On the night of the 7th the men slept at the foot of Sausage Gully, slept undisturbed by the roar of the artillery, and heedless of the noisy reveille sounded by the guns as they began the intense bombardment which always preceded the dawn. The sun at last dissipated the heavy morning fog which was then prevalent, and its rays beat down upon their exposed bivouac. Still they slept that heavy sleep which follows a night of relief from a hard vigil in the trenches, when the breakfast-hour passes unheeded, when "cook-house" is shouted at mid-day and men wearily raise themselves to swear at the cooks and again roll over in slumber, when there is little or no assorting, but officers and men lie in one inert mass, and the quartermaster and transport-officer come up from the rear to supply the only show of activity in the silent bivouac.
Some stir, first began around the improvised orderly room. Lists were being consulted and casualties reckoned. Casualties were already known to be heavy, and their summing-up made a sad total. Of officers there were six killed - Dyke, English barrister, traveller, author, and young Walters, and Jack Cosson, a cheery, shrewd old bookmaker of the West, and Richardson, and Ottaway and Hawke. Fourteen officers were wounded. Ninety-eight of other ranks had been killed and 76 were officially reported as missing, which could but mean death in that grim fight where tally of its many fatal events was impossible, for the Battalion lost no prisoners to the enemy. Four hundred and four men had been wounded, thus bringing the unit's casualties in officers and men to the awful total of 598. What remained of the effective strength of the Battalion made a very small party.
The men rested throughout the 8th and again on August 9, recounting incidents of their adventure, recalling to one another how this man and that man was killed, and often interspersing their reminiscences with vows of vengeance for the loss of this pal or that pal. Some wrote letters to people at home to give them the too premature assurance that they were quite safe. Others wrote offering honest sympathy to the relatives of comrades killed, narrating such details as they cared to describe to those last moments, knowledge of which is so much sought after by bereaved parents.
In their present positions there could be little regular training. The Lewis gun, however, had proved a good friend in the trenches; and as casualties had occurred among the gunners many new hands were told off for immediate instruction to fill the vacant places, and to form a useful emergency reserve.
With the reaction so pronounced in men whose routine is war, life again became normal. Some began to growl again about their rations, to curse the Army Service Corps, to quarrel with one another on a dozen, different subjects and agree only on the merits of their own battalion. That agreement, always easily arrived at in every unit, had been strengthened by their two days experience on Pozieres Ridge, and was further enhanced by the following special order read to them on the morning of August 10:
SPECIAL ORDER OF THE DAY.
By Lt.-Col. R. L. Leane, D.S.O., M.C.
10/8/1916.
After a short but strenuous period in the front line of trenches, the 48th Battalion has been withdrawn to rest and reorganise, but not to relax. The battalion in 48 hours has won for itself a name that every officer, every N.C.O. and every man should deem it his sacred duty to uphold, a name for unflinching courage and stoical endurance. It is true that in those two stern days, many of our comrades were lost to us, but let it not be thought that their sacrifice was in vain. We were given a most important trust: we were called upon to hold at all costs the ground won by the preceding battalion: and we held it, in spite of the most determined efforts of the enemy to regain the position.
The following copy of a special order issued by General von Bulow which was taken from a German prisoner, bears witness to the importance placed by the enemy on the position of the Pozieres Plateau:
"At any price the Pozieres Plateau (Hill 60) must be recovered, for if it remained in the hands of the British, it would give them an important advantage. Attacks will be made by successive waves 80 yards apart. Troops which first reach the Plateau must hold on until reinforced, whatever their losses. Any officer or man who fails to resist to the death on the ground won will be immediately court martIalled."
We were subjected to a bombardment of an intensity that has not been surpassed by any previous bombardment in the history of the war, until our ranks were most appallingly depleted. This was followed by an infantry attack the first waves of which, although in places penetrating our line, were driven out and back, leaving a large proportion of their number dead or prisoners in our hands. The succeeding waves were caught in our artillery barrage, which followed most rapidly on our call for retaliation: large numbers of the enemy were accounted for in the valley below our lines, and the attack was finally broken up and abandoned.
To the medical section special praise belongs. Our medical staff and stretcher-bearers had to perform much of their work in the open, under heavy fire. Through their fearlessness and untiring zeal, when we were at last relieved from the trenches we had brought in not only our wounded, but also those who had been left by the brigade which preceded us.
The general officer commanding 1st A.N.Z.A.C., the G.O.C., 4th Division, and the G.O.C. 12th Aust. Inf. Bde. have all been pleased to express their appreciation of the good work achieved by this battalion, and the commanding officer wishes to say that he is deeply proud of his command.
As we have begun so we must continue, so that the battalion shall always have a name for endurance, for courage and for stern determination. See to it, men, that your N.C.O's. and officers have your loyal support; that new reinforcements who come to build up our strength again are made to know what standard of soldiership is required of them; and that the esprit de corps, which comes from dangers shared and battles fought together, is maintained and fostered as long as the battalion shall last.
(Signed) B. B. LEANE, Capt.
Adjutant 48th Battalion.
One thing was suggested by the order, as well as by their continued stay so close to the battle-front. Another turn in the trenches was evidently imminent. Next day it was definitely announced that during the night they should return to the defence of the same ground which they had left only three days previously.
Their ranks had been much thinned, and it seemed a risky experiment to entrust such a strenuous defence to those weary men. But the colonel had no will in the matter, and indeed he preferred this manner of attempting the task with a third of the men he had previously employed.
He had made careful reconnaissance of the area previous to the battalion's first occupation of the line. He foresaw the havoc which the concentrated shelling would work among a platoon, a company, a battalion caught whilst making its way through those congested saps, and what little chance of avoiding casualties existed for men who should be crowded in the inadequate trenches. Strongly did he insist that it was better to risk a temporary penetration of the line for one strenuous moment, than to suffer passively and continuously from the congested front presented to the enemy's shell-fire.
Those were the days, however, when close formation in defence was as popular with us as was close formation in attack popular with the enemy. Then a unit went into the line in all the pride of its full fighting strength, and along the crowded saps many a battalion paid dearly before the lesson of other tactics was learned. Later on some 500 rifles represented a unit's strength in the line, whilst one-third of the battalion's effective strength was prudently kept out of action.
When on the morning of the 12th the battalion was again in O.G. 1 and O.G. 2 there was no congestion. The number of men was small enough for the work to be done, which kept all hands busy. Tramway Trench was further improved as well as the communication-sap that ran towards the front trenches. The attempts to improve O.G. 1 and O.G. 2 were not so successful, for these trenches were an easy mark to the enemy, and shells constantly undid the work expended on them.
But during this term in the line the shelling of the position was light in comparison with what they had previously experienced. Occasionally it was very intense, as on the 13th, and again on the night of the 14th. The old Windmill was still a storm centre, and shells from our guns that fell short were landing on it as frequently as were the shells of the enemy. During their third evening in the line the enemy shelled the trenches so heavily that it was thought he intended to make another counter-attack, but our artillery brought prompt retaliation to bear upon the other side of the crest. This eased the situation somewhat, but not before Captain Evans and a number of other ranks were killed. On the preceding day Lieutenant Law had been killed, an officer whose fate was a hard one, for he had just been transferred to the battalion after spending a strenuous time in the trenches with his previous unit.
Next morning the 48th was relieved by another Australian unit, and stole away from the trenches in the dense fog of the early morning. The second term in the line had been of three days duration, and the casualty list was a comparatively small one. Two officers had been killed and 21 of other ranks, whilst three of other ranks were reported missing and 63 wounded. It is true they had sustained no such heavy shelling and no counter-attack, but the shelling was continuous and at times intense; and, although the casualty list was indeed long enough, its contrast with that of the previous term was an instructive as well as a happy one.
Near to the Windmill, whose name seemed to be on all men's lips during those fierce days, lay the dead of the 48th. They were buried with what brief ceremony the circumstances allowed. Some were buried where they had fallen, for the living have the first claim, and the transport of the wounded was in itself all too difficult. Others were buried near the Chalk Pit, where something of the uniformity of peace time was given to their last resting-place. Later on, when conditions allowed it, more permanent organisation was introduced into the great irregular burying-ground that contained the dead of so many Australian units. On the slope of the Ridge was erected a monument to the many known and unknown Australians who slept there. When nearly two years afterwards the tide of battle, which had receded far from the Ridge, again swept over the land enveloping Pozieres and the country around, the enemy, so unaccustomed to respect anything sacred or profane, nevertheless respected that monument to the memory of the men who so withstood him. Its surroundings peopled by so many of Australia's dead, the site of the old Windmill has since been sacred to Australian soldiers. But it was an unlucky landmark and a thing of ill omen in those days, and the men of the 48th gladly turned their backs on it.
Away down to Albert they went, that day of August 15, on to the old brickfield again, where they bivouaced for the night unmindful of the weather. Next morning they started at 7 o'clock and, marching through a downpour of rain to Warloy, arrived there drenched but happy to see civilian people once more. There they rested for the remainder of the day and during the next day, but on the morning of the 18th they again turned towards the friendly West and reached Herissart. Next day they were early on the march, keeping to the inferior roads away from the main highways of military traffic. Still it rained till their clothes were sodden and their boots oozed mud, rained whilst they marched again Into Berteaucourt and felt they had at last come home.
The return to Berteaucourt was a real home-coming, though a sad one. Those kindly French people turned out to greet the old battalion which had grown so familiar during its brief sojourn among them. But when they saw that small party looking so ill-used by war and weather, and understood it was all that remained of the imposing unit that had marched away, such a wailing chorus of grief and sympathy went up from them as embarrassed even the usually casual soldiers. Old men mournfully shook their heads and murmured something about "soivante-dix." Old women and young women wept. Many merged with the column unminded by the officers, to inquire the fate of their numerous friends, of "Jack," of "Monsieur George," of le Sergeant."
At Berteaucourt the battalion settled for a week in happy forgetfulness of the horrors of Pozieres Ridge.