Zero Hour (11 page)

‘What use am I if I am broken?' asked Baxter.

‘It's your submission we want, Baxter, not your services.'

Baxter was sent to the front-line, where soldiers taught him when to duck shells, and saved his life when he tried to take off his gasmask too early. When an officer ordered four soldiers to repeatedly lift Baxter above their shoulders and drop him onto the duckboards as a punishment, the soldiers gently lowered him down instead, ignoring the officer's growing anger. Despite the kindness of some soldiers, Baxter began flinching at the sound of explosions. He collapsed in early 1918, and was declared mentally unfit for service. Before the end of the war, he returned home to his farm.

FORTY DAYS AND FORTY NIGHTS

Unlike New Zealand, Australia had not yet introduced conscription but after the Somme, the calls for it grew. The Australian government held a referendum for the people to vote on it. The prime minister, William ‘Billy' Hughes, had little choice; he supported conscription but he knew his governing Labor Party didn't.

Those who supported conscription believed every available man was needed to save Britain and therefore Australia. Those against felt that only a volunteer would give his fullest contribution. Some Australians also believed that the war was less about freedom and more about trade. Before the war, Germany had begun surpassing Britain as an industrial power—German companies controlled much of Australia's metals industry in 1914.

For 40 days and 40 nights both sides appealed to voters through public meetings, doorknocking, posters and badges. Some leaflets asked voters, ‘Will you send another woman's son or husband to his death?' while others depicted ape-like German soldiers standing over a dead women, with the caption ‘“Your turn next”. Help to prevent this by voting “YES.”' The two sides clashed repeatedly; in one incident, hundreds of soldiers fought civilians who opposed conscription.

At the Western Front, journalist Keith Murdoch was concerned that the Australian soldiers would vote ‘No' because they wouldn't want others to be forced to go through what they had experienced. Murdoch contacted the prime minister, who asked the Australian commander Lieutenant General Birdwood to persuade the men to vote for conscription. Birdwood and other prominent Australians appealed to the soldiers to vote for conscription, which a majority did, though it was soldiers who worked in the back camps and transports that swung the vote. But still the ‘No' vote won in October 1916. The referendum spilt the community as well as the Labor Party, which expelled Hughes. But he continued to govern with several loyal ministers and the support of the opposition Liberal Party—together they formed a new Win the War Party. Without conscription, new methods had to be introduced to increase the volunteering rate. Returned soldiers, Victoria Cross recipients and mayors appealed to the public, calling for recruits during intervals at dances and shows, on beaches, and other areas where large crowds gathered.

These appeals saw 3000 men a month enlisting, but it wasn't enough—there were 38,000 Australian casualties in the last four months of 1917. In December 1917, a second referendum was held. This time the word ‘conscription' was removed; instead, voters were asked whether they were in favour of reinforcing troops overseas. With Britain, New Zealand, Canada and the United States all using conscription, Hughes appealed to the public not to abandon the troops: ‘Don't leave the boys in the trenches. Don't see them butchered. Don't leave them below their strength or you will cover Australia with shame.'

Tensions resurfaced. Minor riots broke out around the country and angry crowds filled halls to drown out speakers. In Melbourne, during separate demonstrations, returned soldiers and anti-conscription marchers attacked each another. Even the prime minister emerged with bleeding knuckles from the middle of a brawl at a train station. He had been talking to a ‘Yes' crowd when an anti-conscription mob arrived and threw eggs, one of which hit him.

Not all returned soldiers were pro-conscription; several formed groups and published ‘Vote No' leaflets. Private Victor Brown wrote home from France saying he didn't agree with conscription, as he and others considered it ‘murder (or near enough to it) to compel anymore to come from Aussie', and that conscription would be ‘the end of a free Australia'.

Pro-conscription leaflets claimed that those who voted ‘No' were unpatriotic, that they believed men at the front should be sacrificed, women should be murdered, babies killed and Australia handed over to Germany. The anti-conscription league was just as emotive, appealing to families with posters saying ‘Vote No, Mum, they'll take Dad next.'

The Australian people voted ‘No' again. And although a majority of the soldiers at the Western Front had once more come out in favour of conscription, the number had fallen.

DIED OF WOUNDS
____________________

PRIVATE JOHN GLASSINGTON
Labourer. 6 April 1918

PRIVATE WILLIAM LITTLE
Miner. 4 September 1918

CHAPTER SEVEN
BULLECOURT, 1917

NITCHIE—In loving memory of my dear daddy,
Pte J. L. Nitchie, killed in action, July 19,
1916, also my dear uncle, Pte L. Nitchie, killed
in action, August 4, 1916.

Though I am far away dear daddy,
And your grave I cannot see,
I am always thinking of you,
As you used to think of me.

INSERTED BY HIS LOVING DAUGHTER, LITTLE IVY .

NEWSPAPER ‘IN MEMORIAM ' NOTICE

WITH THE SPRING of 1917 approaching, Haig—who now held the rank of field marshal—reluctantly agreed to take over parts of the French line. The aim was to support a French offensive further south against the wooded heights of the strongly held Chemin des Dames. After the bloodletting of the Somme, the French commander-in-chief General Joseph Joffre had been replaced by General Robert Nivelle, who believed in victory through ‘violence, brutality and rapidity'. Haig's British troops were to attack between the Somme and Arras to draw German troops away from the French. Haig would have preferred to attack the Germans in Belgium, but the British prime minister, David Lloyd George, had lost faith in him after the senseless slaughter of the Somme.

Since August 1916, the Germans had also been making changes. After General Falkenhayn's failure at Verdun, the Kaiser had replaced him with Generals Paul von Hinden-burg and Erich von Ludendorff. They'd decided to create strong defensive positions rather than recapture lost ground or attack fortified positions as Falkenhayn had done. After halting operations at Verdun, Ludendorff ordered the building of a new defence line, known to the Allies as the Hindenburg Line. The new trench system, up to 40 kilometres behind the Somme trenches, ran from Reims to Arras. It straightened the original line, which reduced the number of men needed to defend it.

On 24 October, French forces led by Nivelle had counterattacked at Verdun and by December had recaptured their lost forts. In the same month, the Germans offered the Allies a peace deal in which they would keep Belgium— it was immediately rejected. Then, in January 1917, they relaunched their unrestricted submarine campaign, which they had eventually halted after American outrage at the sinking of the
Lusitania
.

THE GERMANS ARE GONE

By February, with the Hindenburg Line nearly finished and the winter frosts melting, Australian patrols discovered the Germans trenches on the Somme empty. They were withdrawing across a 210-kilometre front—setting fire to villages, mining roads and leaving machine-gun posts at strategic locations to slow the pursuing Australian and British soldiers. The Germans, some wearing looted suits or dresses, toppled house walls, tore tiles from roofs and cut down trees. Nothing was to be left for the Allies.

Even so, the Australians' spirits lifted: the worst of winter was over and the Germans had withdrawn. After 10 months of trench warfare, the men were fighting out in the open and, although it was just as brutal, they felt for the first time that they were winning the war. They passed through the burning town of Bapaume, leaving the wasteland of the Somme behind them. They fought desperately, capturing village after village until they were halted by the chalk-white parapet and deep wire rows of the Hindenburg Line.

As drivers manoeuvred horse-drawn artillery over sabotaged roads, the 4th Australian Division moved forward to take over the new front-line. They passed the bodies of Australians killed in the pursuit—some buried in German-dug graves—and hospital trains filled with wounded men going the other way. Then welcome news arrived: finally, on 6 April, the United States had declared war on Germany. The Germans' return to unrestricted submarine warfare had been the last straw.

THE BATTLE OF ARRAS

On 9 April, the Allies began their planned offensive at Arras, close to where the Hindenburg Line joined the original German line. British and New Zealand tunnellers had hacked over 32 kilometres of tunnels and chambers through the chalk ground under Arras, and as an artillery barrage crushed the German defenders, 30,000 British troops moved secretly through the tunnels to the jumping-off point. Nearby, Canadian soldiers also readied themselves.

At zero hour, the Canadians stormed the strategic heights of Vimy Ridge, while British troops smashed through the line at Arras, but any further attempts to exploit the break were shut down by desperate German fighting.

Twenty kilometres from Arras, General Gough, commander of the 5th Army, ordered the Australians to attack Bullecourt village, a bastion built into the Hindenburg Line, to both support and take advantage of the Allied gains. However, the double belts of wire—specially angled to direct attacking troops into the line of fire—were still intact, so Lieutenant General Birdwood asked for a postponement. Gough told him that a line of 12 tanks would do the job of the artillery and crush the wire. For a long time tank commanders had wanted to attack en masse—now they had their opportunity.

At 4.15 a.m. on 10 April, soldiers from two brigades of the 4th Division lay on the snowy ground listening for the tanks, as ‘grape-like bunches of coloured lights' hung momentarily over the German line. On their left, a brigade of the 62nd British Division was to pass through Bullecourt once the Australians and tanks had cleared it. Beforehand, British patrols would also support the advance by attacking the Hindenburg Line on the other side of Bullecourt, but this was not known to the 4th Division front-line troops. By dawn, not one tank had arrived, so thousands of Australians stood up and strolled back to their trench, ‘like a crowd from a football match', luckily concealed by snow flurries. The British patrols ran into uncut wire and machine-gun bullets. Those who survived were bitter that the Australians hadn't told them the attack had been postponed.

THE ‘MONSTERS'

After resting during the day, the same tired soldiers got back into position on the snow-covered slopes as the British gassed Bullecourt. One of the reserve soldiers, Private Wilfred Gallwey, was so exhausted that he could only drag his rifle. His knees were giving way, and he wondered ‘of what use would I be tonight'. Again Birdwood tried to have the attack postponed, but Gough insisted that Haig expected them to proceed. This time, the tanks were there. At 4.45 a.m., zero hour, their overheated exhausts glowed red as they churned across no-man's-land with long, straight lines of soldiers following. Many Germans fled from the ‘monsters', but those that stayed kept firing. Bullets hit the tanks, causing ‘metal splash': bolts, solder, thick paint flakes and rivets were torn off the interior walls and spat into the crew space, gashing or blinding the men inside. The German artillery, mechanical failure and boggy terrain crippled most of the tanks before they had even reached the wire—only four made it, but they were so slow that the Australians had overtaken them.

German SOS rockets lit the night and the replying artillery shells tore into earth and men alike. Gas clouds billowed towards the British and the 4th Division and, up ahead, dead and maimed troops were hanging in the uncut wire. One soldier thought that the wire ‘seemed to swarm with fireflies' as bullets struck it. But the Australians scrambled through gaps and captured the main trench and the support trench, then barricaded the ends and dug fire steps in the other side of the trench wall. Captain Harry Murray sent runners with messages saying they were ‘in' and could ‘keep the position till the cows come home' if they had artillery support. But the artillery remained silent. The commanders mistakenly believed that the tanks and troops were advancing past the trenches, and they wouldn't risk shelling their own men.

Without an artillery barrage, German soldiers were able to creep close to the barricades, with bombs, while others shot at the Australians from nearby houses. Private Gallwey could ‘only describe it as Hell. Every minute I expected to be blown out…All around me men were falling…' The Australians released pigeons with messages demanding more ammunition but the bullets sweeping no-man's-land prevented reinforcements and supplies getting through.

By 11.30 a.m., with bombs exploding around them and their own running out, Murray gave the order to withdraw. Corporal James Wheeler, in charge of one outpost, was unsure where the order came from so he told his men to stay and ‘fight it out like Australians'. They were captured, along with other posts who stayed to fight. Murray now urged those men around him to ‘run the gauntlet back through the wire…“There's two things now,” he said, again and again, “Either capture, or go into that!” ' The wire sparked with the hum of bullets. Other officers told their troops, ‘Every man for himself.'

Few of those that tried to escape made it back. Lieutenant George Mitchell was one of the last to try, and as he left he felt the heavy gaze of the wounded. ‘You are not going to leave us?' one man pleaded. Mitchell and another 150 Western Australians walked out slowly and deliberately, supporting newly wounded men, through the bullets. Mitchell had promised to send back stretcher-bearers for those left in the wire, but it couldn't be done. Along the line, over 1100 Australians chose to surrender. One soldier whose foot had been blown off waited for the Germans with a Mills bomb in his hand.