WHEN the 48th Battalion returned to the ruins of Ypres from Anzac Ridge it made but a short delay before continuing its journey to a camp in the reserve area. There at Halifax Camp it remained until the 26th of the month, when it went by train and bus through Wizernes to Cuhem.
The whole of the 4th Australian Division was now making its way back far behind the war zone. Everyone was confident that the division was about to have the spell so long promised to it. Several of its units had lost very heavily in the recent fighting. It was therefore expedient that this particular time should be chosen for resting and to enable them to obtain reinforcements.
At the village of Cuhem the battalion remained for about three weeks and from there marched by easy stages towards the coast. The weather was then beautiful. Th [sic] country through which the men marched was still showing the glories of a French autumn. The inhabitants had not before seen Australian soldiers. Indeed they had seen much less of any soldiers than had the war-worn people of the Somme. Their reception of the Australians was therefore an enthusiastic one in the different villages through which the men marched.
These circumstances made the march a very pleasant experience for the battalion, and happy anticipation was at its highest when the village of Friancourt was reached. There the unit was to spend its term of rest.
This village was but a short distance from the coast. The smell of the sea was in the billets of the troops. The breakers could be sighted from their training-ground. Treport was near to them, and Eu, and other villages all within walking distance. In the country around them there was nothing except their own presence to suggest the existence of war. The sound of a gun was never heard, and an aeroplane, friendly or otherwise, was never seen. The district lay far away from the main roads of traffic, civil or military. The people of the district knew almost nothing concerning the war, and were indeed a much more kindly and pleasant people for that fact.
It was known as definitely as anything connected with a campaign can be known that the battalion with other units of the division should remain in this area until the middle of February. The last week of November was just begun when the 48th had settled down to its new billets at Friancourt. So the men were determined to make as comfortable as possible these billets in which they should have such a long spell and should spend the winter. The good French people gave them every assistance. Whilst the digger did a great deal for himself with the help of Madame, the battalion used its powers of organisation to add to his happiness. Football grounds were arranged and tournaments started. Concert parties were organised and many schemes were discussed for excursions to different places of interest along the coast.
This tranquillity, however, was rudely broken in upon when on the evening of December 3 it was known through the battalion that all ranks were to stand by ready to move at half an hour's notice. Many had gone away to the surrounding villages and returned late at night to hear that such orders had been issued. Later on it was known the unit should not move until the following day. Next day it transpired the enemy had broken through at Cambrai, but that it was even then uncertain if the 4th Australian Division should have to interrupt its rest.
The division began to move from its present area immediately, after being there nine or ten days. On the night of the 5th the 48th Battalion left Friancourt at 11.30. The women-folk, young and old, of the village, shed tears at the departure of the Australians as if the stay of the latter had been a matter of years instead of days.
They marched that winter night to Eu, a distance of about four miles, and there entrained for Peronne. The journey to Peronne lay through the country made desolate by the first Somme offensive, and further devastated in the enemy's evacuation of it during the spring of 1917. The long train journey was not completed till late in the evening of the 6th. The battalion then detrained at Peronne and marched to Hautallaines, a district some miles distant.
At this place the several battalions of the brigade were accommodated in one large camp. During most of the time here there was snow and frost, and the cold was intense in the wooden huts. It soon became apparent that the division was not to be employed immediately in the front line, and that the stay of the brigade in this camp might be a long one. So its several units settled down to make the best of the conditions.
General Robertson, having been granted a prolonged leave some weeks previously, the 12th Brigade was now commanded by General Gellibrand. The latter with the energy proverbially predicted of the new broom, began training the brigade as if it was a very raw and new formation. Brigade attacks were practised frequently, the battalions skirmishing through the mud and charging over that desolate country until every rise and hollow on its surface was hatefully familiar to them. When these operations were not taking place the different units carried on their usual programme of training in their own grounds. But even then they were not free from the direction and criticism of the new brigadier.
A strange man was Gellibrand, with the physique and bearing of a rather sickly university professor of mathematics, with hands stuck deep in the pockets of his breeches and the collar of his digger tunic hooked tight around his neck. He might be met in any part of his brigade area. Nearly always on foot, he would casually lounge on to the parade-ground of a battalion. After watching a young officer at work for some time he would begin such a quiet, lazy cross-examination as often to make the officer in question afterwards assert very emphatically that "the new Brig, knew too dam' much."
The energy with which he started remained with him, and during the weeks spent near Peronne the 48th Battalion along with the other units of the brigade was kept very busy. Perhaps it was indeed a fortunate thing, not only for the efficiency but for the happiness of the men. For the camp was a bleak and desolate place, whilst Peronne was but a ruin and with its surroundings was destitute of all civilian population. The men were indeed accustomed to walk into Peronne of a night to attend a picture show or a concert organised by the military, although the distance was some four miles and the season the middle of winter. There was but little attraction for anyone in the district, and life was perhaps made most tolerable by making it as active as possible on the parade ground.
Christmas Day was spent there, and, despite the unfavourable circumstances, it was a merry one, and probably a noisier one than any Christmas the unit ever celebrated in France. New Year's Day was made memorable by the fall of a German aeroplane in the 48th Battalion parade ground.
The sound of a gun had not been heard for a considerable time except very faintly, and a hostile aeroplane had not been seen. When this machine was observed to be in difficulties, and then to descend so close to the camp, there was quite a sensation. Officers and men rushed to the spot. But the observer and pilot of the disabled machine were too quick for them, and had set fire to the aeroplane before they could be apprehended. This enraged the men, who were always keen on souvenirs from fallen planes, and but for some officers of the battalion the Germans would have suffered rather rough treatment. The latter, who had descended easily, and were unhurt, were made prisoners. The men of the 48th had to be content with telling lies to the other battalions as to their share in bringing down the aeroplane.
A week later the battalion left their camp at 10 o'clock at night, and, marching to Peronne, entrained there at midnight for the north. It was a cold and tedious journey, and lasted until 3 o'clock of the following day, when the train reached Bailleul. Snow was falling heavily as the men detrained, and they immediately set out for billets, at which they arrived some three hours later.
The following day was January 10, and that morning they were again on the march. They crossed the frontier into Belgium and took the train once more till they came to Elzenballe, a ruined village not far from Vierstraat, Ridge Wood and other places that were made familiar to them in the autumn of 1916.
That evening parties went forward from the battalion to reconnoitre the sector to be occupied. On the following day the unit set out for the front line. It marched through Ridge Wood, past the old familiar brasserie, and then was carried on a light railway to a point on the Ypres-Comines Canal, known as Spoil Bank. The strength of the battalion was at this time about 30 officers and 620 of other ranks. On the night of the 11th it was in the front line.
The position which the battalion now held was not far from Hollebeke. Snow lay deep on the ground, but a light frost kept it dry under foot, and during this term in the line the conditions were quite pleasant. In the ten days that it occupied the front area the battalion suffered but one casualty. The sector was very quiet, as at that season of the year there was little possibility of an attack being attempted by either side.
Yet there was every reason to fear that when weather conditions improved an attack would be made by the enemy. For the defence system in this particular place seemed incapable of defence and promised success to any formidable assault made upon it. Moreover the outline of the country was particularly adapted to that pivotal method of sweeping attack on which Hindenburg was supposed to rely so strongly.
The line here had been held by one of those British divisions that had been very much reduced in strength. Receiving no reinforcements they were employed on a sector where non-provocation of the enemy was the policy to be followed. This arrangement, sometimes necessary, had its advantages and disadvantages, and in this case the latter showed themselves in the state of neglect and disorganisation into which the defences had fallen. Immediately the Australian troops occupied this part of the front there began the proper organisation of its defence. Trenches had to be dug, strong-posts constructed and wire entanglements erected. The five Australian divisions were in this northern sector at the time, and the same programme of reconstruction and preparation was being followed by all of them.
When therefore the 48th Battalion was relieved from the front line and went back to Curragh camp near La Clytte, it did not go back to absolute rest. Things were too busy in the forward area. Parties of men were daily being sent to Spoil Bank and beyond that point on road-making, laying cables, or some such work. The distance which these working parties had to travel from their battalion was very great, and all ranks were glad when the unit once more set out for Spoil Bank.
It remained there until the middle of February, doing the same kind of work, but under happier conditions, for the men were nearer to the scene of their daily occupation. The battalion then had to go to the front line again and during its week of duty there it had the same freedom from casualties as on the previous term.
On the night of February 20 the battalion was relieved and moved to a camp in the back area. There it remained until the end of the month, when it again crossed the frontier into France to spend a few weeks at the village of Meteren.
Colonel Leane had again joined the battalion, from which he had been absent since wounded at Passchendaele on October 12. Since that time the battalion might be said to have enjoyed an unbroken spell. It certainly had no continuous spell from hard work, for whether in peace or war hard work is incidental to the life of any battalion that would maintain its efficiency. And during those months it had been enduring the rigours of winter. But those rigours were endured mostly in camp; it had had but two brief terms in the line, and that in a sector that was very peaceful. Its great spell, however, had been a spell from casualties in which the 48th had such a tragic record. Comparing these months with the full term of the unit's life, one may well refer to the immunity of this period as a spell.