone to a lot of trouble camouflaging his deadly raider, but
once they got close enough they would see straight through his
disguise, realise it was a German raider pretending to be a Dutch
HMAS Sydney was normally
a formidable opponent, as
she proved at the Battle of
Cape Spada in July 1940, off
Crete in the Mediterranean,
when she played a leading
role in sinking the Italian
cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni.
Painting by F. Norton.
245
trader and blow him out of the water for sinking so many Allied
ships. Still, he could only try.
He quickly tried to hide by positioning his ship in front of the
bright sun setting in the west, hoping it would blind anyone on the
cruiser trying to identify him. When the fast-approaching Sydney
signalled, demanding his ships name, he hoisted old-fashioned flags
rather than using the signal light, deliberately making mistakes with
his false name, Straat Malakka, to make the Australians think he
was stupid.
He also sent a distress wireless message claiming he was being
attacked by a German raider to make the Australians think he was
just a frightened innocent, and ordered the deck crew to hide so he
would look like a one-man band. So far so good. In fact the cruiser
had started to launch a reconnaissance plane that would have blown
his cover, but the aircraft had just been put back in its hangar; nor
had the Australians demanded that Detmers stop and be searched.
Australian navy personnel in white caps were walking calmly around
Sydneys deck as if they were on a Sunday stroll. Sighing with relief,
the German captain could not believe his luck.
Then the cruiser was alongside and staring straight at him from
900 metres with its massive guns trained on his ship at point blank
range. Not only that, the Australians then demanded the secret
password known by all Allied ships. If Detmers did not answer
within seconds, those guns would open fire!
What the hell could he do? There could be no flighthed
have to fight. He did not want to disobey the Fuhrers orders, but
this was a dream come true. He had to get in first. It was kill or
be killed. With his heart in his mouth he pulled down the Dutch
flag, hoisted the dreaded Nazi battle flag and gave the orders:
Entarnen! Feur Frei!
The battle
It was 19 November 1941 out in the Indian Ocean about 240
kilometres south-west of Carnarvon, Western Australia, and by
246
giving the order, De-camouflage! Free fire!, Detmers had started
the worst naval battle in Australian history.
His ship might have been slower and smaller than the mighty
HMAS Sydney, but he was more deceitful and had pulled off one
of the greatest surprise attacks in history. It took his well-trained
men only a few seconds to remove the screens concealing the real
profile of his raider, the false deck railings and covers hiding the
guns and torpedo tubes. Seconds later the Germans opened fire
at the cruisers port side, hitting the bulls-eye with a shell from a
3.7-centimetre Pak anti-tank gun that Detmers had fitted when no
extra anti-aircraft weapons were available.
This was the blow to the eye of Goliath that would cripple the
giant. To make sure, Detmers men riddled the bridge with their
2-centimetre C/30 anti-aircraft machine guns. Then to finish off
any crew that might still, by some miracle, be standing, Detmers
murderers shot off a salvo of 15-centimetre shells that slammed into
the remaining wreckage of the bridge, smashing it completely. All
the men who had been strolling about so casually before would, by
now, have been blown to pieces.
Less than twenty seconds after Detmers gave the order, the
Sydneys captain, Joseph Burnett, and his key officers had certainly
been killed. The bridge was totally destroyed and the devious German
raider had more or less won the battle he had been forbidden to
fight. To make sure, he continued firing his 15-centimetre guns,
hitting the Australian flagship time after time, destroying the big
guns forward and in the centre near the wrecked bridge. The
ruthless Detmers destroyed the control tower, the engine room
and the aircraft just aft of the bridge, which exploded in a ball of
flames that engulfed the unfortunate aircrew and sailors nearby.
What happened next on HMAS Sydney was little short of a
miracleespecially as the main guns had been put out of action.
Somebody, captain or no captain, began firing back at the raider
from the remaining aft gun turrets.
Even more miraculously, they scored a direct hit that would
finish off the Kormoran.
247
The first couple of shots from the battered Australian cruiser
had missed, but then the gunners had more luck. Warriors like to
take an assailant with them if they are to be killed anywayand
now, against all odds, HMAS Sydney had done that.
Sydneys aft gunner or gunners, who must have been among
the few remaining able-bodied crew, fired a 6-inch shell that hit
Kormorans main funnel, with its oil pre-heating line, sending
flaming oil into the engine room below, where it burst into flames
and crippled the engines. The never-say-die souls on the doomed
Australian cruiser got off more salvos that penetrated the Kormorans
hull, disabling the generators and destroying the fire extinguishing
system. These were the shells that stopped the Kormoran from
getting away from the scene of the crime.
The Australian gunnersunsung heroes if ever there were
unsung heroes and also unknown to us nowgot their shots away
The sinking of HMAS
Sydney with the loss of all
645 hands on board was
the worst naval disaster
in Australian history and
a huge blow to public
morale as the ship and
its popular crew were
the pride and joy of the
Australian fleet. She is seen
here on peacetime fleet
manoeuvres. Fairfax Photos.
248
just in time, because Detmers had fired off a torpedo that hit
the bow and blew a hole in the port side of the doomed cruiser.
Immediately water began pouring into the badly wounded ship
and its bow began to sink. The cruiser would never recover, yet
the battle had started only two minutes earlier.
Even as the crippled cruiser drifted off to the south, unable to
steer, the German gunners kept up their relentless fire, twisting
the knife in the dying victim as she was sinking. They fired
into the cruisers undamaged starboard hull as it now became
exposed to the Kormoran. The Germans continued to fire at
the disappearing cruiser, salvo after salvo hitting their target.
Now HMAS Sydney really was finished, drifting south in flames
towards a darkening horizon, sinking deeper and deeper every
minute. It was about 5.50 p.m. and Sydney was bound for a
watery grave, littered with 645 dead and dying Australian crew;
the nations worst naval loss.
Things werent much better for Detmers,
because Kormoran was on fire and belching
smoke. He had hundreds of mines below
decks that could explode at any moment,
his engines were wrecked, he was a target
for Allied warships in the middle of a hostile
ocean, many of his crew were wounded and
the equipment for lowering the lifeboats was
broken.
Before it got too dark he called his
officers together on the bridge. They would
abandon ship immediately. As night fell and
the weather deteriorated, the Germans raced
around lifting the surviving lifeboats over the
rail and into the sea. Hopefully crew could get
on board and row or sail to Australia.
Before leaving Kormoran, Detmerswho,
like all captains, wanted to be last to leave his
shipordered scuttling charges to be laid,
giving himself twenty minutes to get away
As the captain of the
disguised German cruiser
Kormoran, Theodor
Detmers proved far too
smart for HMAS Sydneys
Captain Joseph Burnett,
luring the unsuspecting
Australian to come along
side before opening fire
with a devastating series
of salvoes that crippled
the Australian ship. AWM
249
from the shattered raider before she blew up. The only other lights
he could see from the deck that night were those of the doomed
HMAS Sydney, still ablaze and about to disappear over the horizon.
Then, just after midnight, the captain of the German raider
rowed clear of the Kormoran. At 12.35 a.m. on 20 November he
turned back to see Kormoran explode, lighting up the blackness
all around before the wreckage sank to its watery grave. Dead in
the water. A victorious old battleship, that could be proud of its
sterling performance against such great odds but now sacrificed
for the greater cause.
Australia declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939 to support
Britains declaration of war after Germany invaded Poland. Australia
mobilised all three arms of the defence forces, army, air force and
navy. This HMAS Sydney, the RANs second of the name, had a
proud history.
Coincidentally, the first HMAS Sydney in World War I
confronted another German raider, the Emden, soon after the
outbreak of war. The Emden was sunk off the Cocos Islands in
1914, not that far from where the World War II HMAS Sydney
was sunk by Kormoran. There are some more striking similarities,
because in 1914 the deadly German raider lured the Australian
ship into its more limited range. The first Sydneys captain made
the mistake of sailing too close before opening fire and once again
the Germans got in firstbut where the Australians won then,
they were defeated in World War II.
Well before the battle with Kormoran, Sydney had chalked up an
illustrious career in different waters, including the Mediterranean,
where it had defeated the Italian cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni. Its
then skipper, Captain J.A. Collins, and his crew were decorated.
The captain by the time she met Kormoran was Captain Joseph
Burnett, 42, who had served in World War I on HMAS Australia,
then on HMAS Adelaide and later as lieutenant commander on
HMAS Canberra.
250
But he had never commanded a ship. When World War II
broke out he was ordered to set up Naval Auxiliary Patrols,
which guarded harbour entrances. Then, in May 1941, he got his
first commandHMAS Sydney. In November 1941 Sydney was
ordered to escort the troopship Zealandia to the Sunda Strait.
After this Burnett was on his way back to Fremantle and was at
a point off the coast between Carnarvon and Geraldton when he
sighted what appeared to be a merchant ship about 20 kilometres
(11 nautical miles) away and sailed over to investigate it. It claimed
to be the Dutch freighter Straat Malakka and Burnett seemed to
believe that, at least until that dreadful moment when Kormoran
opened fire.
After the battle the stricken HMAS Sydney limped south for
some way before it sank with all surviving hands. They could not
escape because the Germans had destroyed all the lifeboats, and
crew who jumped into the water wearing life vests could not have
survived for long in remote waters where there were also sharks.
The body of one sailor, who is believed to have escaped on a
Carley float with a shrapnel wound in the head, was washed up
on Christmas Island four days later where the unsuspecting locals
buried him.
Kormorans captain was told by his commander as he left
Germany: The world is your oyster, go where you like, Arctic or
Antarctic, but get results.
Detmers sank eleven ships before HMAS Sydney and was
decorated with the Iron Cross, later upgraded to a Knights Cross.
He received it after the war because, along with the other survivors
who made it by boat to the beaches of Western Australiaa total
of 318 out of 393 crewhe was put into a POW camp for the
rest of the war.
But it was a great achievement sinking the Sydney and Detmers
deserved his decorations. He won the battle because he had the nerve
to lure HMAS Sydney into his trap until it was close enough for
him to fire off the first deadly shots. His gunners and crew were also
first-class marksmen and ruthlessly determined, murderous killers.
The world is your
oyster, go where
you like, Arctic or
Antarctic, but get
results.
251
In the end it was the human factor: Detmers deceit defeated
Burnetts trust, Detmers cunning defeated Burnetts naivety and
Detmers surprise caught Burnett totally unawares. The Germans
were good at warfare. And they sure got revenge for the Emden.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because the aft gunners on HMAS
Sydney, possibly even wounded at the time, sank the Kormoran
against almost impossible odds. Their ship was on fire, their captain
and probably all other officers dead, communications were wrecked,
the steering was faulty and they were under constant fire on a hot
and burning ship, yet they scored direct hits and took this fierce
enemy ship down with them. It was an unbelievable recovery by
these unknown aft gunners from a shock attack at point-blank range.
We can now see the damage they inflicted on Kormoran in the
images of the wreck captured by shipwreck hunter David Mearns
when he found it in 2008, so they really were unsung heroes and
did not die in vain.
It was also a great battle because of the great loss of life: 645
Australian servicemen. This was the greatest naval loss in Australian
history, and the worst all-hands loss of the Allies in World War II.
The Germans also saw it as a great battle because, despite orders
against such actions, their slower and smaller raider beat the faster,
larger, state-of-the-art Australian warship HMAS Sydney for the
price of 79 German seamen.
Postscript
If only Captain Joseph Burnett had learnt from the mistakes of
Captain Glossop when HMAS Sydney I had sailed too close to the
German raider Emden, history may not have repeated itself. But it
was a shame that the RAN selected a World War II captain with
no experience of battle.
Nobody knew what had happened to the Sydney. The only
witnesses to her last moments were Detmers and his surviving
crewwhich is why this account of the battle has been written from
252
the German point of view. They told their rescuers what happened,
but not many people wanted to believe them.
The prime minister at the time, John Curtin, certainly did not
know and all he could tell the nation was that he had ordered an
extensive search by air and sea. While regretting the loss of the
Sydney and her gallant complement, Curtin said, the people of
Australia will be proud that she and they upheld the traditions of
the Royal Australian Navy and completed her glorious career in
successful action against the enemy.
For 66 years Australia was ignorant of the fate of HMAS Sydney
and its 645 crew. It was not until in 2008 that the worlds top
shipwreck hunter David Mearns found Kormoran and Sydney.
A master detective who had studied all the German records and
believed Detmers was telling the truth, he set out from the Western
Australian coast and found both ships within days before telling
his story in the TV special The Search for the Sydney and then in
his book of the same name.
Battle stats
Winner: German Raider Kormoran, Captain Theodor Detmers
Loser: HMAS Sydney, Captain Joseph Burnett
Toll: HMAS Sydney, all 645 officers and crew died at sea; Kormoran, 79
officers and crew died at sea
Result: The German raider Kormoran destroyed a key RAN warship, under-
mining the navys war effort
253
The fall of Singapore,
815 February 1942
THE WORST DEFEAT IN
BRITISH HISTORY
There must at this stage be no thought of saving the troops
or sparing the population. The battle must be fought to the
bitter end at all costs. The 18th Division has a chance to
make its name in history. Commanders and senior officers
should die with their troops. The honour of the British
Empire and of the British Army is at stake. Irely on you
toshow no mercy to weakness in any form.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, cable sent to General Wavell,
10February 1942
H
aving successfully held back the Japanese invaders attacking
his Australian 27th Brigade on the north-western shores of
Singapore Island, Brigadier Duncan Maxwell was thrown off-guard
by the sudden order from his British commander, Lieutenant
General Arthur Percival, to retreat.
After all, his men were protecting the only causeway between
the island and the mainland. British defenders had sabotaged the
causeway, but if the Japanese crossed the water and landed on the
island they could repair the vital bridge. Then thousands of troops
and armed vehicles would flood into Singapore.
But having effectively pulled up the drawbridge over the moat,
Maxwell had been defending it tooth and nail. His men had inflicted
heavy casualties on the Japanese. Unlike their mates in the 22nd
254
Australian Brigade, which was being pushed back at Sarimbun
on the west of the island, Maxwells infantry, field artillery and
machine gunners were not budging. He reckoned he could hold on,
even though he knew he could not expect reinforcements for his
embattled brigadebecause even after the invasion started, Percival
still believed the main attack would come by sea, from the east.
Reinforcements or no reinforcements, Maxwells men had been
slaughtering the Japanese trying to cross the straits and land at the
village of Kranji near the causeway. In fact, the Japanese had been
so taken aback by the resistance of Maxwells 27th Brigade that
they hastily considered aborting their invasion of Singapore. Every
second counted. If Maxwells men could stop the enemy hereor
sufficiently delay the invasionthe civilian population could escape
on waiting ships and British troops would have time to dig in and
defend the city.
But if Maxwell understood it correctly, Percival had just ordered
him to retreat. It meant throwing open the door to the waiting
Japanese who would cross the straits, repair the causeway in minutes
and pour into Singapore in their thousands. But orders were orders.
The battle
It was February 1942 and this was the battle for Singapore. British
and Allied forces, including the Australian 8th Division under
Major General Gordon Bennett, were trying to stop the Japanese
advancing down the Malay Peninsula and capturing Britains famous
Fortress Singapore.
The British had more than 100,000 troops of different nations
at their disposal, including two brigadesthe 22nd and 27thof
Bennetts 8th Division. Both brigades were placed at the front line
to take the brunt of the attack.
The Japanese, who had been bombing Singapore on and off since
they wrecked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, blitzed the island on
8 February the following year, dispatching remaining Allied aircraft
and destroying much of the stronghold ahead of their invasion.
255
Percival, commander of British
forces at Singapore, had good reason
to be worried, because apart from
destroying the US Pacific fleet at Pearl
Harbor, the Japanese had invaded Hong
Kong and the Philippines and were
landing forces in southern Thailand
and northern Malaya. They seemed
unstoppableand they were.
Japans Twenty-Fifth Army, under
Lieutenant General Tomoyuki Yama-
shita, came by night, directing artillery
and then infantry at the weakest point
in the Johor coastal defence: the west,
Sarimbun, defended by Brigadier Harold
Taylors 22nd Brigade; and north-west,
Kranji, defended by Maxwells 27th
Brigadethe opposite end of the
island to where Percival claimed they
would land.
8 February
The Japanese attacked Sarimbun beach at 8.30 p.m., and Taylors
machine gunners opened fire on vessels carrying a first wave of 4000
troops towards Singapore Island. The Japanese tried to land on the
beach but the Australians repelled them until, by increasing their
artillery fire and sheer weight of numbers, the Japanese created a
toehold. They exploited gaps in the thinly spread Allied lines by
using rivers and creeks, and by midnight the 22nd Brigade was
forced to start a fighting retreat.
The Japanese sent more troops over during the night. Towards
dawn on 9 February elements of the 22nd Brigade were overrun or
surrounded and the 2/18th Australian Infantry Battalion reported
losing more than half its soldiers.
Once the Japanese had
captured the Malay
Peninsula it was only a
matter of time before
they overran the island
of Singapore, a place that
British leaders, including
Prime Minister Winston
Churchill, claimed would
never fall. AWM
256
They also reported 80 exploding shells in their position within
one minute, with a veteran of the World War I Battle of Pozires
claiming it was worse than the most intense bombardments of the
Germans in 1916.
9 February
The 27th Brigade believed it had more of a chance. Defending
the shoreline between the Kranji River and the JohorSingapore
Causeway, this brigade and one irregular company were the last
hope against the Japanese now that Taylors 22nd Brigade was being
pushed back on the western tip. All hopes were pinned on Maxwell.
Trying to smash through the second Australian defensive line as
they had the first, the Japanese attacked across the straits towards
Kranji from the mainland at 10 p.m. on 9 February. Maxwells 27th
Brigade was waiting for them.
They fired their mortars and machine guns relentlessly, with
the 2/4th Machine Gun Battalion inflicting heavy casualties. The
Australians also set fire to oil that they sluiced into the water,
stopping the Japanese from getting across the water effectively
enough to establish a beachhead.
As dawn approached on 10 Februarya dawn that could only
help the Australiansthe Japanese began to panic and discussed
aborting the operation. If there was ever a time for the Australians
to dig in, this was it, especially as the Japanese had attacked in the
south-west, forcing Bennett to form a fall-back defence known as
the Jurong Line, around Bulim, east of Tengah Airfield and north
of Jurong.
10 February
Maxwell, convinced Percival wanted him to fall back to the secondary
line even though he was holding, tried to phone Taylor to check
the wisdom of the order, or if the Japanese looked like encircling
them. But the phones were dead, so Maxwell remained in the dark,
saddled with an order to retreat that he was reluctant to execute.
257
Against his better judgement,
Max well ordered his troops to fall back.
As he predicted, once his line of last
defence withdrew from the seafront
the Japanese were across the water in
minutes, started repairing the causeway
in the absence of any Allied counterat-
tack, and began landing armoured units
on the island. Japanese troops took
control of Kranji village, which the 27th
had protected so effectively.
As Maxwell pulled his men back
towards the city of Singapore, where
most of the British troops were defending
the civilians and better communications
were re-established, he realised to his
horror he had made a terrible mistake.
He had misunderstood Percivals secret orders to withdraw to
the last defence line around the city only if necessary. Assuming the
22nd Brigade had been forced back already, Maxwell thought this
was an order for him to withdraw to the line and poor communica-
tions had left him unable to check the orders with Taylor. It was
a disaster, because his Australian commander, Bennett, had earlier
ordered him to stay in position at Kranji.
Now the Japanese were getting across the causeway and by water
because both Australian brigades had retreated! They poured in
unmolested, using anything they could lay their hands onincluding
fishing boats that Percival had decided against destroying to avoid
alienating the local population.
All for nothing. The enemy would soon breach the JurongKranji
defence line as they thrust south towards the heart of Singapore City.
From then on it was an escalating retreat. Enemy forces poured
across the causeway repaired by Japanese engineers, and Imperial
Guards towed tanks fitted with flotation equipment across the
strait, landing armoured units that advanced rapidly south along
Woodlands Road. They soon outflanked the 22nd Brigade on the
As his troops appeared to
be repelling at least part
of the Japanese landing on
Singapore Island, Australias
Brigadier Duncan Maxwell,
27th Brigade, was surprised
when he was ordered by his
British commanding officer
to withdraw. As Maxwell
predicted, this allowed
the Japanese to invade
the island faster. AWM
258
Jurong Line, as well as bypassing the 11th Indian Division at the
naval base. Meanwhile, retreating British forces raced to defend the
city centre before the Japanese arrived.
This was when British Prime Minister Winston Churchill cabled
General Sir Archibald Wavell, head of the American-British-Dutch-
Australian (ABDA) Command and Percivals commander, saying:
The defenders must greatly outnumber Japanese forces that have
crossed the straits, and in a well-contested battle they should destroy
them. There must at this stage be no thought of saving the troops
or sparing the population. The battle must be fought to the bitter
end at all costs . . . Commanders and senior officers should die with
their troops. The honour of the British Empire and of the British
Army is at stake. I rely on you to show no mercy to weakness in
any form . . . the whole reputation of our country and our race is
involved. It is expected that every unit will be brought into close
contact with the enemy and fight it out.
So Wavell told Percival that the ground forces were to fight to the
end, and that there should not be a general surrender in Singapore.
But now that Maxwells ferocious 27th Brigade had retreated,
along with the 22nd, nobody was left to stem the tide of the Japanese
advance, even if Churchill had demanded the battle must be fought
to the bitter end at all costs. Nor had Maxwell or Taylor obeyed
Churchills demand that commanders and senior officers should
die with their troops.
Maxwell, Taylor and others now showed the weakness Churchill
had forbidden. Maxwell had done his duty by Churchill, who
expected that every unit will be brought into close contact with
the enemy and fight it out, but he had been told to retreat and that
was the last time the Australianslet alone the Britishlooked
like saving the island.
On 11 February Yamashita called on Percival to give up this
meaningless and desperate resistance. Percival refused, then moved
his Combined Operations Headquarters in Sime Road as the
259
Japanese increased their bombardment and their forces started to
sweep through the lines.
The Australians could no longer help much as the fighting
strength of the 22nd Brigade, which had borne the brunt of the
Japanese attacks, had been reduced to a few hundred men. The
Japanese captured Bukit Timah, including most of the Allied
ammunition, plus control of the main water supplies and other
vital installations.
General Wavell left Singapore for Java early on 11 February and
sent a worrying cable to the increasingly angry Churchill:
Battle for Singapore is not going well . . . I ordered Percival to stage
counter-attack with all troops possible . . . Morale of some troops
is not good . . . troubles are lack of sufficient training . . . and an
inferior complex which bold Japanese tactics and their command
of the air have caused. Trying to produce more offensive spirit and
optimistic outlook . . . I have given the most categorical orders that
there is to be no thought of surrender and that all troops are to
continue fighting to the end.
Australias World War II
soldiers had developed
a great reputation after
their skilled fighting in
North Africa, but they
proved no match for the
fanatical Japanese soldiers
attacking Singapore. SLV
260
12 February
The Japanese tried to advance with tanks further south from Bukit
Timah, but British forces turned them back at least for a while.
Japanese Imperial Guards captured the reservoirs and Nee Soon
village, sending defending troops and civilians flooding towards
the city. On the same night, British forces in the east of the island
had begun to withdraw. As a result of Churchill and Wavells orders
not to surrender, Percival set up a 40-kilometre defensive perimeter
around the city as a last defence.

Allied units of other nationalities did their bit, stopping the
Japanese for two days at the Battle of Pasir Panjang and defending
Bukit Chandu, an area that included a major Allied ammunition
store.
Now British forces had to withdraw to a steadily diminishing
area in the south-east of the island.
13 February
Buoyed by the success of his supporting units slowing the enemy
advance, Percival considered mounting a counterattack from behind
the perimeter but realised he did not have the resources.
The Japanese 5th Division continued its advance and reached
Adam and Farrer roads to capture the Sime Road Camp, Percivals
old HQ. Yamashita moved his HQ forward to the bomb-damaged
Ford Factory in Bukit Timah, nearly two-thirds of the way across
the island.
Heading south, the Japanese 18th Division advanced into Pasir
Panjang, where British supporting units made up of Malays bravely
fought and lost the last major battle at Bukit Chandu.
It was a losing battle. Australians had achieved the only Allied
successes of the campaign at Gemas, Bakri, Jemaluang and Muar
River. Now, with the Allies still losing ground, senior officers advised
Percival to surrender in the interests of minimising civilian casualties.
Percival refused again, perhaps with Churchill and Wavells warnings
uppermost in his mind.
261
14 February
Although remaining Allied units fought on, it was hopeless. Civilian
casualties mounted as a million people crowded into the area
still held by the Allies, and bombing and artillery fire intensified.
Civilian authorities began to fear that the water supply would
give out.
Percival should have surrendered then and there because
the Japanese had already reached the civilian districts and were
approaching the Alexandra Barracks Hospital. Nobody could stop
the bloodthirsty soldiers, not even a British lieutenant with a
white flag who asked the Japanese not to enter the hospitalhe
was bayoneted and killed. Japanese troops then killed the doctors,
nursing staff and patients, including those undergoing surgery.
They rounded up 200 male staff members and patients, many of
them walking wounded, marched them 400 metres to an industrial
area, bayoneting anyone who fell. They imprisoned the survivors
overnight without water, then bayoneted them the next morning.
15 February
The Japanese broke through the final British defences around the
city in the morning and entered the city, demanding that Percival
and his forces surrender. He had little choice, as the remaining water
supplies for the million people huddling in the city were destroyed,
and the Allies were running out of food and ammunition, especially
for the anti-aircraft guns.
After Percival held a conference at Fort Canning with his senior
commanders (where they discounted the chances of an immediate
counterattack to regain the reservoirs and the military food depots
at Bukit Timah), he decided to surrender.
Percival met Yamashita, who laid down the terms of surrender
starting by hoisting the Japanese Rising Sun flag over the tallest
building in Singapore.
Other terms included the unconditional surrender of all military
forces; hostilities to cease at 8.30 that evening; all troops to remain
Japanese troops
then killed the
doctors, nursing
staff and patients,
including those
undergoing
surgery.
262
in position until further orders; all weapons, military equipment,
ships, planes and secret documents to be handed over intact; during
the temporary withdrawal of all armed forces in Singapore, a force of
1000 British armed men to take over until relieved by the Japanese.
The fall of Singapore was one of the biggest military events in British
and Australian history. The unthinkable happened. An Asian race
had defeated the mighty British Empire on which the sun never
set. It was a bigger shock to the West than the first Asian defeat of
a European power in the Russo-Japanese war, when Japan defeated
the Russians in 1905.
Britains unconditional
surrender to the Japanese
in Singapore, signed here
by Lieutenant General
Arthur Percival, front right,
marked a turning point in
the war. It was a big blow
to the morale of the British
and meant that they could
no longer help defend
Australia, where a Japanese
invasion was believed to
be imminent. AWM
263
Singapore was supposed to have been an impregnable fortress
and stood as a potent symbol of British power in South-East Asia
since the construction of the naval base in the 1920s.
The Singapore Governor, Shenton Thomas, who discussed the
approach of the Japanese with Percival, even said: Well, Isuppose
youll shove the little men off ? But they could not, because the
British believed any attempt to invade Singapore would come from
the sea. So they fortified the areas from where the little men were
supposed to come.
It resulted in the fall of Singapore to the Japanese, and the
largest surrender of British-led military personnel in history. About
80,000 British, Australian and Indian troops became prisoners of
war, joining 50,000 taken by the Japanese in the Malayan Campaign.
Churchill called the ignominious fall of Singapore the worst
disaster and largest capitulation in British history.
Australian governments accepted the strategy of imperial
defence as the lynchpin of national defence policy. The incred-
ible speed and apparent ease of the Japanese victory was both
breathtaking and alarming for Britain and its allies, including
Australia. Many thought it just a matter of time before the Japanese
reached Australia.
In Singapore, the odds were too great for the Allies, despite
Churchills expectations. Percival only had the British 18th Division,
two brigades of the Australian 8th Division under Bennett and
an Indian corps of two divisions to oppose the three divisions the
Japanese deployed.
But the worst mistake was Percivals decision not to defend
the islands north-western approaches across the Straits of Johor
properly, as this was the most vulnerable part of the island. Percival
deployed Bennetts two reduced brigades, which were spread so
thinly and over too wide a front that they were unable to halt the
Japanese amphibious landings.
Unfortunately Percival, despite the advice of military experts
warning that the Japanese would come from the mainland, clung
to the belief that the main attack would come by sea.
264
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because the 22nd and 27th Brigades
bore the brunt and fought bravely against the Japanese attack.
Taylors men of the 22nd repelled the invasion at Sarimbun for as
long as humanly possible and Maxwells 27th stopped the invasion
in its tracks.
It was also a great battle because of the significance of the fall
of Singapore itself, in which 1789 Australian were killed in action
and 14,972 were taken prisoner, of whom 1306 were wounded.
Postscript
Although an angry Winston Churchill later described the fall of
Singapore as the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British
history, he failed to supply the ships and fighter planes he had
promised to defend the fortress. Britain had promised between
350 and 550 aircraft to defend Singapore from the air, a pledge
that was never met.
The losses did not stop there, because the prisoners of war
especially those of the Australian 8th Divisionthen had to fight
another battle in Changi POW camp where they struggled tosurvive.
Thousands died in the service of the Japanese working on the
BurmaThailand death railway.
Thousands of others were taken on prisoner transports known
as hell ships to other parts of Asia, including Japan, to be used as
forced labour. One of the worst was the Sandakan airfield in North
Borneo. Here, later in the war, the Sandakan Death March took
place, in which thousands of prisoners, including many Australians,
were marched till they died.
There were many other terrible consequences of the defeat,
including the sinking of the Vyner Brookea ship carrying evacuees
from the cityand the Banka Island massacre, in which survivors
of the Vyner Brooke were killed in cold blood.
Bennett, who had distinguished himself at Gallipoli in World
War I, was criticised along with some of his staff officers for escaping
before the Japanese finally captured Singapore, while Percival went
to prison.
Winston Churchill
later described the
fall of Singapore as
the worst disaster
and largest capitu-
lation in British
history.
265
Handing over command of the 8th Division, Bennett comman-
deered a small boat and eventually made his way back to Australia.
When the war ended and Percival was released from Japanese
captivity, he accused Bennett of relinquishing his command without
permission. Australias top-ranking officer, General Sir Thomas
Blamey, convened a court of enquiry that found Bennett was not
justified in handing over his command or in leaving Singapore.
Veterans of the 8th Division, who were generally loyal to Bennett,
protested against the finding. In November 1945 Prime Minister
Ben Chifley appointed a Royal Commission, which concluded that
Bennett had disobeyed Percivals order to surrender.
British scholars have blamed Australian forces for letting the
Japanese onto the island, but they fought very hard, had the most
successand, while representing only 13 per cent of Allied forces,
suffered 73 of the garrisons death toll from the battle.
But it was a great victory for Japan. Japanese newspapers trium-
phantly declared the capture of Singapore would win the war for
Japan. They renamed it Syonan-to (Light-of-the-South Island).
After the Japanese surrender in August 1945, Yamashita was
tried by a US military commission for war crimes that had been
committed by Japanese personnel in the Philippines, but not for
crimes committed by his troops in Malaya or Singapore. He was
convicted and hanged in the Philippines on 23 February 1946.
Battle stats
Winners: Japanese forces led by Lieutenant General Tomoyuki Yamashita
Losers: British forces led by Lieutenant General Arthur Percival, including
Australias 8th Division (22nd and 27th Brigades)
Toll: 1789 Australians killed in action; 14,972 taken prisoner, including 1306
wounded, as part of 130,000 British forces captured as prisoners of war
Result: Britain suffered her biggest historical defeat as Japan, an Asian
nation, captured the British Empires invincible Fortress Singapore, which
gave the Japanese a strategically valuable base for waging their war
266
Battle for Darwin,
19February 1942
AUSTRALIAS PEARL
HARBOR
The job to be done seemed hardly worthy of the Nagumo
Force. The harbour, it is true, was crowded with all kinds
of ships, but a single pier and a few waterfront buildings
appeared to be the only port installations. The airfield on
the outskirts of the town, though fairly large, had no more
than two or three small hangars, and in all there were only
twenty-odd planes of various types scattered about the field.
Anti-aircraft fire was intense but largely ineffectual, and we
quickly accomplished our objectives.
Mitsuo Fuchida, commander of the Japanese warplanes attacking Darwin,
1942
S
eeing to his horror a Japanese Zero warplane attacking his
patrol in the skies over Darwin, Lieutenant Robert Oestreicher
made a quick decision. His was now the last plane flying. The
Japanese Zero that arrived out of nowhere had shot down Lieutenant
Jack Peres, sending his Kittyhawk plunging to the ocean in flames,
then shot down Lieutenant Elton Perry, sending his Kittyhawk
spiralling straight down in a ball of flames. Then it had belted the
hell out of Lieutenant Max Wiecks Kittyhawk, forcing him to bale
out, and shot up Lieutenant William Walkers aircraft so badly that
the wounded Walker had to crash-land his damaged Kittyhawk at
Darwin airport, where it was strafed and burnt.
267
The Japanese were enjoying a strike rate like Pearl Harbor a
couple of months earlier.
Rather than get the hell out of this aerial massacre, Oestreicher
decided to fight back. It was just pure luck that he and his mates
had been airborne when the enemy planes arrived, and now he
might be the last Allied plane left in the air. The aerial defence of
Darwin could depend on him. To hell with his own survival.
Jettisoning his drop tank for speed, he skilfully manoeuvred his
Kittyhawk to a commanding height above Darwin when he saw
the formation of enemy bombers. Oestreicher positioned himself
then dived at a D3A Val dive bomber, firing as he approached.
Yes! Oestreicher exclaimed to himself, got ya, a direct hit. His
accurate fire had damaged the Japanese plane so badly it crashed
into the ocean.
Without wasting a second the lieutenant lined up another Val
D3A in his sights. Again he attacked and again Oestreicher hit a
second of the enemy planes. He was not sure how badly he had
damaged the second plane, but he quickly turned his attention to
a third while the going was good.
Then just as he began firing, he felt a violent shock and the
whole of his Kittyhawk shuddered uncontrollably. Oestreichers
luck had run out. High above Darwin in the enemy-infested skies
his little Kittyhawk had been hit, and badly.
The battle
It was 19 February 1942 and this was the battle for Darwin, a
vital port for the Americans as well as the Australians in the war
against the Japanese. Oestreichers defiant attempt to stop a fleet
of Japanese planes arriving to bomb Darwin was of course an
impossible task, but like the biblical story of David and Goliath
the lone Lieutenant did bag at least one enemy aircraft from this
massive force, if not two.
His plane was badly damaged, forcing him to land his P40E
Kittyhawk at Darwin airportwhich he did under continuing
enemy attack, and miraculously walked away.
High above Darwin
in the enemy-
infested skies his
little Kittyhawk
had been hit, and
badly.
268
Although the attack had been a surprise to Oestreicher, coast-
watchers on the ground had spotted the first wave from 9.15 a.m.
onwards. John Gribble on Melville Island and Father John McGrath,
a Catholic priest conducting missionary work on Bathurst Island,
had sent a message: An unusually large air formation bearing down
on us from the northwest. Darwin received both warnings at least
twice by radio, no later than 9:37 a.m. But RAAF commanders
dismissed them because they believed the planes were just Lieu-
tenant Oestreicher and his flight of Kittyhawks headed for Timor.
No action was taken, so just like at Pearl Harbor the warning had
been ignored.
So the raid was not confirmed until Oestreicher and his fellow
pilots were attacked. The five Kittyhawks were not defending
Darwin, they were part of a flight of ten aircraft en route from
Darwin to Timor that just happened to be in the air at the time. His
five fellow pilots on the ground refuelling were all unable to help
him fight back. One tried to take off but crashed on the runway;
two others were quickly shot down; and the remaining two were
shot down in the combat that followed. This was not surprising,
as none of the pilots apart from Oestreicher had more than twenty
hours flight time in the P40E Kittyhawk.
Warning or no warning, nobody could have stopped the Japanese
attack, because there were 188 aircraft in the first wave alone. The
When they attacked
Darwin, the Japanese
bombers targeted military
sites like the airport,
destroying as many aircraft
as they could in order to
cripple Allied air power
and undermine future
attacks against their
expanding bases in Asia.
269
deadly fleet included 36 A6M Zero fighter aircraft, 71 D3A Val
dive bombers and 81 B5N Kate high-level bombers. Not only
that, but they would also be followed within 80 minutes by 54
land-based bombers.
The Japanese fleet was led by the commander responsible for
the successful surprise attack on Pearl Harbor ten weeks earlier,
Mitsuo Fuchida. The first wave had been launched from four
aircraft carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navys Carrier Division 1
(Akagi and Kaga) and Carrier Division 2 (Hiryu and Soryu), all of
which were at least 350 kilometres to the north-west in the Arafura
Sea near Timor, where the operation was commanded by no less
than Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo. The 54 land-based bombers
would also take off from too far away to be stopped at source, from
Kendari in the Celebes (Sulawesi) and also Ambon.
Having got past Oestreicher and the Kittyhawks, the Japanese
bombers started attacking Darwin just after the air raid alarm
went off at 9.58 a.m. Targeting the vital harbour, they began by
strafing HMAS Gunbar, which was sailing out at the time. Then
the heavy bombers pattern-bombed the harbour while dive bombers
escorted by Zero fighters attacked shipping, inflicting great damage.
Witnesses reported about twenty-seven planes bombing the harbour
initially, followed by another 50 that targeted shipping. Others
claimed there were as many as 81 Kate bombers that attacked the
harbour and its shipping.
As it happened, 70 unlucky waterside workers had been unloading
the Neptuna and Barossa on the right-angled extension of the long
pier just before the air-raid alarm. The pier was hit and cut in two,
killing twenty-one workers enjoying a smoko on the jetty at the
land end, while many other labourers were marooned on the sea end.
There were at least 45 ships in the port, including the destroyer
USS Peary. Within minutes Peary had been sunk with the loss of
80 lives. Then it was the turn of the large US transport Meigs, sunk
with two killed. The 6600-tonne Australian motor vessel Neptuna,
formerly a passenger vessel, was hit. Loaded with 200 depth charges,
it blew up with a terrifying blast. The captain, William Michie, and
45 crew were killed. Five merchant ships were sunk.
270
The hospital ship Manunda was hit but survived to play an
important role in caring for the injured. Four people on the Manunda
were killed, including a nurse, Sister Margaret de Mestre. Dozens
of men were blown into the water, only to have to swim through
burning oil. Twenty-two of these men are thought to have died.
Meanwhile, Japanese aircraft attacked the towns military and
civil aerodromes, and the hospital at Berrimah. Without a let-up
they bombed Darwin for forty minutes.
The defenders of Darwin fought back but had limited resources.
Apart from Oestreicher and his Kittyhawks there were not many
aerial defenders available that day.
Key operational RAAF fighter squadrons were in Europe, North
Africa or the Middle East. The only modern fighters at Darwin
were ten USAAF P40E Kittyhawks of the Far East Air Forces 33rd
Pursuit Squadron (Provisional). There were a few lightly armed
or obsolete training (five unserviceable Wirraways) and patrol (six
Hudson) aircraft belonging to the RAAF. There were certainly not
enough fighter planes to tackle the deadly menace from the north.
The 188 Japanese aircraft
that attacked Darwin during
the first raid killed at least
243 people, wounded many
others, sunk a number
of military ships in the
harbour and inflicted great
damage on the town and
its port facilities. NAA
271
Darwin was also poorly covered by anti-aircraft guns, there being
only light automatic weapons and none of 20-millimetre or greater
calibre. Japanese aircraft were targeted by anti-aircraft batteries
(14th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Battery and 2nd Anti-Aircraft Battery)
and there were AA emplacements at Darwin Oval, Fannie Bay and
other strategic locations.
Out on the harbour, as anxious as Oestreicher was to hit back,
Commander A.P. Cousins, skipper of HMAS Katoomba, took the
biggest risk. His ship was stuck in dry dock so he was a sitting duck.
Although reluctant to provoke return fire that could destroy the
vital dry dock itself, he ordered his gunners to fire their high-angle
guns and machine guns at the Japanese bombers, expecting his ship
and the dry dock to be blown to smithereens.
On land, Jack Mulholland was returning fire from one of the
14th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Battery positions. One of the guns he
manned was assigned a 90-degree field of fire over Darwin Harbour.
The dive bombers were attacking the larger ships and fighter
aircraft were strafing smaller vessels. The 14ths guns were too
slow to engage the Japanese aircraft at such short range. The only
strategy they could adopt was to put up a shield of fire above the
ships in the harbour. The shortest recommended fuse setting was
two seconds. The Australians set one and a half seconds to cut the
range of the shell before it exploded.
Eventually a shell exploded near the nose of one of the dive
bombers and the damaged Japanese warplane side-slipped into
the harbour.
There were also many heroic acts as the dead, dying and survivors
were plucked from the water by men in small boats. In the town
people also fought hard to survive. The Post Office was hit and
nine peopled killed, including Postmaster Hurtle Bald, his wife,
Alice, and daughter, Iris, and four women who had remained in
their essential jobs as telephonistsEmily Young, Eileen and Jean
Mullen and Freda Stasinowsky. Their supervisor, Archibald Halls,
and another PMG worker, Arthur Wellington, also died.
The air-raid trench in which workers sought shelter in the Post
Office garden was found to have received a direct hit. Walter Rowling,
272
a telephone technician, later died from injuries sustained in the raid.
Darwin Hospital was also bombed, fortunately with no loss of life.
At Government House, the Administrator of the Northern
Territory, Charles Abbott, his wife Hilda, and members of his staff
sheltered under the house. An Aboriginal woman, Daisy Martin,
one of the Administrators servants, died when a concrete block
fell on her.
By 10.30 a.m. the first raid was over. It had lasted just over half
an hour, a dreadful shock for people who had little or no warning,
but the defenders had shot down at least four attacking planes. For
in spite of Fuchidas arrogant assessment of the anti-aircraft fire as
largely ineffectual, Japanese planes were exceptionally vulnerable
to ground fire and many were hit on their prolonged low-level
strafing runs.
The shocked survivors were just emerging from cover and trying
to assess the damage when, at 11.58 a.m., the attack resumed. The
second raid was by the 54 land-based bombers launched from the
Celebes and Ambon, recently occupied by the Japanese. This time
it was high-altitude bombing and focused on the RAAF base at
Parap, lasting for twenty to twenty-five minutes.
Oestreichers remaining Kittyhawk was destroyed together with
a Liberator, three Beechcraft, three US Navy Catalinas, six RAAF
Hudsons and a Tiger Moth. Surprisingly, given the intensity of the
attack, only seven men were killed, including Wing Commander
Archibald Tindal. The Japanese planes that carried out the raid,
according to witnesses, included twenty-seven Mitsubishi G3M Nell
bombers (which flew from Ambon) and twenty-seven Mitsubishi
G4M Betty bombers (from Kendari, Celebes).
The two raids killed at least 243 people and between 250 and
320 were wounded. The Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour
database shows eighteen deaths of military personnel.
The Japanese destroyed at least eight ships in Darwin Harbour:
the destroyer USS Peary; USAT Meigs, a large US army troop
transport; two Australian passenger ships being used as troop
transports, MV Neptuna and Zealandia; HMAS Mavie, a Royal
Australian Navy patrol boat; SS Mauna Loa, a 5436-tonne US
273
merchant freighter; MV British Motorist, a UK-registered merchant
refuelling oiler; and the Kelat, a 1849-tonne coal storage hulk.
The Japanese destroyed Australian and American aircraft on the
ground. Among others, the Australians lost six Hudsons, with one
Hudson and a Wirraway badly damaged. The Americans lost the
ten Kittyhawks, a B-24 (LB-30) Liberator and three C-45 transport
planes. The US Navy also lost three Catalina PBY flying boats.
The air raids caused chaos in Darwin, with most essential services,
including water and electricity, being badly damaged or destroyed.
The Japanese air raid was the first enemy attack on Australian soil
in the nations history. At the time, Darwins civilian population
numbered less than 2000 (the normal civilian population of about
5000 having been reduced by evacuation). It was a strategically
placed naval port and air base with about 15,000 Allied soldiers
in the area.
There would be other raids, but this was the worst. The Japanese
bombed Darwin 64 times over twenty-one months, but the raids
on 19 February were massive and devastating by comparison.
Flying P40E Kittyhawks,
American pilots like
Lieutenant Robert
Oestreicher defended
Darwin as best they could
against the Japanese
bombers and Zero
fighter planes. Some, like
Lieutenant A.J. Reynolds of
Oklahoma, pictured here,
had a great strike rate
he shot down eight Zeros
and three bombers while
defending Australia. AWM
274
During the war other towns in northern Australia were bombed,
including Townsville, Katherine, Wyndham, Derby, Broome and
Port Hedland.
These raids were a psychological blow to the Australian popula-
tion, coming just weeks after hostilities with Japan had begun. It was
also a significant action in the Pacific campaign of World War II,
and this first raid is often called the Pearl Harbor of Australia.
Although it was a less significant military target, a greater number
of bombs were dropped on Darwin than were used in the attack
on Pearl Harborjust like Hawaii, Darwin was unprepared and
failed to heed early warnings.
But contrary to widespread belief at the time, the attacks were
not a precursor to an invasion. The Japanese were preparing to
invade Timor and wanted to disrupt Darwins potential to act as
a base from which the Allies could launch a counter-offensive. The
Japanese also hoped it would damage Australian morale, but did
not plan to invade Australia.
Darwin may not have seemed well defended, but with the rapid
advance of the Japanese war machine after Pearl Harbor, some
efforts had been made to secure the area. Darwin was the base of
the nations 7th Military District. Larrakeyah Barracks contained
the 23rd Brigade. There were also the two anti-aircraft batteries.
The important RAN base at Darwin included a floating dock. The
RAAF was represented at a base built in 1940, just 8 kilometres
south of Darwin.
Civil defence left much to be desired. By late December most
white and Asian women and children had been evacuated from the
town. Little help, though, seems to have been given to the large
Aboriginal population, which was expected to fend for itself. The
white women who stayed behind were for the most part employed
in essential services such as nursing and telegraphy.
There had been several trial air-raid alarms, but overall defences
were inadequate. Then the tragedy of errors unfolded, starting with
the unheeded warnings.
A radar station at Dripstone Caves outside Darwin was not yet
operational. The newly invented aid, however, was of great help in
But contrary to
widespread belief
at the time, the
attacks were not
a precursor to an
invasion.
275
forestalling subsequent air attacks on Darwin. But those vital early
warnings of Gribble on Melville Island and Father John McGrath
on Bathurst Island, and others, were ignored.
The Allied navies largely abandoned the naval base at Darwin
after the initial 19 February attack, dispersing most of their forces
to Brisbane, Fremantle and other smaller ports. Conversely, Allied
air commanders launched a major build-up in the Darwin area,
building more airfields and deploying many squadrons.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because Australians, with their
American allies, put up a good fight against a superior force. Pilots
like Oestreicher fought well, as did Mulholland and Cousins, who
put up a brave resistance. At least four Japanese aircraft were shot
down in the first raid. One Val crashed in the sea north of East
Point after it was hit by a cone of gunfire from the towns defences.
A Zero was hit in the oil tank by a single .303 rifle round over
Darwin Harbour and crashed on Melville Island; and at least one,
but possibly two, Vals were shot down by Oestreicher.
It was also of great historical significance because it was the first
attack on Australian soil by a foreign enemy. And it was the first
and the worst of 64 raids on Darwin and the first of nearly 100
raids on Australian towns altogether.
Finally there was also a great loss of lifethe largest number of
civilian lives lost in Australia through enemy attack.
Postscript
One of the main heroes of the hour, Oestreicher, was of course
American, helping to confirm the value of the alliance with the
US and Australias dependence on its American ally.
Despite the size of the attacking force, the large number of
fatalities and the damage, Australian newspapers played down the
event. Wartime censorship demanded editors promote good news
and not publish news that might damage morale.
Singapore having fallen to the Japanese only days earlier, the
Australian government initially announced that only fifteen people
276
had been killed and twenty-four wounded. It took many weeks
before the public in the other main cities of Australia became aware
that hundreds had died.
One of the key officials in charge of censorship was, ironically,
Sir Keith Murdoch, whose uncensored report on Gallipoli in World
War I had so damaged morale that it inspired the British government
to evacuate, putting an end to the failed campaign.
The authorities, defence personnel and people did not behave
well after the attack. In the hours following the air raids on
19 February, believing that an invasion was imminent, Darwins
population began to stream southwards. About half Darwins civilian
population fled. The panic in the town was repeated at the RAAF
base, where servicemen deserted their stations in great numbers.
Three days after the attack, 278 servicemen were still missing. The
exodus south towards Adelaide River later became known as The
Adelaide River Stakes.
Many of those fleeing complained about the failure of the early
warning system and the fact that the officials ignored what warnings
were given of the attack.
There was also widespread looting during and after the bombing
raids and incidents of civil disorder. The Australian army had
difficulty stopping its own troops from looting private property
after the bombing and in the ensuing chaos. After 22 February
Darwin came under military control.
There was also great disagreement about the number of people
killed, with estimates ranging from a couple of hundred to more than
1000. Asoldier based in Darwin at the time claimed he saw barges
of tangled bodies towed out to sea after the attacks; the Mayor of
Darwin, Jack Burton, said about 900 people had been killed; a
news bulletin estimated 1100 deaths based on army intelligence
(which had included some of the 2000 or so itinerant workers in
Darwin at the time).
Darwin historian Peter Forrest said the death toll was somewhere
between 400 and 500; Adelaide historian John Bradford said many
were buried on a Darwin beach. Ross Dack, a member of a burial
team at Mindil Beach, said many bodiesmost black with oilwere
The exodus south
towards Adelaide
River later became
known as The
Adelaide River
Stakes.
277
buried in a large hole dug by a bulldozer. However, a plaque unveiled
in Darwin in 2001 gives the total as 292.
Against this background of confusion and bad behaviour the
government hurriedly appointed a Commission of Inquiry, led by
Mr Justice Lowe of the Supreme Court of Victoria, which issued
two reports, one on 27 March and the other on 9 April 1942.
Having interviewed many of the participants for his report as
he tried to piece together exactly what had happened, Mr Justice
Lowe concluded 243 people had been killed and between 300 and
400 injured. He also found
the delay in giving the general warning was fraught with disaster.
It is impossible to say with certainty what would have happened
if the warning had been promptly given when received by RAAF
Operations at 9.37, but it is at least probable that a number of
men who lost their lives while working on ships at the pier might
have escaped to a place of safety.
Although little known or publicised, the battle for Darwin
achieved a mass audience when it was featured in Baz Luhrmanns
film Australia in 2008.
Battle stats
Winners: Japanese air force
Losers: Australian defenders of Darwin
Toll: In total, Japanese forces killed at least 243 people and wounded
between 250 and 320. They also inflicted great damage on shipping,
aircraft and Darwin itself. The defenders of Darwin claimed to have
shot down four enemy aircraft
Result: Australia and its allies increased their surveillance, improved their
warning systems and transferred key resources needed for the war
against Japan away from the vulnerable port of Darwin
278
Bombing of Broome and
other towns, March 1942
November 1943
AUSTRALIA UNDER
ATTACK
The government regards these Japanese attacks as most
grave, and makes it quite clear that a severe blow has been
struck on Australian soil. Australia has now experienced
physical contact of war within Australia.
Prime Minister John Curtin, 20 February 1942
O
utraged by the sight of the passenger plane, packed with
women and children, being shot down in flames by Japanese
fighter planes as it took off from Broome, First Lieutenant Gus
Winckel grabbed the nearest machine gun and started firing back
at the murderers in the sky. With no time to waste and nobody to
help, the lone defender found a flat bit of ground, balanced the
heavy 7.9-millimetre machine gun on his right shoulder, took aim
and just started firing.
Winckel was not a machine gunner by any stretch of the
imagination, in fact he was just flight crew with the Dutch Air
Force and this ML-KNIL machine gunespecially without its
proper mountingwas no match for the Japanese Zeros bombing
and strafing the poor little port from the sky; but there were no
Bombing of Broome, March 1942November 1943
279
anti-aircraft batteries let alone Allied fighter planes to help. In fact
as far as defence wentWinckel was it.
Even though the machine gun was difficult to balance on his
right shoulder, in the heat of the moment the inspired Dutchman
managed to rest the barrel on his left forearm and fire off a number
of rounds with his right hand. Spotting a Japanese Zero coming
straight towards him he then raised the barrel up with his left arm
and poured round after round straight into the enemy aircraft.
Although his weapon was not mounted on a tripod, Winckels aim
was true and within seconds the Zero burst into flames and came
crashing down to the ground. So far so good, he thought.
But just as he lined up the next Zero, hoping to stop more of
these monsters wreaking such havoc on the unsuspecting port, he
let out a cry of pain. Looking down he saw his left arm (which
had been taking the place of the tripod) burning under the guns
barrel. His skin was so scorched he had to drop the gun to the
ground in agonyeven as more enemy aircraft darkened the skies
over Broome.
The battle
It was 3 March 1942 and Winckel was trying to stop the Japanese
bombing the little port town of Broome, north-west Australia,
which had become a significant air base and route of escape for
refugees and retreating military personnel, following the Japanese
invasion of Java in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia).
The first Japanese fighter planes had come out of the northern
sky at 9.20 a.m., a fleet of nine Zerosthe deadly Mitsubishi
A6M3scommanded by Lieutenant Zenijero Miyano. Six of these
planes were flying in lowabout 500 feet (150 metres)while
another three hovered high above to deal with any Allied planes
that might challenge them.
Winckel, a loyal Dutchman, was outraged because he had just
helped fly plane load after plane load of Dutch refugees down
from Java to get away from the invading Japanese and now here the
Japanese were chasing them all the way south to Australia. Some
The first Japanese
fighter planes had
come out of the
northern sky at
9.20 a.m., a fleet
ofnine Zeros.
280
of these refugees were sitting as passengers in flying boats on the
harbour waiting to take off for safer ports further south. Others
were sitting in planes at the airport which were also waiting to take
off for safer havens. With the evacuation in full swing, in all there
were sixteen flying boats waiting in Broomes Roebuck Harbour
and seven Allied aircraft at the airport.
Spotting the sitting ducks on the water, three of the Zeros went
straight for the flying boats, strafing them with a massive rain of
explosive bullets, sinking some and forcing the passengers, many of
them women and children, to leap into the sea. Other passengers
on the wharf waiting to board ran for cover.
That was bad enough, but what made Winckel mad was the
attack by three more of the Zeros on the airport where they
not only put all planes out of action but also attacked a B-24
Liberator bomber carrying 33 passengers and crew away from the
war zone. No sooner had this plane taken off over the harbour
to turn south for safety than these three Zeros shot it to pieces,
sending the plane crammed with its human cargo crashing into
the sea in flames.
The Japanese bombers killed
between 70 and 88 people
in Broome and wounded
30 others, many of whom
were Dutch refugees
on flying boats fleeing
the Japanese invasion of
the Dutch East Indies.
281
That was when the angry Dutchman grabbed the machine gun
to stop what carnage he could. And as it turned out Winckel got
rid of one of the nine Zeros and its pilot Warrant Officer Osamu
Kudo. But as he was the only gunman defending the port and had
to drop his gun when it burnt his arm, that was the sum total of
the Allied kill at Broome; although another damaged Zero did
crash land on its way back home.
So having destroyed the sixteen flying boats (some reports say
fifteen), several aircraft at the airfield and killed or wounded scores
of innocent people, mainly Dutch, the eight remaining Japanese
pilots took one final look at the chaos below them, then flew back
into the skies from whence they camejust fifteen minutes after
they had first appeared.
In that short space of time, the Zeros with their strafing runs
killed between 70 and 88 people and wounded at least 30 others.
Authorities were not able to establish the exact number because
many of the people in this pearling town of seasonal workers
were passing through, including the Dutch refugees. Four more
people were killed out of town when the Zeros on the way back
to their base shot down a KLM Douglas DC-3 carrying passengers
near Carnot Bay. It crash-landed 80 kilometres north of Broome
killing four of its passengers. Also on board was a valuable cargo
of diamonds, which were lost or stolen following the crash. During
the attack between twenty-three and twenty-five aircraft were lost
(most sources say twenty-four), including the flying boats and
aircraft at the aerodrome. The Allied aircraft destroyed included
two B-24 Liberator bombers (including the one shot down in
flames that angered Gus Winckel), two American B-17E Flying
Fortresses, one RAAF Hudson bomber, one Dutch DC-3 cargo
plane and one Dutch Lodestar bomber. The attack on Broome was
the second worst after Darwin (where more than 240 people died
on 19 February 1942).
Broome was only one of many Australian towns or bases attacked
by Japanese planes between 18 February 1942 and 12 November
1943. Others included Wyndham, Horn Island, Derby, Katherine,
Townsville and Mossman. In fact the Japanese attacked Australia
282
nearly 100 times as they tried to destroy bombers, fighter planes
and aerodromes, anything that could have been used against them
as they waged their war from their bases in South-East Asia. They
attacked Darwin alone 64 times right up to 12 November 1943,
Broome four times, Wyndham twice, Horn Island seven times,
Derby once, Katherine once, Townsville three times and Mossman
once. Apart from air force targets, they also attacked ships sailing
up and down the coast and civil infrastructure, including harbours,
railways and fuel tanks.
The Japanese attacked Broome again on 20 March with seven
bombers, killing one person and destroying the aerodrome and a
Stinson civil aircraft on the runway. They also attacked on 27 August
1942, then for the fourth and final time on 16 August, inflicting
little damage and certainly no casualties in these two follow-up raids.
After Broome, the Japanese attacked Wyndham twice, on 3March
and 23 March, targeting the aerodrome but inflicting little damage
and there were no casualties.
Gus Winckel was certainly not the only quick-thinking hero
who leapt forward to defend Australia during these attacks. When
the Japanese started attacking Horn Island on 14 March, after
their first attack on Wyndham, one of the American pilots of a
P40 Kittyhawkthe same type of plane that had tried to defend
Darwin on 19 February 1942went to great lengths to destroy
a Zero. When his gun jammed, the frustrated American just flew
straight at one of the Zeros and smashed the cockpit to pieces with
his reinforced wingtips, sending the Zero out of control down to
the ground below.
This Japanese Zero fighter was just one of a dozen in a fleet
which was escorting eight heavy bombers known as Nells dropping
bombs on Horn Island, which was a strategic centre for Allied air
operations on the tip of Cape York. His fellow Americans, who were
in a fleet of nine Kittyhawks that just happened to be on a training
flight, also shot down at least one other Japanese Zero and possibly a
Japanese bomber. The Japanese, who destroyed two RAAF Hudson
bombers on this first raid, bombed Horn Island another six times, on
18 March, 11 April (killing one person), 11May, 7June (when they
283
wounded three people), 30 July
and 1August; but most of these
raids did little damage compared
to the first raids on Darwin and
Broome.
Although they were much
smaller raids, the Japanese also
attacked Derby, on 20 March
1942when eight Zero fighters
strafed the little townand the
outback town of Katherine, south
of Darwin, on 22 March, when
they attacked the aerodrome,
killing one man and wounding
another. They also bombed the
most important Allied air base,
Townsville, on the east coast, in
a series of three raids between 26
and 29 July 1942which was as
far south as Japanese bombers
ever camebut with little effect
as most of their bombs landed in
the water or in the bush (although one bomb fell on an agricultural
research station at Oonoonba and damaged a coconut plantation).
After this, the Japanese bombed Mossman, which was much closer
to their base at Rabaul, on 31 July, but again their bombs landed in
the bush or the water with little effect (although one bomb landed
near a house sending fragments flying inside, wounding a child).
It was surprising how little damage the Japanese did in these
raids, considering the lack of concerted opposition from Australian
or Allied planes and the impressive nature of their aircraft. They
used some of the best planes of the Imperial Japanese Air Force
and Imperial Japanese Navy, including the A6M3 Zero fighter,
medium and large-scale bombers such as the Mitsubishi G4M2,
and even Kawanishi H6K5 Mavis naval flying boats. Australians
could put up some resistanceespecially when authorities heeded
Broome was lucky that
Hollands First Lieutenant
Gus Winckel, seen here on
the right with friends (left
to right, Len Dal and Jean
Agnew), just happened
to be in town when the
Japanese bombed the port.
He picked up a machine
gun and shot down one
of the enemy Zeros, and
might have got more
but the barrel burnt his
arm so badly he had to
drop the gun. AWM
284
warningsbecause apart from their own RAAF, they had USAAF
planes based in northern Australia, as well as British and Dutch Air
Force planes. The problem was, these Allied aircraft were simply
no match for the Japanese.
Australia declared war on Japan after the Japanese bombed Americas
Pearl Harbor in December 1941 because, as Prime Minister John
Curtin explained, Our vital interests are imperilled and because the
rights of free people in the whole Pacific are imperilled. Addressing
the nation Curtin also said:
My appeal to you is in the name of Australia, for Australia is the
stake in this conflict. We Australians have imperishable traditions.
We shall maintain and vindicate them. We shall hold this country,
and keep it as a citadel for the British speaking race, and as a place
where civilization will persist.
This declaration of war against Japan was well advised and
timely because within two months the Japanese had captured
Britains Fortress Singapore and bombed Darwin. This aggression,
representing the first attack by a foreign power on Australian soil,
forced the federal government to order a full mobilisation of the
nation, which was put on a war footing to meet the challenge of
Japanese ambitions.
Although many Australians believed the Japanese were attacking
Australia because they wanted to invade the country, the Japanese
plan was in fact to neutralise any threat of attack against their bases
in Asia from Allied forces (especially aircraft) based in Australia.
The bombing of Broomeand other Australian townswas part
of this strategy: to destroy as many Allied aircraft, aerodromes,
air force facilities, port facilities, fuel dumps and ships that could
be used against them as they established their bases in Asia and
the Pacific, from which they planned to wage war until they had
complete domination of the region.
285
Fortunately for Australian defence, Prime Minister Curtin had
in December 1941even before Singapore fellanticipated the
demise of British forces in the region and saw that the nations
interests were better served by forging closer links with the United
States, which then came to the aid of Australia in its hour of need.
As Curtin explained, Without any inhibitions of any kind, on 29
December 1941, Australia now looked to America, and We shall
exert all our energies to shaping a defence plan, with the US as its
keystone, which will enable us to hold out until the tide swings
against the enemy. As a result of this change of policy, there were
brave American pilots in Kittyhawks and other fighter aircraft ready
to defend Australian towns when they were attacked by the Japanese.
Postscript
The death toll in Broome could have been a lot lower, because
there was plenty of warninglookouts had spotted a Japanese
The Japanese bombers
which took the sleepy
port of Broome by
surprise destroyed at least
twenty-four aircraft on
the airfields, fifteen flying
boats on the harbour and
a number of buildings.
286
reconnaissance plane the day before the raid, on 2 March 1942,
and they had told the pilots of the sixteen flying boats in Broome
to expect an attack, but most of the pilots did not listen to the
warnings. The only pilot who didan American with a plane
from the US warship Houstonflew out early on the morning of
the attack and got safely out of the way.
Australians began to respect the air-raid warnings as the raids
continued, however, and when Allied aircraft were available they
took off to confront the attacking Japanese aircraft before they
arrived and, where possible, military and civilian personnel ran for
air-raid shelters.
An accurate death toll in Broome has never been established
because so many people were refugees passing through, most of
them Dutch whose names had not been recorded by local authorities
before they were killed. Amemorial in Broome tries to redress this
problem of unidentified war dead.
First Lieutenant Gus Winckels arm recovered from the burns
inflicted by the hot barrel of the machine gun.
Battle stats
Winners: Japanese aircraft commanded by Lieutentant Zenijero Miyano
Loser: The Australian township of Broomedespite the valiant efforts of
First Lieutenant Gus Winckel of the Dutch Air Force
Toll: In the first attack on Broome, between 70 and 88 people were killed
and at least 30 wounded, most of whom were Dutch refugees; there were
few casualties in subsequent raids on Broome and other towns. Winckel
shot down at least one Japanese Zero, claiming the life of Warrant Officer
Osamu Kudo; another Zero hit during the raid crash-landed on its way
back to base; the pilot survived
Result: At least 24 aircraft were destroyed along with Broome aerodrome;
in subsequent raids on other towns, smaller numbers of aircraft were
destroyed as well as aerodromes. These attacks forced Australia to
relocate its northern air bases further south
287
Sydney Harbour,
31 May 1942
REPELLING JAPANESE
MIDGET SUBS
As a result of the Coral Sea battle, the naval forces
defending Australia have disappeared. There is now
nothing to defend Australia against the onslaught of
theJapanese forces.
General Hideki Tojo, May 1942
A
suspicious object glinted in the dark water in front of the
boom net protecting Sydney Harbour from enemy attack,
so nightwatchman James Cargill, a 52-year-old Scotsman, bravely
rowed out in his little skiff to take a closer look. Despite frightening
rumours of a Japanese invasion that had spread like wildfire since
the Japanese bombed Darwin a few months earlier, Cargill knew
he had to do his duty.
The trusting people of Sydney, now asleep in the homes whose
lights twinkled all around the harbour, depended on men like
himand any boat on the harbour should have had at least a
running light.
As he rowed closer to the object now bobbing up and down in
front of the boom net strung between Georges Head and Green
Point, he shipped his oars and caught his breath. He could see a
steel construction sticking up about a metre out of the water. What
the hell was it, the Scotsman wondered; maybe just a couple of
oxyacetylene bottles. That would be all right.
288
But as he drew abreast of the heaving object, Cargills worst
fears were realised. My God, he thought, its either an elongated
mine that could explode at any momentor more likely an enemy
submarine like the ones the Japs sneaked into Pearl Harbor before
their bombing raid just five months earlier. Maybe this meant the
Japs were about to bomb Sydney Harbour!
Turning his skiff around quickly, the worried watchman rowed
to a nearby channel patrol boat, HMAS Yarroma, that was guarding
the western end of the boom net and climbed aboard. Breathlessly
he reported that he had discovered an enemy submarine trying to
penetrate the net and attack Sydney. The captain, a twenty-one-
year-old former shipping clerk from Melbourne, H.E. Eyres, did not
believe Cargill for a minute. In fact, he shone a searchlight towards
the submarine a couple of hundred metres away and said Cargill
was seeing things, because it was just a heap of naval wreckage.
Eyres could not have cared less that Cargill was more than
twice his age, nor that he was with the Maritime Services Board.
Cargill begged Eyres to come back in his skiff, or to motor over
in the Yarroma, and see for himself. But no matter how much the
Scotsman pleaded with Eyres to save the sleeping city of Sydney
from a night attack, Eyres refused, telling the nightwatchman to
get back in his boat and row away.
So, making a decision described later by the commander in
charge of the harbour as deplorable and inexplicable, the captain of
the channel patrol boat refused to do anythingleast of all leave the
comfort and safety of his mooring and go on patrol in the channel.
Less than three hours later a Japanese midget submarine that
got past the boom net and deep into the harbour fired a torpedo,
sinking the naval depot ship HMAS Kuttabul berthed at Garden
Island, killing nineteen Australian and two British sailors.
The battle
It was the night of 31 May 1942 in Sydney Harbour. For the people
of Sydney, it was a night just like any other. Yes, there was a war
on and newspapers had warned the Japanese could invade Australia
289
now that they had bombed Darwin, but Sydney was a long way
from Darwin, let alone Japan and, like Eyres, most complacent
Sydneysiders found it hard to believe the Japanese would ever come
this far south.
But, as Cargill had discovered, the Japanese were comingthat
very night, in fact.
While Eyres was turning a blind eye to the dangers, three enemy
midget submarines were at that moment attacking Sydneywith
two of them deep below the black surface of the harbour, for as
Cargill had seen, one was stuck near the surface after becoming
caught in the net.
Earlier that night the deadly midget subs had set off from
their mother submarine 11 kilometres off the Heads, the entrance
to Sydney Harbour. Their mission: to attack as many US and
Australian warships as possible. They knew it would be worth the
One of the midget Japanese
submarines shot off a
torpedo in the dead of
night which sunk the
naval depot vessel HMAS
Kuttabul, killing twenty-one
naval ratings who were
asleep on board. AWM
290
risk after a Japanese seaplanes reconnaissance flight just two days
before the attack, which confirmed the harbours value. The relaxed
Sydneysiders who saw the aircraft imagined it was just an American
plane, but the Japanese observers reported a special target: the
cruiser USS Chicago docked at the RAN base of Garden Island.
There were also plenty of other targets awaiting their torpe-
doesso the three subs set out with high hopes. Each had a two-man
crewa pilot and a navigatorand motored silently through the
night and in the darkness sneaked through the Headseach with
a different destination and a different fate.
Lieutenant Kenshi Chumas sub
Midget sub A14, piloted by Lieutenant Kenshi Chuma, had the
worst luck of the three. Things looked good to start with because it
spotted a brightly lit Manly ferry heading for Sydney and followed
it through the open boom net.
But Chumas midget could not keep up and when the boom net
closed right behind the ferry, he slammed into it opposite Georges
Heights in the suburb of Mosman, where unsuspecting residents
were going to bed. Chuma was unlucky because the net was still
under construction and did not stretch right across the harbour,
with only the central section completed. Even so, the tail of his
midget got caught in this part of the boom net, where it became
hopelessly stuck.
This was the midget spotted by James Cargill and which finally
triggered the alarmbecause eventually Eyres conscience got the
better of him and he reluctantly agreed to allow a stoker from
Yarroma to go in Cargills skiff and check what had been found.
Using a torch, the stoker quickly confirmed Cargills claim that it
was a sub when the two men saw the serrated edge fitted to the
sub to help it cut through the boom net.
When they got back to Yarroma the sceptical Eyres agreed to
report the suspicious object as a metal vessel with a serrated blade
on topwhich suitably alert officers would hopefully assume was
a submarine.
291
So two men in a rowing boat had saved the great city of Sydney
from a surprise attack, for Eyres now gave the alarm. Regrettably,
this was after 10 p.m.; Cargill had spotted the sub just after 8 p.m.
So Eyres had held up the warning for about two hours. Admittedly,
Eyres had radioed his superior earlier that men were investigating a
suspicious object in the net when he sent the stoker with Cargill,
but he did not think he had enough concrete evidence to raise
the alarm.
Now, however, as the penny dropped, Eyres acted. He asked
another nearby patrol boat, Lolita, to confirm the submarine.
When Lolitas skipper, Warrant Officer Herbert Anderson, said it
was indeed a sub, Eyres finally reported to the office of the Naval
Officer-in-Charge, Sydney, Rear Admiral G.C. Muirhead-Gould:
Object is submarine. Request permission to open fire. Muirhead-
Gould immediately issued a general alarm at 10.27 p.m., repeated
at 10.36 p.m., ordering all ships to take anti-submarine precautions
and banning outward shipping. Meanwhile, Anderson, who knew an
enemy sub when he saw one, was not waiting for orders and dropped
three depth charges on Chumas sub. They failed to detonate as
they had been set for deeper waters.
Chuma had the last word. At 10.35 p.m., stuck fast in the boom
net, he fired a demolition charge that killed him and his navigator,
Petty Officer Takeshi Omori, blowing the sub apart with a loud
explosion and sending a big orange flash and fragments into the air.
Sub-Lieutenant Katsuhisa Bans sub
The second midget sub, the M24, initially identified as No. A, was
piloted by Sub-Lieutenant Katsuhisa Ban, with his navigator Petty
Officer Mamoru Ashibe. Ban got past the boom net and motored
down the harbour at periscope depth by 10 p.m.
Then Bans vessel lost buoyancy control and kept bobbing up
to the surface. It wasnt long before its black conning tower was
spotted by sharp lookouts on board its main target, USS Chicago.
The Americans switched on searchlights and fired at Bans midget
with a 5-inch gun and a four-barrelled machine gun just before
Object is
sub marine.
Request
per mission
toopenfire.
292
11p.m., but apparently missed as the midget submerged out of sight.
Then the RAN corvette HMAS Geelong spotted Bans midget just
after 11 p.m. and opened fire, but also missed the elusive midget.
Having escaped destruction, Ban got into position opposite
Bradleys Head, from where he could see USS Chicago lit up by
the floodlights of construction workers who were building a new
dock. Things were looking good for Ban until just before he was
ready to fire the harbour defenders switched off the lights. Thanks
to Cargill and then Eyres, the commander of harbour defences had
ordered the graving dock floodlights to be switched off in the nick
of time, at 12.25 a.m. on 1 June.
Five minutes later, now shooting in the dark, Ban fired two
torpedoes. The first missed the Chicago but hit the wooden-hulled
Kuttabulan old ferry used as accommodation for sailors in
transitkilling twenty-one ratings and wounding ten others sleeping
on board. The second also missed the Chicago and buried itself into
the side of Garden Island where it failed to explode.
As soon as Kuttabul sank, the harbour defenders intensified
their search for the attacking sub or subs. Sydney residents who
heard the explosions came out of their houses, many of which near
the waterfront had shaken with the blast. The Chicago quickly got
ready to escape the dangerous harbour and just after 2 a.m. steamed
down towards the Heads and the relative safety of the open sea.
Ban, who must have been a skilful seaman, also steered back
down the harbour, escaping the searching craft and getting past
the boom net and out into open waters.
But rather than try to rendezvous with his mother ship, which
he was meant to meet 29 kilometres south of Sydney Heads, he
steered north to a position off Long Reef on Sydneys northern
beaches, where his midget sub sank to the seabedto be discovered
64 years later, complete with dead crew.
Sub-Lieutenant Keiu Matsuos sub
The third sub, A21, was piloted by Keiu Matsuo with Petty Officer
Masao Tsuzuku. It seemed to be cursed from the start. Matsuo had
293
run into trouble soon after setting off when, just after 11 p.m. on
31 May, the crew of HMAS Yandra spotted A21 and attacked,
ramming it as it tried to enter the harbour past South Head.
Matsuos boat survived this attack, but then he had trouble
getting the sub going again and did not enter the Heads until just
before 3 a.m., just as USS Chicagothe prime targetwas sailing
out of the harbour. One of the alert Americans spotted Matsuos
periscope and reported that the midget sub was entering the harbour.
Although Matsuo cleverly sneaked past the boom net and patrol-
ling craft defending the harbour and got past Bradleys Head towards
Cremorne Point, he was then spotted by HMS Kanimbla (a British
armed merchant cruiser), which opened fire on the battered midget
just before 4 a.m. Miraculously, Matsuo slipped away again deeper
into the dark harbour.
Although two of the
three Japanese midget
submarines were recovered
in Sydney Harbour after
they had been wrecked and
their crews had died, one
of the midget submarines
escaped, making it as far
as Long Reef, on Sydneys
northern beaches, where it
sank. It was found in 2006.
294
Finally Matsuo was spotted off Taylors Bay (between Brad-
leys Head and Chowder Bay) by Lieutenant Reginald Andrew,
commanding HMAS Sea Mist, about 5 a.m. Sea Mist started
attacking Matsuos midget immediately by dropping depth charges,
and was joined by the Steady Hour and Yarroma. Sea Mist succeeded
in hitting the targetafter the first round of depth charges the sub
was thrown up to the surface upside down, out of control.
To make sure, Andrew then dropped another salvo of depth
charges that probably finished off Matsuos midget. The three
surface vessels hammered Matsuo for the next few hours with at
least sixteen depth charges, totally destroying his midget.
But Matsuo and Tsuzuku had the last word on their fate. When
the submarine was pulled up from the bottom, the salvage operator
discovered the two crew had shot themselves with a pistol.
Once Japan attacked the United States by bombing Peal Harbor in
December 1941, Australia declared war on Japan. As the Japanese
had attacked Pearl Harbor by both air and sea, Australias defenders
thought the Japanese could also attack Sydney Harbour, by both
air and sea, especially when it was harbouring American warships
such as the Chicago. As the Japanese had used midget submarines
in addition to bombing the vital American port, those in charge
of Sydneys defences prepared for a similar attack.
Initially the Royal Australian Navy had started laying electronic
indicator loops on the seabed to protect Sydney Harbour. These
included outer loops between South and North Head and inner
loops between South Head and Middle Head, which could detect
submerged and surface vessels.
In January 1942 the RAN also started building an anti-torpedo
boom net between inner South Head and Middle Head, from
Georges Head to Green Point. After the Japanese conquered Singa-
pore in February 1942, then bombed Darwin the same month, the
RAN expected an attack and increased the number of defending
craft and personnel involved.
295
As the Japanese had developed their midget submarine fleet for
attacking warships in Pearl Harbor and other ports, they targeted
Sydney as part of a bigger plan. The attack was implemented by
the Eastern Attack Squadron. As with Pearl Harbor, larger mother
submarines sailed from Japan transporting the midget submarines,
which they then launched near Sydney.
Before the three midget submarines attacked, however, a recon-
naissance seaplane that had been assembled on a mother submarine
took off from the sub two days before the attack. The spotter
plane, piloted by Lieutenant Susumo Ito, flew over Sydney Harbour
unopposed on this mission to identify the location of ships like
USS Chicago before he returned to the mother sub
11 kilometres out to sea. Although his plane capsized
on landing beside the mother sub, he and his observer
scrambled on board and confirmed the value of the
midget sub attack.
Following the unsuccessful attack on ships in
Sydney Harbour, the mother ships were not prepared
to sail back north towards Japan without a parting
shot.
On 8 June the Japanese mother submarines shelled
Sydney and Newcastle. Fortunately only one shell
detonated and nobody was killed or even badly
injured, although the shelling damaged houses in
Sydneys Eastern Suburbs at Bellevue Hill, Rose Bay
and Bondi.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because no city in
Australia had ever been attacked by sea before and
the local defenders turned back the attack. They may
have made mistakes, but they successfully defended
the main warships anchored in Sydney.
Authorities had expected Sydney would be
attacked almost from the time it was settled. In the
early 1800s, fearing attack from Napoleonic France,
Governor Philip Gidley King built a strong fort at
Once he finally heard
about the sighting by the
nightwatchman James
Cargill, the officer in charge
of defending Sydney
Harbour the night the
Japanese attacked, Rear
Admiral G.C. Muirhead-
Gould, deployed the
vessels that succeeded in
destroying one of the three
enemy midget submarines.
296
Middle Head. A range of harbour defences were installed and
upgraded by each generation, from Fort Denisonan 1850s forti-
fied islandto gun batteries on both North and South Head for
World War II. This was, however, the first time these defences were
really tested. The boom net stopped one midget and, although two
of the three midgets slipped through, they were both thwarted.
It was a victory. Despite the lack of warning, the RAN defeated
the invading fleet.
It was also a great tribute to MSB watchman James Cargill, who
earned his place in history by keeping such a good lookout.
It was also a great battle for Lieutenant Andrew of HMAS Sea
Mist, because he destroyed Matsuos midget submarine, even though
he had just joined the navy and had taken command of Sea Mist
only the day before.
It was also a victory for the commander in charge of harbour
defences, Muirhead-Gould, who issued the general alarm and
mobilised an attack on the midget submarines before they did too
much damage.
It was certainly a failure for the Japanese. They might have
blown up Kuttabul, but the midgets missed their main target, USS
Chicago, and lost six brave and expensively trained men.
Postscript
Sydneysiders were lucky that night as Australians were getting very
good at ignoring warnings. Military officials were especially good
at ignoring warnings from people keeping a good lookout. They
had ignored the warning that Darwin was about to be bombed,
that Broome was about to be bombed and now that Sydney was
at imminent risk of attack.
Observers had seen an unknown plane flying low over Sydney the
day before the attack, but authorities assumed it was an American
aircraft, even though it was a light spotter plane. Lieutenant Ito had
flown over Sydney Harbour unopposed in broad daylight.
Cargill may have raised the alarm, but he was never given credit,
let alone a decoration. Eyres was never reprimanded or censured for
Military officials
were especially
good at ignoring
warnings from
people keeping a
good lookout.
297
delaying the general alarm for two hours. Much to his disappoint-
ment, Andrew, in charge of the Sea Mist, also was never decorated
for sinking Matsuos midget submarine.
The defenders of Sydney Harbour were lucky to repel this attack
because their defences were not that effective. The midgets got
past the coastal guns mounted on North and South Head because
it was dark. All of the midgets got past the sensor loops, and the
defenders had not finished the anti-torpedo boom net, with gaps
of more than 200 metres at either end.
After the brazen attack against their biggest city, defence chiefs
decided not only to recover the bodies of the four Japanese crew
but also to give them a funeral service with full military honours,
in the face of stiff civilian opposition. When authorities discovered
Bans midget sub in 2006, it was declared a war grave.
Battle stats
Winners: Royal Australian Navy and Rear Admiral Muirhead-Gould, who
successfully defended Sydney Harbour
Losers: Three Japanese midget submarines and their crews
Toll: 21 naval ratings killed on HMAS Kuttabul (19 Australian and 2 British);
6 Japanese killed in action
Result: The RAN defended the ships in Sydney Harbour, and Sydney was
put on alert for future attacks
298
First El Alamein,
127 July 1942
OUTFOXING THE
DESERT FOX
You must dispel by all possible means the idea that
Rommelrepresents anything other than the ordinary
German general.
General Claude Auchinleck, commander Eighth Army, report sent to
Churchill, 28 July 1942
H
eld up by intense machine-gun fire coming from bunkers less
than 100 metres ahead, Private Arthur Gurney of the 2/48th
South Australian Battalion knew something had to be done. He and
his fellow Australians were pinned down and unable to continue
their advance through the desert. Almost all the officers had been
either killed or wounded, leaving the 2/48th without its leaders
and isolated on the battlefield.
Private Gurney decided to take matters into his own hands.
Grasping the seriousness of the situation and without hesitation,
Gurney took his rifle and charged the nearest German machine-gun
post, bayoneting three of the enemy and silencing the gun. He
then rushed on to a second post and bayoneted two men, sending
a third back as a prisoner.
At that moment a German appeared from a narrow trench
and threw a stick grenade at Gurney. Landing just a metre or
two in front of him, the explosion covered Gurney in rock and
smoke and knocked him to the ground. Though shocked and
299
dazed by the blast, Gurney picked up his
rifle andsweat pouring from his face and
stinging his eyescontinued straight on
at the third enemy position. Disappearing
into a cloud of dust and fire, his comrades
in the rear lost sight of him.
Gurneys body was found later that day,
sprawled by the mangled German machine
gun he had charged. For his gallant and
unselfish bravery in silencing enemy
machine-gun posts by bayonet assault,
Gurney was posthumously awarded the
Victoria Cross. According to his citation,
by this single-handed act of gallantry in
the face of a determined enemy, Private
Gurney enabled his Company to press
forward to its objective, inflicting heavy
losses upon the enemy. The successful
outcome of this engagement was almost
entirely due to Private Gurneys heroism
at the moment when it was needed.
The battle
It was early in July 1942. Lieutenant General Leslie Morsheads
men of the Australian 9th Divisionmany of whom had held on
so doggedly at Tobruk in 1941found themselves in the middle
of the Egyptian desert at the hottest time of the year.
They had been brought in to support General Claude Auchin-
lecks British Eighth Army, which had been pushed back through
Libya and Egypt in June by an enemy bent on capturing Cairo, and
Egypt itself. The Eighth Army faced a dilemma because by the end
of June 1942, it was retreating into Egypt, to establish a defensive
position near El Alamein, a small settlement with a railway station.
Moving into the forward line, Lieutenant Tas Gill of the 2/45th
After his officers were killed,
Private Arthur Gurney of
the South Australian 2/48th
Battalion won a Victoria
Cross when he silenced
the nearest machine-gun
post by bayoneting three
Germans, then neutralised a
second post by bayoneting
another two Germans
and taking another one
prisoner. Finally, despite a
near-miss by a grenade, he
attacked a third machine-
gun post before dying
in the assault. AWM
300
Battalion remembered passing British soldiers retiring to the rear:
some of the Tommies who were travelling in the opposite direction
cheered us . . . it was a moment I shall never forget.
The Eighth Army had pinned all their hopes on their new
defensive position near the tiny railway stop. Here, the battlefield
narrowed between the coast and the impassable Qattara Depression
further inland. To press on and capture Cairo, the Axis (German
and Italian) forces would first have to pass through this heavily
defended neck of land.
After driving the Allies back through Egypt in June, Field
Marshal Erwin Rommel, who would later become known as the
Desert Fox, launched a major offensive on 1 July, attacking the
British defensive position with Panzer tanks. Aseries of indecisive
battles between the exhausted Axis and Allied armies took place
before the men of the Australian 9th Division entered the fray on 10
July. An intense period of desert fighting was about to commence.
Through their tenacious
fighting at the first
Battle of El Alamein, the
Australian 9th Division
helped the British Eighth
Army stop the advance
of German and Italian
troops into Egypt. AWM
301
One of the thousands of Australians who took part in the
fighting was Sergeant Augustus Gus Longhurst of the 2/2nd
Machine Gun Battalion. On the afternoon of 10 July, Guss first day
in battle, his platoon went forward to support an infantry attack
on a section of railway at Trig 33. Trig 33 was a ridgeline near Tel
el Eisa, a strategically important position near the coast.
After the infantry did its job with Vickers machine guns and the
bayonet, the men of the 2/2nd began digging shallow slit trenches
and gun pits to consolidate the high ground gained by the assault.
Suddenly, a pack of Panzer tanks appeared and crossed the railway
line, counterattacking and overrunning the Australian position.
Longhurst kept his eye on the tank coming towards his trench
and, as it passed, leapt out into the open. As one of his mates who
watched him recalled, showing some of his football field dash,
Gus overhauled the tank and threw his grenade at the tail of it,
but just missed. He then turned back, and made an attempt to blow
up another of the tanks.
At that very moment another Panzer was hit by Allied artil-
lery fire and burst into flames, billowing plumes of black smoke.
Longhurst turned immediately on the tank crew desperately trying
to escape the burning wreckage. Asmall rise in the ground prevented
Longhurst from shooting at them with a Vickers gun, so he lifted
the gun from the tripod, and with Pte Bill Selmes feeding the belt,
he stood up and brought fire to bear on the enemy. They at once
surrendered to the nearby infantry.
As a result of this brand of fearless and determined fighting by
the Australians, the ridgelines in this important northern sector of
the battlefield were taken and held by the Allies on 16 July. Axis
forces had sustained heavy losses and, most importantly, Australian
troops had captured the German Signals Intercept Company 621.
This unit had provided Rommel with priceless intelligence gleaned
from intercepting British radio communications. This source of
intelligence was now lost to the Desert Fox.
Between the endless attacks and counterattacks taking place
under the sweltering July sun, Allied troops were subjected to
continual barrages, both from German artillery andmost
302
memorable for many soldiersGerman Stukas. These dive-bombers
emitted a screeching sound as they dived from the sky on Allied
positions, dropping their bombs at the last minute, just before
pulling out of their descent. As an artillery signaller remembered,
it was frightening to be on your back, in the open, and see the
bombs drop away from the fuselage as the pilot, who could be
plainly seen, pulled out of the dive.
Many other soldiers experienced this sense of fear and dread
on the battlefield. Major Hugh Staniland of the 2/2nd machine
gunners complained when under attack by German Stukas, the
piercing noise of the diving planes and the whistle of the bombs
splitting the air had the effect of convincing him that every single
missile was aimed straight at him. Major Staniland also claimed
it was only the image of the stained glass windows at his local
churchSt Johns in Gordon, Sydneythat got him through
those terrifying moments: lying in shallow trenches in the desert
as Stukas dive-bombed him, as he closed his eyes and saw that
stained glass.
One of the most important battles the 9th Division was involved
in was capturing the high ground at Tel el Eisa on 22 July. It was
during this fighting that Private Gurney was posthumously awarded
the Victoria Cross.
Another Australian, Lieutenant Richard Cameron of the 2/2nd
machine gunners, also demonstrated outstanding leadership and
bravery that day. Coming under heavy enemy fire on the morning
of the battle, Cameron first established his men in position on a
ridge. He then crawled forward, identified a German gunner who
was pouring fire onto his men and rushed the enemy post, silencing
the gun.
Having left the front line in the middle of the day to arrange
for the supply of ammunition, Cameron returned to find that his
men had been unable to carry a machine-gun tripod and rangefinder
out of a forward position they had been repelled from. Still under
heavy fire and high-explosive shelling, Cameron advanced alone
over 250 metres of ground, returning moments later carrying the
tripod and rangefinder. By his courage and example, Cameron so
Itwas frightening
to be on your back,
in the open, and
see the bombs
drop away from
the fuselage as the
pilot, who could be
plainly seen, pulled
out of the dive.
303
inspired these improvised gun teams that he was able to maintain
both guns in action without relief for a further 24 hours. Cameron
was granted an immediate award of the Distinguished Service Order.
But on 27 July the 2/28th Battalion suffered what would be
remembered as its worst defeat of the war. After successfully fighting,
outnumbered, against a strong German position the night before,
the men of the 2/28th had dug in to consolidate the ground they
had captured on what they called Ruin Ridge. There they waited
until morning, when the promised British tanks would arrive to
secure their gains.
Tanks arrived at dawn, but the Australians noticed that they
were marked with large black crossesthey were German. The
British tanks had been caught in minefields and were nowhere to
be seen. Also, a British attack that was supposed to have secured
the battalions flank had been repelled during the night, leaving the
2/28th on its own and without protection or support.
The battalions commander, Major Lew McCarter, had no
choice but to surrender his surviving men to the soldiers emerging
with machine guns from the Panzers. A five-man patrol from the
Australian front line sent out on the night of 27 July failed to find
anything on Ruin Ridge but dead bodies and a few shallow trenches.
As disastrous as the day was for the 2/28th Battalion, 27 July
brought the First Battle of El Alamein to an end. Both sides
exhausted, hostilities around the El Alamein railway station ceased.
But through fierce fighting the brave Australian 9th Division and
the rest of the Eighth Army had, after a months continuous and
ferocious desert fighting, succeeded in halting the Nazi juggernaut
for the first time in the war.
Since June 1940, war had been raging in the North African desert.
Two countries sitting side by sideLibya and Egyptwere the
major theatres. Libya had been an Italian colony since 1912; Egypt,
just to Libyas east, had been the home to a contingent of British
forces since 1882. At the outbreak of World War II, a relatively
304
modest British and Commonwealth force remained in Egypt,
primarily there to protect the Suez Canal.
The canal was strategically importantit was a vital trade and
transport routeand beyond it lay the Arabian oil fields, rich with
resources that would support and strengthen any army that had
control of them. On 11 June 1940, the day after Italy declared war
on the Allies, the Italian forces stationed in Libya began a series
of raids on the British. A number of inconclusive battles followed
until Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy, ordered a major
invasion of Egypt on 8 August.
Initially successful, the Italians were caught off-guard by a
large-scale British and Commonwealth counterattack launched
on 9 December. By 10 December more than 20,000 Italians had
been taken prisoner. The Australians that formed part of the British
force pressed on to capture a number of Libyan towns, including
Tobruk, with little or no opposition.
Fearing a total collapse by his Italian allies,
Hitler deployed his Afrika Korps, commanded
by the charismatic Erwin Rommel, as rein-
forcements to the Italians. Rommel launched
an offensive in March 1941 which, by
15April, had pushed the British forces out of
Libya and back into Egypt. Tobruk, encircled
and besieged by Axis forces, remained in the
hands of the Allies.
On 18 November 1941, after the lengthy
siege of Tobruk, the British Eighth Army
launched another large-scale assault on Libya
and succeeded in pushing Rommel back over
the ground he and his Afrika Korps had taken
in March and April, and relieving the Rats of
Tobruk, as its defenders were known. Rommel
still had plans to push the British out of North
Africa once and for all, however, and in June
1942 he began a second major Axis offensive.
Personally appointed by
Nazi leader Adolf Hitler,
the commander of the
German Afrika Korps, Field
Marshal Erwin Rommel, had
become so skilled at waging
war in the desert he was
known as the Desert Fox.
305
In June 1942, El Alamein was just a small and insignificant
railway station on the Egyptian coast. But it stood between the
Desert Fox and his Afrika Korps to the west and the Suez Canal
and the Arabian oil fields to the east. By the end of June 1942,
Rommel had forced the Allies back into Egypt, and the capture
of Cairo and the Suez Canal seemed a very real possibility. Such
was the backdrop to the two battles of El Alamein, of July and
October 1942.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because the Australian 9th Division
had played a major role in halting the advance by enemy forces into
Egypt. As Rommel said of the British leader Auchinleck and his
men after the battle, The British losses in this Alamein fighting
had been higher than ours, yet the price to Auchinleck had not
been excessive, for the one thing that had mattered to him was to
halt our advance, and that, unfortunately, he did.
Though the First Battle of El Alamein had ended in a stalemate,
a heavy blow had been dealt to the forces of Nazi Germanywhich
to this point had advanced steadily throughout Europe. The Eighth
Army had suffered over 13,000 casualties, including 2552 in the
Australian 9th Division, but had taken over 7000 enemy prisoners
and inflicted heavy damage on Axis men and machines.
It was also a great battle because the soldiers of 9th Division grew
in confidence as a fighting force due to the part they had played in
halting Rommels troops. As the Australian official history of World
War II explained, the 9th Division emerged from the battles fought
at El Alamein . . . a more self confident formation than before, and
a more efficient one.
Postscript
Australian forces had played a significant part in the campaign of
1941. In 1942, the year of decision in Africa, they were again to
play a leading, perhaps vital, part in the climactic battles that would
determine the outcome of the war in the Mediterranean theatre.
306
The Eighth Army now held the high ground near the Egyptian
coast, which provided an excellent position from which the Allies
could observe the enemy and launch offensives. The scene was set
for the Allies to strike back at the Desert Fox, and it was the fighting
yet to come in 1942 that would determine who controlled North
Africa and the Suez Canal for the rest of the war.
One Australian never to return from El Alamein was Private
James Tip Kelaher of the 2/2nd Machine Gun Battalion. Killed
in action on 14 July 1942, Kelaher was remembered by his mates
as being a good man to have beside you, in peace or war, in battle
or in a Rugby scrum, or at the other crease in a cricket match, or
when the beer was flowing. Kelaher was a poet, and before leaving
the battalions camp in Syria to fight at El Alamein penned what
would come to be his last poem. Entitled A Message to Aussie, it
is a fitting final address to the men he left behind:
And steadfastly we stand, whateer may come,
To do our job where be the greatest need.
We dont decide; we answer to the drum,
God grant that He may steel us for the deed.
Battle stats
Winners: The British Eighth Army, of which the Australian 9th Division
was a part
Losers: Axis (German and Italian) forces, especially Rommels newly created
Afrika Korps
Toll: Australian casualties 2552; British Eighth Army casualties were also
heavy as were the losses of Germanys Afrika Korps
Result: The Australian 9th Division played a major role in halting the
advance of enemy troops into Egypt. This was the first time in the war
that Axis forces had been stopped, and it set the stage for another major
battle at El Alamein that would ultimately determine who controlled
North Africa
307
Milne Bay, 25 August
7 September 1942
JAPANS ABORTIVE
GALLIPOLI LANDING
Australian troops had, at Milne Bay in New Guinea,
inflicted on the Japanese their first undoubted defeat on
land. If the Australians, in conditions very like ours, had
done it, so could we. Some of us may forget that of all the
Allies it was the Australian soldiers who first broke the
spell of the invincibility of the Japanese Army; those of us
who were in Burma have cause to remember.
British Field Marshal Sir William Slim, whose Fourteenth Army had been
retreating in Burma in 1942
G
rabbing a handful of grenades from his shelter in the high
grass, Corporal John French ordered his men to duck down,
then he rushed out across no-mans-land straight towards the three
Japanese machine-gun nests pinning down his section. As the men
of his 7th Section watched in disbelief, the twenty-eight-year-old
Queensland hairdresser reached the first enemy nest, lobbed in
some grenades then stood back as the Japanese machine gunners
were blown sky high.
Seeing a second enemy machine gun lining him up, French,
from Crows Nest near Toowoomba, bolted back to his shelter,
collected more grenades, then ran back to the second pit and
hurled in a couple more, again blowing the Japanese gunners to
small pieces.
308
Two down, one to go, French thought. It
was just a pity he was out of grenades.
Ignoring shouts from his men to let them
take on the third nest, the brave corporal lifted
his Tommy gun and ran straight into the enemy
fire, shooting as he went and killing all the
Japanese occupants in the third pit.
It was only then he realised he had been
hit by one of the machine gunners before they
died, and was bleeding badly. Turning to his
mates, having opened the way for their advance,
he beckoned them on before collapsing dead
on the lip of the enemy gun pit.
For paving the way for his comrades, this
corporal from the 2/9th Battalion was awarded
a posthumous Victoria Cross.
The battle
It was 4 September 1942 and French was leading his section against
Japanese machine-gun posts near KB Mission in the Battle for
Milne Bay, where the enemy had landed ten days earlier in an
attempt to displace the Australians from the strategic base they
had established there.
The Battle of Milne Bay began when Japanese marines attacked
the Australian base, on the south-eastern tip of Papua, on 25 August
1942. By capturing the newly constructed airfields at Milne Bay, the
Japanese hoped to secure an air and naval base to support Japans
Kokoda Track campaign aimed at taking Port Moresby.
From 4 August 1942 Japanese aircraft bombed Milne Bay in
preparation for the landing, which Allied forces knew was coming.
The Japs transported their highly visible invasion troops by sea
from Kavieng, on New Ireland, and Buna, with orders to land
at Rabi, near the airfields being built at Milne Bay, from where
they were to launch an immediate attack towards No.3 Airstrip,
Twenty-eight-year-old
Corporal John French,
from Queensland, won a
Victoria Cross at Milne Bay
when he cleared the way
for his men to advance
by killing two nests of
Japanese machine gunners
with a fistful of grenades
and silencing a third with
his Tommy gun before
being shot dead. AWM
Milne Bay, 25 August7 September 1942
309
the easternmost airfield. The troops from New Ireland travelled
in large transports, but those from Buna set out in seven big
landing barges.
Like Australias ill-fated Gallipoli landing in World War I, this
Japanese invasion did not go well. The barges were spotted by
a coastwatcher on 25 August before the enemy landed, and the
Allies let them have it from the air, hoping to forestall the Japanese
attack. P40 Kittyhawk fighter bombers of 75 and 76 Squadrons
RAAF, based at Milne Bay, attacked the barges, wrecking many
earmarked for the Milne Bay assault. The Kittyhawks also attacked
barges off the DEntrecasteaux Islands to the north of Milne Bay,
destroying seven.
On 25 August, at midnight, despite the damage, the Japanese
landed from two transports carrying the first wave of 2000 marines
assigned to capture the airfields at Milne Bay. They decided to go
ahead because they anticipated a walkover, as faulty intelligence
advised there were hardly any defenders.
The invaders were in for a shockthey faced 8824 Australians
led by the Milne Force commander, Major General Cyril Clowes,
bolstered by 1365 Americans. In fact the garrison had just been
strengthened with 7th Militia Brigade, 18th Brigade AIF (an
experienced regular force under the command of Brigadier George
Wooten) and a battery of the 2/5th Field Regiment, all sent to
improve ground defence; the RAAFs 75 and 76 Squadrons (with
Kittyhawks); and the US Armys 709th Airborne Anti-Aircraft
Battery and a company of American engineers.
Unfortunately for them, the Japs landed on the wrong beach,
as the Anzacs had at Gallipoli, 11 kilometres east of the coveted
airfield, forcing them to advance in the dark along the thick under-
growth of the East Cape Peninsula to get there. Not that they got
far because they walked right into Allied defenders. They had to
start fighting that night along a road that followed a narrow strip
of level ground on the northern shores of Milne Bay, running west
from the landing beaches near Ahioma down past KB Mission to
Rabi and all the way to the airstrips at the head of the bay.
310
At first the invaders did well. The Japanese overwhelmed and
pushed back the first Australian battalions encountered, the 61st
and 2/10th Battalions.
However, the Australians soon recovered and, firing with
everything they could lay their hands on, started inflicting heavy
casualties. During the night the defenders began to hold their
ground, and by dawn on 26 August the Japanese withdrew to their
landing beach.
The withdrawal was the worst thing the Japanese could have
done because with the daylight Allied aircraft went straight for their
concentrated camp. Aircraft from Milne Bay and Port Moresby
attacked Japanese positions, destroying most of their supplies and
sinking a transport ship, undermining the invasion badly. RAAF
The Japanese hoped the
tanks they brought on
their landing barges would
help with their invasion
of Milne Bay, but the
tanks either got bogged
in the muddy conditions
or were put out of action
by Australians defending
the strategic port. AWM
311
Kittyhawks attacked the Japanese from then on for every day of the
battle. Their strike rate was good because these pilots included men
like Squadron Leader Bluey Truscott, the great Victorian footballer
and one of Australias best air aces of World War II.
The embattled Japs survived the raids and then after dark
landed the rest of their invasion force from New Ireland. During
the night this larger force was able to push the Australians back
to the Gama River, between Rabi and Motieau, but once again at
dawn the invaders pulled back to their landing positions in the
see-saw battle.
At daylight on 27 August, the Japs began to advance again. Part
of the Australian 18th Brigade repelled this advance, pushing the
invaders back as far as the KB Mission, holding the enemy at bay.
Clowes ordered the 2/10th Battalion to mount an offensive on the
Gama River against the Japanese Type 95 tanks with sticky bombs
hand grenades coated with an adhesive to stick to tanksbut
these failed to work because of the tropical humidity. This failure
enabled the Japanese tanks and troops to make mincemeat out of
the 2/10th, which suffered 43 killed and twenty-six wounded. The
Australians were forced to retreat to north of No. 3 Strip south of
Kilarbo, although the 25th Battalion held the Japanese back for
a while. Then as darkness fell the Japanese made a strong attack,
strengthened by their tanks, and forced all the Australians back
almost to the edge of the No. 3 Strip.
The next day, 28 August, seeing their target so close, the invaders
made a determined frontal assault on the airstrip, fighting with their
usual fierce and self-sacrificing commitment, supported by heavy
machine-gun and mortar fire.
The Australians, however, were not going to let the Japs get hold
of an airstrip that would bring them that much closer to bombing
Australian cities without a tremendous fight. Backed by artillery,
mortars and heavy machine guns, they counterattacked and held
the Japanese.
The fortunes of the Japanese continued to improve during
daylight on 29 August as they consolidated their positions. When
night fell, Japanese commander Minoru Yano arrived with 775
312
reinforcements and enemy warships shelled Australian positions
around Gili Gili.
The next day saw the strengthened Japanese prepare for a night
attack they hoped would enable them to break through and capture
the airfield. Unfortunately for them, their narrow-tracked Type
95 light tanks became bogged in the mud near Rabi and had to
be abandoned. Even so, a few hours after midnight the Japanese
launched their major attack on the airstrip.
But the Australian 25th and 61st Militia battalions had also dug
in around the vital airfield and would not budge. Nor would the
US 43rd Engineer Regiment that was now in support.
As night turned into a bloody dawn the Japanese repeatedly
charged the airfield, throwing themselves at the Australian machine
guns. Despite Allied artillery barrages the Japanese soldiers kept on
coming, mounting three banzai charges on No. 3 Strip against with-
ering Allied machine-gun and mortar fire from the 25th Battalion,
61st Battalion and US 46th Engineer General Service Regiment,
along with artillery fire from Australias 2/5th Field Regiment.
When the sun rose, the battlefield was littered with Japanese
dead. Licking their wounds, the Japanese had no option other
than to retreat towards their landing spot. From that moment, the
Australians were able to go on the offensive. Clowes ordered the
2/12th Battalion to pursue, against a savage fighting retreat. At one
stage Japanese forces launched an assault that lasted for two hours
before the Australians could stop them.
By 1 September, the Australians and their American allies were
firmly on the offensive, and drove the outnumbered Japanese steadily
back in a careful but relentless series of attacks as the Japs fought
an increasingly desperate rearguard action.
On 3 September, as the retreating Japanese regrouped, Clowes
ordered the 2/9th Battalion to help the 2/12th Battalion combat
a sudden increase in Japanese firepower on East Cape Peninsula.
Clowes did not want to lose any more men than he had to in this
final stage of the battle to drive the Japanese into the sea.
The next day, the two Australian battalions were suddenly
blocked by the strongest Japanese resistance for days. The 2/9th,
313
trying to push the Japs back from KB Mission, could not move
forward because of several well-placed machine-gun postsand this
was when Corporal John French leapt into action. French ordered
his section to take cover before he attacked and destroyed two of
the machine guns with grenades, and the third position with his
Thompson submachine gun. The Australian section advanced to
find that all the enemy machine gunners had been killed, along
with French. Nothing could stop the men of the 2/9th now as they
approached the main Japanese base camp, in spite of losing thirty
killed and 90 wounded.
By now the Japanese were on the run and that night they began
to load their wounded onto ships, ready for withdrawal.
On 5 September, the Japanese High Command ordered the
withdrawal of their forces from the area. The evacuation started
The Japanese invasion
of Milne Bay failed
miserably, with at least
700 of their soldiers
being killed and a smaller
number taken prisoner.
314
that night, with about 1300 Japanese troops evacuated by sea under
cover of a naval bombardment.
Allied air power increased the next day with the arrival of
three Beaufighters of 30 Squadron RAAF and six Beauforts of 100
Squadron, which would provide additional support against any
further landings and begin missions against ships. But the Japanese
werent quite finished and answered back that night when the light
cruiser Tatsuta bombarded the wharves at Gili Gili and sank the
MV Anshun, an Australian merchant ship.
On 7 September, the last of the invaders who had remained
behind and kept fighting were defeated, while Australian patrols
tracked down and killed the Japanese who were trying to trek
overland to Buna. Japanese warships kept shelling onshore positions
to cover the withdrawal, buttwelve days after the landing and
after bitter fighting on land, in the air and along the coastthe
Australians and their allies had defeated this Japanese invasion.
Milne Bay was important to both the Japanese and the Australians
and their allies.
Japan needed it to capture Port Moresby, their future base for
any attack on Australia and to cut Australia off from resupply from
the US mainland. The Japanese plan of attack on Port Moresby was
two-pronged: overland across the Owen Stanleys; and a seaborne
attack from Rabaul.
They landed at Gona and Buna in July, with enemy forces
moving inland on the Kokoda Track for their fateful engagement
with Australias 39th Battalion. By August the Japanese were making
such slow progress that they decided to occupy Milne Bay to build
an airfield from which they could attack Port Moresby. Tokyo
ordered an all-out offensive.
But the Australians and Americans had also decided Milne Bay
was suitable for an air base, so had started constructing airstrips
at the head of the bay. For defence the Allies steadily built up a
garrison, eventually led by Major General Cyril Clowes, including
315
Australian soldiers of 18th Infantry Brigade, 7th Division; the 7th
Brigade, a militia formation; companies of the 55th Battalion,
14th Brigade; gunners of 9th Battery of 2/3rd Light Anti-Aircraft
Regiment, the 709th US Airborne Anti-Aircraft Battery and the 9th
Battery of 2/5th Field Regiment; elements of the US Army Corps
of Engineers; and RAAF Kittyhawks of 75 and 76 Squadrons plus
6 Squadrons Hudsons. The Allies expected an invasion, and they
were ready for it.
While smaller than the fleet that transported the Anzacs to
Gallipoli, the Japanese invasion fleet was still considerable. The main
Japanese force that left Rabaul on 24 August under the command of
Rear Admiral Mitsaharu Matsuyama included the transports Nankai
Maru and Kinai Maru, the submarine chasers CH-22 and CH-24,
the light cruisers Tenryu and Tatsuta, and the destroyers Urakaze,
Tanikaze and Hamakaze. A second group of troops that left from
Buna was stranded on Goodenough Island after their barges were
destroyed by 75 Squadron. The invasion troops were elite Japanese
marines rather than the Imperial Japanese Army troops, equipped
with light tanks.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because it was a turning point for
the war in the Pacific, the first undoubted defeat on land of the
Japanese, a victory that first broke the spell of the invincibility of
the Japanese Army, in the words of Field Marshal Sir William Slim.
The victory at Milne Bay was the first full-scale defeat inflicted
on the Japanese in any of their amphibious landings since they
entered World War II in December 1941, destroying the myth of
Japanese invincibility in the jungle after a succession of lightning
campaigns, even if they had been outnumbered four to one and
subjected to constant air attack.
This would soon be followed by another great victory over
the Japanese on the Kokoda Track, where on 25 September the
Australians launched the counterattack that would push the Japanese
back across the Owen Stanley Range.
So at Milne Bay the Australians and Americans got the Japanese
on the run for the first time, and Kokoda forced them to run even
316
harder. It was the start of the end for Japan, which had first failed
to establish its foothold on the south-eastern shore of Papua New
Guinea in May 1942 after being turned back at the Battle of the
Coral Sea.
After the victory, the Allies were able to develop the base at
Milne Bay to support the counter-offensive along the northern
coast of New Guinea.
Postscript
The effect on the morale of all Allied servicemen in Asia and the
Pacific was profound, but especially for other Australians fighting a
rearguard action on the Kokoda Track, US Marines simultaneously
fighting on Guadalcanal, and Slims troops of the Fourteenth Army
who had been retreating in Burma.
Yet the High Command never fully acknowledged the achieve-
ment of the Australians and their American comrades in stopping
the Japanese juggernaut, which only a short time earlier had rolled
into Singapore and captured Britains great Far East fortress.
Very few of the gallant soldiers won decorations in the little-
known battle, apart from Corporal John Alex French, who paid
for his Victoria Cross with his life.
In Australia the victory was never celebrated like Gallipoli
which had actually been a defeatnor was it acknowledged by
the media or taught in schools. It was mostly forgotten, even
though Australians had played a major role in defeating the Japanese
invaders right on Australias doorstep.
Battle stats
Winners: Australian 9th, 25th, 61st, 2/9th, 2/10th and 2/12th battalions,
plus US army forces
Losers: Japanese forces
Toll: Australian battle casualties 373, of whom 161 were killed or missing
(several captured Australians POWs were bayoneted); the Americans also
suffered casualties; the Japanese death toll was at least 700
At Milne Bay the
Australians and
Americans got
theJapanese on
the run for the
first time.
317
Kokoda Track,
29 August 1942
CHOCOLATE SOLDIERS
HALT JAPS AT ISURAVA
Physically the pathetically young warriors of the 39th
[Battalion] were in poor shape. Worn out by strenuous
fighting and exhausting movement and weakened by
lack of food, sleep and shelter, many had literally come
to a standstill. Practically every day torrential rain fell
all through the afternoon and night, cascading into their
cheerless weapon-pits and soaking the clothes they wore
the only ones they had.
But this was Australias Thermopylae and compared
favourably with the battle in 480BC, when an outnumbered
Greek force led by 300 Spartans held off [sic] a vastly
larger force of Persians led by Xerxes until reinforcements
arrived.
Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Honner, commanding officer, 39th Battalion
H
earing the Japs had just broken through the Australian front
line at Isurava and were heading along the trail towards
Australia, Private Bruce Kingsbury, from the Melbourne suburb
of Malvern and now of the 2/14th Battalion, bolted down the
muddy Kokoda Track.
He grabbed a hot and bloodied Bren gun from his wounded
mate, Corporal Lindsay Teddy Bear, then moved forward and
318
began shooting at the attackers coming
up the jungle track. It was an impossible
task, one soldier against waves of Japanese
breaking through the line, but Kingsbury,
with his blood right up, went for it.
Firing from the hip, he shot down
Jap after Jap as they tried to bring him
down, leaving them dead or wounded in
bloody heaps on the bloodstained track.
Kingsburys mates, running behind him,
picked off even more.
For a while he seemed invincible. The
startled Japs fired at him repeatedly as they
scattered in retreat, missing every time.
Within minutes the frightened enemy had
gone. Kingsbury had closed the hole in
the Australian front lineit looked like
the crazy soldier had done the impossible.
But as he paused below a towering rock
to change the Brens magazine so he could
push the Japs back even further down the hill, a single shot rang
out. Kingsbury fell to the ground, dropping the Bren gun as he
collapsed and clutched at his chest.
Up above, out of sight on the top of the rock, a lone Japanese
sniperwith one deadly bullethad caught him unawares.
The battle
It was 29 August 1942 on the Kokoda Track, high up on the Owen
Stanley Ranges of New Guinea and Kingsburys depleted battalion
was desperately trying to stop the Japanese invasion along this
muddy highway to Port Moresby, from where they could have
invaded Australia.
Kingsbury, a soldier seasoned in the Middle East before being
deployed to Papua New Guinea, made his heroic stand at Isurava,
Private Bruce Kingsbury,
from Victoria, won his
Victoria Cross by bolting
down the muddy Kokoda
Track at Isurava against
heavy enemy fire armed
with a Bren gun and turning
back a Japanese attack
that had broken through
the Australian front line.
He would have pushed
the enemy further back
but he was shot dead by
an unseen sniper. AWM
319
a strategic village that Australias inexperienced 39th Battalion had
been defending on their own for days.
The Japanese wanted it as a springboard for their southern
advance. By confronting their assault head-on, charging through a
storm of rifle and machine-gun fire, Kingsbury cleared a path of
100 metres before being shot down by that sniper. His action almost
single-handedly saved the vital village of Isurava and the vital 39th
Battalion headquarters, and he was awarded a posthumous Victoria
Crossthe first won on Australian soil (Papua being an Australian
protectorate at that time).
Australian soldiers under the overall command of General Sir
Thomas Blamey were spread out along the Kokoda Track from the
southern starting point near Port Moresby all the way to Isurava
just over the top of the ranges in the centre of New Guinea. They
were trying to stop the Japanese advancing down the track from
Gona to the north.
In the beginning the Australian forces consisted only of Lieu-
tenant Colonel Ralph Honners 39th Battalion of militia, a mix of
volunteers and conscripts recruited to fill the gap left by regular
AIF troops fighting in the African desert, so the 39th was seen as
filling in until the regulars got back from North Africa. Militia
soldiers were nicknamed chocolate soldiers or chockos by a cynical
populace as it was considered likely they would melt under pressure.
But they had not melted. Miraculously, they had stopped the
Japanese advance at Isurava on their own. Sure, they had first been
deployed further north and been pushed back, but now they had
taken a standand stopped the Japs in their tracks. The 39th had
been hit hard and the survivors were wondering just how long they
could hold on when, out of the blue, the first AIF contingents
arrived on 28 August, including seasoned soldiers such as Kingsbury
and his mates from the 2/14th Battalion (commanded by Lieutenant
Colonel Arthur Key). Now the desperate chockos, as Kingsbury
would demonstrate, really had help.
Soon other reinforcements, including the 53rd Battalion and
the 2/16th, were manning defensive positions nearby.
320
It was just as well the reinforcements arrived when they did as
Isurava had proved very difficult to defend. At least 350 soldiers
had been killed in the first few days of the battle and nearly 1000
wounded, many from the mainstay 39th Battalion.
Now the battle see-sawed up and down this muddy, bloody
track in a two steps forward, one step back series of engagements.
But Isurava was one of the most important locations, a last-ditch
stand of the plucky 39th Battalion. Yet when the 2/14th arrived to
relieve them, the Chockos insisted on staying to fight the Japanese
and refused a command to withdraw from the front line even though
they were exhausted and had lost hundreds of dead.
When Major General Tomitaro Horiis South Sea Force landed
on the north-east coast of New Guinea at Gona on 21 July the
Japanese vowed to charge down the track to Port Moresby, killing
any Australians who got in their way. The Japanese were tenacious
fighters, who fought to the death. There was nobody to stop the
enemy advancing south apart from the Chockos, who met the Japs at
the north end of the track on the other side of the range at Awala.
They had been nicknamed
chocolate soldiers by
the critical Australian
media who predicted they
would melt in the sun,
but by the time these
untrained militia men had
helped stop the Japanese
advance down the Kokoda
Track, the 39th Battalion
were renamed ragged
bloody heroes. AWM
321
Not surprisingly, the Japanese forced the 39th south in a series
of retreats past the villages of Wairopi, Olvi and into Kokoda itself,
about halfway along the track.
The 39th wanted to hold the symbolic Kokoda village, but by
29 July the Japanese had kicked the battalion out. After licking their
wounds, the men of the 39th bravely mounted a counterattack on
8 August, but they had no hope.
With reinforcements arriving from the north, the Japanese not
only repelled the counterattack but also pushed the 39th Battalion
back to the village of Deniki. After a week of hard fighting the
39th had to retreat yet again in the face of a steady loss of men
and severe shortages of ammo and rations.
But when the 39th got to the next village south along the track,
Isurava, they swore they would retreat no further.
They were just over halfway back to Port Moresby, and in a good
high vantage point. Honner ordered them to dig in on arrival on
14August 1942 and prepare for the Japanese attack. The 39th were
down to about 400 exhausted and underfed soldiers, many of whom
were also sick or wounded. But they had to hang on; AIF reinforce-
ments had only just arrived in Port Moresby (the main Australian base
in Papua). The troops of 2/14th Battalion (a Victorian battalion),
the first elements of Brigadier Arnold Potts 21st Brigade to be sent
in, would need time to climb the track and reach them.
The Japanese launched an attack on the 39th at Isurava on
26August, but the Chockosoutnumbered five to oneheld on
until the first units of the 2/14th arrived. Like the cavalry in an
American Western, the reinforcements had arrived in the nick of
time, and men like Kingsbury were quick to spring into action.
Suddenly the 39th could breathe a sigh of relief. For what had
been expected of a militia unit, they had performed extremely well.
In fact, when the seasoned soldiers arrived they thought the 39th
looked like ragged bloody heroes rather than chocolate soldiers.
This new description stuck, for they had slowed down wave after
wave of advancing Japanese soldiers for more than a month.
But even seasoned troops could not stop the Japanese for long,
apart from Kingsburys heroic one-man stand on 29 August. Before
322
long, waves of Japanese soldiers returned, firing barrages of mortar
shells, belting the Australians with rifle and machine-gun fire
as they charged up the track with fixed bayonets. Despite the
reinforcements, the Australians had to retreat south from one
stepping-stone village to the next.
On 30 August the 39th Battalion finally agreed to be withdrawn
south to the Isurava Rest House, but then almost immediately they
all had to retreat south to Alola where HQ units also joined the
retreat. The supporting 2/14th followed the 39th as the Japanese
forced the Australians back to Eora Creek, the last and highest
position on the eastern side of the ranges from which they could
still look down on the advancing Japanese.
The Australians, still lacking the artillery and mortar firepower
they needed, could not hold this last high point and on 2 September
they crawled over the top of the range and down the southern side
to Templetons Crossing.
Eventually the exhausted Australians reached Ioribaiwa, where
the fresh troops of Major General Arthur Tubby Allens experienced
7th Division joined them. Now they had a real chance to win back
lost groundand they had to. By now the Japanese could glimpse
the longed-for treasure of Port Moresby in the distance.
After regrouping a little further south at Imita Ridge on
17 September, the enlarged force of Australians repelled every
Japanese attack until the day they suddenly felt the enemy offensive
weakening.
On 24 September Japanese forces were ordered to withdraw.
Their troops were needed more urgently on other battlefields, such
as Guadalcanal, and they were now so far from Gona they were
running out of food, water and ammunition.
After that the boot was on the other foot and the 7th Divisions
25th Brigade, led by Brigadier Ken Eather, chased the Japs back
up the muddy track all the way to Kokoda, which they retook on
2November before eventually driving the enemy back to Gona and
away from New Guinea.
Unbelievably, a few diehards from the 39th Battalion joined
them for the chaseso much for melting under pressure! But most
323
of the 39th was by now well out of the battle, knowing that their
mates buried on the track would have been pleased Kokoda was
back in Aussie hands.
Before December 1941 Australian forces were deployed in European
theatres in the war against Hitler and Mussolinis Axis powers.
Most of Australias available soldiers were fighting in North Africa
or around the Mediterranean.
When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in early December,
Prime Minister John Curtin knew Japan was likely to attack Australia.
He told British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that Australia
had a new war to fight in the Pacific and ordered Australian troops
to return homewhether the disgruntled Churchill liked it or not.
While he was waiting for them, Japan captured Singapore, then
bombed Darwin, so militia units like the 39th Battalion had to be
sentwith very little trainingto New Guinea to stop the Japanese
until regular AIF soldiers from Middle East could arrive. The
The Australian victory
against the Japanese forces
pressing southwards at
Kokoda was celebrated
back home, where people
feared the enemy could
invade Australia if they
reached Port Moresby.
324
Japanese planned a full-scale overland assault against Port Moresby,
with at least 8500and perhaps as many as 10,000seasoned
troops commanded by Horii.
Although the Australians eventually pushed the Japanese back
up the track and kicked them out of New Guinea, it did not matter
quite as much as people feared at the time. For the Japanese did not
want to capture Port Moresby to invade Australia, they wanted to
use it as a base from which to attack Australian air force and naval
targets to stop them being used against Japanese units waging war
in the Pacific.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because, for the first time, Austral-
ians had successfully defended their own territory from enemy
attack by land. As Papua was an Australian protectorate, the 39th
had technically repelled an invader on Australian soil. After Isurava,
Honner compared the men of his 39th Battalion with the 300
Spartans at Thermopylae, when a vastly outnumbered Greek force
led by the Spartans held off the invading Persians long enough for
the main Greek army to escape.
It was also a great battle because the Australians achieved another
first for World War IIit was the first time an advance over land
by the Japanese was repulsed by opposing troops meeting the
Japanese head-on.
And it was a political turning point, as Australian Prime Minister
Paul Keating said on visiting Kokoda on 26 April 1992:
Australian soldiers were not fighting for Empire, they were fighting
not in defence of the Old World, but the New World. Their world.
They fought for their own values. For Australians the battles in
Papua New Guinea were the most important ever fought.
Basically it was a great battle because despite their lack of training
and experience ordinary men of the 39th Battalion showed they too
had the Anzac spirit and, like the Diggers at Gallipoli who would
not be dislodged, they remained in the line against the enemy. The
much-ridiculed Chockos had refused to melt, either in the hot sun
For Australians
the battles in
Papua New Guinea
were the most
important ever
fought.
325
or the heat of battle, and became those ragged bloody heroes as a
maximum of 1000 men fought 6000 Japanese to a halt, long enough
for reinforcements to stop the Japanese.
Postscript
On 22 October General Blamey visited the ragged remnants of
the 21st Brigade in their camp near Port Moresby, Koitaki. On
9November he returned and ordered the men paraded so he could
address them.
Expecting commendation for their desperate efforts on the
Kokoda Track, they were shocked to hear Blamey claim that Prime
Minister Curtin had asked him to say that retreats like the initial one
on the Kokoda Track would not be tolerated, because Australians
had been beaten by inferior forces and that no soldier should be
afraid to die.
Remember, Blamey said, its the rabbit who runs who gets
shot, not the man holding the gun. The ranks seethed with barely
suppressed rage at effectively being called rabbits.
Yet even the retreats they had endured had been a huge achieve-
ment, carried out while they were dressed in rags, suffering from
wounds, malaria, dysentery and starvation. They had to slog it out
through mud, rain and impenetrable jungle, sometimes without
enough ammunition to fight, yet always taking the chance to have
a crack at the Japanese wherever possible in a clever war of attrition.
They knew the Japanese would mutilate and execute the
wounded, also propping up wounded or dead Australians to lure
their mates into ambushes. Later, as they cleared the track, Austral-
ians found many corpses of diggers with body parts removed. The
starving Japanese had eaten them.
Back in Australia, the men of the 39th Battalion also got little
credit for their actions, from the public, media or top brass. Even
the controversial US commander-in-chief of the Pacific War, General
Douglas MacArthur, rubbed salt in their wounds when he said,
Australians have proven themselves unable to match the enemy in
jungle fighting. Aggressive leadership is lacking.
326
Battle stats
Winners: Australian forces, including 39th and 2/14th Battalions and the
Papuan Infantry Battalion
Losers: The Japanese invaders, Major General Tomitaro Horiis South Sea
Force
Toll: 624 Australians killed and presumed killed, 1023 wounded; estimated
total Japanese casualties for all Papua and New Guinea actions, 15,000
Result: The Australians repulsed a major attack on Port Moresby launched
by the Japanese down the Kokoda Track and stopped the enemy setting
up a base there for waging war against Australia
327
Second El Alamein,
23 October5 November 1942
CHASING THE FOX OUT
OF THE DESERT
I have ordered immediate reinforcement of the vital heights
of Alam Halfa, as I am expecting Rommel to attack with the
heights as his objective, and for all contingency plans for
retreat to be destroyed. Ihave cancelled the plan for with-
drawal, for if we are attacked, then there will be no retreat.
If we cannot stay here alive, then we will stay here dead.
Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery, British commander, El Alamein,
first officers briefing
I
t was just after midnight and, lying in the darkness in the
Egyptian desert, Private Percy Gratwick of the 2/48th Battalion,
a forty-year-old prospector from Western Australia fighting in the
South Australian unit, knew the situation was desperate. German
shells rained down on him and the rest of the platoon, exploding
in the sand and rock all around them.
Gratwick and his mates were attacking Trig 29, a slight elevation
overlooking the battlefield and heavily defended by Axis forces. Now
they were pinned down by artillery, machine-gun and mortar fire.
Those in command had been killed and Gratwicks platoon reduced
to just seven men. They faced stiff resistance: the ground in front
of them was dotted with enemy mortar and machine-gun posts.
As a man who all his life had judged others by their actions
and not their words, Gratwick didnt have to ask anyone what to
328
do. He rose from his position and charged at one of the machine
gunners raining fire on his platoon, grenades in one hand, rifle and
bayonet in the other.
A German gunner stood up and opened fire on him immediately,
but Percy reached the nearer post and hurled in two grenades, killing
its occupants, then turned on a mortar crew and silenced them. He
then targeted the attacking gunner and charged him with rifle and
bayonet. Battered and bloodied by bullet wounds sustained during
his brave solo assault, Percy reached the machine gun, silenced it
too, then collapsed, dead.
Awestruck, his comrades had no choice but to follow the example
of his bold self-sacrifice and enter the deadly dark themselves, no
matter the risks.
The battle
After halting the advance of Axis forces into Egypt at El Alamein
in July 1942, the British Eighth Army, now led by General Bernard
Montgomeryor Monty, as he was affectionately calledlaunched
General Bernard
Montgomery, who
Churchill appointed to
fight the second Battle
of El Alamein, proved a
good choice as British
commander in North Africa.
He outfoxed Rommel, the
Desert Fox, enabling the
Allies to drive the Germans
from North Africa.
329
a large-scale offensive to drive Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the
Desert Fox, and his men out of North Africa.
Montys initial plan was for Allied soldiers to clear the mine-
fields that the German and Italian troops had laid in front of their
defensive positions. Aware that tanks would trigger the mines,
Monty began his attack on the enemys front line on 23 October
with Operation Lightfoot, where British infantry would advance
across the minefields and clear a path for the rest of the army to
follow and break through the Axis defensive positions.
Monty needed a lot of brave soldiers to carry out Operation
Lightfoot and when the time came there was no shortage of volun-
teers. Many Australians from the 9th Division like Percy Gratwick
were involved in the assault and fought hard to wrest outposts from
a determined enemy in the northern sector of the battlefield.
At one point the men of the 2/48th Battalion found themselves
face-to-face with a German defensive position protected by barbed
wire, mines and booby traps. After losing his commanding officer
to wounds, Sergeant Bill Kibby took matters into his own hands
and, calling Follow me!, dashed forward firing his Tommy-gun
and silenced the post, killing three men and taking the surrender
of 12 others.
However, the minefields along the Axis front proved thicker
than expected and soldiers trying to clear paths through them were
hit by heavy defensive fire. Paths had still not been cut through the
desert towards Rommels defensive positions by 24 October.
On 25 October men of the Australian 9th Division were called
on to assault the strategically valuable Trig 29, an elevated Axis
strong point in the northern sector of the battlefield. The 26th
Brigade attacked at midnight, with the support of a heavy artillery
barrage. Warrant Officer Cobber Craig of the 2/13th Battalion
described the bombardment: The sky rocked, it was like the onset
of an earthquake accompanied by a lightning storm.
The Australians captured and held Trig 29 that night. Fierce and
persistent fighting between Axis and Australian troops continued
for several days as the Australians protected the newly held position
330
from determined counterattacks. Rommel threw everything he
could at the Australians. The Desert Fox wrote that
attacks were launched by elements of the 15th Panzer Division,
the Littorio Division and a Bersaglieri Battalion, supported by
all the local artillery and anti-aircraft guns. The British resistance
was desperate. Rivers of blood were poured out over miserable
strips of land.
Those miserable strips of land remained in Australian hands,
however, as the troops of the 9th Division dug in, repelled attacks
and launched their own counterattacks. Private Eric Lambert
described the fighting best:
The artillery gunners
played a dominant role
in the second Battle of El
Alamein with their nightly
barrages against enemy
positions helping to drive
Rommels Axis forces
out of North Africa.
331
How I came thru it God only knows; men on either side were
falling & I became convinced I bore a charmed life & no longer
bothered to go to ground. Ahead of us loomed a ridge; machine-
guns pelted it from both sides. The bullets as they came past me
were like comets.
Passing thru the post taken by the Coy [company] in front,
all its defenders lay dead in trenches, except one whom I sent
careering fearfully back with his arms up. Past here death and blood
came thick among us . . . for a moment chaos & disorganisation
reigned, but the line reformed, the shells cut among us like scythes.
Brennan came running back, his arm pouring blood, seeking a
stretcher bearer. His dirty wide eyed face passed mine and was gone;
Beard, hit by the same shell, lay bleeding to death. Men wandered
everywhere bleeding, hoarse, distracted . . . We began to dig like
things possessed expecting the counter-attack.
It was during this period of fighting that Percy Gratwick charged
bravely into the night. His death was certainly not in vain either, as
his inspired comrades crept forward that night
and managed to capture the important high
ground.
For his heroic actions and self-sacrifice that
night, Private Percy Gratwick was posthumously
recommended for the Victoria Cross. Awarded
for unselfish courage and gallant and deter-
mined efforts, it was presented to his mother in
Perth on 21 November 1943.
Gratwick was not the only Australian at El
Alamein to receive this high honour, however.
Bill Kibby, after showing so much determina-
tion and bravery, became the third Australian
to be posthumously awarded a Victoria Cross
in North Africa.
On the night of 31 October, Kibby and his
platoon came under intense machine-gun fire as
the Australians pressed deep into the German
The Western Australian gold
prospector Private Percy
Gratwick used a couple of
grenades to kill a German
machine-gun crew that
had been pinning down
his comrades, then killed
the crew of a mortar gun
with his rifle and bayonet.
Finally, even through badly
wounded, he killed the crew
of another machine-gun
post before dropping dead.
His actions earned him
the Victoria Cross. AWM
332
front line. After reorganising those men in his platoon who had
survived the German machine guns and shelling, Kibby charged
forward and attacked several machine guns firing directly at him
from a few metres away. Most likely knowing that he was about to
be killed, Kibby kept going, destroyed a German machine-gun nest,
then fell dead, hit by a burst of fire.
According to his citation, Kibby left behind him an example
and memory of a soldier who fearlessly and unselfishly fought to
the end to carry out his duty.
Brigadier Arthur Godfrey was another Australian who gave his
all during the relentless fighting along the Egyptian coast. Although
he was killed by a shell falling directly on a tactical headquarters, a
promise the much-respected Godfrey had made to his men nearly
two years earlier had been fulfilled: No matter what happens to
us, when we go forward we shall give the enemy such a thrashing
that they will never willingly stand up to an assault by Australian
infantry again.
This tenacious brand of fighting by the Australians at Trig 29
forced Rommel to send more and more men, guns and tanks to
the northern sector of the front. Monty exploited this movement
of troops from the south to the north by amassing a largeand
largely rested and refreshedBritish force in the southern sector,
preparing it for the Supercharge. Operation Supercharge was a
second attempt at a breakthrough, which this time would take place
against a stretched, exhausted and weakened enemy.
Supercharge was a success: British forces broke through Rommels
stretched defences in the south and, after almost encircling them,
forced their retreat from Egypt. The Australian 9th Division
had played a major role in drawing Axis troops to the north and
weakening the southern sector of the El Alamein battlefield, which
in turn led to the successful launch of the British breakthrough.
As British XXX Corps commander Lieutenant General Sir
Oliver Leese said, the 9th Divisions actions gave the opportunity
for the conception of the final break through the centre, but this
could never have been carried out if your front has been broken.
333
The Britishwith the help of Australianswere fighting to drive
the German-led Axis forces out of North Africa, and the battles
of El Alamein were part of the overall plan to rid the strategically
valuable region of the Nazis once and for all.
After the initial month of hard fighting at El Alamein in July
1942, during which the Australians gained and held the important
high ground at Trig 33, there came a lull. At the end of August there
was a brief flurry of activity when the Germans made probing raids
on the Allied position in preparation for a full-scale attack, but they
were repelled and the Eighth Army maintained its commanding
position in the field.
Between August and October the Allies set about fortifying
their position at El Alamein and preparing for their own offensive.
Churchill had pressed for an early attack but Monty, who had
replaced General Auchinleck as commander of the Eighth Army,
wanted to wait and build up his forces to ensure an overwhelming
superiority over Rommel. By October Montys army had increased
its motor transport, had better anti-tank guns and superior Grant
and Sherman tanks, and was ready to attack.
The men of the 9th Division readied themselves for the coming
offensive. Corporal Edwyn Oakes of the 2/2nd Machine Gun
Battalion wrote:
As much of the fighting
was done at night in the
second Battle of El Alamein,
like this bayonet charge,
Australian soldiers had to
make sure they were killing
enemy soldiers rather than
their own comrades. SLV
334
Our patrols worked unceasingly through this period, often going
deep into the enemys defences to chart minefields, locate strong
points, and bring back prisoners for identifications ... Our gunners,
too, watched for targets, or kept the nervous enemy alert with
harassing fire.
The 9th Division was ready to play its part alongside the rest of
the Eighth Army in dealing a crushing blow to the Axis forces in
North Africa.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because Australian soldiers played
such a vital role in defeating the Axis forces and chasing them out
of the North African desert.
On 2 November 1942 Monty passed a message on to the division
through the 9th Divisions commander, Lieutenant General Sir
Leslie Morshead: I want to congratulate you on the magnificent
work your division has done on the right side of the line. Your men
are absolutely splendid. Please tell the division that I am delighted
with the way it was fought. This was not said in the heat of the
moment. Indeed, years after the war Monty wrote that we could
not have won the battle . . . without that magnificent Australian
Division.
Monty was not alone in attributing the victory to the Austral-
ians. Leese, in congratulating the 9th Division on the victory at
El Alamein, said in November 1942, the final break was, in my
opinion, a very bold conception by the Army Commander, and
one which he could never have carried out unless he was certain
of the valiant resistance that would be put up by your Division.
It was also a great battle because, almost for the first time in
World War II, an Allied army had convincingly defeated Axis forces.
This boosted the morale of soldiers and their leaders, as well as
those at the home front, and gave the Allies the momentum in the
war. After the Second Battle of El Alamein, Rommel and his men
were forced to retreat from Egypt all the way back to Tunisia, and
were eventually forced out of North Africa for good.
We could not
have won the
battle ... without
that magnificent
Australian
Division.
335
This was a turning point for the Allies. As Churchill stated
after the battle: This is not the end. It is not even the beginning
of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Though
the Australians had suffered 2694 casualties, their heroic fighting
and dogged resistance in the northern sector of El Alamein had
played a pivotal role in tipping the balance of the war in favour
of the Allies.
Postscript
The Australians had achieved a great deal in North Africa, yet
they were not able to continue to build on their great work. The
satisfying task of pursuing the retreating Axis soldiers to Tunisia
was denied them. Instead this rewarding work was given to the rest
of the Eighth Army.
By contrast, the Australian 9th Division, despite all the knowledge
and skills the men had developed in the harsh desert environment
at El Alamein, was withdrawn from North Africa and sent to
fight a new enemy in a new and little-known tropical theatre: the
Japanese in the Pacific.
Yet their performance in the desert had been faultless. As
Lieutenant Colonel Edward Macarthur-Onslow, commander of
the 2/2nd Machine Gunners, said to his men after the battle of
El Alamein: We know now what we can do, and what we are
worth. When our time comes to fight again, I know that we shall
play no small part in putting Hitler and his satellites back where
they belong.
But the time had come for Australians to defend Australia.
After Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor then Darwin, Americans
and Australians switched their focus from Europe and North Africa
to Australia and the Pacific. It was here that the 9th Division had
to adapt and learn new skills for fighting in steamy jungles, not
dry deserts.
They would now be fighting against a foe who posed an imme-
diate threat to Australia, but in time the 9th Division would prove
336
itself all over again, winning battles that would eventually help
destroy the Japanese Empire and hasten the end of World War II
in the Pacific.
Victory at El Alamein had given the Australiansand the rest
of the Allied forcesthe confidence they needed to go forward and
defeat the new enemy, which is exactly what they did. As Churchill
put it: Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we
never had a defeat.
Battle stats
Winners: The British Eighth Army, including the Australian 9th Division
Losers: Axis (German and Italian) forces
Toll: Australian casualties 2694
Result: After helping to halt the advance of enemy troops into Egypt in July
1942, the Australian 9th Division now played a major role in driving them
out of North Africa. The second Battle of El Alamein was a turning point
in the war, an Allied victory from which Axis forces never fully recovered
337
BIGGER AND BETTER
THAN GALLIPOLI
It was fitting that the Seventh Division, which turned back
the Japanese tide of invasion at Kokoda Track in July 1942,
should also defeat the same enemy at Balikpapan in July
1945 and secure the most strategic target in the East Indies
sector and thereby complete our tactical control of the
entire South West Pacific.
General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander Allied Forces South
West Pacific
L
ooking around for the promised naval, field artillery and tank
barrage meant to cover his men as they scrambled up the
sandy beach towards entrenched Japanese defenders in the jungle,
Lieutenant Colonel Tom Daly was dumbfounded. He had just been
ordered to attack one of the toughest Japanese strongholds of all,
a hidden fortress connected by a labyrinth of tunnels infested with
fight-to-the-death Japanese warriors.
Daly, a real regular who liked a fight, had taken it on because
his divisional commander, Major General E.J. Teddy Milford, had
assured him of the strongest supportnot only naval and artillery
support, but also a generous supply of tanks to crash through the
jungle towards the fleeing Japs ahead of his vulnerable infantry.
Mind you, Dalys 7th Division were real fighters. They had certainly
taught the Germans and Italians a thing or two in the Middle East
and North Africa, not to mention Kokoda where they had turned
338
back a determined Japanese advance. No, these sons of Nippon
would be no problem. But hell, he would have liked some bloody
support.
As his men ducked under the trees for cover, Daly scanned the
busy landing scene for that support. It looked worse than Gallipoli,
he thought, and that landing had been a mess. These ships that
were meant to be firing at the Japs before Daly and his men got
there were silent, and the field artillery was nowhere to be seen. Oh
well, at least well have those bloody tanks to help us, the hardy
Queenslander thoughtbefore a comrade drew his attention to
these much-celebrated tanks, which were hopelessly bogged in soft
sand on the beach and were, according to another of his men, as
useless as tits on a bull.
Righto, boys, he called, looks like were on our bloody own, but
we can still beat these little Nippon bastards. Remember Kokoda!
And with those bold words the soldiers of 2/10th Battalionstill
unsupported, but determinedcharged into the jungle to take on
the formidable fortress.
Lieutenant Colonel Tom
Daly, left, talking to
Lieutenant Colonel Ian
Hutchinson, had been ready
to lead his men off the
barges and onto the beach
to attack the Japanese
bases at Balikpapan,
because he had been
promised strong artillery
and tank support. When
these failed to materialise,
he and his men were on
their own against fanatically
determined Japanese
jungle troops. AWM
339
The battle
Daly was leading the 2/10th Battalion of the 18th Brigade, part of
the celebrated Silent Seventh Division, whichdespite its lack of
recognitionhad defeated Germans and Italians in the Middle East
and North Africa. Daly was one of thousands of Australians landing
on Japanese-occupied Dutch Borneo to capture the oil-rich port of
Balikpapan and its refinery, and drive the enemy from the island so
the Australians could use it as a base to attack the Japanese in Java.
This landing in south-east Borneo in which Daly and his
soldiers were taking part was also the biggest amphibious landing
of Australian troops since Gallipoli in World War I, and to this day
the biggest landing in Australian history.
And the Japanese would have to watch out, because the troops
of the Silent Seventh were far from silent when unleashed against
an enemy. They won most of their battles in Lebanon, Syria and
North Africa, where they won their share of Victoria Crosses. Now
Artillery barrages had
softened up Japanese
resistance, making the
landing of most Australian
troops at Balikpapan much
more successful than the
World War I landing at
Gallipoli. The men got
ashore unharmed and
the troops were able to
advance through the flat
terrain immediately. AWM
340
Daly and his battle-hardened men were charging into the jungle
against a force of demoralised Japanese who knew they were losing
the war and that Australians were deadly opponents.
Not only that, the Australians far outnumbered the Japs
defending their jungle positions. The enemy only had about 3900
troops at Balikpapan, whereas Milford commanded about 21,000
7th Division troops as part of a 33,000-strong invasion force.
Milfords three brigades, the 18th, 21st and 25th, were supported by
2/1st Machine Gun Battalion and the 1st Armoured Regiment. As
well, he had massive naval and air supportor was meant to have.
Daly, left on his own, would never have vouched for this claim.
But on the morning of 1 July 1945, just before 9 a.m. in broad
tropical daylight, two brigades landed on an 1800-metre stretch of
narrow sandy beach at Klandasan, near Balikpapan. Dalys 18th on
the left and the 21st on the right. The 25th would follow later. Even
General Douglas MacArthur, commanding the overall operation,
would land later. When he did, as he stepped ashore he recalled an
earlier defeat by the Japanese, and said: I think today we have settled
a score for that Makassar Strait affair three and a half years ago.
Unlike Gallipoli, which loomed as large then in the nations mind
as it does today, there was no enemy opposition as they landed, apart
from a lone Japanese rifleman taking pot shots who was soon silenced.
All the troops got ashore from the landing craft that beached from
the waters of the Makassar Strait. The Japanese started shooting,
however, once the invaders reached the edge of the jungle.
Dalys 18th Brigade immediately drove back the Japanese
defenders trying to stop them entering the jungle and helped secure
a massive beachhead about 1 kilometre into the tropical forest.
Then came the big moment, when Dalys men of the 2/10th
supported or not supportedhad to attack a Japanese strong point,
quaintly named Parramatta, which overlooked the beach and had
to be taken before any big build-up of troops could begin on the
beachhead. And support would have been useful as this defensive
position was a fortress, with tunnels connecting strong points and
bunkers. Daly had been promised the firepower of at least one
cruiser, a battery of field artillery and Australian Matilda II tanks.
341
In fact, the whole strategy of landing at Klandasan was built
on firepower expectations. Because of the expected massive air
and naval support, Milford decided to land his brigades right in
front of the Japanese defences rather than off to one side. Milford
believed it would be more effective in the long run than landing at
a less strongly held area and fighting his way to the key objective.
Sure, there had been massive air and naval bombardment leading
up to the landing, but as Daly prepared to attack the fortress he
was shaking his head in disbelief at the continued lack of the naval
and artillery fire support promised for his assault. And the bloody
useless tanks were still bogged on the beach.
He could not wait and pressed on, praying that his seasoned
troops could attack fast enough to stop the Japanese from reorgan-
ising, but as they moved forward it hurt him to see the casualties
build upmen killed and wounded because of the absence of the
barrages that would have softened up the Japanese. One company
captured some land just short of the fortress, but lost nearly half
the men in its forward platoon. Still Dalys men attacked the Japs
defending the fortress and crept forward.
Support or no support, Daly and his seasoned soldiers were still
able to inch forward, their weapons blazing and hurling grenades
against spirited opposition. But it was costing them.
Australian soldiers patrolling
through the long grass had
to keep their wits about
themat any moment,
enemy soldiers could leap
out and ambush them. SLV
342
Then lo and behold, some of the tanks arrived, followed by
some field artillery, and by 11.40 a.m.more than two hours into
the advancethey joined the attack. Now Dalys men started to
win the battle for the fortress.
Better late than never, Daly thought. With the artillery firing
into the Japanese stronghold and the tanks charging through the
jungle, forcing the Japs to flee ahead of them, Dalys men won. It
was all over in a flash.
Not long after midday, high noon, Dalys men and six tanks
secured the well-defended Japanese fortress of Parramatta. Dalys
boys of the 2/10th Battalion had done itwith a little help from
their tardy friends.
Then, with the beachhead established at least a kilometre deep,
the harbour secured and the fortress cleared, it was time for the
mighty men of the 18th, 21st and later the 25th Brigades to spread
out across the island. Unlike the open ground of the Middle East or
North Africa, they had to battle marksmen and machine gunners
in hidden jungle positions, pillboxes, booby traps and Japanese
escaping down or suddenly appearing out of tunnels. Undeterred,
the 18th Brigades veterans advanced successfully through the bush
north and north-west from their landing.
After the men of the 21st Brigade secured a covering position
about 800 metres in from the beach, they advanced east along the
coast towards the airfields, fighting against determined Japanese
resistance using mortars.
The fighting got harder and harder right up to nightfall, but
next day, 2 July, the 21st captured the airfield of Sepinggang,
5kilometres along the coast. After crossing the Batakan Ketjil River
they encountered a strong Japanese force on 3 July, which the 21st
drove back before capturing Manggar airfield, about 18 kilometres
north-east of Balikpapan, on 4 July.
Then the 21st had to take the fight to Japanese coastal defence
artillery near the Manggar Besar River. To make sure the airfield was
secure, the 21st Brigade spent the next few days destroying Japanese
machine-gun, mortar and small-arms strong points established to
defend the enemy airfield, but by 9 July they had won their battle.
With the artillery
firing into the
Japanese strong-
hold and the tanks
charging through
the jungle, forcing
the Japs to flee
ahead of them,
Dalys men won.
343
Not content with these victories, the Australians then drove the
Japanese defenders inland right up into the high country, removing
them completely as a threat.
Meanwhile, the 25th Brigade advanced into the worst fighting of
all. It headed straight down the Milford highway north along the
coast towards the villages of Batuchampar and Samarinda, fighting
the strongest Japanese resistance yet encountered. The Australians
came up against a well-entrenched Japanese rearguard and had to
call in artillery and air support before they could encircle the enemy.
Finally the Japanese withdrew and by 21 July the 25th, after a long
and costly battle, captured Batuchampar.
This brought an end to the main combat operations, although
Australian patrols fought minor clashes against Japanese elements
until the end of the war. Well before the end of the month, however,
all the objectives of the three brigades had been achieved and
Balikpapan was in Australian and Allied hands. The 18th Brigade
captured the town of Balikpapan and its oil refineries, the 21st
Brigade captured the Sepinggang and Manggar airfields and the
25th captured Batuchampar.
Balikpapan was just one stepping stone in a series that the Supreme
Commander Allied Forces South West Pacific theatre General
Douglas MacArthur had laid out leading all the way to Japan. The
seizure of Balikpapan was part of his wider campaign to drive the
Japanese back from the islands of South-East Asia. On Borneo,
the Australian and Allied forces had just defeated the Japanese at
Tarakan in May 1945 and Brunei in June.
But this landing at Balikpapan was much bigger than Gallipoli,
where only 16,000 Anzacs landed on the first day. In Borneo 21,000
7th Division troops took part in the landing as part of an overall
force of 33,000 Allied army, navy and air force personnel.
Balikpapan had a port with seven piers, an oil refinery and a
large number of warehouses. The town itself was built around the
eastern headland of Balikpapan Bay. On a narrow coastal plain
344
backed by steeply rising hills were two airfields. It was a useful
strategic base for the Japanese and would also be a great base for
Australia to attack the Japanese in Java.
Not that it was that easy to capture. Heavy timber obstacles were
embedded offshore along the likely landing beaches. On land the
Japanese had prepared concrete strong points and bunkers and had
at least 112 artillery pieces. Even worse, the Japs had laid thousands
of mines and booby traps and built pillboxes in strategic locations,
many connected by tunnels.
Unlike Gallipoli, where the Turks had so successfully opposed
the Anzac landing, at Balikpapan Australian and Allied forces made
sure there would be little or no opposition to their assault. Allied
naval vessels fired 23,000 shells into the Japanese positions from
15 June. Two Australian ships, the heavy cruiser HMAS Shropshire
and light cruiser HMAS Hobart, and thirteen destroyers bombarded
Japanese batteries. From 26 June, underwater demolition teams also
blew gaps in the series of formidable offshore obstacles.
The Australians made sure
of victory at Balikpapan
by landing nearly 33,000
troops in a massive invasion
fleet which aimed to
overwhelm the estimated
3900 Japanese ranged
against them. It was the
largest amphibious landing
in Australian history, far
bigger than Gallipoli,
and the troops won the
battle decisively. AWM
345
Before the troops were landed on 1 July, Allied ships fired
another 17,250 shells into the long-suffering Japanese lurking in
the jungle. If they had not been softened up by then, they never
would be. Then at 9 a.m. the first troops landed, including Daly
and his 2/10th Battalion of the 18th Brigade, tasked with securing
a beachhead, capturing the harbour and taking the high ground
behind the fortress and the town of Balikpapanno small order.
Following the end of the war just weeks later in early August,
the 7th Division remained in Borneo, undertaking tasks such as
guarding Japanese prisoners and restoring law and order.
After the demobilisation process began, some members of this
great division were repatriated to Australia or transferred to other
units for further service. Some personnel helped create the 65th
Battalion, formed to undertake occupation duties in Japan as part
of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because it was the largest amphibious
landing of any Australian force in history, far larger than Gallipoli
with many more vessels and thousands more men. And of course
it was far more successful than Gallipoli.
It was also a great battle because the Australian forcesthe
18th and 21st Brigades and especially the 25th Brigadewon this
battle decisively, aided tremendously by the naval and air force
bombardment that had softened up the Japanese for a couple of
weeks before the landing.
Postscript
It was a pity that the raison dtre for the full-frontal landing at Balik-
papanunprecedented naval, air force, artillery and tank supportwas
missing from the landing in key areas when it mattered. It would
eventually be supplied, just a little late in the day, as Daly would
confirm, having lost some men who might not have died otherwise.
But Daly did his bit. After the warwhich finished about a
month laterhe went on to an illustrious army career in peacetime,
being promoted to army chief of staff.
346
Despite the clear-cut victory, Balikpapan had been a controversial
battle from the planning stages onwards. As late as May 1945 the
Commander-in-Chief of Australian Military Forces and commander
of Allied Land Forces under MacArthur, General Thomas Blamey,
tried to pull the plug.
According to official historian Gavin Long: Balikpapans only
strategic value would be as a base from which to launch an expedi-
tion against Java, which was a purely political objective since it
would not matter militarily whether that part of Japans crumbling
empire was lost or held.
But Blamey himself became pretty controversial. After he
changed his tune at the last moment and got involved in plan-
ning the battle, he went aboard the landing ship Kanimbla. Here,
according to Queenslander Bill Spencer of the 2/9th Battalion,
Blamey moved from deck to deck speaking with the Diggers, then
addressed the troops, telling them their fate would be decided in
Washington and London.
It may well be that some of you with long-term service will be
given a spell, a spell which you have earned, Blamey said. I know
the 2/9th will want to be in the thick of it. To which a Digger
retorted: Pigs arse! Blamey continued, but when he finished his
speech the same Digger called out: Arent you coming with us?
Blamey did go ashore but not till the enemy had been defeated.
Battle stats
Winners: Australian forces, especially the 7th Divisions 18th, 21st and 25th
Brigades plus many Australian and Allied units in support
Losers: Japanese forces
Toll: Australian casualties 229 killed and 634 wounded. After two weeks of
fighting, nearly 1800 Japanese were dead (based on bodies counted), not
including those killed and buried in tunnels; and 63 were taken prisoner
Result: Australians and Allied forces cleared the Balikpapan area of Borneo
of Japanese forces, capturing towns, villages, oil fields and ports for
future use
347
HALTING THE
COMMUNIST ADVANCE
The seriousness of the breakthrough on the central front
had been changed from defeat to victory by the gallant stand
of these heroic and courageous soldiers [who] displayed
such gallantry, determination and esprit de corps in accom-
plishing their mission as to set them apart and above other
units participating in the campaign and by their achieve-
ments they have brought distinguished credit to themselves,
their homelands and all freedom-loving nations.
United States Presidential Unit Citation, awarded to 3 RAR, 26 June 1951
S
eeing another wave of communist Chinese troops advancing
up the valley as the early dawn light silhouetted them against
the towering mountains, Major Ben ODowd ordered his radio
operator to call for immediate support.
An officer of the US 1st Marine Division answered but, despite
the obvious Australian accent, refused to believe it was ODowds
radio operator calling.
Fuming with rage and with seconds before the enemy arrived,
ODowd grabbed the phone and demanded to speak to the American
commanding officer. The general commanding the Marines came on
the line, but when ODowd reported his position and the imminent
attack, the American refused point blank to believe him.
The American insisted the Australian forces no longer existed
because the Chinese had wiped them out the night before. Losing
348
patience and with the enemy almost on them, ODowd blasted back:
Ive got news for youwe are still here and we are staying here.
The battle
It was 24 April, the eve of Anzac Day, and ODowd and his fellow
Australians were fighting hand-to-hand for their lives as they
repulsed one of the biggest Chinese offensives of the Korean War.
All through the previous night they had been defending a series
of ridges strung across the Kapyong River valley, trying to stop wave
after wave of Chinese forces advancing south towards the capital,
Seoul. The valley was a traditional invasion route and if the Chinese
captured Seoul, they may have pushed the foreigners right off the
Korean peninsula and won the war.
But UN forces wanted to draw a line in the sand at the 38th
parallel, the line of latitude 38 degrees north, where it crossed
Lieutenant Colonel Bruce
Ferguson, smoking a pipe
in the centre, CO of the 3rd
Battalion, Royal Australian
Regiment, at Kapyong,
discusses his battle plans
with a British officer, left in
the beret, while an Australia
soldiers watches. AWM
349
the Korean peninsula. The Australians were fighting about 60
kilometres north-east of Seoul as part of a United Nations force.
ODowd was commander of A Company within the 3rd
Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, which was fighting as part
of the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade. The Diggers were
also fighting alongside Americans, Canadians, New Zealanders
and South Koreans. The Commonwealth Brigade had occupied
strategic defensive positions across the valley in an attempt to
halt the Chinese advance. As a reserve, British soldiers of the 1st
Battalion, Middlesex Regiment, held a position to the rear.
On 23 April the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment
(3 RAR), under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Bruce
Ferguson, and the 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricias Canadian Light
Infantry, took up their positions on prominent hills on either side
of the valley, near where a small tributary joined the Kapyong River.
The Diggers, who had been assigned positions on ridges such as
Hill 504 overlooking the Kapyong River and one of its smaller
tributaries, dug themselves in on 23 April.
It was a tiny force compared to the Chinese juggernaut. The
Chinese launched their spring offensive south down the valley with
an estimated 337,000 men in the main force across a 7-kilometre
front, with an estimated 150,000 attacking further east. The
expansive Kapyong valley was too large to defend with the forces
available, and the defenders were spread very thinly.
The Chinese first overran American tanks placed unwisely out
in front of the infantry and without artillery support. Unsurpris-
ingly the Chinese, who had already occupied Seoul once, quickly
overran South Korean forces defending the major invasion route.
The Australians of the 3rd Battalion first realised the situation in
the evening of 23 April, when South Korean forces came running
back past Australian positions along with Korean civilians retreating
from the Chinese.
Much to the Australians surprise, within minutes Chinese
soldiers themselves came running past in the night, chasing the
retreating South Koreans. It was difficult to differentiate between the
two Asian armies in the dark, with Chinese in among the retreating
350
Koreans, but the shrewd ODowd had expected the worst. Iknew
that Chinese soldiers would mix in with the civilians, he said.
They would be in civilian clothes or in uniform, in the half-light,
and be penetrating to the rear in numbers. Irang the commanding
officer and requested permission to open fire with the machine-guns
to stop all movement on the road. This was refused on the grounds
Republic of Korea soldiers could still be coming through.
The odd shot rang out and I repeated my request. Nevertheless,
the panic became justified as firing broke out around battalion
HQ. The enemy was at our rear.
ODowd and his men now had to watch their backs.
This human wave initially swarmed between the positions of the
Australian battalions A and B Companies and into the positions
Australian soldiers in
Korea, part of the United
States-led United Nations
forces, take a well-earned
break. Men like these won
a US Presidential Unit
Citation for their gallant
stand, determination and
espirit de corps during the
Battle of Kapyong. SLV
351
they were defending, so the Australians, all of whom were now fully
alert, began to let them have it, firing at the Chinese charging in
among them and stopping them in hand-to-hand combat.
The Australians killed many, but the enemy soldiers kept on
coming and by midnight the Australians were fighting for their
lives as the communists began breaking into their inner defences.
Throughout the night the Chinese used grenades and mortars,
then repeatedly charged into the Australian positions in waves over
their own dead and wounded. The Australians managed to keep
them at bay.
It was a close-run thing; no wonder the Americans thought
ODowd had been killed. ODowd said: Some of the Chinese
soldiers did not carry weapons, just buckets of grenades. They had
the job of keeping my Diggers heads down so their rifleman and
machine-gunners could rush in and get among us.
The Chinese also attacked the nearby C Company and its highly
respected commander, Captain Reg Saunders, the first Aboriginal
commissioned officer in the Australian army. Saunders reported
he had first been alerted to the attack by the sound of small arms
fire and the crash of cannon and also seen flashes of fire coming
from the direction of Battalion headquarters. Saunders thought the
communists were in a good position to cut off our Companyhe
was right, as his men had not been able to stop the Chinese. Saunders
had no alternative but to retreat.
Then the enemy attacked the battalion headquarters deeper
in the Allied lines in overwhelming numbers. The defenders had
to withdraw towards the Middlesex position. This loss of the
headquarters forced other Allied units to withdraw.
It had been a tough nights fighting. Mick Servos, a rifleman
and forward scout, said the Chinese were a tough and clever enemy
and they just charged in, wave after wave after wave. At least every
twenty minutes on average through the night, he said, the massed
Chinese attacks kept coming at the Australians defending their
positions on the hills overlooking the Kapyong valley.
When dawn broke on 24 April, most Australians had survived
and were still defending their positions. The light enabled ODowd
352
to see the Chinese getting ready for another attack on his position,
which is when he phoned for support, only to be told by the Ameri-
cans he had been wiped out. The American commanding officers
reaction was understandable, though, because so many Chinese had
infiltrated Australian positions during the night of 23 April.
ODowd mounted a counterattack that forced the enemy back,
but there was absolutely nothing I could do to help my men, beyond
walking up and down, watching for the possibility of a break-in and
shouting encouragement while attacks were in progress. The battle
was to be largely ODowds.
Although the Chinese were exposed on the floor of the valley
in the daylight where Allied forces could reach them with artillery,
during the night they kept creeping forward and the Australians
had to stop them with fire or hand-to-hand fighting and bayonets.
ODowd also called in New Zealand artillery supporthe expected
a better result in convincing the Kiwis he was still alive.
Fighting continued throughout 24 April. The Australians held
their positions, even though US airstrikes accidentally killed two
Australians and wounded others with napalman example of
friendly fire. The Canadians also fought off intensive attacks by
the Chinese, refusing to be dislodged from their hill-top position.
But it was plain the Australians would be unlikely to survive
another night in such an exposed position without great losses, so
they planned a night withdrawal along a ridge. Late on 24 April,
with more Chinese arriving, the Australians were ordered to retreat
to a position that had been successfully defended by the Middlesex
men, then establish new front-line defences.
Their fighting withdrawal was supported by New Zealand
artillery from the 16th Field Regiment, and as they fired and fell
back the Diggers attacked the enemy occupants of their former
battalion headquarters, killing 81 Chinese soldiers at the cost of
four Australian lives. The Australians had delivered a blow but
continued their retreat to safer ground.
Just before midnight on 24 April, the Australians were recovering
at the Middlesex Regiments position where they had linked up again.
On Anzac Day 1951, the Australians rested after their long fight.
353
They could celebrate as they had slowed and blunted the Chinese
offensive for long enough for the Americans to move in and rein-
force the Kapyong River front. It cost the 3rd Battalion thirty-two
lives lost and 59 wounded, but the battalion had certainly stood
up well against massive odds. The Australians had taken the brunt
of the fighting that first night, with little food and water, limited
ammunition and no mines or barbed wire to secure their positions.
Mao Tse Tung (later Mao Zedong in official usage) had created a
communist state in China by revolution in 1949 and his Commu-
nist Party then threatened to conquer or convert nearby nations
to communism, in line with the Marxist-Leninist Communist
Internationale aim of world revolution. By 1950 North Korean
communists were fighting to rule the Korean peninsula from the
north on the Chinese side and were soon joined by their Chinese
communist allies.
But the worlds non-communist forces, led by the United Nations
and the US, were determined to keep South Korea free. UN troops
Chinese troops advance
across snowy terrain. Not
only did the UN forces
manage to survive a
massive attack by Chinese
communists who overran
their bases at Kapyong,
but they also turned
back the advance and
protected the South Korean
capital, Seoul. AWM
354
from sixteen countries were sent to Korea after the South was
invaded. By 23 April 1951 the war was ten months old.
The Chinese and North Koreans, after four largely successful
campaigns, forced the UNs predominantly American armies back
down the length of Korea and captured Seoul.
American forces recaptured Seoul by March 1951, after which
UN forces decided to dig in and defend their positions. The Battle
of Kapyong was an attempt by the Chinese to break through the UN
front; it would be the last major Chinese offensive of the Korean War.
In Australia this was a period of passionate anti-communism. The
Domino Theory was prevalent, the conservative Menzies govern-
ment warning voters that communism would spread down from
the north towards Australia, toppling Asian nations like dominoes
as it went. And then there were the fifth columnistscommunists
infiltrating Australia who were ready to organise a revolution from
within; the media described these people as Reds under the bed.
This was also the period when Britain and her allies were devel-
oping the nuclear weapons to be used against the communists if
necessary. Britain detonated its first atomic bomb in 1952 in the
Monte Bello Islands off the Western Australian coast; more British
tests followed in the Australian desert.
Rugged up against the
brutally cold Korean winter,
Australian troops celebrate
Christmas. Well trained and
highly disciplined, Australian
soldiers proved more than
a match for the far more
numerous Chinese and
North Korean troops.
355
Although the Australian government wanted to ban communists,
not all voters believed the governments analysis and in 1951, after
years of bitter and divisive debate, the people voted in a referendum
not to ban the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), believing
it more important to have an open and free democratic political
system.
It was a victory for democracy, despite a passionate campaign
against the CPA by Liberal Prime Minister Bob Menzies, who was
bent on his new legislation, the Communist Party Dissolution Bill,
becoming law.
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE for Australian soldiers because they
helped the embattled UN forces to stop a massive Chinese offensive
involving hundreds of thousands of men. The 3rd Battalion held
up the Chinese long enough for US reinforcements to reach the
Kapyong River front and blunted the Chinese offensive, which
never got going again.
After Kapyong the Chinese made only one more attempt to
break through UN lines, only to be stopped once again by the
Americans.
From then on, the 38th parallel was maintained by the Allies.
Cease-fire talks began in July 1951.
It was the most significant and important battle for Australian
troops in Korea. The Diggers of the 3rd Battalion RAR, nicknamed
Old Faithful, along with the Canadian and American units, were
presented with the US Presidential Unit Citation.
The commander of 3 RAR, Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Ferguson,
was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his skilful leader-
ship at Kapyong.
Postscript
It was a great achievement stopping the communist advance and the
capture of Seoul, although it still cost thirty-two Australians their
lives. It was a big achievement in Korea and instructors in military
academies described Kapyong as the perfect defensive battle.
Kapyong was the
perfect defensive
battle.
356
But few in Australia heard about Kapyongin fact, so many
knew so little about the Korean conflict it became known as the
Forgotten War. The heroes of Kapyong returned to an Australia
largely uninterested in their struggle. Australians had plenty of
heroes and war stories from World War II.
The Kapyong veterans received little public recognition and
even found it difficult to gain repatriation benefits. More than
one remembers being turned away from RSL clubs because that
wasnt a proper war.
Defeating Chinese soldiers had also been downplayed by the
great US General Douglas MacArthur, leader of the United Nations
forces, who dismissed Maos army as Chinese laundrymen who
would flee at the first encounter with the Allies in Korea. MacArthur
was dismissed just before the battle for failing to follow presidential
orders. President Harry S. Truman said:
I fired him because he wouldnt respect the authority of the
president. Ididnt fire him because he was a dumb son-of-a-bitch,
although he was, but thats not against the law for generals in the
US Army. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.
The American leadership also made too many mistakes in the
Battle of Kapyongespecially when they sent Corsair aircraft to
hit Hill 504, believing no one could have survived the attacks of
the night before, without making sure. The napalm attack killed
two Australians and injured several others.
Battle stats
Winners: United Nations forces, especially Australias 3rd Battalion, Royal
Australian Regiment, and also Canadian troops, supported by New
Zealand, South Korea, Britain and the United States
Losers: Chinese communist forces
Toll: Australian casualties 32 lives lost and 59 wounded in action
Result: UN forces halted a massive assault, preventing an attack on Seoul
and creating a stalemate that inspired cease-fire talks
357
DIGGERS DEFEAT VIET
CONG IN A DOWNPOUR
The Battle of Long Tan has been promoted to its icon status
by the public and by the Viet vets themselves, rather than
by the politicians or the senior military. Its sobering to
realise that in fact only four medals were awarded for the
Battle of Long Tan. The politicians and the senior military
didnt recognise it as a great event. But its the public and
the Viet vets themselves that have made Long Tan the
icon that it is today where 18th August is the nationally
celebrated Vietnam Veterans Day.
Second Lieutenant Dave Sabben, commanding officer 12 Platoon, Battle of
Long Tan, Australians at War Interview No. 2585
S
training to see through the torrential monsoonal rain that
drowned out the cries of his wounded comrades, Sergeant
Bob Buick feared his worst nightmare had come true. The Viet
Cong trying to kill his mates were advancing thick and fast through
the rubber plantation where they were closing a circle around the
surviving soldiers. Soon the Australians could be surrounded and
cut off.
Even through the downpour Buick, acting commander of 11
Platoon 6th Battalion RAR, could see the enemy getting closer
and closer, their numbers increasing by the second. The deafening
deluge meant he did not know how many of his men were still alive
or could fight back. Not only that, Buick knew his men could not
358
sustain the heavy fire they were laying down as they were carrying
only five magazines each.
They stood a good chance of being massacred in minutes by
the Vietnamese unless they could get outside help. Buicks platoon
commander, Second Lieutenant Gordon Sharp, had just been killed
calling in artillery support. Sharp had succeeded before he was shot,
but unfortunately the barrage had missed the enemys forward units.
Buick, who had taken over when he saw Sharp was dead, was
in deep trouble and his surviving men were looking to him for
leadership. Fighting their way out would be hard. His men had
only been in Vietnam a few months and some were freshly trained
National Servicemen, as Sharp had been.
His 11 Platoon, which was part of D (Delta) Company, 6th
Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (6 RAR), might have escaped
if it had been just a small group of local Viet Cong (VC) attacking
them, but it now looked like they had walked into a regiment-sized
formation of VC. In a break in the downpour Buick had seen
hundreds of Vietnamese around them. Buick had only twenty-eight
in his platoon to start with.
These Australian soldiers of
Delta Company did well to
survive the Battle of Long
Tan. They were surprised by
a group of enemy soldiers
hiding in the plantation,
their commanding officer
was shot dead, seventeen
of them were killed on the
battlefield, they ran out
of ammunition and they
were caught in a tropical
downpour. Painting by
Bruce Fletcher, AWM
359
He lunged for the radio to report the situation to his headquar-
ters, call for more ammunition and direct artillery firethen let
out a bloodcurdling curse: the VC had shot off the bloody aerial.
The battle
It was mid-afternoon on 18 August 1966 in South Vietnams Phuoc
Tuy Province, about 68 kilometres south-east of Saigon (now Ho
Chi Minh City). The men of 11 Platoon were lucky they had the
capable Buick to lead them because they were up against it.
They were part of a force of 108 Australians on the ground
against what turned out to be an estimated force of 2500 Viet
Cong fighters led by North Vietnamese Army (NVA) commanders.
The Australians were part of the 1st Australian Task Force
(1ATF), based at Nui Dat, and consisted mainly of men from the
6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (6 RAR).
The troops fighting for their lives were from D Company
6RAR, commanded by the experienced Major Harry Smith, who
had served in the Malayan Emergency in the 1950s. Buicks 11
Platoon, commanded initially by Sharp, was accompanied by 10
Platoon (Second Lieutenant Geoff Kendall) and 12 Platoon (Second
Lieutenant Dave Sabben).
They were operating with a company HQ and a three-man
New Zealand artillery forward observer unit, searching for the VC
force that had attacked the Australians operational headquarters
the day before with a twenty-minute barrage of heavy mortar and
recoilless rifle fire, wounding twenty-four soldiers. One would later
die of his injuries.
They hoped to find where the enemy had been shooting from
and whether they had withdrawn. The rubber plantation was north
of the dilapidated old village of Long Tan, a few kilometres east of
Nui Dat. To make matters worse it was starting to rain.
The three platoons moved forward and spread out. By mid-
afternoon their suspicions were confirmed when the Australians in
11 Platoon suddenly came across a patrol of VC and immediately
360
opened fire. Buick wounded one of the enemy, before they melted
away into the trees.
Then, as they patrolled deeper into the plantation, all hell broke
loose, as one of the survivors of 11 Platoon would say.
First, the heavens burst and masses of monsoonal rain bucketed
down. The rain was coming down so hard it bounced back up to
about chest level, cutting visibility even further. Then the rain was
joined by torrents of AK-47 assault rifle and machine-gun fire from
the VC.
Through the downpour Buick spotted Vietnamese soldiers in
the plantation firing light mortars and rocket-propelled grenades
as well as small-arms fire. His men took cover, then realised the
enemy were not only in the front of them but also on both sides:
11 Platoon was in big trouble, and within minutes four Australians
had been killed.
The platoon was trapped by an unknown number of enemy, and
Buicks commander, Sharp, used his radio to call in artillery support.
The first shells from the artillery at Nui Dat started falling, then
when Sharp looked up to see how he should direct the artillery fire
he was shot dead. That was when Buick took command and tried to
call for more ammunition, only to have his radio antenna shot off.
Isolated from the rest of the company, with minimal ammunition
and no radio, 11 Platoon fought on. The VC fire increased, hitting
Buicks men before they could move. Within seconds close to half
of 11 Platoon were groaning or silent casualties. Buick reckoned
thirteen of his twenty-eight men were now dead.
Realising that Buicks platoon was in deep trouble, at HQ
Smith ordered the nearby 10 Platoon commanded by Kendall to
move forward. As they approached to within 100 metres of their
besieged comrades, the men of 10 Platoon also came under heavy
fire and were forced to retreat with their wounded, their radio also
destroyed. A runner, HQ radio operator Private William Yank
Arkell, delivered a replacement radio set after killing two enemy
soldiers on the way, and was later mentioned in despatches.
But Buicks 11 Platoon were still on their own, cut off, nearly out
of ammunition and out of radio contact with night approaching,
361
blinded by torrential rain and increasingly surrounded by the enemy.
Some of his men were so short of ammo they picked up machetes,
just in case. The artillery could not fire for fear of hitting Buick
and his struggling men.
Then one of Buicks men managed to get the radio working
again, and finally Buick was able to call in artillery fire from Nui
Dat, directing it just over his mens heads onto the enemy.
Buick also told headquarters where to send any helicopters to
drop ammunition. If you dont get the ammunition here were all
dead, he said. Theyll come through us like a dose of salts.
In one of the best bits of luck on the day, two RAAF Iroquois
from 9 Squadron were in Nui Dat having just been used as transport
for a Col Joye and Little Pattie concert. Disobeying orders, their
pilots agreed to fly the support mission through the blinding rain
and dropped cases of ammunition wrapped in blankets near the
beleaguered soldiers. As Smith reported:
We started running short of ammunition and I requested helicopter
resupply. This arrived some time after, no mean feat by the pilots
in monsoon rain conditions, and was dropped through the trees
right into our position during a lull in the VC onslaught, and the
Australian soldiers give first
aid to a fellow Australian
wounded in the Battle of
Long Tan. Sergeant Bob
Buick, right, took command
of his platoon after his
CO was killed. AWM
362
ammunition was quickly distributed. Without this resupply, there
is little doubt we would not have survived.
Now the artillery, using the positions relayed by the new radio
contact, started hitting their targets. Shells from the twenty-four
guns struck the enemy surrounding the Australians just in time.
After all, the Australians were outnumbered twenty-three to one.
As Smith also said: We would not have survived without artil-
lery. He said they initially fired off 30 to 40 rounds, landing just
75 metres in front of us with pin-point accuracy and wiped out
the VC Vietnamese.
Altogether the artillery gunners fired 3500 rounds from twenty-
four guns in the combined regiment which included eighteen
105-millimetre howitzers from 161 Field Battery (Royal New
Zealand Artillery), 103 and 105 Field Batteries (Royal Australian
Artillery), and the six 155-millimetre self-propelled howitzers from
2/35th Battalion (US army) at Nui Dat some 5 kilometres away.
It was just as well to have all this firepower because Sabbens
12 Platoon, which was short one section left to protect HQ, had
set out to find 11 Platoon but could not get any closer than 75
metres because of heavy fire from the Viet Cong. They also had to
turn back, but before leaving, Sabbens men set yellow smoke flares
to mark the escape route for 11 Platoon.
Finally, a lull in the fighting meant the survivors could run for
it. Bob Buick and the remainder of 11 Platoon linked up with 12
Platoon and together the two platoons managed to fight their way
back to boost Company HQ defences.
Finally, like the cavalry, men from A Company 6 RAR arrived
from Nui Dat in M113 armoured personnel carriers, charging
through enemy lines and arriving just in time to help the exhausted
men of D Company. This final show of strength helped disperse
the enemy and end the battle.
Overwhelmed by the aggressive multilevel response by the
Australians and discouraged by nightfall, the Vietnamese called off
their assault soon after 7 p.m. and withdrew.
363
It had been an exhausting battle, as Private Graham Smith
of HQ said: The survivors struggled in like haunted men, with
looks of horror on their faces. D Companys dead were left in the
plantation to be collected the next morning.
Much to their surprise, when the sun rose next day and the
Australians returned to the battlefield, it was littered with 245 VC
bodies, which they then buried. The penny dropped. Not only had
all the forces combined to help 11 Platoon escape, D Company had
also fought and won a major battle.
Australia got involved in the Vietnam War from 1962 following
a request from the South Vietnamese president, Ngo Dinh Diem,
who asked for help against communist insurrection.
Liberal Party Prime Minister Robert (soon to be Sir Robert)
Menzies provided thirty military advisers in July 1962, but as the
insurgency grew the Americans asked Australia to commit troops.
By 1965 Australia had sent its first troops, from the 1st Battalion
RAR. As the conflict worsened, in 1966 Australia sent the biggest
deployment of troops since World War II when the first of a 4500-
man task force left for Vietnam. About 60,000 soldiers served in
sixteen battalions over nine years in South Vietnam. Australia also
signed the ANZUS Treaty, strengthening its commitment to helping
defend its regional neighbours.
Worried by the spread of communism, Menzies agreed to fight in
the Vietnam War because he believed that if the communists succeeded
in Vietnam they would invade countries further south, eventually
reaching Australiaan analysis known as the Domino Theory.
National Service had been introduced to boost troop numbers
for Australias Vietnam commitment, and the Long Tan battle
was fought by National Servicemen as well as regulars. The only
complaint heard from any of the men at Long Tan at that time was
having to go on patrol the very day the group of visiting entertainers
that included Col Joye and Little Pattie were setting up their
equipment for a much-anticipated concert. As Smith recalled: We
The survivors
struggled in like
haunted men, with
looks of horror on
their faces.
364
were moving across the grassy fields to the east to the music from
the Col Joye and Little Pattie Concert.
The battle at Long Tan followed the Anzac tradition of mates
saving mates, but unlike Gallipoli the Vietnam War was a contro-
versial conflict. Anti-Vietnam War groups mobilised large protest
marches and demonstrations around the nation.
Part of the reason for deep public concern was that Vietnam
was the first television war, with vision of battle scenes and civilian
carnage shown every night as Australians sat down to their evening
meals, and this helped turn the voters against the war. The debate
would continue until the election of the Whitlam Labor government
in 1972 which immediately withdrew all remaining troops, as they
had promised in their election platform.
Nevertheless, to that point in time, the Vietnam Waralthough
it was never declared a warwas the longest conflict in which
Australia had been involved.
Helicopters, which were so
vital for Allied operations
in Vietnam, dropped the
ammunition supplies that
saved the lives of the
Australians trapped by
the communists in the
Battle of Long Tan. NAA
365
IT WAS A GREAT BATTLE because Australians had won through
against the odds. The large enemy force attacked in waves during a
torrential downpour, almost overrunning the Australians.
Yet they had rescued their mates against heavy enemy fire and
blinding monsoonal rain and won a major battle in the process.
It was an achievement for the helicopters and artillery to save
the lives of 11 Platoon despite the shocking visibility and limited
communications. It showed Australians could win through no
matter what.
The Australians were also greatly outnumbered, by at least
twenty-three to one. It was also a long battle as D Companys
men, and the three New Zealanders from 161 Battery, Royal New
Zealand Artillery, fought for almost four hours. And it was a
decisive Australian victory and is often cited as an example of the
importance of combining and co-ordinating infantry, artillery,
armour and military aviation.
In defeating the Vietnamese the Australians inflicted an estimated
500 casualties, at least 245 of whom were killed. By turning them
back, the Diggers showed the Vietnamese were not invincible. This
had important tactical implications in allowing the Australians to
gain dominance in Phuoc Tuy Province; although there were other
large-scale encounters, the Australian forces were not fundamentally
challenged again.
Australias government named 18 August as Vietnam Veterans
Day, because the Battle of Long Tan achieved symbolic significance
similar to Lone Pine at Gallipoli, Hamel on the Western Front in
World War I, Kokoda or Tobruk in World War II, and Kapyong
in the Korean War.
Postscript
Long Tan was the costliest single engagement involving Australian
troops in Vietnam: a third of D Company were casualtieseighteen
killed and twenty-one wounded.
It also added to the controversy at home as many more Austral-
ians were opposing participation following protests sparked by the
366
visit to Australia that same year of US President Lyndon Baines
Johnson. Prime Minister Harold Holt, who had succeeded Menzies,
angered many protestors when he declared Australia would go all
the way with LBJ. The protests increased until the early 1970s,
when up to 100,000 protesters marched in Sydney and Melbourne
right up to the election of the Whitlam Labor government which
promised to bring the remaining troops home.
This opposition undermined the awarding of decorations for
bravery, and Major Harry Smith always claimed the soldiers achieve-
ments were never properly recognised. He said:
At least 60,000 soldiers served in Vietnam in 16 Battalions over
nine years performing great acts of valour in a series of battles
including Long Tan yet not one Victoria Cross was awarded to an
Australian soldier fighting in the field outside the Training Team.
The four Victoria Crosses for the Vietnam War went to Australian
Army Training Team members Warrant Officer II Kevin Wheatley
and Major Peter Badcoe, both posthumously, and Warrant Officer
Ray Simpson and Warrant Officer Keith Payne.
But Canberra never fully acknowledged the victory nor bravery
of many Australians. In May 1968 D Company 6 RAR was awarded
a US Presidential Unit Citation for extraordinary heroism one
of only two Australian units to have received the decoration (the
other being 3 RAR for its role in the Battle of Kapyong during
the Korean War).
Although the South Vietnamese government offered the Diggers
the South Vietnam Cross of Gallantry, it was advised that Australian
government policy forbade the acceptance of foreign awards. So the
Australians received presents: wooden cigar boxes for the officers,
cigarette boxes for the NCOs, and dolls dressed in national costume
for the other ranks.
Nevertheless, 42 years later, Smiths Military Cross was upgraded
to a Star of Gallantry (one below the VC) for his great leader-
ship in the battle; and as this book went to press Smith was still
I must admit,
looking back now,
if Harry Smith
hadnt been the
commander he was,
and if myself and
other sergeants
and corporals
we had in Delta
Company had not
been of the calibre
they were, Idont
think we would
have survived
LongTan.
367
campaigning to have appropriate medals awarded to the men who
served under him.
Buick said later:
I must admit, looking back now, if Harry Smith hadnt been the
commander he was, and if myself and other sergeants and corporals
we had in Delta Company had not been of the calibre they were,
Idont think we would have survived Long Tan. Ithink the whole
hundred and eight would have been killed. So thats how important
it was for us.
For their part, the North Vietnamese initially lied about the
battle, claiming they had wiped out the Australians, and presented
medals to surviving Vietnamese soldiers. Even today they claim Long
Tan was only a small engagement with perhaps 50 Vietnamese
casualties.
Battle stats
Winners: Australians, 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, D Company,
Platoons 10, 11 and 12
Losers: Vietnamese communist forces who lost 245 killed in action
Toll: Highest loss of Australian life in a single action in the Vietnam War
with 18 men killed (17 on the battlefield and 1 who died of wounds later),
as well as 21 wounded
Result: The Australians had a great victory, repulsed a major VC attack,
rescued a platoon from certain death and achieved strategic dominance
of Phuoc Tuy Province
368
CoralBalmoral,
12 May6 June 1968
AUSTRALIAS BIGGEST
VIETNAM BATTLE
CoralBalmoral was the biggest battle Australians fought in
the Vietnam War. It was the biggest in terms of the number
of Australians involved, the size of the enemy force and the
number of Australians killed.
Private Lachlan Irvine, 3 RAR, Fire Support Base Coral, 12 May 1968
H
ad it not been for the arrival of the tanks, Second Lieutenant
John Salter was convinced the Viet Conghidden in their
underground bunker systemwould have wiped out the patrol
he was leading through the dense jungle long ago. Up to now the
Australian soldiers had been creeping through this murderous maze
not knowing when they might fall into a hidden bunker or when
a Viet Cong fighter would fling open the trapdoor of a concealed
tunnel, spring up like a jack in the box and blow their heads off.
The young officer had seen too many young Australians killed
on this sort of operation. Nevertheless, it was hard to keep his eyes
and ears wide open as they had been at it for three hours firing
back at the enemy, whenever they appeared, fighting from bunker
to bloody bunker.
Saltera good-looking, happy-go-lucky young Queenslander
from Townsville with his life ahead of himhated these jungle
patrols. Yet as leader he had to keep searching for the underground
hell holes because, like snakes in the grass, the Viet Cong had started
369
using their underground system to mount
attacks on Australias Fire Support Bases,
Coral and Balmoral.
They had already caused heaps of
damage. Five blokes had been killed in the
first attack on Coral alone.
And the Viet Cong would blow Salter
and his mates in 10 Platoon to smithereens if
they got a chance because the bastards were
now using lethal rocket-propelled grenades
(RPGs). Nothing worse when you are on
foot. The Aussies had always done their best
to ferret out the shadowy jungle fighters
from their underground lairs, but with the
Viet Cong using such weapons the Austral-
ians did not stand a chance. Salter knew his
patrol could not go any further. It would
be suicidal, and he wanted to get back to
sunny Queensland where the girls were much
prettier than any he had seen in Vietnam.
Then, in the nick of time, the tanks
arrived. Not a minute too soon, Salter
reckoned, as they roared into action. As soon as the Centurions
charged towards the bunkers, tunnels and underground hideouts, the
Viet Cong popped up to fire their RPGs at the steel savioursthen
watched helplessly as they bounced right off the armoured monsters.
Moving forward two or three abreast, the 52-tonne Centurions
crushed many of the bunkers, caved in connecting tunnels with
their weight and engaged the enemy at point-blank range with their
84-millimetre main guns. The tanks routed this particular snakes
nest as canister rounds blasted away the heavy foliage to expose
further bunkers, leaving the Viet Cong no place to hide.
Salter and his infantry then cheerfully mopped up remaining
resistance as they followed the tanks, using rifles and grenades.
Then assault pioneers provided support with flame-throwers while
their artillery and mortar fire support engaged more distant targets.
At a cost of twenty-
five livesthe highest
Australian death toll of
any battle in Vietnam
the Australian and Allied
forces won the Battle of
CoralBalmoral by repelling
repeated attacks by the
communists determined
to wipe out the Australian
Fire Support Bases. AWM
370
That will teach the Viet Cong, Salter thought, wondering why
they had not used tanks before. They were much better than
armoured personnel carriers (APCs). Yet the Centurions had only
recently been sent to Vietnam and were being used for the first
time in this CoralBalmoral battle and to great effect. Although
it had been a fierce fight none of Salters men were either killed
or wounded.
The battle
It was 26 May 1968, in the middle of an intense battle between
the Australians and Vietnamese communists, and Salter and his
men were on patrol with the intention of stopping the Viet Cong
and units of the North Vietnamese Army from mounting yet
another attack on two Australian Fire Support BasesCoral,
about 40 kilometres north-east of Saigon, and Balmoral, about
4.5 kilometres further north. His platoon had been out since early
morning fighting back against enemy small-arms fire and RPGs,
3 kilometres from Coral.
The bunkers were well constructed and camouflaged, and the
dense vegetation meant Salter and his mates often fell into the
bunkers before they saw them. The bunkers were also arranged
to lay down mutually supporting enfilading fire, and the North
Vietnamese defending them were also well equipped with RPGs.
It was just lucky Salter and his patrol had the Centurions.
Even so, after three hours of fighting the enemy from bunker to
bunker the Australians realised the size of the complex was beyond
their small force, so they sensibly withdrew. Aerial reconnaissance
confirmed the bunker system was part of a much larger base area.
Salters CO, Major Tony Hammett, commanding both D
Company, 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (1 RAR) and
the tanks of 1 Troop C Squadron, ordered his forces to retire to
Coral by late afternoon under the cover of artillery and mortar fire.
Salter, awarded the Military Cross for his leadership during this and
other actions, was forever grateful that Colonel (later Lieutenant
General Sir) Donald Dunstan, acting commander of 1st Australian
371
Task Force (1 ATF), had had the sense to provide some of the newly
arrived tanks up from Nui Dat.
It had not been a bad haul, even though the enemy had a home-
ground advantage. With the help of the tanks, the Australians
wrecked at least fourteen bunkers and killed at least seven North
Vietnameseleaving an unknown number entombed in crushed
bunkers and tunnels.
Salter and his mates were part of an American, Australian
and New Zealand force of between 2500 and 3000 men trying
to repel their familiar enemy, the Viet Cong, as well as North
Vietnamese regular forces of about 4000 men. Salters Australian
comrades included men of 1 RAR and the 3rd Battalion, Royal
Australian Regiment (3 RAR), the APCs and tanks of A Squadron
3rd Cavalry Regiment and C Squadron 1st Armoured Regiment,
and the 105-millimetre howitzer light field guns of the 12th Field
Regiment Royal Australian Artillery.
It was the longest-running engagement the Australians ever
fought in the Vietnam War.
Together Australian, New Zealand and American forces were
involved in fierce and sometimes hand-to-hand combat against
superior numbers of enemy from 12 May to 6 June at Fire Support
Bases Coral and Balmoral, some 20 kilometres north of Bien Hoa.
Sitting astride a route used by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong
forces approaching or departing Saigon, the bases were defended
positions providing artillery, mortar and armoured support for
infantry patrols of the area tackling large formations of enemy troops
falling back north after the failed Tet Offensive against Saigon.
The worst thing would be for the Vietnamese to get hold of one
or both of these bases. The North Vietnamese tried hard, launching
attack after attack in an attempt to drive the Australians out of
the area. But the Australians werent just sitting behind sandbags
waiting to be attackedthey also initiated combat on countless
patrols into the jungle around the bases.
Coral and Balmoral were actually back-to-back battles between
US, Australian and New Zealand forces and the North Vietnamese
Armys 7th Division, plus substantial Viet Cong formations.
372
12 May
The enemy first attacked Coral, east of Lai Khe in Binh Duong
Province in an area of operations known as AO Surfers, less than
twenty-four hours after the Australians arrived to establish the base.
They attacked as usual under cover of darkness, in the early hours.
This was not just an assault by lightly armed Viet Cong, but one
led by the more experienced and more heavily armed regular North
Vietnamese forces. The enemy mounted battalion-sized attacks, with
a heavy bombardment signalling the start of the assault.
At least 400 enemy troops from the NVAs 141st Regiment
charged the base and broke through its defences, penetrating the
Australian perimeter and killing five of the eighteen members
of the 1 RAR mortar platoon, wounding eight more. Having
dealt with these Australian defenders, in desperate close-quarters
fighting they captured an Australian forward gun position, taking
a 105-millimetre howitzer pit of 102nd Field Battery. This had
never happened before.
In the dark, the battered Australians regrouped and decided to
go for the jugular. Determined not to lose their gun, other artillery
was loaded with deadly splintex rounds containing hundreds of
small darts called flechettes and fired on the captured gun position.
Although patrols seeking
out enemy positions
underground were proving
effective, thanks to the
leadership of brave men
like Second Lieutenant John
Salter, the commanding
officers of CoralBalmoral,
Lieutenant Colonel Phillip
Bennett, centre, and Major
Tony Hammett, right
(seen here with Major
Bob George), decided to
cancel them because the
enemy bunker system
was just too large. AWM
373
The dreadful rounds killed at least 51 enemy soldiers and forced
the attackers to start withdrawing.
It was a very close shave, but by dawn the gun was back in
Australian hands. Not surprisingly casualties were heavy, with ten
Australians killed and twenty-five wounded.
The Australians won, thanks to some air support from helicopter
gunships and fixed-wing US aircraft, but they had come close to
being beaten by North Vietnamese forces they had met before.
It was a dramatic moment, as one of the soldiers, Lachlan Irvine,
reported in his diary:
The attack came in the middle of the night, around 1am. It started
with mortars, and was followed by a ground assault on the 1RAR
positions. Some of the 1RAR rifle companies had moved out too
far to establish a tight perimeter, and gaps had been left between
them. The NVA forces were able to attack through the gaps, into
the 1RAR mortar platoon, which was virtually wiped out, and into
the guns. They reached as far as the D & E platoon, the protection
for Task Force HQ, but they seemed content to partially overrun
102 battery and capture one gun. The artillery boys fought them
off with a combination of hand-to-hand combat and point blank
firing of artillery, and won back the gun.
To stop it happening again the commanders ordered 1 RAR to
defend FSB Coral and 3 RAR to set up a buffer to stop further
attacks on their western side, calling this new FSB Coogee.
16 May
The enemy attacked Coral, again under cover of darkness, unleashing
a heavy barrage and following it with another regiment-sized attack.
Despite the new defences, the North Vietnamese penetrated the
Australian perimeter yet again, and 1 RARs three companies had
to fight back hard. The enemy grabbed part of A Companys
position for a while, and it took the Australians six hours to kick
the North Vietnamese out of the base. When they could stop to
The artillery boys
fought them off
with a combination
of hand-to-hand
combat and point
blank firing of
artillery, and won
back the gun.
374
look around the base, the Australians found five of their own killed
and another nineteen wounded. Protecting this FSB was getting
costly, although the Diggers did manage to kill at least thirty-four
enemy soldierswith blood trails and drag marks suggesting many
more had been carried off by the enemy.
It had been a lively night, as Flight Lieutenant Roger Wilson
wrote:
After we got scrambled . . . and got out to the AO [Australian
Area of Operations] at 0330 there was a hell of a fire fight going
on. The ATF had made contact in a big way and were getting
the worst until F-100s and Huey gunships got on the scene. The
Spooky overhead did a great job in illuminating the battle . . . Iput
in a pair of F-100s with napalm and 117s (high-drag bombs) and
then directed Huey gunships. The VC had a few .50 cal nests down
there and were fairly trigger happy firing at all the aircraft, but the
Huey finally silenced them.
Wilson was flying a tiny Cessna spotter plane under intense ground
fire, and won a Distinguished Flying Cross for his vital efforts in
highly accurate direction of the air support.
The men of 3 RAR were then ordered to leave FSB Coogee
and switch their attention to establishing FSB Balmoral with as
much artillery as they could muster. It was to bolster Balmoral
that Dunstan ordered the new secret weapon, Centurion tanks, to
the FSB. The tanks, which would later help Salter and his patrol,
arrived on 25 May.
26 May
It was lucky the tanks arrived when they did, for the enemy attacked
Balmoral just a few hours after they arrived with a vengeance, just
before dawn on 26 May. Two enemy battalions were launched
against the Australian lines in the pre-dawn light by the NVAs
165th Regiment, starting with an accurate rocket and mortar barrage
which hit D Company on the perimeter.
375
The response must have a been a shock to the enemy. With
the Centurions adding substantially to the units firepower, the
Australians were really able to let the Vietnamese have it. The enemy
found themselves charging across open ground into an absolute
storm of fire that no infantry could withstand, and by full daylight
the attack was over.
The enemy could run but not hide. Even if they did make it
back to their underground hideouts they were in for a shock as this
was the day Salter and his patrol used these same tanks back in the
Coral area, finding and destroying those Viet Cong bunkers with
great success. Salter and his mates had to succeed, because these
bunkers were enabling the enemy to launch night attacks on the
Australian bases. In fact even after that first 12 May attack back at
Australian chances
improved greatly during the
Battle of CoralBalmoral
when a fleet of Centurion
tanks arrived, enabling the
hard-pressed Australians to
repel attacks on their Fire
Support Bases and seek
out enemy underground
hideouts. NAA
376
Coral the enemy had continued attacking Coral with small mortar
and rocket attacks from time to time.
But between 26 and 27 May Salter and his men destroyed as
many bunkers as they could just outside the Coral base. And now
that the Australians were fighting back harder against the night
attacks on both FSB Coral and Balmoral and Salters search and
destroy missions with the tanks were wrecking havoc with the
underground hideouts, the Australians were turning the tide of
battle against the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong.
28 May
Despite the belting they were getting from the Australians, the
enemy attacked FSB Balmoral for a second time on 28 May, again
with a regiment-level NVA force, at 2.30 a.m. But by now the
Australians had dug in and were really ready for them, turning back
the latest deadly night assault with support from the tanks, artillery
and mortars and sending the enemy packing in half an hour.
The Australians were learning fast and getting better and better.
It might have been only half an hour, but they counted at least 55
North Vietnamese soldiers killed and many more wounded, while
the Australians only lost one killed and six wounded.
The Australians had demonstrated their superiority, but fighting
continued into June, so soldiers like Salter had to keep patrolling.
However, as the enemy attacks waned 1 ATF was relieved by US
and South Vietnamese troops before being redeployed to Nui Dat
on 6 June.
It was a sound victory as this was the first time Australians
had clashed with regular North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong
main force units operating at battalion and regimental strength.
And not only had they won this battle. Although a significant
number of Australian lives had been lost, in twenty-six days of
fighting the communists suffered such punishing losses that they
abandoned a further planned attack on Saigon at the time. Mission
accomplished.
The Australians
were turning
the tide of battle
against the North
Vietnamese and
Viet Cong.
377
The CoralBalmoral battles were the largest for the Australian
forces since the August 1966 Battle of Long Tan and marked a
turning point, with Aussies starting to fight North Vietnamese
regulars instead of just Viet Cong units.
These battles were important from both a military and political
point of view. Following the defeat of the co-ordinated attacks
across South Vietnam, which became known as the Tet Offensive, in
January and February 1968, in April two Australian battalions were
again redeployed from their base at Nui Dat in Phuoc Tuy Province
to positions where they could block routes leading to Saigon, in
order to stop renewed enemy movement against the capital.
The Viet Cong again successfully penetrated Saigon on 5 May,
causing great disruption in an attempt to influence peace talks
scheduled to begin in Paris on 13 May, but in three days of intense
fighting US and South Vietnamese forces repelled the Viet Cong.
There were heavy losses on both sides and significant damage to
Saigon, as well as many civilian casualties.
Australias military involvement in Vietnam had grown steadily
over the years, from thirty advisers who arrived in Vietnam in 1962
and the troops who followed from 1965, reaching a total of just
under 8000 service personnel.
All services were involved in the Vietnam conflict over the years,
but the Royal Australian Regiment was the key player. It is the parent
regiment for all regular infantry battalions of the Australian army
and the senior infantry regiment of the Royal Australian Infantry
Corps. It was originally formed in 1948 with three battalions but
today normally has seven battalions covering various roles.
The regiment deployed to Korea, Malaya and Borneo before
Vietnam and then after Vietnam to Somalia, Rwanda, Cambodia,
East Timor, the Solomon Islands, Iraq and Afghanistan.
THEY WERE GREAT BATTLES because they were turning
points. In terms of the number of Australians involved, the size of
the enemy forces andthe number of Australians killed, the battles
to save FSB Coral and Balmoral together made up the biggest
378
engagement of the Vietnam War in which Australians fought.
Fought over twenty-five days, it was also the most protracted
Australian engagement of the war.
They were also great battles because for the first time the
Australians had used tanks, which proved very effective in spite
of a long-held belief among Australian army top brass that they
wouldnt be much use in the heavy forests of Vietnam.
They were great battles because a number of brave and skilled
men like Salter fought with great distinction. Many were deco-
rated, especially the battle commanders, including Major John
Blue Keldie, commander of A Squadron 3 Cavalry Regiment,
who co-ordinated the defences of units other than 1 RAR during
the attacks on Coral between 13 and 16 May; he was awarded a
Military Cross.
CoralBalmoral was also the largest unit-level action of the
war for the Australians and today is considered one of the two
most significant actions fought by the Australian army during the
Vietnam War, together with the Battle of Long Tan.
North Vietnamese and Viet Cong casualties in AO Surfers
were much worse than Australias, with 267 killed confirmed by
body count, 60 possibly killed, 7 wounded and 11 captured, while
Australian losses were 25 killed and 99 wounded.
The US Commander-in-Chief, General William Westmoreland,
had been impressed by the results achieved by 1 ATF and, while US
and South Vietnamese forces had borne the brunt of the fighting
during this time, 1 ATF featured prominently in American reports.
The Royal Australian Regiment, 3rd Cavalry Regiment and 1st
Armoured Regiment were all subsequently awarded the battle
honour CoralBalmoral, one of only five made to Australian units
during the war
Postscript
Despite the victory, Australians suffered the largest losses of the
war. Through delays in the arrival of some equipment and specific
orders, they had moved too slowly in setting up FSB Coral, only
379
partially completing its defences by the evening of the first attack
on 12 May.
Yet the fighting represented a watershed in the Australians
campaign. While they had deployed outside Phuoc Tuy Province
previously, they now faced regular North Vietnamese formations and
Viet Cong main force units rather than local Viet Cong guerrilla
units. Deployed astride the enemys lines of communication, the
Australians had forced the communists to respond, resulting in a
set-piece battle far removed from the standard counter-insurgency
doctrine under which they normally operated.
The Australians were also forced to improve their tactics. For
example, the use of patrols like the bunker search-and-destroy
mission of Second Lieutenant John Salter had to be upgraded
because North Vietnamese forces operating in superior strength
could easily overwhelm an isolated patrol. It had not been easy for
the Australiansprolonged operations in the first half of 1968 had
placed considerable strain on Australian logistics.
Despite the high Australian death toll, CoralBalmoral is little
known in Australia and certainly less well known than Long Tan.
It was also the first Australian combined infantry and tank
assault since the Bougainville campaign against the Japanese in
World War IIand it was no surprise that Colonel Donald Dunstan
(no relation to former South Australian premier Don Dunstan) had
been keen to call the tanks forward. He had also been in command
at Bougainville.
Battle stats
Winners: Australian, US and New Zealand forces
Losers: North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong forces
Toll: 25 Australians killed in action and 99 wounded; North Vietnamese
and Viet Cong casualties included 267 killed confirmed by body count,
60 possibly killed, 7 wounded and 11 captured
Result: During 26 days of fighting, punishing losses were inflicted on the
communists, forcing the North Vietnamese 7th Division to postpone
an attack on Saigon
380
SUCCESS IN MISSION
IMPOSSIBLE
To all Australias sailors, soldiers, airmen and airwomen
who contributed to Operation Catalyst, Ioffer my sincere
gratitude for your service. In completing this task, which
I observed first hand during many visits, you performed
extremely well under considerable pressure. You exhibited
that unique mixture of determination, practicality and
compassion which have traditionally put Australian
servicemen and women among the finest in the world.
Chief of the Australian Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Angus
Houston, marking the end of Australian Operations in Iraq; Canberra,
21 November 2009
L
ooking out the windscreen of the C-130 Hercules at Baghdad
Airport at the war-torn landscape of Iraq, Flight Lieutenant
Paul Pardoel, thirty-five, buckled himself in for the supposedly
routine flight. Some of his Aussie mates had said it was time he came
back to Australia and share his deep knowledge of air navigation as
a teacher, instead of risking his life flying dangerous missions over
Iraq, for the Brits.
Pardoel, from Melbourne, was well aware of the dangers but
still wanted to honour his contract with Britains Royal Air Force.
He had got away with many of these missions before and did not
have long to serve anyway. In fact, his four-year contract finished
in about five months.
381
He knew he was needed back in Australia, where he used to teach
navigation in Sale, Victoria, but this was also important work
installing democracy in place of a most brutal dictatorship established
by the tyrannical Saddam Hussein. It was his duty as a navigator with
Britains 47 Squadron, based at RAF Lyneham, England.
Anyway, he thought, as the crew of RAF Hercules XV179 did
their checks and taxied down the runway for take-off, he would
soon be on his way back to the safety of Britain and his loving wife,
Kellie, and their three young children. His wife and kids were excited
about his plans to relocate to Canberra. They would get a house
there, and he would train Australians to carry out these missions.
Iraq at this time was a highly dangerous place; ruthless insurgents
took any opportunity to strike back at the Coalition forces. Not far
from the airfield, as the unsuspecting Hercules waited for clearance
to take off, a four-wheel-drive vehicle pulled up on a dirt track next
to open ground under the flight path. Three men in distinctively
Iraqi clothing hurriedly leapt out and dragged their deadly equip-
ment from the innocuous-looking vehicle. Two men then got into
position, one kneeling with a rocket launcher on his shoulder while
the other stood, peering forward, waiting for their target.
Back on the runway, having obtained clearance, Pardoels
plane took off as scheduled on its routine mission to Balad, about
Australians serving in Iraq
were issued with the most
up-to-date weapons, which
gave them an advantage
over their opponents and
enabled them to help
the international US-led
Coalition force stabilise
the political situation
enough for foreign troops
to withdraw by 2009.
382
80 kilometres north of Baghdad. As the Hercules headed into the
sky, its occupants breathing a sigh of relief to be leaving the tensions
of the war in Baghdad behind, Pardoel was thinking only of his
waiting wife and children.
Down on that dusty dirt track the insurgents saw the Hercules
flying towards them. Afew excited shouts in Arabic, then a stream
of fire and smoke belched from the rear of their launch tube and a
deadly rocket streaked off into the sky.
The battle
It was 30 January 2005 and Pardoel was fighting with Coalition
forces in Iraq in the United States-led Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Although Australian-born he had switched to Britains RAF to serve
as a navigator. There were also many Australians who had been
fighting in Iraq under their own national flag since the American-led
invasion a couple of years earlier. They had done very well in their
operations too, such as their courageous advance on the huge Al
Asad air base, capturing a vital facility for the Allies.
The Australian forces that had first entered Iraq in 2003 had
been serving under American leadership as part of interrelated
campaigns in the region from 2001 onwards after al-Qaeda terrorists
destroyed the World Trade Center in New York and damaged the
Pentagon in Washington DC on 11 September 2001.
In fact, a Special Forces Task Group from Australia had started
fighting in Afghanistan in 2001 in the campaign against al-Qaeda
and the Taliban called Operation Slipper. But troops of the Special
Air Service Regiment (SASR) withdrew from Afghanistan in
November 2002 after all three SAS squadrons had served in different
parts of the country.
The SASR then provided most of the ground forces for the
Australian contribution to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Australias
campaign was called Operation Catalyst. The SAS forces performed
well, advancing rapidly and successfully to help the American opera-
tion and adding greatly to Australias reputation among its allies.
383
Australias Special Forces Task Group was built around
1 Squadron SAS, with a platoon from the 4th Battalion, Royal
Australian Regiment (4 RAR) and a troop from the Incident
Response Regiment available to support the SAS.
This 1 Squadron had operated in western Iraq, where it succeeded
in capturing the Al Asad base. However, 1 Squadron was withdrawn
from Iraq and the SAS were redeployed by September 2005 to
Afghanistan, where Australian forces were still serving in 2011.
Pardoel, by contrast, was involved in high-powered British
operations that were often more dangerous than those involving
Australians in Iraq. But so far he had been lucky.
Then his luck ran out. Seconds after the C-130 took off, the
insurgents, who had been waiting for such a target, took careful
aim and fired straight into Pardoels plane. They could hardly have
missedthe Hercules size and distinctive, four-storey-high vertical
stabiliser made it easy to identify.
The rocket slammed into the starboard wing, causing an explo-
sion that separated the outboard section of the wing from the rest
of the plane, sending it plummeting to the ground. The Hercules
was totally destroyed, with wreckage strewn across a large area. All
on board were killed: a soldier and nine RAF air crewone of
whom was Pardoel, who became the first Australian to die in Iraq.
Australians fought in Iraq twice, initially in what became known as
the First Gulf War (from 1990 to 1991), and then in the Second
Gulf War of 2003 to 2009.
First Gulf War
On 2 August 1990 Iraqi president Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait,
starting a series of events that included the First and Second Gulf
Wars and ultimately led to his capture and execution by hanging
on 30 December 2006.
The rocket
slammed into the
starboard wing,
causing an explo-
sion that separated
the outboard
section of the wing
from the rest of the
plane, sending it
plummeting to the
ground.
384
In 1990 the United Nations was quick to act in the face of Iraqs
surprise attack on its much smaller southern neighbour. Significant
US forces stationed in Saudi Arabia were put on high alert and,
four days after the invasion, the United Nations Security Council
unanimously authorised a trade blockade of Iraq.
In the following weeks the US and UN organised a multinational
force for two key tasks: the naval blockade of Iraq in the Persian
Gulf; and amassing the troops of thirty nations into a 40,000-strong
invasion force for any battle with Iraq.
In November 1990 the UN gave Saddam Hussein until
15January 1991 to withdraw all Iraqi forces in Kuwait. While the
truculent dictator argued, blustered and threatened, the deadline
passed, and on 17 January Coalition forces launched the salvos
of Tomahawk long-range missiles and stealth bomber attacks that
initiated the devastating air assault on Iraq that would continue
until the wars end, 43 days later.
Australias participation in this First Gulf War also involved
RAN vessels deploying to assist with imposing UN trade sanctions
in the region.
Second Gulf War, Operation Iraqi Freedom
The Americans wanted to invade Iraq in 2003 because they believed
Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that he might
use against the US and its allies. They also suspected he had links
with al-Qaeda, and so had some responsibility for the attacks of
11 September 2001 on New York and Washington.
Even though United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix had
toured Iraq and stated he believed Iraq had no such weapons, the US
wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein. The Australian government
agreed to help.
So, following the First Gulf War and after a period fighting in
Afghanistan, the Special Forces Task Group provided most of the
ground force element of the Australian contribution to the 2003
invasion of Iraq.
385
It was withdrawn from Iraq soon after the end of the war in
2009. Before the task group left, Australians had achieved some
great things in one of the great battles of Australian history.
IRAQ WAS A GREAT BATTLE for Australians for several
reasons, but this greatness has to be measured in different ways
to previous wars and battles. Politics was inextricably involved in
Iraq, and because of that the Australians achievements were not so
much military victories, but more enduring legacies.
Celebrating the official end of Australias presence in Iraq in
2009, ADF chief Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston congratulated
the Australian units involved in the Middle East Area of Operations
in Operation Catalyst, which had been one of the most dangerous
and complex missions undertaken by Australia.
Houston was right, because during those six years thousands of
Australian servicemen and women were instrumental in developing a
more secure and stable Iraq. They trained and mentored over 30,000
members of the Iraqi Security Forces; completed reconstruction
projects in southern Iraq; protected people, infrastructure and assets
in Baghdad, southern Iraq and the North Arabian Gulf; provided
overwatch in the provinces of Al Muthanna and Dhi Qar; provided
logistic and communication support, intelligence, medical care and
air traffic control; advised the Iraqi government; were embedded
in critical staff functions in Coalition and national headquarters;
and provided aircraft to conduct surveillance, medical evacuation
and transport.
Houston confirmed Iraq had been a great battle because
Australias performance had improved the ADFs reputation as a
world-class fighting force. In Iraq Australias sailors, soldiers and
RAAF personnel who contributed to Operation Catalyst had
exhibited that unique mixture of determination, practicality and
compassion which have traditionally put Australian servicemen and
women among the finest in the world.
He said the Australians demonstrated very high levels of profes-
sionalism, loyalty, integrity, courage, innovation and teamwork in
successfully completing their mission and showed great respect and
386
humanity to those who call home, a country less fortunate than
our own, Houston said.
Australian forces were also involved in several other operations,
such as Operation Kruger which was the ADFs contribution to the
provision of security and support for the Australian embassy and
its staff in Iraq. And as this book went to press, Defence personnel
were also deployed with Operation Riverbank, providing security
for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI)
and senior military advice to the Special Representative to the
Secretary-General within the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq.
Postscript
Paul Pardoel, the first Australian-born serviceman killed in Iraq, was
deeeply unluckyhe had only five months to serve on a four-year
contract with the RAF. He and his young family planned to start
a new life in Canberra when his contract expired in July. Despite
Despite the great changes
in technology, weapons and
uniforms, the Australian
soldier in Iraq still had
to go on patrol and seek
out the enemy, just as
his counterparts had
in previous conflicts.
387
Pardoels commitment, his mother, who
planned to move with him and his wife to
Canberra, never agreed with the Iraq War.
Margaret Pardoel said she opposed the inva-
sion and always feared for her sons safety.
PardoelPards or Paulie to his
mateswas born in Melbourne and entered
the Australian Defence Force Academy in
Canberra in 1988, graduating three years
later with a Bachelor of Science Degree.
He completed navigator training with the
Royal Australian Air Force and was posted
to 36 Squadron flying Hercules aircraft out
of Richmond RAAF base north-west of
Sydney. He served with distinction, flying
operational aircraft around the world for
seven years. In 1999 he moved to Sale in
Victoria where he instructed at the School
of Air Navigation, training future navigators
for the Australian and New Zealand defence
forces. He was renowned as an exceptional
instructor by his students.
He transferred to the RAF in 2002, and was posted to 47
Squadron, RAF Lyneham, again flying C-130 Hercules aircraft. He
served with the squadron in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
British Defence Secretary John Reid told the House of Commons
that a British military board of inquiry determined that Pardoels
Hercules, RAF Hercules XV179, was brought down by hostile
ground-to-air fire minutes after taking off from Baghdad Airport
on 30 January. According to the military investigation:
The aircraft crashed as a result of hostile ground-to-air fire which
caused an explosion in the right-hand wing fuel tank. This explosion
caused the outboard section of the wing to separate from the
rest of the wing, at which point the aircraft immediately became
uncontrollable. The crash was not survivable.
Flight Lieutenant Paul
Pardoel, pictured with his
wife Kellie, was unlucky
to be shot down in his
Hercules C-130 by insurgents
in Iraq. He was coming to
the end of his four-year
contract with the Royal Air
Force and was planning
to return to Australia with
his wife and three children.
Photo: Defence Department
388
Pardoel was not the only Australian killed in Iraq. Two others
have died: Warrant Officer Class 2 David Nary, of the SAS, who
died as a result of a training accident; and Private Jake Kovco, of
the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, who accidentally
shot himself.
Despite the good work of the ADF in Iraq, the war in this remote
country became increasingly unpopular with the Australian public,
some of whom felt the continued involvement in the internal affairs
of another sovereign nation had little to do with our country.
The Australian commitment was small, about 2000 personnel in
total. What may be less obvious to the casual observer is that it was
small in proportional terms also. Calculated on military personnel
per head of population, Australias forces could have been seven
times larger and still not have equalled the commitments of either
the US or Britain.
Battle stats
Winners: US-led Coalition forces
Loser: The Iraq government of Saddam Hussein
Toll: Australians lost 3 men in Iraq and the Coalition troops about 1589;
Estimates of Iraqi losses vary widely, but up to 45,000 is one figure
Result: The Allies removed the tyranny of Saddam Hussein
389
WINNING VICTORIA
CROSSES AGAINST
THETALIBAN
You watch file footage of the Anzacs or how blokes react
to each other in Korea or Vietnam and you know just by
watching, that its an Australian thing, not a soldier thing.
The Aussie soldier through time is the same person, the
same guy, who is doing it for his love of Australia, never
wants to let his mates down, because thats an Aussie thing.
Ben Roberts-Smith, Victoria Cross recipient, Afghanistan, 2011
R
ealising with horror that his comrades creeping across an
orchard were about to be killed by Taliban fighters firing three
machine guns from behind a wall, Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith,
a thirty-one-year-old Special Air Service Regiment soldier from
Perth, knew he had only seconds to act.
He was leading the advance and closest to that wall, but to the
side crouching behind a pile of mud bricks. His mates were out in
the open, advancing from the middle of the orchard with very little
cover and lying flat on the dry Afghanistan soil under intense fire.
He could either throw a grenade over the top of the wall and
hope for the best or charge the Taliban position, trusting the enemy
would not shoot him before he got there. He calculated the distance,
about 20 metres. Bullets ploughed into the dusty ground around
his mates. Hed have to act now. His immediate response was:
390
grenades. Try that first, anyway. Finding a bit of air space between
the crowded trees he hurled a grenade at the Taliban marksmen.
Missed. Damn it.
Then he spotted a gap in the wall. He was fit and a fast sprinter!
Big bloke too, about 2 metres tall in his boots. If he could make
it to the wall, the Taliban couldnt shoot him, because his mates
would pick them off if they showed their heads. Then he could
charge through that gap and shoot it out.
This was the sort of thing hed been trained for. Weighing up
the odds, the daring corporal reckoned he had a 5050 chance.
Good odds for a daredevil SAS warrior of the Special Operations
Task Group.
Going into overdrive, Roberts-Smith leapt up from behind the
pile of mud bricks and bolted across the open ground like a bat out
of hell straight for the wall. Too fast for the Taliban to aim their
machine guns in time. He made it. He was crouching at the bottom
of the wall. The Taliban were uphill on the other side. So far so
good. Now, all I have to do, he thought as he caught his breath, is
to charge through that gap and kill them before they kill me.
The battle
It was 11 June 2010 in the village of Tazik, in Kandahar Province
in Afghanistan, where Roberts-Smith was desperately trying to help
his comrades advance into this Taliban stronghold. Their mission
was to track down and kill a notorious Taliban commander who
had been organising deadly attacks against the Allies, and take him
out before he did any more damage.
The Australians were heavily outnumbered. It would be very
dangerous fighting the Taliban on their home ground and Roberts-
Smith did not want to die in the attempt. Too many Australians
had been killed in similar actions, and his wife was expecting twins
soon back in Western Australia; he wanted to see them.
But his first loyalty out here in the field was to his mates. He
would live up to the motto tattooed across his broad chest: I will
not fail my brothers.
391
Roberts-SmithRS to his mateswas doing pretty well so
far. He had just covered the landing of some of these brothers as
they dropped into the village from their Black Hawk helicopter by
shooting from his own chopper at the Taliban fighters who were
firing up at them with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled
grenades. It had not been easy, what with bullets slamming into
his own chopper, but he had helped his SAS comrades get down
safely, although the Taliban managed to wound one of them. He
then slid down the landing rope himself, helped establish a base in
an orchard of fig trees and readied himself for the assault.
Not that the orchard was much of a basethe trees were pretty
thin, old and fragile and did not offer much cover. Not only that,
at the end of the orchard, blocking their entry to the village, was a
large mud-brick wall with at least three machine gunners shooting
over it from an elevated position. It looked as deadly a set-up as
any trench warfare he had read about in World War I, but like his
Anzac predecessors at Gallipoli and the Western Front, he had
gutsand of course his special motto.
As the SAS men inched forward, Roberts-Smith realised the
enemy were using at least two AK-47 assault rifles as well as the
machine guns. That was when he had first tried to destroy this strong
Although Australian soldiers
were much better armed,
wore more protective
clothing and had better
communications than their
counterparts in either of
the world wars, the gun
in their hands was still
their main weapon.
392
point with a grenade. Lifting a grenade to show his mates what he
planned to do, he got a nod from one of them, who leapt up and
started firing hell for leather at the Taliban, enabling Roberts-Smith
to jump up and hurl his grenade at the wall. Unbelievably, he
missed. The wall was only 20 metres away and now the bloody
Taliban were turning their guns on his mate, whose sustained firing
had allowed Roberts-Smith to throw the grenade. And this Aussie
soldier, whod put his life on the line, had very little cover: not even
a pile of mud bricks.
After failing with his first weapon of choice, Roberts-Smith
wondered if he could take on the three machine gunners and their
AK-47 shooters. Big ask. Then suddenly the platoon sergeant, seeing
Roberts-Smith had missed, hurled a grenade over the wall. This
one hit its target, exploding and silencing one of the machine guns.
Great, thought Roberts-Smith, now there are only two machine
gunners to contend with, as well as the pair of AK-47 riflemen. And
he had to do somethingthe Taliban were still firing at his mate,
who could do nothing but huddle on the ground under the storm
of bullets. And hed sworn never to fail his brothers.
That was when Roberts-Smith charged across the 20-metre
stretch of bare ground, watching the Taliban trying to swing their
barrels around at his sprinting figure and firing the AK-47s. But
he got to that wall.
Now, having got his breath back and with adrenalin pumping
through his veins, he sprang up and rushed through a gap in the
wall, shooting dead the machine gunners before they could shoot
back. The two Taliban with the AK-47s, seeing this giant Australian
coming for them, simply fled. Mission accomplished.
The exhilarated hero of the battlewho had no idea he had
just earned a Victoria Crossbeckoned his comrades forward.
They advanced through the destroyed machine-gun post and into
the village, where they shot at any resistance as they cleared the
stronghold of all Taliban fighters, including the senior commander.
The Australian SAS drove the Taliban before them on this and
subsequent battles in the village and the valley. Roberts-Smith, who
had fought and killed Taliban insurgents in many battles before,
393
continued to lead the way, swiftly shooting dead a sniper who tried
to kill him on a follow-up action as they cleared this particular
valley. For like his SAS comrades, he was fighting an ongoing war
and the battle for the village of Tazik was just one of the many that
continue as this book goes to press.
Roberts-Smith was fighting with his elite SAS unit in Afghanistan
against the Taliban, Islamic fundamentalists who in the 1990s had
taken over the country and implemented a regime based on their
draconian interpretation of the Koran.
The United States invaded Afghanistan to attack the Taliban
after Islamic fundamentalists from Osama bin Ladens terrorist
organisation, al-Qaeda, used hijacked passenger planes to destroy
the World Trade Center in New York and damage the Pentagon in
Washington DC on 11 September 20019/11 in the American date
format. The Taliban had provided a haven from which bin Laden
planned and launched the attack, and the US wanted bin Laden.
The US asked Australia to provide troops for a coalition of
democracies joining its war of revenge, which they called Operation
Enduring Freedom.
Coalition soldiers serving in
Afghanistan have become
used to interviewing the
local people about the
movement of insurgents.
394
Australian forces began fighting in Afghanistan late in 2001
after the Americans invaded this mysterious, mountainous and
forbidding land to hunt the culprits of the 9/11 attacks. From 2001
to 2002, three SAS squadrons deployed in offensives against the
Taliban, helping to capture the vital Kandahar airport. The SAS
returned from 2005 to 2006, the year Roberts-Smith first served
in Afghanistan.
The Australians continued to fight in a number of roles, including
attacking Taliban command and supply routes in Uruzgan Province,
then with the Special Operations Task Group from April 2007.
Roberts-Smith was not the only soldier whose actions earned a
Victoria Cross in the challenging battles of Afghanistan.
In 2008 Trooper Mark Donaldson, twenty-nine, from Waratah,
New South Wales, won his VC For most conspicuous acts of
gallantry in action in a circumstance of great peril, in Afghanistan
as part of the Special Operations Task Group during Operation
Slipper, Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan.
Trooper Mark Gregor Donaldsonwho, like Roberts-Smith,
is married with a familywas posted to the Special Air Service
Regiment in May 2004. On 2 September 2008 Trooper Donaldson
was travelling in a combined Afghan, US and Australian vehicle
Australians fought in
Afghanistan as part of a
well-armed international
force led by the United
States. Operation Enduring
Freedom aimed at
displacing the Taliban
insurgents and installing a
democratic regime run by
the people of Afghanistan.
395
convoy that ran into an enemy ambush. His party was attacked
with sustained machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades that
inflicted many casualties. Donaldson fought back with 66-millimetre
and 84-millimetre anti-armour weapons, as well as his M4 carbine,
deliberately exposing himself to enemy fire to draw attention away
from the substantial number of wounded soldiers to enable the
casualties to be moved to relative safety.
As the convoy escaped the ambush, Donaldson, who was running
beside the remaining vehicles because they were full of casualties,
realised a severely wounded coalition interpreter had been left
behind. Displaying total disregard for his own safety, Donaldson
ran across 80 metres of exposed ground to recover the wounded
man. He had to dodge intense machine-gun fire from entrenched
positions, but he reached the interpreter, picked him up and carried
him back to the vehicles, where he provided immediate first aid,
which saved the mans life, before he returned to the fight.
Donaldsons actions were uncannily similar to those of Australias
first VC winner, Captain Neville Howse, the medical officer in the
Boer War who saved a buglers life in 1900 by charging forward and
rescuing him in the full heat of battle.
Later in the battle Trooper Donaldson administered medical
care to other wounded soldiers, also while continually engaging
the enemy.
After the initial invasion by the US, the war in Afghanistan was
prosecuted by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF). The Australian Defence Forces contribution to ISAF, known
as Operation Slipper, included up to 2011 the following elements:
A national command and support element of about 165 ADF
members embedded in various headquarters.
The Mentoring and Reconstruction Task Force (MRTF), which
consisted of 724 personnel who were engaged in construction
and security operations in Uruzgan Province. The MRTF also
included a team that assisted in the development of the Afghan
National Armys 4th Brigade. The task force was composed mainly
of infantry, cavalry and engineers from the 1st Battalion, Royal
Displaying total
disregard for
his own safety,
Donaldson ran
across 80 metres
of exposed
ground to recover
the wounded
man. He had to
dodge intense
machine-gun fire
from entrenched
positions.
396
Australian Regiment, 2nd Cavalry Regiment and 3rd Combat
Engineer Regiment.
The Special Operations Task Group provided support for ISAF
security operations, and security and force protection for coali-
tion forces in Uruzgan Province. The task groups included about
310 personnel, consisting of commandos, SAS, and enabling and
support personnel.
A Force Support Unit provided logistical support for ADF
operations. Based in Kandahar, the unit had about 70 members.
The Force Communications Unit had 40 personnel.
An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Detachment of 30 personnel from
the 20th Surveillance Targeting Acquisition Regiment operated the
SCANEAGLE drone.
A Rotary Wing Group of about 65 personnel operated two
CH-47D Chinook helicopters from Kandahar Airfield.
ISAF led all combat (such as fighting the resurgent Taliban in
the south) and reconstruction operations. The NATO structure
eventually covered much of Afghanistan, including the southern
provinces that were the birthplace of the Taliban and where the
most serious fighting seen since 2001 took place in August and
September 2006. This structure reported through the NATO
chain of command, which in October 2006 formally took full
responsibility for the whole of Afghanistan.
Australians were not the only foreign nationals serving in
Afghanistan as part of the American-inspired Operation Enduring
Freedom, but many national contingents were solely part of ISAF.
Some of the countries involved in the war apart from the US,
either from 2001 or for at least part of the following decade,
included Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France,
Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Denmark, Hungary, the Czech Republic,
Romania and Turkey.
THERE WERE GREAT BATTLES for Australian soldiers in
Afghanistan, especially for the SAS, which bore the brunt of the
fighting. Actions such as the 2010 battle for the village of Tazik
397
in northern Kandahar Province were
especially great because Ben Roberts-
Smith won the Victoria Cross.
The same could be said for the
Uruzgan Province battle in which
Trooper Mark Donaldson won his
Victoria Cross in 2008the first award
of the Victoria Cross for Australia, as
it is now named, since the transition
from the old imperial awards system
on 15 January 1991.
Both men fought as bravely and
skilfully as their counterparts in the
Boer War, World War I, World War II,
Korea or Vietnam, in the best Anzac
fighting tradition.
In the end, in the war in Afghani-
stan Ben Roberts-Smith and Mark
Donaldson were doing what Australian soldiers had done since the
Boer Warrisking their lives to save their mates. In Roberts-Smiths
case, it took the form of a classic charge against enemy marksmen
pinning down fellow soldiers with machine-gun fire; in Donaldsons,
a selfless and death-defying sprint, under heavy fire, to rescue a
wounded man.
Postscript
Both Ben Roberts-Smith and Mark Donaldson continue to lead
distinguished careers with the Australian Defence Force as this
book went to press.
They were keenly aware of their roles as links in the chain of
great Australian battle heroes, stretching back to Captain Howse
and the Boer Warthe men whose stories make up this book.
As the historically minded Roberts-Smith said in 2011: Ive
always felt very strongly about recognising the sacrifice of previous
generations, but I also feel it is important that people realise the
Two Australians have
won Victoria Crosses in
Afghanistanboth in ways
that uncannily echo the
deeds of previous recipients.
Trooper Mark Donaldson,
left, ran back into enemy
fire and rescued an injured
comrade, just as Captain
Neville Howse had in the
Boer War. Corporal Ben
Roberts-Smith, right, won
his VC in the time-honoured
way by single-handedly
killing machine gunners
who were pinning down
his comrades, thus enabling
his men to advance.
398
acts of real courage that are still being carried out on the front line,
today and every day.
But despite the bravery and skill demonstrated by soldiers such
as Roberts-Smith and Donaldson, this war became increasingly
unpopular with the public as the years went by, rather as the
Vietnam War did in the late 1960s and early 1970s with public
protests growing year by year.
This was partly because it proved difficult to defeat the Taliban
or to establish a truly democratic government that recognised human
rights and personal freedoms in Afghanistan, a country lacking a
tradition of democracy. Although many believe it is important for
democratic countries to try to destroy the evils of the fundamentalist
Taliban, others argue that it is wrong to interfere with another
countrys sovereign right to determine its own government. Other
critics say the Taliban had little or nothing to do with al-Qaeda
and that therefore Coalition troops should not be there.
As the mounting death toll was reported in the media, the public
became increasingly disenchanted and more critical of the reasons
the government gave for participating, which included supporting
Australias main ally, the United States, and hunting for al-Qaedas
leader, Osama bin Laden. With the assassination of bin Laden in
neighbouring Pakistan in May 2011, critics called for America
and its allies to leave Afghanistan. His death did not seem to do
anything to disable Taliban forces, however, which continued to
have a powerful influence in Afghanistan as this book went to press.
Battle stats
Winners: Australian SAS forces, which won the battle for the village of Tazik
Losers: Taliban insurgents
Toll: In the battle for Tazik, about 60 Taliban insurgents were killed, with
no Australian losses; however in the war in Afghanistan generally 28
Australian soldiers died between 2001 and July 2011
Result: The Australians cleared the village of Tazik of Taliban as part of the
general liberation of the northern Kandahar Province
399
PEACEKEEPERS:
ATRIBUTE
T
he unsung heroes of the Australian military are the peace-
keepers, those soldiers entrusted with preventing conflicts.
Depending on where they serve, and the nature of their mission,
they may be armed or unarmed. Many have served in some of the
most dangerous places on earth, contending with harsh conditions,
hazards such as minefields, and people with a vested interest in
fomenting violence and bloodshed.
Australias peacekeeping involvement began in Indonesia on
14September 1947, when four Australian officers were assigned to
the United Nations Good Offices Commission in the Dutch East
Indies (present-day Indonesia). These military observers were not
only the first Australian peacekeepers deployed but also the first
ever UN peacekeepers deployed into the field. Those men were
army Brigadier L.G.H. Dyke (RAA), RAN officer Commander
H.S. Chesterman, army Major D.L. Campbell, and RAAF officer
Squadron Leader D.T. Spence, DFC. The Australian commitment
to this mission eventually involved 45 military observers.
Since then, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has been
extensively involved in both UN and multinational peacekeeping
and peacemaking operations. The tempo of these operations has
notably increased since the first large deployment of Australian
army Engineer troops to Namibia in 1989.
400
Following this deployment, the early to mid-1990s witnessed the
ADF deployed to the Gulf (Kuwait), Cambodia, Somalia, Rwanda,
and other parts of Africa. The operational tempo again lifted in
1997 with deployments to Bougainville, while other peacekeeping
commitments in the Middle East were maintained.
In September 1999 Australia deployed its largest ever force on
war service since World War II to the troubled nation of East Timor.
Known as the International Force East Timor (INTERFET), it
involved the deployment of more than 6000 ADF members, who
were led by Major General Peter Cosgrove. Its job completed,
INTERFET handed over to the United Nations Transitional
Administration of East Timor (UNTAET) in February 2000.
The terrorist attacks of 9/11 in the United States triggered
the creation of the Coalition of the Willing, which saw a
significant increase of ADF personnel deploying to Afghanistan
in October 2001.
Peacekeepers like Jonathan
Church, seen here rescuing
a child during a conflict in
Rwanda in 1995, have been
the unsung compassionate
heroes since peacekeeping
began after World War II.
Church was killed in a
Black Hawk helicopter
training accident in
Townsville in 1996. Picture
courtesy of Paul Copeland,
Australian Peacekeeper
and Peacemaker
Veterans Association
Peacekeepers: A tribute
401
In March 2003, based on controversial US intelligence reports
on Iraqs possession of weapons of mass destruction and the threat
to Israel, Coalition forces invaded Iraq. Since then, Australia has
deployed almost 17,000 ADF members to Iraq and over 15,000
to Afghanistan.
From 1947 to the present, and separate to the Iraq and Afghani-
stan conflicts, Australia has contributed over 66,000 personnel in
73 operations to 64 different countries non-stop. The roles have
varied and included both warlike and non-warlike operations,
including peacekeeping, peacemaking, United Nations contingents,
military observers, truce supervisors, emergency forces, special
commissions, humanitarian aid, monitoring forces, mine clearance
teams, and training teamsas well as other roles, including, from
1964 onwards, peacekeeping by police officers from the Australian
federal, state and territory police forces.
Peacekeeping operations
Since 1947 Australian military and police peacekeepers have served
around the world in the following operations:
United Nations Good Offices Commission (UNGOC) in Dutch
East Indies & United Nations Commission for Indonesia
(UNCI): 194751
UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan(UNMOGIP):
194885
UN Commission on Korea (UNCOK): 1950
UN CommandKorea (UNCK): 195056
UN Korea Military Armistice Commission (UNKMAC): 1953
UN Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO) Middle East:
1956
UN Observer Group in Lebanon (UNOGIL): 1958
United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC): 196064
UN Temporary Executive Authority (UNTEA) (United Nations
Security Force (UNSF) in West New Guinea/West Irian):
196263
402
United Nations Yemen Observer Mission (UNYOM): 196364
UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP): 1964
UN IndiaPakistan Observation Mission (UNIPOM): 196566
UN Emergency Force Two (UNEF II) Sinai: 197379
United Nations Disengagement Force (UNDOF) Syria: 1974
Commonwealth Monitoring Force, Rhodesia (CMFR): 197980
Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) Sinai: 198286 &
1991
UN IranIraq Military Observer Group (UNIIMOG): 198891
UN Mine Clearance Training Team Peshawar (UNMCTT):
198993
First Maritime Interception Force (MIF 1)Ops DAMASK I & II
Persian Gulf: 199091
Multinational Forces in IraqKuwait (MNF (I-K)) (before and
after the Gulf War): 1991
NATOKurdishRelief Operation Provide Comfort, northern Iraq:
1991
UN Mission for Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO):
199194
UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) Iraq: 199198
ADF 3rd Country Deployments (UK & US) in the Middle East:
19912003
2nd Maritime Interception Force (MIF II) Persian Gulf, Ops
DAMASK IIIX: 19912003
NATO ImplementationForce (IFOR) & NATO Stabilisation Force
(SFOR) in Bosnia: 19922004
First UN Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM I): 199293
The Australian Police Contingent to the UN Transitional Authority
in Cambodia (UNTAC): 199293
UN TransitionalAuthority in Cambodia (UNTAC)UN Military
Liaison Team (UNMLT): 199394
Cambodia Mine Action Centre (CMAC): 199397
Multinational Force in Haiti: 1994
South Pacific Peacekeeping Force (SPPKF) Bougainville: 1994
United Nations Operation in Mozambique (ONUMOZ):
19942002
403
United NationsVerification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA):
1997
Truce Monitoring Group & Peace Monitoring Group, Bougain-
ville Operations: 19972003
Multinational Military DeploymentKuwait (Op Pollard): 1998
NATO Force in Kosovo (KFOR): 1999
UN Advance Mission in East Timor (UNAMET): 1999
International Peace Monitoring Team (IPMT), Solomon Islands:
200003
The United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL):
200003
The United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE):
200105
The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI):
2003
United Nations Operations to East Timor, and later Timor Leste
(various): 2003
International Stabilisation Force (ISF) to Timor Leste: 2006
United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS): 2005
United Nations and African Union Hybrid Operation to Darfur
(UNMID): 2007
War or warlike service
Some operations take place in areas as dangerous as war zones. After
the Vietnam War, from 1975, Australia sent thousands of troops and
police to war service around the world. In warlike operations, the
terms peacemaking and peacemakers are often colloquially used
to describe those ADF members who have served on warlike service
since 1989. Although under the auspices of the United Nations
Charter, peacemaking is a function of the diplomatic process, prior
to the agreement of a UN Security Council Resolution and prior
to the deployment of a peacekeeping force to a designated mission.
From 1989, ADF members have served on warlike service in
the following countries:
404
UN Transition Assistance Group in Namibia (UNTAG): 198990
The Gulf War (including Kuwait): 1991
ADF 3rd Country Deployments (UK & US) in the Middle East:
19912003
The Australian Contingent to the UN Advance Mission in
Cambodia (UNAMIC): 199192
The Australian Contingent to the UN Transitional Authority in
Cambodia (UNTAC): 199293
Unified Task Force Somalia (UNITAF): 199293
Operation Damask VI, HMAS Canberra: 1993
The Second UN Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM II): 199395
The Second UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR II):
199495
The Australian Contingent to the UN Protection Force in Bosnia/
Herzegovina (UNPROFOR): 1994
International Force, East Timor (INTERFET): 19992000
UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET):
200002
The International Coalition Against Terror (ICAT), Afghanistan:
200105
International Military Advisory Training Team (IMATT), Sierra
Leone: 200103
UN Mission In Support of East Timor (UNMISET): 200203
ADF contribution to US-led Multinational Force to stabilise Iraq:
200309
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA):
2003
ADF Security Detachment, Baghdad, Iraq: 2003
The NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF),
Afghanistan: 2005
UNTSO Observer Group Lebanon (Israel & Lebanon War): 2006
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI): 2008
405
Veterans
The Australian Peacekeeper and Peacemaker Veterans Associa-
tion (APPVA) is a non-profit veterans organisation of profession
of arms and services that encompasses all operations that have
involved Australian and New Zealand Defence Forces servicemen
and women, federal and state police, philanthropic organisations
(for example, Everymans Welfare Service, Red Cross, Salvation
Army) and Defence civilians.
Battle stats
Since 14 September 1947, 66,000 Australians have served in 73 operations
involving 64 countries
Toll: 71 peacekeepers have died in the field
406
BATTLE CASUALTIES
S
ince Federation in 1901, Australia has sent more than one and
a half million troops to fight in wars and conflicts overseas.
More than 102,000 have been killed and over 225,000 wounded.
World War I was by far the worst war fought by Australians and
much worse than World War II. In that war, nearly 62,000 died
out of a population of about four million,
which represented 1.55 per cent of the
population. In addition, 155,000 men were
woundedout of the 330,000 serving in
the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). So
a total of 217,000 casualties (killed and
wounded) out of 330,00 represented about
two-thirds of those who served.
By contrast, in World War II, 39,667
were killed out of a total population of
seven million, which represented 0.57 per
cent of the total population. The other
wars claimed even fewer lives as the table of
casualties from the Australian War Memo-
rial below confirms.
The millions of soldiers killed in France and Belgium in
World War IAustralias worst warwere buried in
church cemeteries like this one at Poperinghe, Belgium,
or near the battlefields where the men fell. Today, those
graves remind visitors of the terrible human cost of war.
Battle casualties
407
Australian battle casualties, 1898
War
Fought
overseas Wounded Deaths
Boer War (18981902) 16,500 735 606
World War I (191418) 330,000 155,000 61,517
World War II (193945) 557,799 66,553 39,667
Korean War (195053) 17,164 1261 340
Malayan Emergency (195060) 7000 20 39
Indonesian Confrontation (196466) 3500 9 16
Vietnam War (196272) 60,000 2398 521
First Gulf War (1990) 1812 0 0
East Timor (1999) 9000 17 2
Afghanistan (2001 ) 15,000 182 28
Iraq (200309) 17,000 27 3
408
THE VICTORIA CROSS
T
he Victoria Cross was created by Queen Victoria in 1856
and made retrospective to 1854 to cover the period of the
Crimean War (185356). The Victoria Cross is the pre-eminent
award for acts of bravery in wartime and
is Australias highest military honour.
It is awarded to soldiers who, in the
presence of the enemy, display the most
conspicuous gallantry; for a daring or
pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice;
or for extreme devotion to duty.
The Imperial Victoria Cross has been
awarded to 96 Australians. Ninety-one
received their VCs while serving with
Australian forces, while five Australians
received the award while serving with
South African or British units. The
majority of the awards were for actions
in World War I, in which a total of 64
medals were awarded. Nine of these VCs
were awarded for actions during Gallipoli.
Only twenty medals were awarded in
World War II, six in the Boer War, four
in Vietnam and just two in Russias Civil
War of 1919.
Captain Clarence Jeffries
was just twenty-two years
old when he won a Victoria
Cross at the Battle of
Passchendaele in 1917 for
most conspicuous bravery
in attack. He was killed
on the battlefield. AWM
The Victoria Cross
409
Twenty-eight Australians have been awarded the medal posthu-
mously, the most famous of whom was Captain Alfred Shout, VC
MC, Australias most decorated soldier of the Gallipoli campaign.
He is featured in this books chapter on Lone Pine.
Australians were first recognised for their gallantry in the Impe-
rial awards, from the Boer War to the Vietnam War. In 1991 a
new but equivalent award was established by letters patent within
the Commonwealth of Australia and its Territories, known as the
Victoria Cross for Australia. By July 2011, it had been awarded
only twice, both times to Special Air Service Regiment members
serving in Afghanistan.
Australians have been awarded the Imperial Victoria Cross and
the Victoria Cross for Australia in the following conflicts:
Boer War (18991902): 6
World War I (191418): 64
North Russia (1919): 2
World War II (193945): 20
Vietnam (19621972): 4
Afghanistan (from 2001): 2
Australian Victoria Cross winners,
1900
War Unit Year Country Location
Boer War
BELL Frederick WA Mounted Infantry 1901 South Africa Transvaal
BISDEE John Tasmanian Imperial Bushmen 1900 South Africa Warm Bad
HOWSE Neville NSW Medical Corps 1900 South Africa Vredefort
MAYGAR Leslie 5th Victorian Mounted Rifles 1901 South Africa Geelhoutboom
ROGERS James South African Constabulary 1901 South Africa Thaba Nchu
WYLLY Guy Tasmanian Imperial Bushmen 1900 South Africa Warm Bad
World War I
AXFORD Thomas 16th Battalion 1918 France Hamel Wood
BEATHAM Robert 8th Battalion 1918 France Lihons
410
BIRKS Frederick 6th Battalion 1917 Belgium Ypres
BLACKBURN Arthur 10th Battalion 1916 France Pozires
BORELLA Albert 26th Battalion 1918 France Villers-Bretonneux
BROWN Walter 20th Battalion 1918 France Villers-Bretonneux
BUCKLEY Alexander 54th Battalion 1918 France Pronne
BUCKLEY Maurice 13th Battalion 1918 France Le Verguier
BUGDEN Patrick 31st Battalion 1917 Belgium Zonnebeke
BURTON Alexander 7th Battalion 1915 Turkey Gallipoli
CARROLL John 33rd Battalion 1917 Belgium St Yves
CARTWRIGHT George 33rd Battalion 1918 France Bouchavesnes
CASTLETON Claude Australian Machine Gun Corps 1916 France Pozires
CHERRY Percy 26th Battalion 1917 France Lagnicourt
COOKE Thomas 8th Battalion 1916 France Pozires
CURREY William 53rd Battalion 1918 France Pronne
DALZIEL Henry 15th Battalion 1918 France Hamel Wood
DARTNELL Wilbur 25th Battalion Royal Fusiliers 1915 Kenya Maktau
DAVEY Philip 10th Battalion 1918 France Merris
DUNSTAN William 7th Battalion 1915 Turkey Gallipoli
DWYER John Australian Machine Gun Corps 1917 Belgium Zonnebeke
GABY Alfred 28th Battalion 1918 France Villers-Bretonneux
GORDON Bernard 41st

Battalion 1918 France Bray
GRIEVE Robert 37th Battalion 1917 Belgium Messines
HALL Arthur 54th Battalion 1918 France Pronne
HAMILTON John 3rd Battalion 1915 Turkey Gallipoli
HOWELL George 1st Battalion 1917 France Bullecourt
INGRAM George 24th Battalion 1918 France Montbrehain
INWOOD Roy 10th Battalion 1917 Belgium Polygon Wood
JACKA Albert 14th Battalion 1915 Turkey Gallipoli
JACKSON William 17th Battalion 1916 France Armentires
JEFFRIES Clarence 34th Battalion 1917 Belgium Passchendaele
JENSEN Jorgen 50th Battalion 1917 France Noreuil
JOYNT William 8th Battalion 1918 France Herleville Wood
KENNY Bede 2nd Battalion 1917 France Hermies
KEYSOR Leonard 1st Battalion 1915 Turkey Gallipoli
The Victoria Cross
411
LEAK John 9th Battalion 1916 France Pozires
LOWERSON Alby 21st Battalion 1918 France Mont St Quentin
MACTIER Robert 23rd Battalion 1918 France Mont St Quentin
MAXWELL Joseph 18th Battalion 1918 France Estres
McCARTHY Dominic 16th Battalion 1918 France Madame Wood
McDOUGALL Stanley 47th Battalion 1918 France Dernancourt
McGEE Lewis 40th Battalion 1917 Belgium Ypres
McNAMARA Frank 1 Squadron AFC 1917 Palestine Tel el Hesi
MOON Mick 58th Battalion 1917 France Bullecourt
MURRAY Harry 13th Battalion 1917 France Gueudecourt
NEWLAND James 12th Battalion 1917 France Bapaume
OMEARA Martin 16th Battalion 1916 France Pozires
PEELER Walter 3rd Pioneer Battalion 1917 Belgium Ypres
POPE Charles 11th Battalion 1917 France Louveral
RUTHVEN William 22nd Battalion 1918 France Ville-sur-Ancre
RYAN John 55th Battalion 1918 France Hindenburg Defences
SADLIER Clifford 51st Battalion 1918 France Villers-Bretonneux
SHOUT Alfred 1st Battalion 1915 Turkey Gallipoli
STATTON Percy 40th Battalion 1918 France Proyart
STORKEY Percy 19th Battalion 1918 France Hangard Wood
SYMONS William 7th Battalion 1915 Turkey Gallipoli
THROSSELL Hugo 10th Light Horse 1915 Turkey Gallipoli
TOWNER Edgar Australian Machine Gun Corps 1918 France Mont St Quentin
TUBB Frederick 7th Battalion 1915 Turkey Gallipoli
WARK Blair 32nd Battalion 1918 France Bellicourt
WEATHERS Lawrence 43rd

Battalion 1918 France Pronne
WHITTLE John 12th Battalion 1917 France Boursies
WOODS James 48th Battalion 1918 France Le Verguier
Russia
PEARSE Samuel 45th Battalion 1919 Russia Emtsa
SULLIVAN Arthur 45th Battalion 1919 Russia Sheika River
World War II
ANDERSON Charles 2/19th Battalion 1942 Malaya Muar River
CHOWNE Albert 2/2nd Battalion 1945 New Guinea Dagua
412
CUTLER Roden 2/5th Field Regiment 1941 Lebanon Merdjayoun-Damour
DERRICK Tom 2/48th Battalion 1943 New Guinea Sattelberg
EDMONDSON John 2/17th Battalion 1941 Libya Tobruk
EDWARDS Hugh 105 Squadron RAF 1941 Germany Bremen
FRENCH John 2/9th Battalion 1942 New Guinea Milne Bay
GORDON Jim 2/31st Battalion 1941 Syria Djezzine
GRATWICK Percy 2/4th Battalion 1942 Egypt El Alamein
GURNEY Stan 2/48th Battalion 1942 Egypt Tel-el-Eisa
KELLIHER Richard 2/25th Battalion 1943 New Guinea Nadzab
KENNA Edward 2/4th Battalion 1945 New Guinea Wewak
KIBBY Bill 2/48th Battalion 1942 Egypt El Alamein
KINGSBURY Bruce 2/14th Battalion 1942 Papua Isurava
MACKEY Jack 2/3rd Pioneer Battalion 1945 Borneo Tarakan Island
MIDDLETON Ron RAAF attached 149
RAF Squadron
1942 Italy Turin
NEWTON Bill RAAF 22 Squadron 1943 New Guinea New Guinea
PARTRIDGE Frank 8th (Militia) Battalion 1945 New Guinea Bougainville
RATTEY Reg 2/25th Battalion 1945 New Guinea Bougainville
STARCEVICH Leslie 2/43rd Battalion 1945 North Borneo Beaufort
Vietnam War
BADCOE Peter Australian Army Training Team 1967 Vietnam Huong Tra
PAYNE Keith Australian Army Training Team 1969 Vietnam Ben Het
SIMPSON Ray Australian Army Training Team 1969 Vietnam Kontum Province
WHEATLEY Kevin Australian Army Training Team 1965 Vietnam Tra Bong
Afghanistan
DONALDSON Mark Special Air Service Regiment 2008 Afghanistan Uruzgan Province
ROBERTS-SMITH Ben Special Air Service Regiment 2010 Afghanistan Tazik, Kandahar
Province
413
ARMY FORMATIONS
AND RANKS
Army formations
The formations described below are based on World War I usage
for infantry numbers, but are only approximate.
Army: Three or four corps under the command of a General
(180,000320,000 men)
Army Corps: Three to four divisions under the command of a
Lieutenant General (60,00080,000 men)
Division: Four brigades, along with artillery, commanded by a Major
General (16,00020,000 men)
Brigade: Four battalions commanded by a Brigadier General or
Brigadier (4000 men)
Battalion: Four companies commanded by a Lieutenant Colonel
(1000 men)
Company: Four platoons commanded by a Captain (120 men)
Platoon: Four sections commanded by a Lieutenant and assisted
by a Sergeant (3240 men)
Section: Eight to ten men commanded by a Corporal
Private: One individual soldier
Army ranks
Non-commissioned officers
Lance Corporal Staff Sergeant
Corporal Warrant Officer Class 1
Sergeant Warrant Officer Class 2
414
Commissioned officers
Second Lieutenant Commands a Platoon (3240 men)
Lieutenant A deputy Captain
Captain Second in charge of a Company (120 men)
Major Commands a Company
Lieutenant Colonel Commands a Battalion (1000 men)
Colonel Interim rank
Brigadier General 1 Star Commands a Brigade (4000 men)
Major General 2 Stars Commands a Division (16,00020,000 men)
Lieutenant General 3 Stars Commands a Corps (60,00080,000 men)
General 4 Stars Commands an Army (180,000320,000 men)
Field Marshal 5 Stars Supreme Commander
Despite the formal
hierarchical structure of
the army, officers like
Captain Bill Knox, 13th Field
Artillery, of Melbourne,
seen here with his wife
Mim and daughter Diana,
took great pleasure in
mixing freely with his
men, bearing out the claim
from the commander of
the World War I Australian
Corps, Lieutenant General
Monash, who said, In the
Australian Army there was
no officer caste, no social
distinctions in the whole
force. All men had a sense
of equality and were graded
and rewarded according
to their individual merits.
415
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I thank Jane King, who helped with this book from start to finish
more than any other of my thirty titles, discussing, developing and
reading the manuscript as well as cooking healthy organic meals
and managing the whole household, office and financial affairs on
her own as I disappeared off to war.
Thanks are also due to Major General Steve Gower, who wrote
the Foreword; John Hampshire, who read and pre-edited the
manuscript at great speed; history teacher Andy Mason-Jones,
who wrote some of the stories, including those on Bullecourt,
Broodseinde, Montbrehain, El Alamein and Tobruk; and Paul
Copeland, of the Australian Peacekeeper and Peacemaker Veterans
Association, who provided the material for Peacemakers: A tribute.
Nicole McGregor researched and wrote material for the book.
Vietnam Veteran Bruce Stark edited the account of the Battle of
Long Tan (in which he fought). Angela Lind edited the chapter on
Beersheba, where her relative fought. Veteran teacher and historical
scholar Helen Cooper helped research and select the contents of
the book, ensuring its relevance for schools. Educational leaders
Andrew Webster and Ruth Forster, Stroud poet Ken Stone and Bev
Stone, helped with story selection, as did fellow military scholar
Gary Clift (who specialises in battles of the Great War both in his
library and on the battlefields themselves) and also his wife Sue
Clift. ABC journalist Charlotte King, who advised on content, also
assisted with research, inspiration and political balance, the graphic
416
designer Stuart Walsh from the Sunraysia Daily helped select and
prepare the pictures, and Peter Tyson helped with computer matters.
Thanks also to the brilliant Pat Kuhn, National Archives of
Australia; Sue Jay, State Library of Victoria; Beau Cooper, Australian
War Memorial; the enthusiastic volunteers of Stroud Library; Alan
Kitchen, Friends of the First AIF; Leslie Sprague; Elsie Ritchie;
Margaret Clarke; and Corinna Clarke of Photosonic, Avalon.
The author also wishes to thank those who provided general
support, including June Henman, Ingrita Spooner, and much-needed
emotional support on this long haul: Kevin and Lowanna Doye,
Tallara, Edan, Juniper and Sky Doye, along with Bryony and Harry
Lancaster, and Olive and Leo and Mollie King
I thank the Authors Association of Australia; Susan Bridge;
Angelo Loukakis; and the Allen & Unwin teamStuart Neal, who
conceived the project, Angela Handley, the managing editor, and
John Mapps, who edited the book so skilfully and with great cheer.
The band of the 5th
Australian Infantry
Brigade playing at a
victory celebration after
the Battle of Bapaume,
Western Front, 1917.
417
PICTURE CREDITS
I
have given credit for all images that I have bought from institu-
tions. Other images have been sourced from private collections
or secondary sources. Ihave used pictures from the original publica-
tions where possible, including my 1916 edition of The Anzac Book,
Written and Illustrated in Gallipoli by The Men of Anzac, Cassell and
Company London. Ihave also used pictures from my rare collectors
set of the classic partworks: Australia in the Great War, The Story
told in Pictures, published by Cassell and Company, Ltd, between
1916 and 1918 and edited by H.C. Smart, generously donated by
Joy Zinn of Caringbah. I also sourced pictures from my copy of
the original edition of From the Australian Front, Christmas 1917,
Cassell and Company Ltd, generously donated by Beryl Holleywell
of Dolls Point, NSW.
I have drawn extensively on photographs and cartoons from
some of my previous books from the mid-1970s onwards. I have
also used photographs from private collectors.
I thank the following for the use of pictures throughout the
book: the first-class collection of the Australian War Memorial
<www.awm.gov.au>; the National Library of Australia; the user-
friendly National Archives of Australia <www.naa.gov.au>; the
community-focused State Library of Victoria copy ordering service
with direct digital format delivery via TIFF or PDF via <www.
slv.vic.gov.au>; the State Library of New South Wales (Mitchell
Library) <www.slnsw.gov.au>.
418
Newspaper Libraries: I am grateful for the special consideration
I received from my former employer, Fairfax, especially from Fairfax
Photos which is a comprehensive image library and photo syndica-
tion service hosting award-winning photography from Fairfax Media
publications including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The
Sun-Herald and The Australian Financial Review. Selected images
from their extensive libraryare available as high-resolution downloads
for home display and professional licensing. For orders and more
information, readers can phone 1300 136 466, email syndication@
fairfaxmedia.com.au or visit <www.fairfaxsyndication.com>.
Some pictures were scanned by Photosonic Avalon, Corinna
Clarke <photosonicavalon@gmail.com> and some by Vickie at
Officeworks, Mona Vale.
Paintings have been credited in the captions where the artist was
known; however, in some cases artists are not known. The author
thanks David Mearns for the use of the painting of HMAS Sydney
by F. Norton on page 244 which is from his book, The Search for
the Sydney; and also the late Mrs Diana Baillieu for the photo on
page 414 of her father Captain Bill Knox, his wife Mim and Diana
as a toddler.
Disclaimer: The author has made every effort to trace and credit
creators of the pictures and their sources; where he has been unable
to do that he apologises and would be grateful if readers could
contact him via the publishers to add any missing credits to later
editions of the book.
419
SELECTED
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bean, C.E.W., Anzac to Amiens, Australian War Memorial, Canberra,
1946
Blanche, H., The Story of Australia Illustrated, New York Publishing
Co., 1956
Burness, Peter, Fromelles and the Somme: Australians on The Western
Front1916, Department of Veterans Affairs, Canberra, 2006
Burness, Peter, Bapaume and Bullecourt: Australians on The Western
Front1917, Department of Veterans Affairs, Canberra, 2007
Burness, Peter, Villers-Bretonneux to Le Hamel: Australians on The
Western Front1918, Department of Veterans Affairs, Canberra,
2008
Carlyon, Les, Gallipoli, Macmillan, Sydney, 2001
Carlyon, Les, The Great War, Pan Macmillan, Melbourne, 2006
Coulthard-Clark, Chris, The Encyclopedia of Australias Battles, Allen &
Unwin, Sydney, 1998
FitzSimons, Peter, Kokoda, Hodder, Sydney, 2004
FitzSimons, Peter, Tobruk, HarperCollins, Sydney, 2006
Franki, George and Slayter, Clyde, Mad Harry, Australias Most Decorated
Soldier, Simon & Schuster, Sydney, 2003
Jenkins, David, Battle Surface, Random House, 1992
King, Jonathan, The Other Side of the Coin: A Cartoon History of
Australia, Cassell Australia Limited, Sydney, 1976
420
King, Jonathan, Stop Laughing, This is Serious! A Social History of
Australia in Cartoons, Cassell Australia Limited, Sydney, 1978
King, Jonathan, Gallipoli: Our Last Man Standing, John Wiley & Sons,
2003
King, Jonathan, Gallipoli, Untold Stories from War Correspondent Charles
Bean and Front-line ANZACS, Doubleday, Sydney, 2005
King, Jonathan, The Western Front Diaries, Simon & Schuster, Sydney,
2008
King, Jonathan and King, John, Philip Gidley King: A Biography of the
Third Governor of New South Wales, Methuen, Sydney, 1981
Mearns, David, The Search for the Sydney, HarperCollins, Sydney 2009
Nelson, Robert et al., APictorial History of Australians at War, Summit
Books, Sydney, 1970
Oral, Haluk, Gallipoli 1915: Through Turkish Eyes, Turkiye Is Bankasi,
Istanbul, 2007
Passingham, Ian, All the Kaisers Men, Sutton Publishing Limited, London
2003
Perry, Roland, Monash: The Outsider who Won a War, Random House,
2004
Rees, Laurence, The Nazis: A Warning from History, BBC Books, 1997
Reid, Richard, Australians at War: Key Dates & Data, Department of
Veterans Affairs, 1999
Taylor, A.J.P., History of World War I, Octopus Books, 1974

Great Battles in Australian History

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Great Battles in Australian History

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Great Battles in Australian History

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Other books (selected) by Jonathan King

The Other Side of the Coin (1976)

You might also like