The Other Anzacs (34 page)
The Australian commander, General McCay, was also far from blameless. It was his decision to stop an armistice arranged with the Germans to collect the dead and wounded from the battlefield with the claim that it was illegal. A history of the 5th Division published four years after the event suggested that the armistice was called off because orders from General Headquarters forbade negotiations with the enemy. However, the Manual of Military Law did allow for a cessation of arms for the burial of the dead. McCay’s reputation never recovered. He was ever after known as ‘Butcher’ McCay.
In his report, Haking patronised the Australians and ignored his own culpability. Indeed, he portrayed the disaster as a success, saying ‘officers and men displayed a fine spirit throughout the attack and drove back the enemy with true British vigour’.
I think the attack of the Australian Division which was new to fighting out here, was carried out in an exceptionally gallant manner. There is no doubt that the men advanced with the greatest determination. Their difficulties on the right flank were caused by the failure of the 61st Division to carry the SUGARLOAF. On their left flank the Australian Division was unable to consolidate sufficiently during the night and consequently when that flank gave way the remainder of the line was compelled to withdraw.
I am quite sure that on the next occasion when the Division is ordered to attack it will distinguish itself even more than on this occasion. I have nothing but admiration for the fine fighting spirit displayed by Commanders and all ranks in the Division.
The artillery work turned out even better than I expected though many of the batteries had had very little experience.
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On 21 July McCay published a special divisional order in which, with ‘great pleasure’, he passed on complimentary remarks from Haig and the Commander of the 2nd Army, General Sir Herbert Plumer. McCay congratulated ‘all ranks in the Division who have so gallantly maintained the ANZAC tradition’. Haig wanted the men to ‘realise that their enterprise has not been by any means in vain and that the gallantry with which they carried out the attack is fully recognised’. Those who survived knew the emptiness of these words. The Diggers barely contained their anger at the debacle. They also now understood what they were dealing with in Haig, who, just a month earlier, had told Britain that it ‘must be taught to bear losses’. Victories, he added, could not be won ‘without the sacrifice of men’s lives’.
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A communique on the battle issued to the press by British General Headquarters on 20 July raised divisions between the Australians and the British: ‘Yesterday evening, south of Armentieres, we carried out some important raids on a front of two miles in which Australian troops took part. About 140 German prisoners were captured.’
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The British generals were already covering up and rewriting the history of the disaster. It was all too much for Elliott, who had learned in horror of the decimation of his 15th Brigade, from which a third of the Australian casualties came. Fromelles was, he said, a ‘tactical abortion’. He wept for the 5th Division’s dead.
Harry Moffitt was among them—one of thirty officers of the division who did not survive the battle. He was among the first killed on the evening of the 19th. He went over the top as adjutant to Lieutenant Colonel Ignatius Bertram Norris, who was leading the battalion. According to Robin Corfield, the first wave vanished in the smoke and dust and then Norris, Harry and other staff followed. As they reached the German line a well-sited machine gun killed them all.
There were eyewitnesses to the deaths of the two men, which happened at around 6 p.m.—within minutes of the attack’s start. But, understandably given the confusion of battle, the accounts differ on some details. According to Corfield, one of the men who witnessed Norris’s death remembered him shouting to his men: ‘Come on, lads! Only another trench to take!’ as he moved over the German line. Then he was hit and fell, and his last words were: ‘Here, I’m done, will somebody take my papers!’
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It was Harry Moffitt who answered Norris’s call. The official battalion report of his death says he was killed on the evening of 19–20 July, ‘while attempting [to] assist’ Colonel Norris, who was hit while attacking the enemy line. Harry was ‘hit by machine gun fire and death was instantaneous’. According to Sergeant Patrick Lonergan, Norris ‘was killed by a shell . . . Mr Moffitt called out for 4 men to bring the Colonel in. He had no sooner done so than he himself was shot in the back of the head and fell dead across the Colonel’s body. I was quite close by and saw this myself.’
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Another member of the battalion, Private John Morlock, said Harry ‘was calling for volunteers to take back the colonel’s body and stood up in the trench. His head was blown off.’
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Yet another witness said Harry was ‘killed by a bullet, probably by sniper—was shot a few seconds after his colonel’. What is beyond doubt is that Harry was going to Colonel Norris’s aid and was killed immediately after him. Because the Germans recaptured the territory the next morning, neither body was ever recovered.
Two days after the battle, Major John Prior at No. 1 Australian General Hospital, Rouen, heard the news about Harry and told Alice Ross King. Words could not convey her grief. Her Harry was dead, and the news struck her senseless. She did not touch her diary for ten days. When she did, her diary entry simply stated:
Harry Killed in Action
Fleurbaix
19th July
Her heart was broken, her hopes for the future shattered by a futile and wasteful military misadventure. Harry’s life had been taken, and Alice was numb. As she struggled to find the strength to keep going, a letter from Harry arrived in the post. The kaleidoscope of emotions Alice would have felt can only be imagined, as can her heartbreak on realising that his last letter had taken longer to arrive than the news of his death. Inside, she read an avowal of love from someone very much alive as he waited for the battle.
14.7.16
Dearest Heart of Mine
We are right in the thick of it all again. This afternoon we had a severe bombardment but as you see I am quite fit. All is over now and I’ll have to get away as I have lots to do. If only I could have one little kiss & one hug, how happy I would be. Ruins are on every hand & the magnificent growth of poppies & cornflowers make a wonderful contrast to the surrounding scene of desolation. The trenches are a great improvement to those at Gallipoli, but the work darling is long. I seem to be going day & night. I get down for a moment and then I am called up. I love you long & dearly love of mine. So think longingly of me, & dream that I am as you know I am in your waking moments.
Ever yr Sweetheart
Harry
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When she resumed her diary on 29 July, urged on by her colleagues, Alice was gutted. ‘Well, my world has ended. Harry is dead. God, what shall I do!’ She agonised over how to carry on. ‘Nothing on earth matters to me now. The future is an absolute blank. I have kept on duty but God only knows how I have done so. Everyone has been most kind to me. Oh my dear, dear love what am I to do? I can’t believe he is dead. My beautiful boy. I’m hoping each day that the news will be contradicted.’
She did not know how to face ‘the lifeless future . . . I feel Harry’s presence constantly with me and my love is growing stronger and deeper even since his death. I cannot really believe the news yet and each day I long for a letter telling me he is only wounded. How am I to bear life?’
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She wrote to Harry’s mother, at Gisborne in Victoria, trying to soften the blow for her. Work was a struggle, but she tried to show ‘a frivolous face . . . Oh God my heart is breaking, and tears are mine that I never thought I should shed.’
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Then there was the question of what had happened to Harry’s body. Five weeks after his death Alice heard that there was ‘no hope of getting Harry’s grave fixed up’. It had not been possible to bring in the wounded and they were ‘still lying there unburied’. Alice pointed no finger, but clearly knew of the fiasco surrounding the failed truce. ‘For days one could see occasional signs of life, an arm would wave or there would be slight movement but it was quite impossible to collect the wounded beyond a certain distance. Thank God I am almost certain that death was instantaneous.’
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She had seen too much suffering among the badly wounded for whom there was no hope. Her only comfort was the thought that Harry had died quickly.
The days dragged by in ‘awful weariness’, and Alice’s nights were full of longing for Harry. The pain of his death grew daily, though in time she became ‘calm of eye’ as she learned to control her visible emotions. But the condolences from family, friends and colleagues only reminded her of her loss. ‘The worst of it is people speak of my trouble in the past tense. I go out a good deal when off duty for I hate my room and yet I hate talking to people too.’
1
Major Prior kept a watchful eye on her, taking her out on her days off for picnics in the nearby woods, where she was ‘able to read or write or sleep’. He would organise afternoon tea and talk about his wife and children and his home. He was her ‘good pal’, and would remain so in the years ahead.
But these interludes aside, Alice believed her heart was ‘too dead for anything’, even for keeping her diary. She took solace in a new poem by American Ellen Gates:
I shall not cry Return Return
Nor weep my years away.
But just as long as Sunsets burn
And dawns make no delay
I shall be lonesome. I shall miss
Your hand, your voice, your smile, your kiss.
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The poem spoke of a tempest sweeping a garden bare, ‘And then you passed, and in your place Stood Silence with her lifted face.’ In hope, Alice looked to eternity, and the day when she might ‘find the way you go’ to join her lost love. She would do her ‘task and wait the opening of the outer gate’.
There was never a shortage of wounded to provide distraction for her. A new form of treatment was being tried whereby wounds were not dressed but allowed to heal under their own pus. ‘The patients are very discontented about it and the wards stink to high heaven, ’ Alice observed, unconvinced by the results.
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In her view, further doubt was cast over the treatment when an amputation patient whose leg was being treated with a pus poultice had a severe haemorrhage. The patient blamed the lack of dressing. ‘The surgeons are discontented about this treatment but the D.G. [director-general of medical services] says it must be given three months trial.’
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It would not last long. But something had to be done to improve existing treatments, for men were dying like flies from dreadful festering wounds.
The Allied hospitals tried another new treatment named after its developers, the American Dr Henry Dakin and the Frenchman Dr Alexis Carrel. It involved cleaning suppurating wounds but not dressing them; instead they were irrigated with bactericidal fluids. It was considered effective, but Alice disliked it because it immobilised the patient. ‘If he does move, the drip pan tips up into the bed. It will be awful when the cold weather comes.’
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As a hospital in a war zone, No. 1 Australian General Hospital at Rouen was hardly the place to help Alice come to terms with Harry’s death. An influx of New Zealand troops from the Somme stirred her to bitter despair. ‘The New Zealanders have been in it badly and we are getting a lot of them in. They are being applauded in the papers, which means of course that they are practically wiped out—like the Fifth Division. One never hears of it now. It is finished. It was someone’s terrible blunder and it took my beloved one from me.’
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The death of another New Zealander also touched Alice deeply. He had been admitted with a compound fracture of the femur after the battle for High Wood at the Somme. Gas gangrene suddenly developed. ‘He made up his mind to live and he made a brave effort, ’ Alice wrote. ‘He ate his food well and battled even when he had no pulse at all. At dinner time I was feeding him with chicken gravy when he said, “Can’t hang on any longer.” He was dead at 3:30 p.m. He sent a message to his girl saying “I’m sorry I’m going out but I’m not whipping the cat.”’
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The same day a soldier was admitted who had been shot in the back, neck, arms and legs. He was paralysed and incontinent. Another had fractures in both legs and bullet wounds in both arms, while a third had his left foot amputated and a compound fracture of his left arm. After cleaning up these ‘frightfully dirty’ patients, Alice gave them egg flip and brandy. They cheered up. ‘’Twas then about 6 p.m. and I turned on the gramophone. It was delightful to see them join in the singing.’
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Even as these broken men lay in their hospital beds there was time for humour. A soldier who had lost his lower jaw when it was shot away somehow remained full of fun, even as saliva dripped out over his dressing. ‘I was doing his dressing when I sneezed twice (twice for a kiss). He wrote, “Sneeze again Sister. There’s nothing doing.” ’
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Another patient told Alice he was a ‘seeder’ in civilian life. She asked what that was. He told her that he worked the machine that made the seeds to put in raspberry jam. Most of the jam was made from pumpkin, then coloured, a few raspberries added and then the seeds put in.