Zero Hour (20 page)

BREAKING THE BEAUREVOIR

Nearby, under a fingernail moon, the New Zealanders had followed up the British success at Trescault Ridge and cleared the ruins of the village of La Vacquerie. They'd bombed up the intricate web of the Hindenburg trenches, until, in the cool breeze of dawn, they looked down over a canal to the unscathed Beaurevoir Line behind it. Beyond that, smoke from burning dumps billowed above the lofty towers and spires of Cambrai. New Zealand machine-gunners fired down at horses and Germans trying to haul away their artillery.

With the Hindenburg Line broken, the Germans were in retreat. General Ludendorff told the Kaiser that the war was lost and to seek an armistice with the Allies before his army was destroyed.

On 3 October, British and Australian troops broke through the Beaurevoir Line. Sergeant James Seivewright, a labourer from Queensland, crawled under a band of uncut wire and single-handedly captured a post of 52 men. The Germans were in poor spirits; if they'd resisted, the Australians would have been shot down in front of the wire by the 50 machine guns facing the approach.

With this section of the Beaurevoir Line secure, Field Marshal Haig ordered that villages beyond it be captured so he could finally send his cavalry through. On 5 October, the 6th Brigade of the 2nd Australian Division set out to capture Montbrehain. The 21st and 24th Battalions and 2nd Pioneer Battalion, who were not trained to fight as infantry, followed the churning dust and smoke of the creeping barrage, but the Germans stayed at their guns. Under cover from their Lewis gunners, the men charged in rushes until the Germans were killed or captured. One prisoner told his captors that they were ‘sick of the war and had they known Australians were attacking they would not have fought at all'.

At other strong points in the village, the Germans kept fighting. When a machine-gun post pinned a group of Australians down, Sergeant Major George Cumming tried to lead a charge to overcome it, but was killed. Others who showed themselves were also picked off. But when a sergeant got to within 18 metres of the strong point and opened fire with his Lewis gun, Lieutenant George Ingram rushed the post, killing or capturing 40 Germans. With more machine guns preventing Ingram from moving on, he and his men caught the attention of a nearby tank. After following it, Ingram shot several more soldiers and captured over 60 prisoners and 40 guns. For his actions, he was later awarded the Victoria Cross, the last of 54 Australians to be awarded the decoration on the Western Front. As the Australians continued to capture the village, house by house, local villagers came out of their cellars to greet them.

The capture of Montbrehain was a brilliant success, though in the short, brutal fight 430 men had been killed or wounded. As the divisions were withdrawn for a much-needed rest, none of the Australians realised this would be their last battle on the Western Front.

CRUMBLING

The day before, the German chancellor had sent a diplomatic note to the United States' president seeking an armistice, but meanwhile Ludendorff's opinion of the state of his army had changed—the British in Flanders and the French and Americans in the Verdun sector had been stopped and with only the British 4th Army making any progress, he became convinced that the German Army could fight on new defensive lines to get a better peace deal. So, as the bulk of his forces withdrew back to new lines, skeleton forces—like those facing the New Zealanders behind 45 metres of wire at the Beaurevoir Line—prepared to stall the British pursuit.

Field Marshal Foch, wanting to prevent the Germans prolonging the war, ordered a succession of attacks along the Western Front. At dawn on 8 October, the 4th Army, and the New Zealanders with the 3rd Army, attacked and broke the Beaurevoir Line in their sector, then chased the crumbling German Army for three days, giving them no time to establish a new line of defence.

When not fighting, the New Zealanders ate boiled swedes from the villagers' gardens to supplement their rations. In the frosty mornings, they stamped their feet to warm themselves, then followed creeping barrages across largely abandoned land. In some places, the Germans stood their ground and fought. Private J. Ward's rifle was shot away, so he picked up a shovel and rejoined the advance, killing three with it. The New Zealanders took pot shots at the fleeing troops, and in front of Fontaine village they watched a single German machine-gunner in the church spire shoot down a British cavalry charge.

On 17 October, as the British in Flanders forced the Germans back from the Belgian coast and the French and Americans attacked again in the Verdun sector, the New Zealanders and British fought across the heavily defended River Selle. The New Zealanders pursued the Germans until, on 31 October, the ramparts of the ancient and famous Le Quesnoy fortress lay in front of them, hidden by trees. In two weeks, the New Zealanders, with British divisions on either side of them, had advanced 18 kilometres.

THE FORTRESS OF LE QUESNOY

Over the next four days, the New Zealanders moved closer to the town, taking prisoners and burying the dead. The British carted in wagonloads of corpses, each one sewn in a blanket, then laid them in two rows, side by side, in a mass grave. They covered them with a layer of earth, then laid another row on top. The German dead were dragged by their heels and thrown into the nearest trench, then covered with dirt.

Everything was collapsing around the Germans. Bulgaria and Turkey had conceded defeat on 20 October. When Austria–Hungary sought peace on 28 October, German civilians called for peace at any price, and sailors mutinied when ordered to set out to fight the British again.

At dawn on 4 November, in the final Allied offensive, the New Zealanders set out to capture the 11th-century fortress town of Le Quesnoy. The Germans had machine guns on top of the nine-metre-high inner rampart, as well as among the trees on man-made ‘islands' that divided the outer moat. The town was filled with civilians and historic buildings, so it was decided that the artillery would carefully explode oil drums and smoke shells on the ramparts to give the infantry cover. The New Zealanders moved up on either side of the town, overrunning machine-gunners. While several battalions tried to break through the fortress, others advanced kilometres past it, effectively cutting off the Germans inside. As they advanced, villagers gave them gifts of coffee and fruit and large numbers of Germans surrendered.

The attempt to capture the fortress itself had been frustrated. German machine-gunners had pinned down the New Zealanders. Second Lieutenant Francis Evans and four others managed to scale an ‘island' rampart, then raced through the trees towards the dry inner moat and inner rampart wall, until they were spotted. Taking cover in a shallow hole, they waited for the gunfire to cease. When it did, Evans scrambled out, but the machine-gunner was waiting, and after a short burst of bullets Evans rolled back into the hole, shot in the head. Another of the soldiers tried to fire his Lewis gun, but was also killed, leaving the remaining three to wait in the hole with their dead comrades for the next six hours.

With the town surrounded, the New Zealand commander sent German prisoners across to explain the hopelessness of the situation. Only one group returned, saying the troops were willing to surrender but the officers wouldn't let them. In the early afternoon, an aeroplane dropped a message requesting the Germans surrender, but their machine-gunners kept firing. While the New Zealand Lewis gunners and mortar teams forced the Germans to take cover, Second Lieutenants Leslie Averill and Harold Kerr got to the inner rampart, leaned a scaling ladder against it and scrambled up. At the top, Averill fired at two Germans running away in panic, then he and Kerr strode down the grass slope into the town, shooting at a crowd of soldiers who rushed for cover. Over 700 Germans surrendered peacefully. When the New Zealanders marched through the open gates, the locals embraced them and gave them flowers and cakes. Fifty New Zealanders had been killed and another 238 had been wounded.

The following night, the second of the offensive, another 20 New Zealanders were killed as they fought from tree to tree through a dense forest with heavy rain falling. It was the New Zealanders' last battle. The Germans were now broken and in forced retreat, leaving behind vast quantities of material and abandoned trains. British aeroplanes flew over an empty land; there was no one left to shoot at.

In Germany, revolution had broken out. Workers took to the streets and demanded that the Kaiser step down, and when German soldiers refused to shoot the workers, the Kaiser was replaced. The new leader immediately accepted the harsh armistice terms—the terms that General Ludendorff had earlier hoped would inspire the German people to fight on.

A QUIET END

The armistice to end the Great War was signed in a railway carriage on 11 November, coming into effect at 11 a.m. The 1st and 4th Australian Divisions returned to the Western Front after their long rest to find it eerily quiet; not one gun was firing. The war to end all wars was over. Nearly 10 million people had been killed.

It was a foggy, sunless day. On hearing the news, the soldiers at the front didn't cheer. For Gunner Bert Stokes, ‘it was just a relief, we didn't celebrate at all.' According to New Zealander Private James Weir, ‘everyone was so dog tired. We had gone beyond hope. It wouldn't sink in. We couldn't care less.' ‘Fancy no more shells,' wrote Private James McKenzie, ‘no more bullets, no more sleeping in dirty wet trenches etc. I was on the verge of tears thinking of putting in another winter on the line…' For Lieutenant George Mitchell ‘it all seemed unreal…Our known world had slipped from us.' In military camps and towns away from the front the mood was more celebratory. Sergeant Eric Evans wrote in his diary:

The fighting is finished. Hurrah! My letters which I wrote to be posted after my death will now be of no use. Thank God. The war has finished and we have won. Hurrah!

KILLED IN ACTION
____________________

SERGEANT JOSEPH HOLT
Railway employee. 18 September 1918

SERGEANT MAJOR GEORGE CUMMING
Cellarman. 5 October 1918

PRIVATE CHARLIE LINFORD
Blacksmith. 5 October 1918

SECOND LIEUTENANT FRANCIS EVANS
Clerk. 4 November 1918

CHAPTER TWELVE
THE WAR TO END ALL WARS

FERN SEED
(extract)

From Hébuterne to Havrincourt
The map is wet with tears —
And women proudly, blindly turn
To face the barren years.

BY D. H. L., 8 NOVEMBER 1918

WHEN THE NEWS reached New Zealand and Australia, church, factory and ship bells tolled and people poured into the streets to celebrate. The troops were eager to return home but they had a long wait. On 28 November, the New Zealanders marched through French and Belgian villages, which were draped in welcome banners and strewn with flowers, en route to Germany and occupation. As they crossed the River Rhine, the German crowds were silent and grim. It didn't take long for the men to befriend the locals, and the more they came to know them, the more they realised the waste of war. Diggers sat with German veterans in cafes and spoke of the mud of Passchendaele.

Slowly, the soldiers were shipped back to New Zealand. Those who'd served the longest and married men were sent first. By 25 March 1919, the last of the New Zealand troops were demobilised.

The Australians, shipped to England, underwent civilian training as they waited to be sent back on a ‘first to come, first to go' basis. With transports hard to find, the slowness frustrated them—they caused so much disturbance in London that the British prime minister wanted them sent home as quickly as possible, but, even so, the last Australian troops didn't return until September 1919.

HOMEWARD BOUND

The Australians and New Zealanders trickled back to countries that were battling the ravages of Spanish flu—a deadly virus that in three days killed soldiers who'd survived the whole war. Several ships arriving home were not allowed to dock immediately for fear of spreading the illness; the men were kept in quarantine, much to their anger. Some homecomings were major affairs, others less so; people were preoccupied with the flu.

For many, returning home was harder than expected. Gunner Bert Stokes felt he ‘was just a soldier who'd come back from war'. Everything he'd done, everything he'd known and been part of were finished, and he would have to start again. The governments tried to help: injured soldiers were given war pensions, while other veterans were given money to set up businesses or less desirable land to farm. In the North Island of New Zealand, some of the land was so isolated and rugged that the soldier-farmers walked off it. The bridge that led to this land is now called ‘the Bridge to Nowhere'. The Australian system worked much better than the New Zealand system, which ended in 1922.

Over 400,000 Australians and 103,000 New Zealanders went to war; 58,961 Australians and 18,500 New Zealanders were killed. Over 64 per cent of all Australians involved and 58.6 per cent of New Zealanders were either wounded or killed. This was 6.8 per cent of Australia's population and 8.9 per cent of New Zealand's. It was a devastating blow to families and to the small populations of both countries. Memorials and monuments were erected in towns and cities. Many family members never recovered from the grief of losing their son, brother, father or husband, and others had to live with the changed or broken men who returned.

With little understanding of what the Diggers had gone through—few talked about their experiences—many civilians expected the returned soldiers to fit back in perfectly, hold down jobs and lead steady lives. Over 80,000 Australians who returned had to cope with ongoing sicknesses, while 1020 New Zealanders had lost limbs. One-armed men were taught shorthand; legless men learned to ‘repair boots, class wool, and other tasks'. Those who'd experienced gas poisoning continued to suffer, and many were forced to give up office jobs to work in the outdoors. Even so, many died from the effects 10 or 20 years later.