Belgium 1914

Battle of the Yser

France 1915

Notre Dame de Lorette

France 1916

Battle of Fromelles

The Battle of the Somme

France 1917

Battle of Vimy Ridge

Advance to the Hindenburg Line

First and Second Bullecourt

Belgium 1917

Battle of Messines

Third Battle of Ypres

Battle of the Menin Road

Battle of Polygon Wood

Battles of Broodseinde, Poelcappelle and Passchendaele

France 1918

Defence of Amiens

Battle of Hamel

Battle of Amiens

Battle of Mont St Quentin

Hindenburg Line

Armistice

Treaty of Versailles

Harbonnières, Heath Cemetery 8 August 1918

With great dash and skill – the advance to the Morcourt Valley

Beyond Lamotte–Warfusée the N29 runs on across the plain. After about four kilometres it dips down steeply, crosses a valley floor, and again rises steeply. This is what Charles Bean called the Morcourt Valley, marked on French maps today as the Vallée Brioche. Off to the right a little past Lamotte–Warfusée, a side road leads to the little village of Bayonvillers which is visible a short distance across the fields. On 8 August the AIF’s second objective lay a little east of the Morcourt Valley, northwards three kilometres to the Somme and southwards three kilometres to just west of the village of Harbonnières – the old French Amiens line.

The advance along the axis of the Roman road was taken up by four battalions moving in a south–easterly direction. The 31st Battalion (Queensland and Victoria) moved towards Bayonvillers where a brave German battery took on the tanks and in quick succession disabled six of them. A seventh made straight for the battery but was also disabled although by that time the infantry had come up and captured the gun. The Australians pressed on to the north of the village towards Harbonnières. A German gun was captured after one of its teams had been shot by Australian Lewis gunners. Far off to the south of Harbonnières, the men of the 31st could see a large German observation balloon being towed away. Soon they were approaching the scrub at the edge of the Morcourt Valley and here German resistance stiffened and heavy machine gun fire brought a temporary halt.

North of the road the push towards Morcourt Vally was led, from south to north, by the 30th (New South Wales), 46th (Victoria) and 45th (New South Wales) Battalions. A German anti–tank gun was driven from the highway by Australian Lewis gunners. Whenever enemy machine gunners delayed the advance, a tank would go forward to break down the resistance. Then the advance would resume. Many prisoners were taken and large numbers of field guns and machine guns were captured. Behind the 45th Battalion came a soldier with a large pot of white paint marking each gun he saw with the words ‘Captured by the 45th Bn. AIF’. Several Germans came out of a wood to surrender to this paintbrush–wielding Australian. Soon all three battalions and their tanks were nearing the edge of the Morcourt Valley.

For the tanks the steep western slope of the valley was an obstacle. One rolled over while trying to descend to the valley floor. So the tanks ranged themselves on the rim and assisted the infantry by firing at German positions with their small cannon and machine guns. The German defenders here were already in some confusion as the Australians arrived. Armoured cars proceeding along the Roman road from Lamotte–Warfusée had already paused in their drive eastwards to shoot up enemy positions in the valley. British artillery following closely behind the Australian infantry were already firing into Morcourt Valley but such was the enemy fire from that area that the soldiers were brought to ground and forced to move forward in more calculated rushes.

Morcourt Vally was a major bivouac area for German reserves and its sides were honeycombed with terraced dug–outs and horse lines. From the highest terrace the German fire was temporarily holding down the 46th Battalion. Here a young leader, Lieutenant Arthur Kemp, age 21, of Ballarat, Victoria, came to the fore. Lieutenant John Hall, leading the company down into the valley, had been killed as he tried to control the rushes forward with a whistle:

The position gained by Kemp was situated around a red brick house on the left–hand side of the road where the Germans had built a trench for machine guns. A tank shell destroyed the house and about 50 Germans surrendered. To the south the 30th Battalion with five tanks was also making headway; two of them went round by the road while three others ‘crashed down through the undergrowth’. The enemy were unnerved and dozens surrendered. Beyond that, the 31st Battalion was also pushing through the valley with a tank which was nosing around the bushes and huts. By 10.40 am the Australians battalions and the British tanks had virtually secured control of the Morcourt Valley and pressed on a couple of hundred metres beyond it to the AIF’s second objective line for the day. Later that day a further successful advance was made to the final objective, the old French Amiens line.

As the sun set on 8 August 1918 both sides took stock. For the Allies it had been a day of unprecedented success. The Australian and Canadian Corps, assisted by French and British attacks on their flanks, had pushed the Germans back an astonishing 8–9 kilometres on average. Thousands of enemy soldiers were taken prisoner and they had lost hundreds of guns, untold numbers of machine guns and other equipment. Four days later, King George V knighted the Australian Corps commander, Lieutenant General John Monash. The investiture was held on the steps of the Chateau de Bertangles, corps headquarters. Drawn up in a semicircle around the driveway in front of the King were dozens of German guns captured by Australians on 8 August. General Erich Ludendorff, the Deputy Chief of the German General Staff, called that day simply the ‘schwarze Tag’, the ‘black day’ of the German Army.

The most famous piece of equipment to fall into Australian hands on 8 August was the ‘Amiens Gun’. This monster, an ex–naval gun weighing 45 tons (40,824 kilograms), was mounted on a specially constructed railway carriage and used to bombard Amiens from a distance of over 25 kilometres. On 8 August, as the Australians were advancing east of Harbonnières village, three trains were observed on a military line. One of them was pulling the ‘Amiens Gun’. British cavalry were already moving through the Australians towards the gun when the train carrying it was hit by a bomb from a British warplane. The crew deserted the train and the gun was claimed by the 31st Battalion AIF. Later that evening, three Australian engineers shunted the train back behind the Allied lines. After being displayed in Paris, the gun was shipped to Australia where the barrel and its canopy can be viewed today outside the administration building of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. The huge weapon is a visual reminder of one of the AIF’s greatest days on the Western Front. According to Charles Bean, this day was described by Sergeant Francis Clausen, 59th Battalion, of Newport, Victoria, as ‘a très bon stunt … that I wouldn’t have missed for worlds.’

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