France 1918: Defence of Amiens

Amiens, Amiens Cathedral

At Amiens - The crash of the missiles

During the period March to August 1918, Australians were much in evidence at Amiens and in the surrounding villages. Australian Corps Headquarters was in the Château de Bertangles eight kilometres north of the city. On 12 August 1918, King George V came to Bertangles to confer a knighthood on the commander of the Australian Corps, Lieutenant General John Monash. This was just days after the great advance of the AIF against the Germans to the east of Villers-Bretonneux on 8 August 1918 at the Battle of Amiens.

The gate, Château de Bertangles, Bertangles. [DVA]

Château de Bertangles, Bertangles. [DVA]

The Knighting of Lieutenant General Sir John Monash on 12 August 1918.

From nearby Coisy, men of the 5th Australian Division watched Amiens being bombarded. Australian Engineers built a light railway through the area to carry supplies towards the front, further to the east. On 8 April 1918, No 3 Squadron Australian Flying Corps established itself at Poulainville, just six kilometres from the city. In July 1918, race meetings were held at the village of Allonville. Rivery, now virtually a suburb, was a rest area and here weary soldiers relaxed in boats on the River Somme. Amiens is famous for its market gardens, ‘Les Hortillonages’, along the Somme River flats and the AIF made good use of the area’s home-grown vegetables.

A party of the 5th Australian Division Pioneers transporting fresh vegetables from abandoned market gardens, Amiens, France, May 1918. [AWM E02430]

In July 1918, Prime Minister William Morris ‘Billy’ Hughes visited and addressed the men of the 2nd Division camped at Camon, another Amiens suburb. At Blangy-Tronville, east of the city along the Somme, Australian Engineers and Pioneers created billets reminiscent of the landscape at Gallipoli. Finally, in the city itself was an Australian Red Cross depot which dispensed to the troops ‘comforts’ parcels that were packed all over Australia by thousands of volunteers, mostly women.

The Australian Red Cross depot, Amiens, c.1918. [AWM H01035]

But Amiens was not just a quiet rest area. On the night of 11 April, as they were waiting beside a rail siding in the suburb of St Roch, the 11th Battalion were subjected to an intensive air raid. One man was killed and many wounded. The battalion historian, Captain Walter Belford, described that night as the worst attack from the air that the battalion ‘was ever subjected to’:

The bombing raid … always remained a very vivid picture in the minds of all the troops who were with the battalion on this occasion. The bombing was carried on hour after hour by successive squadrons, and all night the crash of the missiles could be heard far and near… several parachute flares were dropped from the enemy planes. These … brightened until they burned with fiercely brilliant lights, which illuminated the whole country for miles around rendering all objects as clearly defined as if in daylight … There was not a man but believed his last hour had come.

Captain Walter Belford, Legs-Eleven, Being the Story of the 11th Battalion (AIF) in the Great War of 1914-1918, Perth, 1940, pp.553-554

Shell-fire damage in Amiens, France, April, 1918. [AWM E02163]

British Army soldiers amid the ruins of Amiens, France, c.1918 [AWM H09698]

A German shell exploding in Amiens, France, c.1918. [AWM H09699]

5th Division staff officers at Coisy viewing Amiens being shelled, A Henry Fullwood, [watercolour and gouache with charcoal, AWM ART02466]