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CHAPTER XIV THE START ON THE SOMhiE-AND FROMELLES THEtwo new Australian infantry divisions, 4th and 5th, which had been formed at the elid of February, but left in Egypt for three months to create their artillery, had received at the end of hlay the order to move to the Western Front. The creation of that artillery was a task unparalleled in British experience, and is the classic example of the speed with which _Australians could be trained. To instruct the 3000 artillery officers and men re- quired by each division, some 150 trained officers and men from the older divisions were allotted to each. The rest were light horsemen and infantrymen together with a few hundred artillery reiniorcements, mostly untrained, and a handful from the engineer and other services. The 4th Division had not one regular artillery officer. For instructing the 12th Field Artillery Brigade Lieut.- Colonel R. A. Rabett (who himself started in the war as a young militia officer) had 5 artillery officers-3 with Anzac experience and 2 reinforcements-and some 30 more or less experienced artillerymen. He had to select 17 officers from non-artillery units, and train them each morning from 4.30 to 6.30, when they in turn began teaching their men. Within a fortnight the new officers, themselves being lectured for four hours daily, and teaching their men for eight hours, were producing results. Only five guns were available, but these were used in relays. In April the artillery were sent to join their infantry on the Canal defences where instruction continued. I ANZAC TO AMIENS [Mar.-June 1916 In the training of the infantry of these divisions there occurred the harshest experience that the A.I.F.’s instruc- tion had ever included. When the older divisions were being moved from the Canal there occurred a shortage of trains to take the new divisions to the Canal. It was therefore decided that all except the leading troops (the 8th Brigade and a battalion of the 4th) should march thither across the desert. The distance was less than forty miles comprising two fifteen-mile stages and a shorter stage on the third day. It was decided to make the march a test, the men carrying full kit, packs, and ammunition. But even in Monash’s, Glasgow’s and Glasfurd’s brigades, which took the usual precautions for desert marching, the movement was accomplished only with great suffering on the part of the troops. In the 14th Brigade, however, possibly because men broke the ranks in order to drink the foul water of the “Sweet-water” Canal, which lay beside part of the route, the brigadier (who was afterwards removed for this mistake) insisted on their marching on through the midday hours. The process ended in an almost complete break-down; parched and exhausted men staggered into the New Zealanders’ camp at Moascar on the second evening, leaving many to be picked up during the night by the ambulances and by the succouring New Zealanders. It was rumoured later that some men died through the results; a search of the records after the war did not confirm this, but it may nevertheless have been correct. On arrival in France the 4th Division, in which the “outside” States-Queensland, S. and W. Australia and Tasmania-were much more strongly represented than in any other division,’ began to enter the line towards the end of June, and by July 4th its artillerymen, who in March had been light horsemen and infantrymen, were responsible for covering their sector of the Western 1 It was composed of three all-States brigades-Monash’s 4th Bde, the 12th Bde (formed from [tic 4th). and the 13th (formed from the 3rd). 218 June-July 19161 THE SOMME Front. This division had by then already raided the Ger- mans, and it was itself raided while its artillery was relieving that of the 2nd Division. (Though the Germans captured a prisoner, their staff remained unaware that the 4th and 5th Australian Divisions had left Egypt.) By July 5th the 1st and 2nd Divisions had been relieved. General Godley and the staff of I1 Anzac became respon- sible for the sector, the New Zealand Division remaining there under them, with the 5th Australian Division from Egypt just arriving in the back area. The 1st and 2nd under Birdwood and the staff of I Anzac were moving into the sector opposite Messines when, on July 7th, orders arrived that by the 13th they must be in the Amiens area, sixty miles to the south, ready for a con- tinuation of the somme offensive. The project of a stroke against Messines had for the present been given up, and plans and maps for that scheme, then in preparation by I Anzac at Bailleul, were returned to the 2nd Army staff. For the great Somme offensive was then in full swing. A week previously, on 1st July 1916, the British and French armies twenty miles east of Amiens had launched their attack astride that river. After a bombardment, which eventually was extended to seven days, the 4th British Army (General Sir Henry Rawlinson) to- gether with part of the 3rd, and a group of French armies under General Foch, were to break the German line, striking in three stages towards Bapaume, ten miles away. If, as was hoped, in any of these stages a sufficient breach was made, a British “Reserve Army”, chiefly of cavalry, under the cavalry leader, General Sir Hubert Gough, would try to push through to the Bapaume plateau and then, turning north, would “roll up” the German line north of the breach. The bombardment (in which two siege batteries formed from the regular Australian garrison artillery took part) had since June 25th methodically smashed the German defences. At one time every gun and howitzer 219 ANZAC TO AMlENS [ngth June-1st July 1916 would fire rapidly with high explosive for twelve minutes on all the villages, following this fire with shrapnel to catch any troops disturbed by this deluge. On other days all German batteries known to the British intelligence staff were shelled; or trenches of the first and second lines were taken under fire and methodically battered down from end to end; or a barrage, like that which would pre- cede the infantry’s advance, was laid on the enemy’s front line, and then lengthened, and then suddenly brought back to catch the German infantry, who might be manning the parapet in expectation of attack. The “bump” of the guns could be heard in England, and under the long drawn out strain the German garrison, whose food, drink and ammunition parties sometimes could not get through, lost in some parts its power of resistance. Thus, when the attack came, on the sector astride the Somme, where Foch’s armies for their six-mile front were supported by no less than goo heavy pieces of artillery, two splendid French corps, the XX north of the Somme and the I Colonial Corps south of the river, penetrated so fast that the German command opposite to them hastily withdrew its troops to a line close in front of Ptronne town, six miles away. The British right flank, immedi- ately north of the French, advanced to the same depth, reaching Montauban village, on the ridge on which lay the second German defence system. It was only through Sir Douglas Haig’s insistence-against the view of the less optimistic commander of the 4th Army, General Rawlin- son-that the first British thrust had been designed to go so deep. But the British Army, though supported by artillery and ammunition on a scale previously unknown to it, was not yet gunned on a scale comparable with the French, Behind its fifteen and a half miles of front were some 400 heavy pieces, and the 12,776 tons of shells used by them on the first day was only half of what the British 220 ist-14th July 19161 THE SOMME were able to throw at the Germans on the first day of the Battle of Arras, nine months later. The deep German dugouts were almost unaffected by the bombardment; at the La Boisselle ruins, on the road from Albert to Bapaume, a little north of the British penetration to Montauban, the attacking troops, Tynesiders of the 34th “New Army” Division, were, for all their devotion, held up practically at the front line. Farther north, where the 3rd British Army attacked with less powerful artillery support, the assault, though it went deep at several points, was largely stopped at the front line, with tragic losses. That day the 29th Division lost 5000 men and the 36th (Ulster) Division, which, with part of the 32nd, had pushed to and beyond Thiepval on the ridge that but- tressed the northern flank of the Germans, lost 5500. Despite sucli losses a tremendous blow had been struck; and though the achievements did not approach the stage at which Gough’s Reserve Army could be used, nevertheless decisive results seemed to Haig within reach. He knew he must first widen the wedge driven into the German line, and, to do this, must take Thiepval. JofEre vigorously urged him to attack Thiepval again frontally, but Haig was determined to drive farther on the southern flank, where his success had been greatest, and then attack Thiepval from there. He accordingly placed General Gough in command of the front facing Thiepval, the divisions there becoining the “Reselve Army’’. Gough was ordered to hold the enemy while Rawlinson with the 4th Army continued to drive ahead.

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