Battle of the Yser
Flers and the Somme Winter
October 1916 – February 1917
An exhausted mule, Fricourt, December 1916 [AWM E00091]
After their operations at Pozières and Mouquet Farm in July, August and September 1916, the divisions of the Australian Imperial Force were sent to garrison the lines east of Ypres (Ieper) in Belgium. This was a relatively quiet sector at the time.
Because of the losses the Australians had sustained on the Somme it came as a shock to them to learn that they were to go back there in mid-October 1916. The move was very unpopular. One onlooker who observed Australians leaving Flanders on 12 October 1916 noted how grim the men looked ‘without the least buoyancy about them’.
The autumn rains had set in by the time the Australians reached the Somme and the whole battlefield had become a sea of mud. Broken ground, easily traversed in dry weather, was a bog. Trenches and tracks were often impassable. It could take relays of stretcher-bearers many hours to bring in a wounded man, the mud slowing the journey to a kilometre an hour.
As the Australians reached the Somme, the great offensive that had begun with such high hopes on 1 July 1916 was nearing its end. The fight now was about seizing suitable positions for the winter during which major campaigning was impossible. On 5 November 1916, the Australians launched one attack near Gueudecourt before dawn and another near Flers in mid-morning. A further attack was made near Flers on the 14th. These actions were made in some of the worst conditions the Australians were to experience on the Western Front.
These attacks were carried out by two battalions of the First Division. The battalion at Gueudecourt, after an exhausting journey through the mud, was seen and shelled and was unable to assemble in no-man’s-land. The troops advanced in good order but because of the poor conditions they could not keep pace with the creeping barrage. Similar conditions existed at Flers later in the day and, while troops from both assaulting forces held parts of the enemy trenches for some hours, the partial gains were not defensible and the Australians withdrew. The gains made on a second attempt near Flers on 14 November also had to be given up.
On 18 November 1916, the Battle of the Somme officially ended and for the remainder of the winter of 1916–17 the Australians garrisoned the line east of Flers. From there they kept pressure on the Germans by means of small attacks and raids. However, the main battle was against mud, rain and frost-bite.
The front lines were up to twelve kilometres away from good roads so major efforts were made to repair approach roads to allow supplies to be brought forward. As the roads neared the front they became ‘duckboard’ tracks’, the only surface by which it was possible to get across the sea of mud. Supplies of hot food, leather waistcoats, thigh boots, worsted gloves, dry socks gradually reached the front where they made the awful conditions if not better at least bearable. In the rear, however, both the accommodation and comfort for troops in reserve were dramatically improved.
Four weeks of colder and brighter weather from mid-January to mid-February 1917 froze the land and water hard and improved conditions although new troubles arrived. Bread could not be cut with a knife, hands were frozen numb within seconds if exposed, boiling tea quickly became ice, and German shells, no longer cushioned by the mud, exploded with more deadly effect. This ‘Somme Winter’ experience was not easily forgotten by men who served through it. One historian of the AIF has described the mood engendered by the terrible losses of the Somme battles and the trials of the winter:
The world seemed a perpetual round of pain, misery and death, and men seemed to endure ceaseless travail, till their souls were deadened, and they resigned their course on earth to the whims of a malicious fate … They had come to Armageddon.
Bill Gammage, The Broken Years, Sydney, 1990
- Battle of the Somme
- Wikipedia article
- More information
- Google search
- Battle of Flers-Courcelette
- Wikipedia article
- More information
- Firstworldwar.com search
This site is being added to progressively. See the Updates page for new regular additions.
© 2008 Department of Veterans' Affairs and Board of Studies NSW :: Last update - November 2008