Beaten Down By Blood Read online

  The ruined town of Péronne, 2000 yards south of the Mont, was a ‘skeleton of its former self’ and the amphitheatre in between was a lifeless wasteland. All the once-pretty villages lay in ruins in a scene of utter desolation. To the north lay the commanding Bouchavesnes ridge along which the 3rd Australian Division had advanced from 30 August to 2 September, small woods clinging to its sides like ‘green-backed beetles’.4

  Over 90 years on, it is still a poignant and moving experience to walk the ground and ‘read’ the battlefield. Using modern technology and a few good maps, it is possible to establish the position of many of the primary landmarks of 1918 in today’s landscape. I am the granddaughter of a 20th Battalion man who, incidentally, knew Bluey Mac quite well and considered him ‘a great soldier and a good sport’. For me, this battle holds a particular significance, as it did for Frank Brewer who saw in it everything that was heroic and legendary.5

  Today, standing on the Bouchavesnes ridge in front of Berlin Wood — one of Brewer’s ‘green-backed beetles’ — it is not difficult to appreciate the tactical significance of Mont St Quentin and Péronne, clearly visible from this vantage point. Equally clear is his concept of the amphitheatre, the vast tract of almost flat land surrounded by high ridges. Feuillaucourt, in front, is just a stone’s throw away, and the area where Bluey Mac and the rest of the 20th were fighting so desperately on 31 August 1918 is just below.

  A short distance away is the 20th Battalion’s jumping-off line. The fields stretching in front of the line and towards Mont St Quentin are once again under crop, the green of the wheat mixing with the yellow flowers of rape, a type of canola plant. On the other side of the Canal du Nord and across brown fields recently planted with sugar beet snakes a faint, smudged, white chalk line — Gottlieb Trench. Closer inspection reveals a slight indent in the fields made by what may have been a railway embankment. From here it is easy to walk up the gentle slope towards the Mont, following in the footsteps of those men so long ago but under very different conditions and circumstances. There are old trench lines, shell holes and the remnants of old brick walls close to the main road, now the Avenue des Australiens. In the pretty village, the church rebuilt after the war has fallen into disrepair, but a crucifix stands at the crossroads near the civilian cemetery and the sunken road on its northern outskirts.

  The detritus of the Great War is still evident — a piece of shrapnel here, a bullet there, an old trench line etched into the chalk, a smashed pillbox, a fragment of barbed wire, an unexploded shell or two. But everything is softer now, with the deep colours of the fields, the thickness of the woods and the dark green of their undergrowth broken by the yellows, whites and blues of the wildflowers which grow in abundance and camouflage the old shell holes and winding trenches. The deep scars have healed, but they have not disappeared.

  There were many Bluey Macs in the battle for Mont St Quentin and Péronne from 28 August to 5 September 1918. Some were rewarded for their actions — McDonald received the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) — but just as many who fought gallantly went unrecognised.6 This book is as much about these men and their spirit and determination as it is about the military details and the problems and issues of the battle. Without their personal accounts, letters, diaries and messages from the front line, it would not have been possible to tell this story and reveal what makes this battle so very memorable — its human face.

  INTRODUCTION

  Collective memory

  The echoes of the Great War grow fainter year by year … But the lapse of time, while subduing the details of the crowded canvas, is helping to compose a picture in which we can discern more clearly the prominent features, view them in their right perspective, and acquire a truer sense of their relative proportion and significance.

  John Monash

  The Argus

  4 August 1928

  Australian mythology of the Great War of 1914–1918 has, at its heart, the Anzac legend of the Gallipoli campaign, particularly the landing on 25 April 1915, and the image of the digger, a tall, bronzed, brave and determined soldier, a bit of a larrikin, independent, individual, unblemished. His iconic image is augmented by his brown slouch hat with the side turned up and his rising sun badges. The landing and the distinctive soldiers of the Gallipoli campaign have been the focus for the commemoration of Australians who fought and died in all wars for over 90 years, drawing thousands to Anzac Day services and parades and the Dawn Service at Gallipoli itself.

  Recently, the ‘myth’ of Anzac and the digger has been challenged by a number of historians. For Michael Tyquin it represents a construct by Australia’s Official Historian of the Great War, Charles Bean, and those working with him on the compilation of the Official History. As such, it is a distortion of history for the deliberate purpose of myth-making — the birth of a nation springing from sacrifice on the battlefield. It is a diet for public consumption to sustain Australia’s sense of ‘self’, a cynical manipulation of historical evidence to sanitise the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) and exclude the weak, the recalcitrant, the shell-shocked. There is little room for personal failure in war or for those men who returned unable to participate in a post-war Australia ‘fit only for heroes of the new Anzac myth’ or ‘the charmed fraternity of invulnerable youth’.1

  Marina Larsson points to the ‘selective nature of Australia’s national memory of war’ in marginalising the severely maimed, those who died in Australia as a result of their wounds or experiences and the families for whom the post-war period of dealing with disabled or mentally unstable loved ones was a different kind of ‘descent into hell’. She stresses that the Anzac legend essentially emphasised the ‘cult of the fallen’ and the ‘glorious dead’ of the battlefield without acknowledging the inglorious lives of many who returned.2

  For other historians, Anzac represents the unfortunate ‘militarisation’ of Australian history that has occurred in recent years at the expense of other significant developments in this nation’s past. This appears to be a deliberate construct by politicians to focus the attention of Australians away from the real issues, a glorification of all that is brutal and base.3 However, as Peter Stanley has pointed out, the Great War has continued to capture the imagination and interest of Australians in a way that other events have failed to do; Australians appear to yearn for a ‘connectedness’, a genuine need to know.4

  Bean’s idealisation of the digger is somewhat undermined by the murky origins of the term itself. Bean tried desperately to find out where and when the term ‘digger’ originated so as to underpin his portrayal of the phenomenon — only to muddy the waters irrevocably. There are assertions that the term originated in New Zealand, others that it was used on the Australian goldfields or in the bush. John Monash, commander of the Australian Corps in 1918, believed it was used at Gallipoli in 1915, while Pozières in 1916 was a popular contender, with Australian soldiers calling themselves ‘cobber’ prior to this. Bean himself dated it to the Third Ypres (Passchendaele) offensive of 1917. Certainly, by 1918, ‘digger’ was the term used to distinguish Australian troops from all others and it was as ‘diggers’ that members of the AIF passed into the mythology of a nation.5

  From the first pages of Volume I of the Official History, Bean established his concept of the ‘digger’, an inviolate image designed to endure. He linked it to the way Australia expressed its ‘uniqueness’ prior to the war, particularly to the bush and the perfect conditions it created for producing good soldiers. Thus, the digger possessed initiative, he ‘seldom hesitated on the brink of action’, he was ‘full of colour, entirely positive’ and could constantly surprise. He could lead men into the ways of good or evil, but he always led. The traditional methods of the British army would not control him; he laughed at anyone who ‘put on the dog’, but was eager to learn and ‘readily controlled by anyone really competent to teach him’. The men of the AIF were ‘hero-worshippers to the backbone’.6

  A myth is a collective belief built on the wishes of a
society without any attempt to establish its truth; it may be a real event so ‘overlaid with cultural significance’ that what actually occurred is submerged and distorted.7 From ancient times myths have emphasised the heroic and either the supernatural or the superhuman in an attempt to explain certain occurrences and perhaps imbue them with symbolic meaning. Myths are a society’s stories, passed down from generation to generation, and forming a part of the very fabric or ‘soul’ of a society, a vital part of its ‘collective memory’. As such they must be treated carefully. Australians have too few myths, too few unique and distinctive stories to pass on to their children, so the Australian resistance to debunking such an important myth as Anzac and the digger is far from surprising.

  Gallipoli is deeply embedded in the Australian psyche as the place where the young nation underwent its ‘baptism of fire’. However, the truth is that it was a sideshow and a military disaster. As Robin Prior has pointed out, the campaign was fought in vain and, even had it been successful, it was irrelevant to what was happening in the main theatre of war on the Western Front. For Prior, ‘the time for sentimentalising Gallipoli has long passed. It should be treated as the men experienced it — as a bloody episode in a bloody war.’8

  Charles Bean himself felt that the results at Gallipoli could not justify ‘so great an expenditure of lives and effort’; the goal was unattainable using the means employed. However, in Australia, for the eight months since the British war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett had relayed to the Australian public the details of the landing and the heroic exploits of men who fought like ‘a race of athletes’, the most intense feelings had centred on Anzac. These were sweet words for a people so keen for their men to perform well in the ultimate test of war.9 For Bean, the campaign had an impact which was ‘far too deep to fade’ and, even though the AIF fought other battles, ‘no campaign was so identified with them as this’.10 As early as 1916, when the first Anzac Day ceremonies were held on 25 April, Bean was committed to Anzac. The Gallipoli campaign was a perfect vehicle for him to create a certain Australian historiography — or mythology — of the Great War and give Australians their identity, story and nationhood. If Bean’s purpose was truly to strive for accuracy and truth, to establish a memorial which would be worthy of the AIF as he claimed, then it is difficult to understand why he could never see beyond Gallipoli to achieve this.

  In their preoccupation with Gallipoli, many Australians tend to overlook the fact that from 1916 to 1918 the AIF fought in the decisive theatre of war on the Western Front in France and Belgium and suffered a death toll of almost 50,000. In 1918 in particular, the AIF was involved in a string of military victories which helped to end the war later that year.

  At the time and shortly after, these feats of arms — Villers-Bretonneux, Hamel, Amiens, Mont St Quentin-Péronne, Bellicourt — were written and spoken of in glowing terms. In 1919 John Monash penned The Australian Victories in France in 1918, dedicating it to ‘the Australian soldier who by his military virtues, and by his deeds in battle, has earned for himself a place in history which none can challenge.’11 Archibald Montgomery, Chief of Staff in Sir Henry Rawlinson’s Fourth Army of which the Australian Corps was a part, wrote The Story of the Fourth Army in the Battles of the Hundred Days, also published in 1919, recognising the debt owed to the men who fought and the unforgettable example set for the British army. In his introduction to this volume, Rawlinson wrote: ‘It is not too much to say that the events which took place in France during August, September and October, 1918, constitute the greatest military triumph the world has ever seen.’12

  Yet these victories never became a part of any national mythology of the war. In Britain, David Lloyd George, the Prime Minister at the time and ardent opponent of Douglas Haig, the British Commander-in-Chief, virtually constructed his own version of the war for public consumption. In seeking to vilify Haig, he deprived the army of its just renown.13 Haig himself downplayed his own army’s victories in October and November 1918 — underestimating the collapse of German morale at this time — and is also therefore partially responsible for its lack of celebration.14 So, just as Gallipoli passed into the Australian psyche as the epitome of what it meant to be ‘Australian’, the Battle of the Somme in 1916 passed into the British mythology of the war. It seems strange that nations preferred to remember their episodes of greatest suffering rather than their periods of military glory. Monash’s own memoir, widely acclaimed in the 1920s, faded in the wake of the Great Depression, Monash’s death in 1931 and the prospect of another war which would create its own generation of heroes.

  As the men returned home, almost every one appeared to have changed in some way as a result of having ‘passed through experiences never intended for man’.15 Australian society began to come to terms with the full impact of the war and what the future would hold, and the memories of the AIF’s glory days in 1918 began to fade. In many cases people just wanted to pick up the pieces and get on with their lives. Only ‘one of the boys’ could ever truly understand the experience of war and, for many of them, mateship and shared commemoration became everything in the post-war world as they struggled to find employment and settle into civilian life. Australians grappled with the statistics: of the 331,814 men who had served overseas —including around 6,000 men who had enlisted twice — 59,330 had been killed and 152,171 wounded.16 For a young nation with fewer than 5 million people, this was an enormous sacrifice requiring an enormous readjustment. How the war was won ceased to be a priority.

  The Battle of Mont St Quentin-Péronne, fought in late August and early September 1918, was almost a wholly Australian operation. It had the potential to provide an alternative to the Gallipoli legend and indeed Monash himself believed that in its significance for Australia it rivalled the Anzac landing. However, there was a difference, because this ‘alternative Anzac’ could be based not just on the ‘heroic’, but on actual achievement and the application of the knowledge and skill gained by training and experience which saw the AIF reach the peak of its effectiveness in 1918. Chris Roberts describes Mont St Quentin-Péronne as a fluid battle, characterised by the freewheeling manoeuvre of large formations and a series of quick attacks. These features set it apart from other battles.17 Unfortunately, Charles Bean, the architect of Anzac but a man who certainly had his own agenda, did not pursue it.

  For the men who took part, winning this battle was always going to be a difficult task — a case of ‘attempting the impossible’ against a determined enemy. What gave the battle the potential to achieve legendary status was not just the ability of the diggers to hold on against all the odds, but its ‘old-fashioned’ and ‘romantic’ elements such as infantry charges against impregnable fortresses complete with old abbey walls, battlemented towers, formidable ramparts and moats and the ‘heroic’ deeds of individuals whose bravery defied description. The action saw the taking of the prize, the town of Péronne on the Somme River, through the capture of its ‘watchtower’, Mont St Quentin. No exaggeration or distortion of historical evidence is necessary as the military achievement speaks for itself. It is an extraordinary story and one deserving of a place in the history — and the mythology — of a nation.

  In 2009, two books were published on the Battle of Mont St Quentin. Peter Stanley’s Men of Mont St Quentin: between Victory and Death is an evocative and insightful study of the men of 9 Platoon, C Company, 21 Battalion, focusing on their experience on 1 September 1918 and how the First World War changed their lives. Bill Billett’s book, Mont St Quentin: A Soldier’s Battle, is a detailed military account of some aspects of the operation. These two books represent the first efforts in over 90 years to specifically treat this battle, although Charles Bean devoted a long and sometimes overwhelmingly detailed chapter to it in the Official History. Beaten Down by Blood seeks to describe the battle across a broad spectrum, remaining true to the military details but highlighting the individuals who fought and reflecting their ‘spirit’ and the spirit of the tradition of Anzac.<
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  Not every record of this extremely complex operation, whether official or personal, tells exactly the same story or approaches it from the same perspective. In this battle of ‘rapidly varying phases’, it is inevitable that there will be contradictions in the sources, even down to what the weather was like on a certain day.18 As Monash himself stated, narratives can be impaired by personal bias, by perceptions coloured by the stress and excitement of the moment, and by the extent to which the teller appreciates the broader strategic picture.19 What is perhaps surprising is the number of times the sources agree and personal accounts in particular corroborate one another, making it possible to tell this story with a high degree of accuracy.

  There is no need to idealise the digger or sanitise his achievements, because in this action the men and their achievements speak for themselves and come close to representing the image created by Bean rather than debunking the ‘myth’ of the digger. That is not to say that they were all ‘heroic’ or that the battle unfolded strictly as the commanders would have wished, but rather that a consideration of all the elements serves to enhance the achievement rather than diminish it. This is an historical account which will, I hope, establish this significant victory in the Australian collective memory of the Great War.

  CHAPTER 1:

  THE OFFENSIVE SPIRIT

  Turning the tide