THE battalion left the front line to set out for the rest area. Making several stages on the journey, it went part of the way on foot, part by bus, until it arrived at Revelles, a village lying west of Amiens. There the unit settled down in billets at the end of September, and remained throughout the following month.
Hard training went on all the time. The long promised war of movement was supposed to have definitely begun, and the character of the training was modified accordingly. Recreation was given its due place, however, and sports meetings were frequently held. A large wooden concert hall was erected in one of the villages of the area, where troupes from different units regularly gave entertainments.
Meanwhile affairs in the war zone were moving very rapidly. On September 27 two British armies, in which many Canadian divisions were included, had begun the operation that resulted in the capture of the Hindenburg Line. Two days later the main attack was launched, the Fourth British Army taking part in it as well as French and American divisions. The Fifth and Third Australian Divisions attached to the Fourth Army played a conspicuous part in the fighting. The artillery of the Fourth Australian Division was engaged, but its infantry was not represented except by those officers and non-commissioned officers who were temporarily attached to an American division for the attack. In the battle which lasted for nine days all the main Hindenburg defences were occupied, and this line definitely broken whose intactness had become so identified with the enemy's hope of final success. The Australian divisions engaged in the advance went back to the rest-area, and henceforth the war had finished for Australian infantry.
At the same time a heavy blow was dealt the enemy in the north. A force composed of the Belgian Army, French divisions and some British units of the Second Army, under the command of the King of the Belgians, began an assault on the Flanders front. The enemy there held his positions lightly, and the operation proved an easy success. It involved the recapture of many old positions lost in the spring, and the withdrawal of the enemy from Lens and Armentieres.
To the members of the 48th Battalion, this shifting of the battle-front eastward now became a matter of first interest. Few details concerning the fighting found their way back to the units isolated in the quiet country villages west of Amiens. Such salient facts as the intelligence reports contained were sceptically considered and debated by the diggers. The number of prisoners stated as captured were, however, regarded as definite indication of success. By the middle of October Lille was evacuated by the enemy, and henceforth the ever shifting flags on the war map registered withdrawal after withdrawal.
The beginning of November found the Australians speculating as to when this phenomenal good luck and facile success was going to cease, anticipating that its cessation would put an abrupt period to their rest. It was rumoured even then that the Germans had reached a line in which they were determined to make a stand, and that the Australian Corps would soon be in action again. The Australian Corps Commander visited the area and addressed the troops of the 48th Battalion to that effect.
On the 8th of the month it was announced that the Fourth Australian Division was to proceed to the front area by train and bus. Orders received by the 48th battalion were to the effect that it should entrain on the following day at 8 o'clock in the evening. Further instructions contained a postponement of the departure for 24 hours.
Immediately the rumour began to spread that the enemy had applied for an armistice. No better confirmation of the rumour could be obtained, however, than an ardent wish among the French civilians that it should be true. In several villages in the area the estaminet proprietors dispensed lavish hospitality to the diggers on the strength of it. The sceptical diggers, long dead to false hopes, were convinced the armistice was still a future event but quite willing to anticipate its celebration.
The battalion was now due to entrain at 10 o'clock on the night of the 10th, but at 2 o'clock in the afternoon there was another postponement for 18 hours, and later on for 34 hours. The rumours concerning the armistice began to get very definite. The French people could talk of nothing else. Amiens was supposed to be madly excited. Individual members of the battalion stole away from the unit and set out for the city to obtain more definite information. These unofficial ambassadors were so enthused by what they saw and heard as to forget all about the responsibility of their mission. They were picked up by the military police, and detained by them whilst the diggers at Revelles were celebrating the official announcement that hostilities should cease on the following day.
The projected movement of the Australian troops was not cancelled, but during the next two days there were again several postponements. The enemy's slow-action mines were just then causing great destruction of railway bridges and roads, and thus continually upsetting all calculation of transport.
At 10 o'clock on the night of the 13th the battalion entrained, and arriving at Epehy next morning marched immediately to Templeux le Grand. There it again entrained and went to Brancourt. The route lay through the Hindenburg Line, and a good view was obtainable of its formidable defences from the open trucks in which the battalion was carried. On the same day the men marched to Fresnoy le Grand, a large town to which the French refugees were then gradually returning.
It was announced that at least two Australian divisions should form part of the British Army of Occupation in Germany, and as the Fourth Division was to be one of them there was great preparation in the 48th Battalion. All the ceremonial of military life was enacted with an exactitude very unusual in campaigning units, cleaning and polishing of uniforms and equipment was insisted on, and the strictest attention to military discipline enforced. A week later there was a rumour that no Australian division was going to Germany. Many were indignant and the rumoured alteration in the arangements [sic] was bitterly commented on; others casually said that they were not sorry if it put an end to "the spit-and-polish" regime.
At the same time the battalion set out from Fresnoy le Grand, and began a long journey north and east through France. It stopped at several villages on the way, spending a night here, a few days there, and crossing the frontier into Belgium marched towards the river Meuse. In Waulsort, a village on the banks of the river, it settled down towards the end of December to spend the few remaining weeks of its existence as a unit.
It were vain to follow further the fortunes of the 48th Battalion. It would be but a narration of the commonplace, the commonplace of demobilisation. Moreover it would not be the story of the 48th. For the 48th was daily losing its identity. Gone was the old life, with its friendships formed by danger and so often broken by death. Now many were beginning to feel that its excitements, its hardships, its fatigues, its risks, were the very things that made military life tolerable. The few remaining old hands of the battalion, men who had seen service in 1914, in early 1915, were shouldering their packs for the last time and setting out for home. The methods of demobilisation admitted of no spectacular disbanding. Every fortnight saw small drafts of men trudge off without formality to join the train that should carry them to the French coast. Away they went, to be once more miners or farmers or clerks or mere drifters on the sea of life. But they who remained to see those first drafts leave felt that the spirit of a fuller life went with them, and that the story of a battalion was told.