Zero Hour (13 page)

When 24-year-old New South Wales builder Corporal George Howell saw the retreating Australians, he rushed across the road, then ran along the parapet, throwing bombs down onto the Germans. After jumping into the trench, he attacked with his bayonet. The Germans scrambled back, chased by those Australians who'd initially fled. They leaped over the badly wounded Howell, who'd single-handedly stopped the German advance, and didn't halt until they'd recaptured the section of trench just lost. For his actions, Howell was awarded a Victoria Cross, the highest military award.

The battle for Bullecourt eventually required the 5th Australian Division as well—the third Australian division used—and continued until 17 May, when the Germans decided it was no longer worth holding Bullecourt and retreated. Field Marshal Haig's plan to distract the Germans while the French recovered had gained little except the killing or wounding of 7000 Australians and thousands more British and Canadians. Nine days later the last Australians withdrew from the Hindenburg Line, exhausted and in desperate need of rest and reinforcement for Haig's fast-approaching Belgian offensive.

KILLED IN ACTION
____________________

PRIVATE JAMES NITCHIE
Labourer. 19 July 1916

PRIVATE LESLIE NITCHIE
Barman. 4 August 1916

LIEUTENANT JOHN JENNINGS
Commercial traveller. 3 May 1917

PRIVATE HAROLD RINGLAND
Clerk. 4 May 1917

PRIVATE JAMES PAUL
Farm hand. 4 May 1917

CORPORAL GRANVILL E JOHNSON
Shop assistant. 11 September 1918

LIEUTENANT WILLIAM BRAITHWAITE
Tanner. 3 October 1918

CHAPTER EIGHT
MESSINES, 1917

A trench,
A stench,
Some scraps of French
Some horrible German vapours.
A shell,
A yell,
No more to tell,
Bar a paragraph in the papers.

ANONYMOUS

THE YPRES SALIENT in Flanders, Belgium, was already well known to the Australians and New Zealanders. Since the start of the war, the British had fought desperately to hold Ypres—the battered town was now a symbol of British resistance.

Seven to eight kilometres in front of Ypres, a low, sickle-shaped chain of hills, rising sharply at Messines, curved for 32 kilometres around Ypres before petering out into long spurs. The Germans had held the ridges and spurs since 1915, after using gas against the British. On these heights were the towns of Broodseinde and Passchendaele, the gaunt, shattered stumps of Polygon Wood, and Menin Road—names which now spoke of famous battles and bloodshed. From the heights, the Germans observed Ypres and the low, destroyed farmland in front of the town, and shelled anything that moved or could be used for observation. It was one of the deadliest and most heavily shelled areas on the Western Front. In 25 square kilometres, hundreds of thousands of men had already been killed.

With the French Army in disarray and unable to take part in joint offensives, Field Marshal Haig returned to his plan to attack in Flanders. He wanted to push the Germans off the heights surrounding Ypres, believing they would sacrifice division after division to hold them. The British War Council was reluctant after the heavy casualties of the Somme but agreed to his plan.

Before the Germans could be forced from the Ypres heights, the lower ridgeline ending at the mediaeval town of Messines had to be captured. General Sir Herbert Plumer, whose 2nd Army had been located in the area for two years, was a methodical and careful planner. He favoured a new step-by-step method of fighting, in which the troops would not advance beyond the range of their artillery. Over the previous two years, he had also overseen the digging of 21 tunnels under the German lines, which, packed with explosives, would be detonated just before zero hour on the day of the planned offensive, 7 June.

After the explosions, three British corps were to advance to capture the ridge. The II Anzac Corps, which had been reorganised to include the New Zealand Division, the 25th British Division and the 3rd Australian Division, would be on the far-right flank below Messines. All three divisions would advance beyond Messines village, which the New Zealanders were to capture, and dig in just beyond the crest of the ridge. Then the 4th Australian Division, on loan to the corps, was to capture the second German defences—the Oosttaverne Line—1600 metres on, once the artillery had softened them. Many of the 4th Division felt they hadn't had long enough to rest after Bullecourt. It was to be the 3rd Division's first battle. Commanded by General John Monash, the men had arrived from England in November 1916 and were nicknamed ‘Dinks', after the saying ‘fair dinkum'. They hadn't signed up during the high spirits at the outbreak of the war but afterwards, knowing it was going to be a long and hard campaign.

From the end of April, the Australians and New Zealanders camped in Ploegsteert Wood. In front of them, perched at the top of a steep hill, was Messines. As the offensive drew closer, the men inspected a miniature model of what they were expected to capture, complete with farms, streams and villages. Below them, battles raged between Australian and German miners.

The Australian miners were tasked with defending two of the 21 tunnels that had been excavated through the deep blue clay. In the stale air, they dug in search of German miners who, themselves, were digging to find the tunnels. If distant thudding was heard, the Australians tunnelled cautiously towards it, checking to see if the mice or canaries they used to detect dangerous gases were still alive. When they got close, a listener waited alone. If the Germans were digging towards the main tunnels, the Australians detonated explosives against the wall, caving in the shafts.

For seven months the Australians dug and fought in the mines, trapping and killing Germans, as well as being buried and killed by them. One detonation trapped Sapper Edward Earl, who continued listening to German movement, wrote to his mother, wrote his will, then slept on and off for two days until rescued. He later died because of his time underground, but he and the other miners had kept the tunnels safe for the upcoming battle.

THE BATTLE OF MESSINES

By June, Messines was in ruins, its green slope churned and upturned. The Allied artillery had shelled all approaches to the village, and the Germans, cut off, hunkered in dugouts—some three to four storeys deep with stairs on either side leading up to the trenches. They were exhausted from the constant explosions and the effort of breathing through gasmasks. Unexpectedly, the safety of their shelters sapped the German troops of courage: the thumping shells and the shaking land made it increasingly difficult for the men to leave the dugouts.

On the dark night of 6 June, the 3rd Division, New Zealand and British troops marched towards the jumping-off point. They passed the artillery lined up wheel to wheel. As each gun fired, the flash from its muzzle threw an eerie light over the trees and gunners. Beforehand, some of the men had listened to their padre praying, then had sung hymns. Now, they heard the soft patter of the German Phosgene gas shells.

With horses and mules gasping in the poisonous air, each man put on his gasmask, squeezed the clips onto his nose to block his nostrils, then breathed out hard through a rubber tube and in through chemical-soaked fabric which neutralised the gas. All too quickly the glass eye-pieces fogged up and they struggled to breathe or see clearly as they walked on. Those who hadn't got their masks on in time gasped for breath, retched, vomited and collapsed, frothing from the mouth. The others eventually stumbled out of the gas clouds, pulled off their masks to suck in fresh air, then lay down at the jumping-off point.

The moon shone brightly. A British aeroplane flew over to drown out the noise of advancing tanks. Ten minutes before zero hour, the officers ordered their men to silently fix bayonets. At 3.05 a.m., five minutes before zero hour, German star flares shot up and several New Zealand machine guns opened fire. The Australians wondered if the attack had been detected before it had begun, but just before zero hour, all was silent again. Then 19 of the 21 mines exploded under the German lines.

Some of the Australians and New Zealanders were knocked over by the force of the blast. Black earth and flames, German troops and concrete blockhouses were heaved into the air. All along the line, British, Australian and New Zealand troops charged up the dust-shrouded slope. The apprehension and fear the men felt leading up to zero hour were now gone. For Lance Corporal Robert Bett
,
it was nothing to stop and bandage a mate's bad wound or to notice ‘men killed alongside you, even when you get their blood spilt on you'. One New Zealander, Private Len Coley, stopped to cut off the mangled leg of a comrade and tried to carry him back but, even with a tourniquet, the man soon died from loss of blood. German SOS rockets burst into two green stars but the answering shells fell behind the rapidly advancing troops.

The first German trench was crowded with wire, broken timber, concrete and dirt, and, as the barrage left it, the Australians and New Zealanders swept in. German dead lay everywhere and the survivors seemed too stunned to fight. They emerged with their hands raised, shouting ‘
Kamerad
'— comrade. Within 16 minutes, the first trench had been taken, and as demoralised prisoners were sent back to prison cages, fresh troops followed the creeping barrage up the slope.

At the edge of the village, German machine-gunners kept firing in spite of the British artillery barrage. Lance Corporal Samuel Frickleton led a group of men through the exploding shells and bombed then bayoneted the crew of the nearest gun. He then attacked a second gun, killing its three gunners and nine others who refused to leave their dugout. He was one of 10 New Zealanders to be awarded the Victoria Cross at the Western Front.

With the nearest machine guns out of action, the New Zealanders waited below the heavily fortified ruins of Messines. Each man had a map of the village that indicated the positions of fortified cellars and five concrete shelters, which gave the Germans a perfect line of fire down the main streets. As the barrage crept through the village, the New Zealanders moved into the dust-swirling streets, fighting from cellar to cellar and from strong point to strong point. Many German gunners kept firing right to the last second, then surrendered. When they emerged with their hands up, revenge crossed the minds of many troops, especially after seeing their friends die around them. ‘It's our turn,' Bett later wrote, ‘you have to decide, shall I kill.' Some New Zealanders shot or bayoneted the surrendering Germans, but Bett saw them as ‘poor, frightened devils', so demoralised they didn't even need an armed escort to take them to the wire cages.

With the sun rising, the Australians and British on either side of Messines advanced, joined by two fresh New Zealand battalions that had passed around the town. Following dust clouds raised by the creeping barrage, and under sniper fire, they pressed on, clearing heavily defended shell holes and rushing farm ruins. The Australians were shot down by gunners who'd left their dugouts and lined the hedges of a broken farm. Private Matthew Gray, a miner from New South Wales, crept up to the hedge and spotted two Germans at the gun—the rest of their crew lay dead around them. When Gray shot one of them, the other surrendered. The farm was finally taken after another crew was killed by 16-year-old Private Henry ‘Glen' Sternbeck, who'd enlisted under another name when he was 15. By 5.20 a.m., pigeons returned to headquarters with news that the Australian, New Zealand and British troops were digging in.

THE PILLBOXES OF OOSTTAVERNE

Concealed by a cloud of dust spewed up by the barrage, the British, Australians and New Zealanders dug new trenches as British pilots shot down enemy aeroplanes attempting to locate the new lines. The 4th Australian Division moved up the Messines slope, with horse-drawn artillery racing ahead to new positions for the next advance. In the mid-afternoon, they set out to capture the Oosttaverne Line.

Twelve hours had passed since the start of the battle, and the recovering Germans waited in their blockhouses—nicknamed pillboxes. Built above ground out of solid concrete, each pillbox was fortified and positioned to give covering fire to the troops—only a direct hit by the heaviest of artillery shells could damage them. As soon as the barrage had passed, the German gunners fired through loopholes in the concrete, while others poured out to shoot from the cover of dense hedges and trenches.

It was the first time the Australians had encountered pillboxes but they adapted quickly, creeping forward to get behind them, while Lewis gunners fired at the loopholes, their bullets splintering concrete into the Germans' faces. It was slow and fierce and the Germans showed no sign of surrendering. Captain Robert Grieve and his men hid in a shell hole under machine-gun fire from a pillbox. Beside Grieve, two soldiers tried to repair their machine gun with wire from the entanglements, but when the gun was hit again, Grieve grabbed a bag of bombs and hurled them, one after the other, scrambling forward under the cover of the explosions until he was past the firing line of the machine gun. Crawling under the loophole, he threw in several bombs, killing the gun crew. At another pillbox, soldiers had got behind it and fired into the back entrance until the screams and whimpers ceased.