From Berteaucourt the Battalion set out on August 23 marching eastwards to Talmas. Thence on the following day eastward still to Rubempre. Sodden with rain, the men reached Vadincourt on the 26th and there camped in a neighbouring wood.
Next day General Birdwood paid one of those flying visits to the brigade, which no pressure of business ever prevented his making when any of his various units had done something that deserved appreciation, or had lost good comrades and needed condolence or encouragement. He addressed the men gathered around him on the wood, and spoke appreciatively of the good work they had done. In addition, he broadly hinted of an opportunity of doing even greater work in the near future.
The men liked General Birdwood, liked the trim, neat figure, so plain and business-like in dress. They liked his incisive, accentless voice, his interest in them individually, in their home lives, the different parts of Australia they came from, and all the little ways in which he showed his anxiety to have their friendship as well as their service. Especially they liked him for his unostentatious manner of coming among them, leaving behind all the following of "red-tabbed Johnnies" on whom the digger looked not with a kindly eye. Sometimes they swore roundly against him for his high opinion of them, imputing to that the frequent use made of them for the severest tasks; but their grievances had in it more of fondness than of resentment.
On the following day the march was resumed towards Albert, where a halt was made for dinner, and that evening the battalion took up a position in reserve at La Soiselle, a ruined village some two miles along the main road between Albert and Bapaume. The men were again within the range of the guns, but only a few shells fell in the area occupied by them.
A definite task had been allotted to the battalion, but on the afternoon of the 30th all the arrangements were cancelled. The battalion commander got hurried orders to reconnoitre the front line at Mouquet Farm, with a view to relieving that night the troops holding it. So he set out on the long and necessarily circuitous route that lead to that part of the line, taking with him his company commanders. Their journey was a tedious and a harrowing one. The communication sap was full of dead men and of dying men who had to be left there to die, or who were with great difficulty pulled out of the enveloping mud and laid on the bank to die. Stretcher bearers struggled through the mud with wounded who had a better chance of surviving the journey to the rear.
Along this avenue of dead and dying the officers slowly mode their way, delayed by passing stretchers, delayed by the necessity of lending a hand where pity might well make military duty forgotten, and delayed not a little by the weight of their own fatigue. When finally they arrived at their destination much was to be done, much information to be got, a Battalion headquarters to be found that would be in closer touch with the line, a medical aid-station to be established that should lessen the hardship of the wounded and the labour of the stretcher-bearers.
These are some of the duties of officers who go forward to the line to map the course and define positions for their battalion. The carrying out of these duties obviously entails work of far-reaching importance. Sometimes the work Is well done; sometimes it is done indifferently. The manner in which it is done has often a very decisive effect on the subsequent casualty list of the battalion. In this case it was not done Indifferently, but its doing required much time and the work had begun late, so that there was no possibility of those officers returning by the same path in time to start again with the battalion on its journey from La Boiselle.
A message was, therefore, sent to La Boiselle, and at 8 o'clock that night the battalion started for the trenches. Its destination was but another part of Pozieres Ridge, the ferme du Mouquet, lying about a mile north-west of the village of Pozieres. The distance between La Boiselle and Mouquet Farm does not look formidable on the map. But the crow's flight is not the route which a battalion would have dared to take in that dangerous area. By many a cautious detour crept the unit before the long, winding communication sap was reached which led to the front line.
This sap was the well-trodden track in every battalion sector, wherein is concentrated all the activity between the front line and its immediate rear in the infantry zone of battle. It is a track that is well known to the battalion runners ever going to and fro, who from there onwards proceed with caution if "going up" the line, or with casual confidence if "going down" the line. Well known also to the signallers, those birds of the night who are ever tinkering with its many strands of telephone wire. And well known to the stretcher bearers, who further congest it with their pitiful traffic that must not be delayed.
All that normal congestion existed on the night of the 30th, when the men of the 48th struggled along it towards Mouquet Farm. It had rained almost constantly during many days past, rained whilst the battalion was on the way to Albert, rained whilst it lay around the ruins of La Boiselle. and on this night the rain came down in one unbroken sheet of water. The sap was in some parts a river. The water lay deep, and men plunged into it till it was above their knees and lapping at their flanks. In other parts the trench ran over higher ground, where the water was shallow, but the mud was deep, so deep that the men clung to the sides of the trench to assist deliberately each step they took. Sometimes a youngster fell, a weakling, weak with the immaturity of youth and fretfully protested his inability to proceed further; whilst a stronger comrade swore at him for his weakness and pulled him free of the mud, only to find that the effort had imprisoned himself. And those at the tail end of the column waited for clearance, knowing not what might be befalling their comrades further ahead, waited in the gathering darkness when shells seem to fall so closely, and blunted sense of direction gives such false judgment to their location.
It was a fortunate thing that the battalion was at this time very low in strength. In fact it had received no reinforcements to make up the great losses sustained on its two previous ventures on the ridge, and now mustered only about 300 rifles. It was, therefore, a comparatively small body of men that made the passage of the river of mud which led to Mouquet Farm. So they had few casualties on the way up. Some men did not reach the end of the journey till late on the following morning, and it was a very small party that relieved the unit then holding the line.
The Battalion so diminished in numbers had a comparatively quiet time from the enemy, for although the shelling was at times intense the Germans had apparently no intention of attempting an attack. Very grim fighting had taken place there but a short time before, and there was promise of heavy fighting in the near future. In fact the principal work of the 48th and other units of the Brigade then holding the sector, was to prepare the way for an attack to be made by the Brigade which should relieve them. The front line was not a trench but a maze of old German trenches that seemed impossible of defence. A new trench was cut through this maze, shortening considerably the stretch of country to be held, whilst a new communication-trench was constructed that facilitated connection with the rear. All this work made a very big demand on the small number of men with which the unit was holding the line.
One rather Interesting feature of this term at Mouquet Farm, was the almost friendly spirit that existed between our troops and the enemy. Such was the nature of the country, that the opposite trenches could not fail to command a very good view of any conspicuous movement on our side. But from the first morning our men went into the trenches, the white flag was in constant use by both sides when wounded had to be removed. The Australians approached the German trenches unharmed, to remove wounded men of whose presence the enemy often acquainted them. A similar freedom was accorded the enemy. Both sides, however, were rather keen to prevent any abuse of the liberty. They were particularly suspicious of officers observing dispositions under the pretext of looking for wounded.
On the first morning of the Battalion's occupation of the line, Colonel Leane was making his usual round of the front when he suddenly found himself but a few yards from two German soldiers. He immediately decided that he had lost his way and had wandered into the German lines, not a very difficult thing to do in that network of trenches. He kept himself concealed, and awaited his chance to run in a direction which he hoped should bring him to his own lines. He had not gone far before he discovered himself in a trench occupied by men of the 46th Battalion. They were able to explain the close proximity of the two Germans, who had been so casual in their manner as to give the Colonel the impression that he was right behind the German front line. One of the Germans was an officer speaking English fluently, and he had come to look for the body of his brother who had been recently killed there. But whether his story was true or false, soldiers are wont to make a great difference between a dead man and a wounded man. It is not prudent to have a unit's trenches and dispositions overlooked by an enemy, for such a slight consideration as the proper burial of that enemy's brother. So the officer was allowed but a short time to go back to his own lines, his sense of fraternal duty having nearly cost him his life.
A short time after this incident Colonel Leane met a British officer in his Battalion sector who was unknown to him. The Colonel's previous encounter with the German officer, who spoke good English, might have made him inclined to be suspicious. Moreover the individual in his path was most correctly dressed, he was well groomed, his clothes were innocent of mud. Colonel Leane was not in a mood to tolerate a clean and fastidiously-dressed officer in his trenches. In his opinion the interloper must be a Staff-officer, an idler, or a spy; and in any case he was unwelcome. To be a Staff-officer, or even an idler is not a criminal offence, so the Colonel was wont to get over the difficulty by treating all such strangers as spies until proved otherwise. This unknown one protested that he belonged to artillery, that he was a liaison officer, but he did not remember to what infantry unit he was temporarily attached. He gave several unsatisfactory answers to several reasonable and unreasonable questions, was put under arrest and immediately marched back to the rear under an escort that gave him little chance of avoiding the mud. Of course the poor stray was not a spy, his battery readily identified him, but resolved to make his display a more workmanlike appearance and memory for the future.
The Battalion got a speedy release from Mouquet Farm and made its way back to Albert It was destined to be free from the struggle of Pozieres Ridge for several weeks But the days it had already spent on the ridge and the grim experiences it there endured left their mark on the unit throughout the rest of its career. The 48th was one of the new formations, and although some of its officers and many of its men had seen service on Gallipoli, the vast majority had no further experience of war than that gained in the peaceful trenches of Fleurbaix. Some of the officers in the unit, as in all such units formed at the same time, were not men that nature ever intended to endure the hard things of such a hard war. Some of them were elderly men who had seen service in other fields, but who had to come to Pozieres to learn that the years had stolen from them their vigour and endurance. Others were good officers in training their men, conscientious fellows in looking after them, officers who gave fair promise of being good leaders when the real test of leadership should come. Pozieres found them wanting. The trial was in some cases pathetic, as the trial of the inculpalby inefficient often is; in some cases it was ludicrous, but always the verdict was unquestioned and unquestionable.
Pozieres also tried the strong and proved their strength, and henceforth the comparatively new Battalion knew what manner of men it desired for officers or for its rank and file Many of its strong men had been killed though not conquered by Pozieres, and their spirit was ever after held up to the personnel of the Battalion as the ideal at which all ranks should aim. Its strong men who survived Pozieres became henceforth the keepers of its honour.
This spirit of the unit which it gained from the struggle on the ridge was the best and indeed its only reward No adequate recognition could come to the Battalion for that kind of fighting. Great honours are not given for a Pozieres. There you had none of the glamour of advance, none of the glory of success. There you had only grim holding-on to ground that was all but untenable. There you had only sustaining of counter-attacks that were all but irresistible. But the bodies of dead comrades strewn along its shallow trenches; the prostrate figures that lay wounded in the crowded sap which served as an aid-post; these bore their testimony of the heroism that was shown and - it would almost seem - wasted on Pozieres Ridge.