Charles E W Bean, Diaries, AWM38 3DRL 606/274A/1 - 1918 - 1941 - Part 11

Conflict:
First World War, 1914–18
Subject:
  • Documents and letters
Status:
Open to contributions
Accession number:
RCDIG1066713
Difficulty:
1

Page 1 / 10

Sketch to illustrate the route taken by a half-section of the 6th Machine Gun Company at MONTBREHAIN on 5/I0/I8 Route shown by dotted lines in red. German machine-guns shown in red. (See attached account) 2 1510000 Adomftrehadt 954 o l een o 33 125 r. RAMCOURT redles Cuss -B i B0. 37 funene 6 e 13 - 145 55 4 18- 13 4 7 8- 4
TELEPHONE Nos. TELEGRAPHIC ADDRESS estor sakile nesun F 257 "AUSWARMUSE" e2s98. CONMUNICATIONS TO sE AOOAESSEO TO "Tw Dezcos. AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL. They gave their Mves. For that publie gift they ELV PLEAA OUOs PosT OfFc sox s!4p received a praise which never ages and a tomb most glorious —not so much the tomb in wa. 12/3/25 whch they He, but that in which their fame EXHIBITION BUILDINGS, MELBOURNE. survives, to beremembered foreverwhenoccasion comes for word or deed .. .. 27th March, 1929. Dear Mr. Bazley, I have just been looking through a translation by I.F.D. Morrow of Rudolf Binding A Fatalist at War". The book is a diary of a German officer who apparently served near Arras, Passchendaele, and on the Somme in 1918. I have decided there fore that we ought to include it in the library. It will in due course appear in our accession list and, if you want it, you will doubtless let me know. Incidentally I noticed a reference on page 164 to the association of Joan of Arc with Beaurevoir which may be of interest to Mr. Bean when he comes to deal with the fighting in which the Australians participated in the neighborhood of this town. Yours sincerely, a Mr. A. W. Bazley, C/o. Official Historian, Victoria Barracks, Paddington. N.S.W.
Sn a Mate, 3rd April 193 SOLICITORS NORTH QUEENSLANO W A AMET. M.A. BARRISTER-AT.VAv. J. S. AMIET, S.A. BARRISTEE.AT.LAw Telephone No 51 P.O. Box 76 Captain C.E.W.Bean (Official Historian), c/o Messrs. Angus & Robertson, Castlereagh Street, SYDNEY N.S.W. Dear Sir, I enclose herewith my account of the operations performed on 3rd October 1918 by my battalion (the 26th), of which I was intelligence officer. The account may be of no assistance to you; on the other hand it is possible that it may provide connecting links of a useful nature. There will be no need to acknowledge it, and my only reason for offering it is that microscopic specks of truth are obviously one of your major considerations, and it is out of these specks that you have erected our five most magnificent national volumes. Yours faithfully, Wld Bunst Enclos.
BRAURnVOIN It was on the 20th September 1918 - the anniversary of Polygon Wood - that news of the anticipated stunt reached the battalion. But how differently the morning broke. Then it had been chilly and wintry, with sharp driving rain pelting upon us as we lay in open pot-holes awaiting the roar of the guns. Now, according to my diary, it was a "glorious day - one storm". Moreover, for the interminable waste of shell-ploughed desert, with which the dawn of day had greeted our eyes a year before, LN there was substituted the trees and meadows of the lazy Somme canal. The camp was at EXclusier, with its little desecrated church overlooking the water. The troops were resting, and dolce was the far niente.. There were some who thought that our fighting days were over until Christmas. All sorts of rumours were afloat about the wonderful holiday the division was atout to commence - a holiday which even then it seemed might possibly outlast the war. But the news of yet another stunt brought no discontent. "Great glee everywhere", is my observation then recorded. We did not let the disclosure unduly interfere with our diversion. The next few days were cool and pleasant, with occasinnal storms to clear the atmosphere. We went on route marches, mounted guard, conducted courte martial, entertained our friends from the neigbouring units and took long walks in what a captured home-letter described as "das berühmte Sommetal" On the 23rd the Major and I strolled as far as the Chateau of the Marquis et Etourmel at Cappy, admired the great rooms, grand even in their wreckage deciphered the chrved mottoes, stood with some reverence in the family chapel - the only apartment which friend and foe alike had left intact, and inspected the family graves in the courtyard some of which bore dates as far back as 1590. That night there fell upon our ears the sound of a furious bombardment in the east, and the very next morning we began to practise for the serious affair which every day brought closer. We staged a full dress rehearsal, with runners and observers, over the country to the village of Maricourt, and on the following day marched via Fontaine-les- Cappy with its smashed-up sugar factory on to the long straight Amiens Herlevlla road, left-wheeling to Hereville to witness a demonstration of tanks - a male and two females, and I returned via Chuignes with its mammoth Paris- bombarder to attend a meeting of Second-division intelligence officers at Cappy. The only untoward event in progress was the strike of the 19th, 21st and 85th battalions against their disintegration - undisciplined
perhaps, but embodying a type of indiscipline which brought a fierce kind of pride into the hearts even of those whose duty it was to repress the rebellion. Farewell to Eclusier. An early swim in the canal, the business of packing up, last letters home, a beautiful day, a crisp night! At 7.15 p.m. on the 27th we left, not without regret, our happy and comfortable tents and set our faces once more towards Berlin. As we tramped along through Herbecourt there occurred one of the most magnificent searchlight displays I have ever seen. Clearly all was not well in the upper air. Crossing the Somme at Halle we marched in silence through the dead and silent city of Peronne, the moonlight gleaming on its desolate walls. By one o'clock in the morning we were safe in our appointed Nissen huts at Doingt, where we slept till nine. The two snoring forms on either side of me were the Padre and the Doctor. When, thought I shall I sleep in such physical and spiritual calm again? Outside the rain was streaming down. We shaved and breakfast- ed in bed, no less, and then got about our respective jobs. Mine was to go to Brigade and get the maps for the stunt, and issue them to the proper persons. I still have mine - the One-in-20,O00 Wiancourt" - yellow with age, and Hindenburg grime. The German trenches, marked in blue, were alleged to have been "corrected from information received up to 19.9.18" nine days previously. There was a meeting of officers, and at 7 p.m. we set out over a sloppy road via Bussu for Templeux-la-Fosse, where we settled down to a freesing night in billets. On the 29th, our third and fifth divisions, with the Yanks, hopped over, so we were told. We worked all day on the maps, and in the evening the Padre and I took a walk to the old ruined church in the village and its mossy graveyard, where the family vaults had been used as dugouts withant and we gazed h some wonder at a memorial erected over the burial place of "4Al englische Soldaten", with its chivalrous inscription: "Sie starben den Heldentod, 21.3.18". Were these the enemies concerning whom, six months earlier at our Oxford O.C.B., they had been enlightening us in special lectures entitled "Hate." "There is no good Hun but a dead Hun", was the lecturer's slogan. "You must hate hate hate" I referred the matter to the Padre,but he remained silent. Then back to the Nissen huts to a stirring game of poker, while a wild rainstorm rattled on the tin roofs. The last day of September found us still cooling our heels
impatiently in the huts. The troops were spoiling for action. This lull in the proceedings was neither fish nor fowl. That day the galvanic reports were circulated that Bulgaria had surrendered, that the cavalgry was marching south on Lille,and that Bellicourt ahead of us had falled. We began to wonder whether the Wiancourt maps would be much use after all Perhaps something closer to Alsace-Lorraine would fill the bill better. The suspense was not of long duration. Next morning the battalion moved eastward by way of Tincourt with its comparatively sound buildings and Roisel where not an undamaged house remained. Posted up in Roisel was a notice on the battered billets in German explaining that bells aohadaf sha of h The village secmet (o denoted an air attack, drums a fire alarm.. We rested during the afternoon in bivvies beside four dead horses in Hankey Quarries, just through Templeux le-Guerard. There we were treated to a most daring raid by a German airman, who in one minute destroyed two of our observation balloons The great fat sausages melted instantaneously into flames and vanished, and nothing but a falling black object or two broke the view. After that they gave me a horse, one "Sugar", and on him I reconnoitred the road, through Hargicourt and Villeret, along which the battalion was to march that night. It was called the Black Road and black it was by name and nature. The rain had made it boggy, and as in the darkness we trudged along it on foot, sinking kneedeep in mud and halting for what seemed like hours until some transport waggon or gun was dug out ahead of us, we cursed it in our most fluent Australian. But all roads have an ending and at some time during the night we crawled into the support trenches occupied by the twenty-ninth, and gave them welcome relief. This was a Geelong battalion and it was a cheering interlude to drop into atrench filled by the fellow townsmen of one's youth,and talk of Corio Bay and the River Barwon until the hand-over was complete. Day dawned brightly on the second of October. It is the intelligence officer's duty to accompany his C.O.round the sights of the city, and so at nine o'clock the two of us set off up the slope to Nauroy and there from an old garden, about which the sickly scent of ,mustard gas still clung faintly, we enjoyed a magnificent view through our glasses of the enemy villages spread out before us - Premont, Montbrehain, Joncourt and Baaurevoir. It was a lovely, sunny morning. Everything was calm and still. Especially still were half a dozen British tanks dotted over the gradient. They had all been put out of action, apparently by direct hits from close artillery. The crews were dead, and some had been trapped and
badly burnt. At night we both went out again and did a reconnaissance over Estrees,. Shells began to fall around and we returned to our hospitable hole in the ground to discuss the future of Europe with our colleagues, Lloyd the Adjutant and Dick Whittaker. Morning came. All hands and the cook were stirring long before dawn. That day the 26th were to have the honour and glory of serving as the point of the spear which was to pierce the last bulwark of the impreg- nable defences of the Hindenburg line. That we should succeed was never questioned. The companies disappeared stealthily in the direction of the jumping off points. The Colonel, a couple of runners, and myself, made for the clump of trees shown on the map as Folemprise Farm. On this target a distant gun was letting high explosive drop at moderate intervals We would hear the hiss, wait for the burst and thank heaven for the distan between us and it. There came another; the fragments whizzed around us, and we had begun our usual mental tribute to Divine Protection when the quiet voice of the Colonel, who had halted, announced "I'm hit". "Here", he said to one of the runners, indicating an arm hanging loosely by his side,"bandage this." But his thoughts were on the objecti and all his plans, and the movements we had talked over yesterday almost at this very spot. "Cooper" he said, "will have charge, so-and-so will take over A Company. Now, take these messages" and so he went on detailing his directions while we, listening, forgot about his wound. "But no one is looking after my arm", he observed after a couple of minutes. So we left a man to fix him up and on we went again. My runners were all in their places. I went along the line of troops waiting in quiet little groups for 6.5, told the dreary news of the Colonel, sought out Cooper, and looked for Lloyd, the adjutant. But he too had been hit windpipe nearly severed, someone said. This was a bad start - this elimination of headquarters at the outset. But Cooper was a cool head and knew his job, and we sent back for George Francis,the popular assistant adjutant. Meanwhile the clock ticked on, down came the barrage,and over we went. Artillery formation was the method of advance. Left and right little serpentine strings of men began to follow up the line of bursts which in the grey morning light were chianing up the ground ahead of us. Soon hostile shells answered to scatter the strings,but in spite of a goodly number of casualties there was not the slightest hesitation. Down the slope we gravitated to the valley of the Torrens canal. Machine
gun fire was pouring in from a quarry on our right, and the company on the right told us later in the day how fircely the German machine-gunmen had stuck to their job until the final hand-te-hand struggle put them out of action. My own personal objective was Lormisset, a prominent farmhouse about half a mile away on the top of the next hill, and just across the ominous blue dots which marked the powerful line of fortifications in the Hindenburg system designated on the map the "Beaurevoir line" In the valley were a couple of the enemy's guns, which had been abandoned. My function was to get information back promptly and, being anxious to justify the Colonel's choice a new intelligence officer, was my intention to be first into the first trench. As I hastened up the hill in front, towards the place where the enemy line bent northwest, there came the rumble of a tank ascending behind me - a friendly and reassuring rumble it was. But the effect was moral rather than material, as things turned out. I reached the wire simultaneously with Captain Stapleton and my old friend Sergeant Lancaster of Neuve Eglise days. "Good morning" we all said, politely, as we commenced to cut the obstruction with our snippers. It did not take long, and as we struggled through there came a rush of prisoners with hands uplifted. They surrounded our little group and began offering us souvenirs - they seemed to know the Australian point of view. As I rattled off the prescribed questionnaire and wrote down the answers my pencil point broke, and about seven of them pulled pencils out of their pockets and offered them to me. The poor beggars were anxious to please. I couldn't halp noticing how they were quivering. That bombardment of ours must have given them hell. When the questions were answered they scampered off delightedly down the hill towards our lines, keeping their hands well up. Then we entered the trench. It was a fine piece of work, this arm of the Hindenburg defence. Great concrete dugouts were built into the trenches. They seemed as rooted to the earth as the rocks of nature, but, as we found the next morning when sheltering in one of them from the barrage of the counter-attack, they moved about like a ship at sea under the pressure of the bursting shells. I came,upon a sergeant who was getting a broken hand doctored up and tried to get a bit of information out of him. But he was surly and short in his answers, as perhaps a man with a broken hand was entitled to be. Before investigating Lormisset, I decided to push on along the trench line with Stapleton and his company and find the best place from radd toe gmane Re säkndt ea sankeir. akte bean te stea upte
our own barrage and sat down in a huge shell hole to wait. There were about ten of us, including the company commander and one of his platoon officers, a very decent little fellow named Carter. He and I ppread out my map on the forward parapet and were picking out objects of interest round Beaurevoir. I asked him a question a couple of times but when I looked up from the map to see why he was not answering, he was dead. The next minute there came a fiendish roar as one of our own projectiles burst fair in the middle of the shellhole. Every other form in the shell hole lay still. Stapleton, I took it, was knocked out. As for myself there was, sharp sting and a sudden rush of fluid putteewards. I clapped my hand to the affected spot and found that the water bottle had taken the full force of the impact and hung twisted and empty and that no bones were broken. I raised the cry of stretcher bearers and they came from nowhere and took charge. The rest of us in the vicinity fell back a shell hole or two to wait for the guns to lift. Half an hour later, Stapleton was away out in the blue once more, leading the remnants of his company along the trench. Meanwhile, remembering my task, I prepared my list of identificat ions and sent them back by a runner. What they were I have long since forgotten. And then we turned our thoughts to Beaurevoir with its red and white buildings a mile or so away slightly north of east. The company troops bashed their way northward along the trench, but we of headquarters commenced to stroll across the paddock on the German side of the line. It was getting on for eleven o'clock. When I say stroll I mean just that. The fierce bombardment had died down. No hostile heads were showing. The morning was a perfect one. A bright sun shone through a crisp atmosphere. Peace reigned on the battlefield - or so it seemed after the contrasting hullabaloo just ended. Diggers dotted the sward seeking out hostile burrows. On the distant heights ahead appeared for a moment a line of cavalry, which quickly withdrew. Uhland we told one another. I kept on in a northerly direction till I came out on a highway - the Goyy-Beawrevo road. There I encountered Corporal Mead, a fellow N.C.O.on the transport which had brought us to England. We had not met since the training period on Salisbury Plains. And we have not met since But it was a friendly five minutes we spent on the Gouy road. Then I turned eastward and walked along to a farm house on the same road,"Belle me bymme, hn ne egrmer of an dld stone wal os ef or beowans,
officers had erected a Lewis gun,and,all alone, was putting bursts into the village. He had been a gunner in his digger days and was having a great time. In the farm yard was a piece of artillery on which I duly chalked the device "Captured by 26th battalion." One had to watch one's prizes in those days. The keenest spirit of rivalry existed between the units, and there was always the risk of some trespasser from the Fifth Brigade coming over to claim it. The farm yard was tunnelled like a rabbit warren. I shouted in German down a couple of holes and fired my revolver hell-wards into the cavities, but all was silent. Said Hocking (the officer-gunner): "You are not getting enough intelligence back. Why dont you go to Brigade, and get us a barrage and we'll take the village in no time?" So back I went across the paddock to Mushroom Quarry and interviewed Eddy Cleary of the 25th, who had some generallisimo type of job at headquarters that day, conveying to him the compliments and expectations of D company. Then, some talk with Holloway, the intelligence officer of the 7th Brigade, by whom I was en¬ trusted with the duty of making out a'Disposition Report". This meant a tour of the front line, so off I limped in lonely state across the same old paddock. For a moment stillness reighed again. It seemed that I was alone in the world. But what is that crescendo buzzing overhead? Fritz in the air has seen me. He has divined my mission. It must at all costs be forestalled. And zip, zip, zip, his bullets whistle around ad down he swoops. Itwas then that, prompted by I know not what instinct of self- preservation, I gave the gentleman the most realistic exhibition he had ever seen of an Australian subaltern falling dead on the ground. Gratif ied he flew away, and I do not mind admitting that I allowed a decent interval to elapse before coming to life again and proceeding with my in dispensable "Disposition Report" By three in the afternoon it was complete. I had ascertained where all the companies were and what they were doing and I took the docu ment mportantly to Brigade Headquarters. By this time the wee bit wound was getting very stiff. But worthy Doc. Newing, with sleeves rolled up and perspiration streaming down his face was patching up broken humanity int the Quarry and he patched up me. "You'd better go out", he said, but by this time I was getting properly warmed up to the intelligence task and it was necessary to let our acting commander know whether or not he was to sup that night in Beaurevoir. So back to the front line once again. The sun's rays were slpping to the west. The poor old corpses

Sketch to illustrate the route taken by a half-section of the
6th Machine Gun Company at MONTBREHAIN on 5/10/18
Route shown by dotted lines in red.
German machine-guns shown in red.
(See attached account)
map - refer to original diagram
 

 

H.N.
TELEPHONE Nos.
F2597.
F2598.
COMMUNICATIONS TO BE ADDRESSED TO
"THE DIRECTOR".
IN REPLY PLEASE QUOTE
NO. 12/3/25
COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA. 
"AUSWARMUSE"
AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL.
POST OFFICE BOX 214D.
EXHIBITION BUILDINGS, MELBOURNE,
"They gave their lives. For that public gift they
received a praise which never ages and a
tomb most glorious - not so much the tomb in
which they lie, but that in which their fame
survives, to be remembered forever when occasion
comes for word or deed..."

27th March, 1929.
Dear Mr. Bazley,
I have just been looking through a
translation by I.F.D. Morrow of Rudolf Binding "A Fatalist
at War".
The book is a diary of a German officer
who apparently served near Arras, Passchendaele, and on the
Somme in 1918. I have decided therefore that we ought to
include it in the library.
It will in due course appear in our
accession list and, if you want it, you will doubtless let
me know.
Incidentally I noticed a reference on
page 164 to the association of Joan of Arc with Beaurevoir
which may be of interest to Mr. Bean when he comes to deal
with the fighting in which the Australians participated in
the neighbourhood of this town.
Yours sincerely,
[[JRNelson?]]
Mr. A. W. Bazley,
C/o. Official Historian,
Victoria Barracks,
Paddington.
N.S.W.
 

 

MACROSSAN & AMIET
SOLICITORS
WM. A. AMIET, M.A.
BARRISTER-AT-LAW
J. S. AMIET, B.A.
BARRISTER-AT-LAW
Telephone No 51
P.O. Box 76
Mackay, 3rd April 1937.
NORTH QUEENSLAND

Captain C.E.W.Bean (Official Historian),
c/o Messrs. Angus & Robertson,
Castlereagh Street,
SYDNEY N.S.W.


Dear Sir,
I enclose herewith my account of the operations performed
on 3rd October 1918 by my battalion (the 26th), of which I was
intelligence officer. The account may be of no assistance to you; on
the other hand it is possible that it may provide connecting links of a
useful nature. There will be no need to acknowledge it, and my only
reason for offering it is that microscopic specks of truth are obviously
one of your major considerations, and it is out of these specks that you
have erected our five most magnificent national volumes.
Yours faithfully,
WA Amiet
Enclos.
Acknowledged

 

BEAUREVOIR
It was on the 20th September 1918 - the anniversary of Polygon
Wood - that news of the anticipated stunt reached the battalion. But how
differently the morning broke. Then it had been chilly and wintry, with
sharp driving rain pelting upon us as we lay in open pot-holes awaiting
the roar of t he guns. Now, ac cording to my diary, it was a "glorious
day - one storm". Moreover, for the interminable waste of shell-ploughed
desert, with which the dawn of day had greeted our eyes a year before,
there was were substituted the trees and meadows of the lazy Somme canal. The
camp was at ExEclusier, with its little desecrated church overlooking the
water. The troops were resting, and dolce was the far niente. xxx.
There were some who thought that our fighting days were over until
Christmas. All sorts of rumours were afloat about the wonderful holiday
the division was about to commence - a holiday which even then it seemed
might possibly outlast the war. But the news of yet another stunt brought
no di scontent. "Great glee everywhere", is my observation then r ecorded.
We did not let the disclosure unduly interfere with our diversion. The
next few days were cool and pleasant, with occasional storms to clear the
atmosphere. We went on rout e marches, mounted guard, conducted courts
martial, entertained our friends from the neiughbouring units and took long
walks in what a captured home-letter described as "das berühmte Sommetal".
On the 23rd the Major and I strolled as far as the Chateau of the Marquis
et d' Etourmel at Cappy, admired the great rooms, grand even in their wreckage,
deciphered the cuarved mottoes, stood with some reverence in the family
chapel - the only apartment which friend and foe alike had left intact,
and inspected the family graves in the courtyard some of which bore dates
as far back as 1590. That night there fell u on our ears the sound of a
furious bombardment in the east, and the very next morning we began to
practise for the serious affair which every day brought closer. We staged
a full dress rehearsal, with runners and observers, over the country to the
village of Maricourt, and on the following day marched via Fontaine-les-
Cappy with its smashed-up sugar factory on to the long straight Amiens
road, left-wheeling to Hereville Herlevilla to witness a demonstration of tanks - a
male and two females, and I returned via Chuignes with its mammouth Paris-
bombarder to attend a meeting of Second-division intelligence officers at
Cappy. The only untoward event in progress was the strike of the 19th,
21st and 25th battalions against their disintegration - undisciplined
 

 

2

perhaps, but embodying a type of indiscipline which brought a fierce kind
of pride into the hearts even of those whose duty it was to repress the
rebellion.
Farewell to Eclusier. An early swim in the canal, the business
of packing up, last letters home, a beautiful day, a crisp night! At 7.15
p.m. on the 27th we left, not without regret, our happy and comfortable
tents and set our faces once more towards Berlin. As we tramped along
through Herbecourt there occurred one of the most magnificent searchlight
displays I have ever seen. Clearly all was not well in the upper air.
Crossing the Somme at Halle we marched in silence through the dead and
silent city of Peronne, the moonlight gleaming on its desolate walls. By
one o'clock in the morning we were safe in our appointed Nissen huts at
Doingt, where we slept till nine.
The two snoring forms on either side of me were the Padre and
the Doctor. When, thought I, shall I sleep in such physical and spiritual
calm again? Outside the rain was streaming down. We shaved and breakfasted
in bed, no less, and then got about our respective jobs. Mine was to
go to Brigade and get the maps for the stunt, and issue them to the proper
persons. I still have mine - the One-in-20,O00 Wiancourt" - yellow with
age, and Hindenburg grime. The German trenches, marked in blue, were
alleged to have been "corrected from information received up to 19.9.18" - 
nine days previously. There was a meeting of officers, and at 7 p.m. we
set out over a sloppy road via Bussu for Templeux-la-Fosse, where we xxxx
settled down to a freesing night in billets.
On the 29th, our third and fifth divisions, with the Yanks,
hopped over, so we were told. We worked all day on the maps, and in the
evening the Padre and I took a walk to the old ruined church in the village
and its mossy graveyard, where the family v aults had been used as dugouts,
and we gazed with some ^not without wonder at a memorial erected over the burial place
of "41 englische Soldaten", with its chivalrous inscription: "Sie
starben den Heldentod, 21.3.18". Were these the enemies concerning whom,
six months earlier at our Oxford O.C.B., they had been enlightening us in
special lectures entitled "Hate." "There is no good Hun but a dead Hun",
was the lecturer's slogan. "You must hate! hate! hate!" I referred the
matter to the Padre, but he remained silent. Then back to the Nissen huts
to a stirring game of poker, while a wild rainstorm rattled on the tin
roofs.
The last day of September found us still cooling our heels
 

 

3
impatiently in the huts. The troops were spoiling for action. This lull
in the proceedings was neither fish nor fowl. That day the galvanic
reports were circulated that Bulgaria had surrendered, that the cavalary
was marching south on Lille, and that Bellicourt ahead of us had fallen.
We began to wonder whether the Wiancourt maps would be much use after all
Perhaps something closer to Alsace-Lorraine would fill the bill better.
The suspense was not of long duration. Next morning the
battalion moved eastward by way of Tincourt with its comparatively sound
buildings and Roisel where not an undamaged house remained. Posted up in
Roisel was a notice on the battered billets in German explaining that bells
denoted an air attack, drums a fire alarm. ^The village seemed to have had a fair share of both.  We rested during the afternoon
in bivvies beside four dead horses in Hankey Quarries, just through
Templeux le-Guérard. There we were treated to a most daring raid by a
German airman, who in one minute destroyed two of our observation balloons
The great fat sausages melted instantaneously into flames and vanished,
and nothing but a falling black object or two broke the view.
After that they gave me a horse, one "Sugar", and on him I
reconnoitred the road, through Hargicourt and Villeret, along which the
battalion was to march that night. It was called the Black Road and
black it was by name and nature. The rain had made it boggy, and as in the
darkness we trudged along it on foot, sinking kneedeep in mud and halting
for what seemed like hours until some transport waggon or gun was dug out
ahead of us, we cursed it in our most fluent Australian. But all roads
have an ending and at some time during the night we crawled into the
support trenches occupied by the twenty-ninth, and gave them welcome
relief. This was a Geelong battalion and it was a cheering interlude to
drop into a trench filled by the fellow townsmen of one's youth, and talk
of Corio Bay and the River Barwon until the hand-over was complete.
Day dawned brightly on the second of October. It is the
intelligence officer's duty to accompany his C.O.round the sights of the
city, and so at nine o'clock the two of us set off up the slope to Nauroy
and there from an old garden, about which the sickly scent of ,mustard gas
still clung faintly, we enjoyed a magnificent view through our glasses of
the enemy villages spread out before us - Premont, Montbrehain, Joncourt
and Beaurevoir. It was a lovely, sunny morning. Everything was calm and
still. Especially still were half a dozen British tanks dotted over the
gradient. They had all been put out of action, apparently by direct hits
from close artillery. The crews were dead, and some had been trapped and
 

 

4
badly burnt. At night we both went out again and did a reconnaissance
over ^by Estrées,. Shells began to fall around and we returned to our
hospitable hole in the ground to discuss the future of Europe with our
colleagues, Lloyd the Adjutant and Dick Whittaker.
Morning came. All hands and the cook were stirring long before
dawn. That day the 26th were to have the honour and glory of serving as
the point of the spear which was to pierce the last bulwark of the impregnable
defences of the Hindenburg line. That we should succeed was never
questioned. The companies disappeared stealthily in the direction of the
jumping off points. The Colonel, a couple of runners, and myself, made
for the clump of trees shown on the map as Folemprise Farm. On this
target a distant gun was letting high explosive drop at moderate intervals
We would hear the hiss, wait for the burst and thank heaven for the distance
between us and it. There came another; the fragments whizzed around us,
and we had begun our usual mental tribute to Divine Protection when the
quiet voice of the Colonel, who had halted, announced "I'm hit". "Here",
he said to one of the runners, indicating an arm hanging loosely by his
side, "bandage this." But his thoughts were on the objectianve and all his
plans, and the movements we had talked over yesterday almost at this very
spot. "Cooper" he said, "will have charge, so-and-so will take over A
Company. Now, take these messages", and so he went on detailing his
directions while we, listening, forgot about his wound. "But no one is
looking after my arm", he observed after a couple of minutes. So we left
a man to fix him up and on we went again.
My runners were all in their places. I went along the line of
troops waiting in quiet little groups for 6.5, told the dreary news of
the Colonel, sought out Cooper, and looked for Lloyd, the adjutant. But
he too had been hit x- windpipe nearly severed, someone said. This was a
bad start - this elimination of headquarters at the outset. But Cooper
was a cool head and knew his job, and we sent back for George Francis, the
popular assistant adjutant. Meanwhile the clock ticked on, down came the
barrage, and over we went.
Artillery formation was the method of advance. Left and right
little serpentine strings of men began to follow up the line of bursts
which in the grey morning light were chruurning up the ground ahead of us.
Soon hostile shells answered to scatter the strings, but in spite of a
goodly number of casualties there was not the slightest hesitation.
Down the slope we gravitated to the valley of the Torrens canal. Machine
 

 

5
gun fire was pouring in from a quarry on our right, and the company on the
right told us later in the day how fireercely the German machine-gunmen
had stuck to their job until the final hand-to-hand struggle put them out
of action. My own personal objective was Lormisset, a prominent farmhouse
about half a mile away on the top of the next hill, and just across the
ominous blue dots which marked the powerful line of fortifications in the
Hindenburg system designated on the map the "Beaurevoir line" In the
valley were a couple of the enemy's guns, which had been abandoned. My
function was to get information back promptly and, being anxious to justify
the Colonel's choice ^of a new intelligence officer, It it was my intention to be
first into the first trench. As I hastened up the hill in front, towards
the place where the enemy line bent northwest, there came the rumble of a
tank ascending behind me - a friendly and reassuring rumble it was. But
the effect was moral rather than material, as things turned out. I reached
the wire simultaneously with Captain Stapleton and my old friend Sergeant
Lancaster of Neuve Eglise days. "Good morning" we all said, politely, as
we commenced to cut the obstruction with our snippers. It did not take
long, and as we struggled through there came a rush of prisoners with hands
uplifted. They surrounded our little group and began offering us souvenirs
- they seemed to know the Australian point of view. As I rattled off the
prescribed questionnaire and wrote down the answers my pencil point broke,
and about seven of them pulled pencils out of their pockets and offered
them to me. The poor beggars were anxious to please. I couldn't help
noticing how they were quivering. That bombardment of ours must have
given them hell. When the questions were answered they scampered off
delightedly down the hill towards our lines, keeping their hands well up.
Then we entered the trench.
It was a fine piece of work, this arm of the Hindenburg defence.
Great concrete dugouts were built into the trenches. They seemed as rooted
to the earth as the rocks of nature, but, as we found the next morning when
sheltering in one of them from the barrage of the counter-attack, they
moved about like a ship at sea under the pressure of the bursting shells.
I came upon a sergeant who was getting a broken hand doctored up and tried
to get a bit of information out of him. But he was surly and short in his
answers, as perhaps a man with a broken hand was entitled to be.
Before investigating Lormisset, I decided to push on along the
trench line with Stapleton and his company and find the best place from
which to commence the assault on Beaurevoir. But we began to catch up to
 

 

6
our own barrage and sat down in a huge shell hole to wait. There were
about ten of us, including the company commander and one of his platoon
officers, a very decent little fellow named Carter. He and I spread out
my map on the forward parapet and were picking out objects of interest
round Beaurevoir. I asked him a question a couple of times but when I
looked up from the map to see why he was not answering, he was dead.
The next minute there came a fiendish roar as one of our own
projectiles burst fair in the middle of the shellhole. Every other form
in the shell hole lay still. Stapleton, I took it, was knocked out. As
for myself there was ^a sharp sting and a sudden rush of fluid putteewards.
I clapped my hand to the affected spot and found that the water bottle
had taken the full force of the impact and hung twisted and empty and that
no bones were broken. I raised the cry of stretcher bearers and they came
from nowhere and took charge. The rest of us in the vicinity fell back a
shell hole or two to wait for the guns to lift. Half an hour later,
Stapleton was away out in the blue once more, leading the remnants of his
company along the trench.
Meanwhile, remembering my task, I prepared my list of identifications 
and sent them back by a runner. What they were I have long since
forgotten. And then we turned our thoughts to Beaurevoir with its red
and white buildings a mile or so away slightly north of east. The
company troops bacshed their way northward along the trench, but we of
headquarters commenced to stroll across the paddock on the German side of
the line. It was getting on for eleven o'clock. When I say stroll I
mean just that. The fierce bombardment had died down. No hostile heads
were showing. The morning was a perfect one. A bright sun shone through
a crisp atmosphere. Peace reigned on the battlefield - or so it seemed
after the contrasting hullabaloo just ended. Diggers dotted the sward
seeking out hostile burrows. On the distant heights ahead appeared for
a moment a line of cavalry, which quickly withdrew. "Uhland!" we told one
another.
I kept on in a northerly direction till I came out on a highway
- the Goyuy-Beaurevoir road. There I encountered Corporal Mead, a fellow
N.C.O.on the transport which had brought us to England. We had not met
since the training period on Salisbury Plains. And we have not met since.
But it was a friendly five minutes we spent on the Gouy road. Then I
turned eastward and walked along to a farm house on the same road, "Belle
Vue" by name. In the corner of an old stone wall one of our D.Company
 

 

7
officers had erected a Lewis gun, and, all alone, was putting bursts into
the village. He had been a gunner in his digger days and was having a
great time. In the farm yeard was a piece of artillery on which I duly
chalked the device "Captured by 26th battalion." One had to watch one's
prizes in those days. The keenest spirit of rivalry existed between the
units, and there was always the risk of some trespasser from the Fifth
Brigade coming over to claim it.
The farm yard was tunnelled like a rabbit warren. I shouted in
German down a couple of holes and fired my revolver hell-wards into the
cavities, but all was silent. Said Hocking (the officer-gunner): "You are
not getting enough intelligence back. Why dont you go to Brigade, and get
us a barrage and we'll take the village in no time?" So back I went across
the paddock to Mushroom Quarry and interviewed Eddy Cleary of the 25th, who
had some generallisimo type of job at headquarters that day, conveying to
him the compliments and expectations of D company. Then, some talk with
Holloway, the intelligence officer of the 7th Brigade, by whom I was entrusted 
with the duty of making out a "Disposition Report". This meant a
tour of the front line, so off I limped in lonely state across the same
old paddock. For a moment stillness reighed again. It seemed that I was
alone in the world. But what is that crescendo buzzing overhead? Fritz
in the air has seen me. He has divined my mission. It must at all costs
be forestalled. And zip, zip, zip, his bullets whistle around as down he
swoops. It was then that, prompted by I know not what instinct of self-
preservation, I gave the gentleman the most realistic exhibition he had
ever seen of an Australian subaltern falling dead on the ground. Gratified 
he flew away, and I do not mind admitting that I allowed a decent
interval to elapse before coming to life again and proceeding with my in
dispensable "Disposition Report".
By three in the afternoon it was complete. I had ascertained
where all the companies were and what they were doing and I took the document 
importantly to Brigade Headquarters. By this time the wee bit wound
was getting very stiff. But worthy Doc. Newing, with sleeves rolled up and
perspiration streaming down his face was patching up broken humanity in t
the Quarry and he patched up me. "You'd better go out", he said, but by
this time I was getting properly warmed up to the intelligence task and
it was necessary to let our acting commander know whether or not he was
to sup that night in Beaurevoir. So back to the front line once again.
The sun's rays were sloping to the west. The poor old corpses
 

 

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