Zero Hour (19 page)

New Zealand soldiers beneath a sign saying ‘The Cannibals
Paradise Supply Den Beware'.
Alexander Turnbull Library G- 13460-1/2

On 4 July, the Australians advanced to capture Le Hamel, which would straighten their line. Monash had planned it down to the last minute. Tanks and several American companies would assist the depleted 2nd, 3rd and 4th Divisions—some companies were down to 80 men after the Spring Offensive, an outbreak of a mild version of the Spanish flu and lack of reinforcements. For days, the enemy front-line had been bombed with smoke and gas shells so that whenever the smoke shells burst, the Germans would suspect gas and put on their masks, which made it difficult to breathe or see, let alone fight.

At zero hour, as aeroplanes bombed Le Hamel, over 5500 troops strolled forward through the high crops alongside 60 tanks. Overhead, ammunition was parachuted to chosen points, or where machine-gun crews had laid V-shaped white cloth in cleared wheat. The artillery fired smoke and high explosives, but this time, no gas.

Around Le Hamel, the Germans were disorientated. Many still wore their gasmasks, believing, as Monash had hoped, that there was gas mingled with the smoke. Their machine-gunners, firing too high, refused to surrender until outflanked or crushed by tanks. Stretcher-bearers and orderlies manning one company headquarters fought from a dugout until phosphorus bombs set it on fire, killing everyone inside. Others quickly surrendered. The German infantry, the Australians were beginning to note, were quicker to surrender or flee than their machine-gunners, who would often fire until killed. Hundreds of soldiers were captured in the cellars of Le Hamel, still wearing gasmasks and unaware that a battle had been raging outside.

Ninety-three minutes after zero hour, the battle was over. Monash's tactics had worked. Over 1600 Germans had surrendered, and their troops were demoralised. The Spring Offensive and the Spanish flu had also decimated their companies—some were down to 50 men—and many of the reinforcements were teenagers, older men from the Eastern Front, or strikers and prisoners, some of whom took off in the first few days. They had built few dugouts and, for the first time, were using their own trenches for toilets. Harvest failures and the blockade of German ports, which prevented food supplies getting in, meant the troops were surviving on turnips and flesh stripped from dead horses. Despite over 1000 Australians and 176 Americans having been killed or wounded, the Australians were convinced they could have gone further and captured the German artillery.

On 15 July, another German attempt to threaten Paris failed after Pershing allowed two American divisions to fight alongside the French. After being pushed back nine kilometres, with 20,000 taken prisoner, the German leaders realised that the attempt to reach a favourable peace settlement through military victory had failed. The best they could hope for now was a stalemate at the negotiating table, but the British and French had little interest in a compromised peace. Knowing the Germans wouldn't willingly choose to surrender unconditionally, the Allies planned their next major offensive.

THE HUNDRED DAYS OFFENSIVE

The first of many joint operations of the Hundred Days Offensive began at the Somme on 8 August, followed by a three-day attack on 21 August. Secrecy was now considered essential for victory. The sky was filled with hundreds of British aeroplanes fighting to keep German observation aeroplanes away. Canadian troops were secretly moved down from Arras. Soldiers' pay books were stamped with the words ‘keep your mouths shut', and no movement was allowed during the day.

In battles for Amiens and Albert, the Diggers advanced behind barrages of ‘daisy cutter' shells that exploded on impact. According to Australian Lieutenant Harold Binder, it was like ‘being behind a curtain of rushing noise'. New Zealander Second Lieutenant Robert Gilkison found the creeping barrage ‘a wonderful sound' and he ‘almost pitied the Germans on the receiving end'.

In the mist and smoke, soldiers slipped through the German lines. One second lieutenant, William Sievers, called in artillery fire to shatter a threatening counterattack. Many Germans fled or surrendered, while machine-gunners were either outflanked or crushed by tanks. Those retreating told the reserves marching forward that ‘everything is lost.'

For the Germans, 8 August was a black day—over 13,000 prisoners were captured, close to 8000 by the Australians. The war resources of the Allies now far outnumbered those of the Germans—on that day, 1900 aeroplanes had flown against 365, and 540 tanks had advanced against none.

The battles continued relentlessly. After shooting and bombing through Loupart Wood and Grevillers village, the New Zealanders failed to capture Bapaume, but, on 29 August, after German flares and machine-gun fire became less frequent, New Zealand patrols entered Bapaume to find it abandoned. The Germans were gone; the Canadians had broken their line at Arras, forcing them into a retreat to the Hindenburg Line.

The New Zealanders pursued them, calling in artillery fire and tanks to destroy machine-gun nests that had been set up to slow pursuers. The Germans left booby traps behind: leaking gas shells were hidden in dugouts; bombs were planted under corpses or in doorways. One trap was placed under a pile of firewood in an abandoned trench. When a young New Zealand soldier lit it for warmth, the explosion blew both his legs off. Rifleman Arthur Ross was

sure he did not know his legs were gone. Someone gave him a cigarette and lit it for him…Poor devil, he just bled to death, in three minutes he was dead.

The Australian pursuit of the Germans ended at the dense barbed-wire entanglements of Mont St. Quentin and the moated and walled town of Péronne, 18 kilometres in front of the Hindenburg Line. Although the Australians were exhausted, Monash wanted the area captured before the Germans became too firmly entrenched.

At 5 a.m. on 31 August, the depleted companies charged Mont St. Quentin, yelling like a ‘lot of bushrangers' to make up for their lack of men. The Germans said that ‘it all happened like lightning', and surrendered in large numbers. Despite this, a determined counterattack saw the Mont recaptured.

That afternoon, down at the Somme River, fresh Australian troops passed cinematographers filming them. Ambulance wagons drove back with the wounded, and men stepped over the dead, while others huddled below banks, singing and yelling ‘overs' at the German gunners whenever their shells passed over and burst harmlessly in the river.

In drizzling rain on 1 September, the Australians quickly recaptured Mont St. Quentin, but the moated fortress of Péronne took longer. Elite German Guard troops were both inside and outside the walls, and the town was surrounded by bands of wire. Australian Lewis gunners forced those outside to take cover as men cut the wire or tore out the pickets with their hands. Some Germans kept firing—one gun had been firing so rapidly that the water to keep it cool was boiling—but the Australians got through, then chased the fleeing Germans so quickly that the troops inside Péronne couldn't open fire for fear of hitting their own men. With most of the defenders caught sheltering in cellars, the town was soon in Australian hands—one platoon drank hot coffee in a cellar with their prisoners.

TO THE HINDENBURG LINE

The Australians, New Zealanders and British continued to pursue the Germans as they withdrew to the Hindenburg Line. The horizon was streaked with pillars of smoke from burning villages; bridges were destroyed and crossroads mined. The men passed forgotten Roman forts, stormed villages and outflanked German machine-gun posts, some set up in disabled German tanks to slow the chase.

The advance moved at a speed unthinkable six months earlier. From gains of 1300 metres, the Allies now advanced in kilometres. By the end of August, they had advanced 40 kilometres on a 113-kilometre front, retaking the lost Somme ground. But as the Australians reached the first of the four trenches of the Hindenburg Line on 10 September, the New Zealanders passing Havrincourt Woods were halted at Trescault Ridge—a strategic height five kilometres in front of the Hindenburg Line—by an elite Jaeger Division with orders to hold the ground at all costs. Over two days, bomb battles raged up trenches as German gas and shells ‘burnt the grass and earth black'. Then, on 12 September, during the first phase of the Battle of Havrincourt-Epehy, the Diggers won parts of Trescault Ridge before losing it again when the Jaegers counterattacked with flamethrowers.

Six days later, the Australians, 20 kilometres south of the New Zealanders, took part in the final phase of the Havrin-court-Epehy battle. The Germans occupied four trenches. The first two were old British trenches, the next was the Hindenburg Outpost Line, then behind a deep canal was the Hindenburg Line itself. The Allies knew that even if they captured the first three, the canal would be a major obstacle. However, for five kilometres it ran underground through the Bellicourt Tunnel, and even though the Germans had heavily wired the land above it, this was the logical place to try to break through. Across a 27-kilometre front, the British planned to advance to the Outpost Line. In the middle, four brigades from the 1st and 4th Australian Divisions would form the spearhead, despite their already depleted numbers being further reduced—two months' leave back home had been granted to soldiers who'd enlisted in 1914.

On 18 September, the Australians, forbidden to smoke or make any noise, grew tense as ‘one minute' was whispered down the line. In a thick mist, the first and second trenches and the Hindenburg Outpost Line were quickly overrun, despite being strongly held. The Germans weren't putting up a fight; large numbers surrendered, some even running towards the Australians, asking ‘Which way?', though Sergeant Joseph Holt, a well-known Queensland footballer, was rounding up a bunch of prisoners when one of them pulled out a revolver and killed him. Impressed with the Australians' speed and skill, a captured German officer remarked, ‘All I can say is you are some bloody soldiers!' But veteran Australian soldiers knew that if the Germans had put up a fight, they wouldn't have stood a chance.

The Australians had captured most of the Outpost Line in front of them, but the British hadn't seized the vital section in front of the Bellicourt Tunnel. When the exhausted Australians of two battalions—who were expecting to be relieved from the front-line—were ordered to assist the British in capturing this section, some of the men refused, saying they were being ‘put in to do other people's work' and weren't ‘getting a fair deal'. In all, 119 men walked away from the front, and despite another commander offering to help, the attack still failed. The troops who'd refused to fight were found guilty of desertion, but not mutiny—an offence more likely to be punishable by death.

TO THE LAST LINE

With German morale obviously low—110,000 soldiers had deserted in August alone—Field Marshal Foch, the Allies' supreme commander, ordered the troops to strike at different times and different locations along the Hindenburg Line after brief but brutal artillery barrages. The Germans were driven back six kilometres at Reims. Trescault Ridge was captured. In Flanders, a combined force of Belgian, French and British troops drove the Germans back past Passchen-daele Ridge, gaining in one attack what had taken months in 1917. But the Americans failed to capture the Outpost Line in front of Bellicourt Tunnel. On the morning of 29 September, the Allies attacked again at Bellicourt.

The main planning had fallen to Major General Monash, and he had decided to use two American divisions to capture the Outpost Line, cross over it and seize the Hindenburg Line. The 3rd and 5th Australian Divisions would then pass on and capture the last German defence line—the Beaurevoir Line—three kilometres on. General Rawlinson, commander of the 4th Army which included the Australian Corps, was concerned about the narrow front. He included the 46th British Division in the attack—they were to use flotation devices to cross the canal before attacking.

At zero hour, according to Sergeant Walter Downing, the ground quivered with the ‘recoil of thousands of guns. The din was ear-splitting. One could not hear one's own voice.' The battlefield was covered in smoke. Three hours later, the 3rd and 5th Divisions marched out through heavily gassed areas to secure the last line, the sun glinting off the glass in their goggles. They passed dead and wounded Americans in the trampled wheat. Ahead of them, British tanks burned. The Americans on the left had again failed to overcome the Outpost Line, forcing the Australians to fight for an area they were meant to be just passing through. American bodies lay everywhere and, as German gunners swept the land in front of the Outpost Line, the left flank of the Australian advance was halted.

On the right, the Americans had overrun the Hinden-burg Line and here the Australians kept going, passing bodies lying thick in front of machine-gun posts. They kept their distance from the tanks, which drew intense artillery fire, and fought on until they looked out over a seemingly empty land. Joined by soldiers of the 46th British Division, who'd swum across the canal, they pushed on together until, exhausted and isolated, they dug in short of the Beaurevoir Line.