Belgium 1914
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- Noreuil, Noreuil Australian Cemetery
Noreuil, Noreuil Australian Cemetery
Mangled bodies and shattered limbs – Vaulx Australian Field Ambulance Cemetery
German engineers prepare mines in a French village before their withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line, spring 1917. [AWM C01094]
In late March 1917, the German Army was withdrawing east and north – east of Bapaume back to its new fortress, the Hindenburg Line. This long stretch of trenches and barbed wire ran from Arras in a south–easterly direction towards Bullecourt, where it circled the village. After the occupation of Bapaume on 17 March 1917, elements of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) pursued the enemy towards the Hindenburg Line over a triangle of French countryside enclosed roughly by the roads leading out of Bapaume to the north and east: the N17 and the N30. In this area are a series of villages where the Germans fought delaying, rearguard actions to allow as much work as possible to be completed on the Hindenburg Line. Placenames such as Lagnicourt, Vaulx–Vraucourt, Morchies, Louverval, Noreuil, Boursies and Hermies, where sharp actions took place costing Australian lives, passed into Australian military history but are now largely forgotten.
The explosion of a mine in a French village captured on film by a German soldier prior to his withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line, spring 1917. [AWM C01095]
Today, as in 1917, this is an open countryside of large fields and views stretching across gradual undulations and big, gentle ridges. A feature of the area are the so–called ‘sunken roads’ lying beneath the level of the field boundaries. This ‘sunken’ effect was due to the continual ploughing over the centuries which raised the level of the fields at the edges, making steep banks for the roads. The Australians, the British and the Germans all used the banks for bivouacs and defences as they gave protection against enemy fire. Little livin niches were burrowed into the sides of the road, where a man might live out of the rain and be fairly safe from shell bursts. In this way whole companies of men could find a temporary home in burrows called by the Germans ‘rabbit holes’.
Commonwealth War Graves Commission sign for Vaulx Australian Field Ambulance Cemetery on the D10E, Vaulx–Vraucourt. [DVA]
The path across the fields to Vaulx Australian Field Ambulance Cemetery. [DVA]
An advance dressing station of the main Vaulx–Bullecourt road, 1917. [AWM E00591]
An Australian journey through this old AIF battleground might leave Bapaume on the D956, crossing the Autoroute (A1) just short of the village of Beaugnâtre. Just beyond the Autoroute bridge is a right–hand turn on to the D10E, 2 km along which, on the right in the fields, is a small cemetery: Vaulx Australian Field Ambulance Cemetery. Along this road in April and May 1917 came thousands of Australian casualties from the two battles of Bullecourt fought on 11–12 April and 3–16 May 1917. This small cemetery, as its name suggests, was started by Australians – the 12th Australian Field Ambulance – and the work during the two battles was described as ‘extremely heavy’. According to the official Australian medical history, 234 Australian Army Medical Corps (AAMC) personnel were either killed or wounded during this period, and a diarist of the 4th Field Ambulance described the situation on 11 April at the height of the first battle of Bullecourt:
...the doctors with their assistants never stopped … the stretcher bearers had one continuous stream of wounded and barely had time to eat. Every possible man helped to carry the wounded in … The weather kept fine till the afternoon and then the snow came and it was frightfully difficult for the bearers to pick their tracks. The men were drenched and cold, but as nothing as compared to the wounded who lay out in the snow. It was a sight to see the smaller men stick to their job, backwards and forwards … [It] was the most solid days carrying in France.
Unnamed 4th Field Ambulance diarist, quoted in AG Butler, The Western Front, Vol II, Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services, 1914–1918, Canberra, 1940, p. 136
‘The morale of the stretcher bearer’, wrote the commanding officer of the 7th Field Ambulance, ‘was remarkable … their casualties were heavy but there was no hesitation’. In this area, the bearers faced a long carry over open and exposed country:
… the road was packed with stretchers and walking wounded … Fritz shelled our track from one end to the other, on the second trip one of my squad was hit in the thigh, we carried him out and got another man. On our next trip another of our squad got a small piece of HE (high explosive) in the leg but carried on … We went on throughout the day. At dusk a HE shell wounded two of the rear squad and hit our patient. We hurried on and returned but found that another shell had killed one of those previously wounded and wounded the patient and another bearer … At night we were relieved.
Unnamed 5th Field Ambulance diarist, quoted in AG Butler, The Western Front, Vol II, Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services, 1914–1918, Canberra, 1940, pp. 149–150
Headstone of Private Eric Willis, 7th Field Ambulance, Vaulx Australian Field Ambulance Cemetery, Vaulx–Vraucourt. [DVA]
Headstone of Private Seymour Healy, 7th Field Ambulance, Vaulx Australian Field Ambulance Cemetery, Vaulx–Vraucourt. [DVA]
Conditions at the so–called ‘Regimental Aid Posts’ (RAPs), close to the front line, were even more horrific. In these tiny posts, AAMC doctors attached to infantry battalions gave initial life–saving first aid to the wounded before they either walked or were carried back to motor or horse–drawn ambulance collecting locations behind the lines. Lance Corporal Roger Morgan, 1st Australian Field Ambulance, described conditions in the 3rd Battalion’s RAP just behind the fighting line at Bullecourt:
Casualties passed through our hands in one endless procession; mangled bodies and shattered limbs, but one cannot be but callous and indifferent as practical assistance is needed here, not sympathy … Working practically for 48 hours without rest and very little food, blood to the elbows as there is not enough water to drink much less to wash.
Lance Corporal Roger Morgan, quoted in AG Butler, The Western Front, Vol II, Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services, 1914–1918, Canberra, 1940, p. 148
Stretcher–bearers carry a wounded man to safety near Noreuil during the battle for Bullecourt, France, May 1917. [AWM E00441]
In Vaulx Australian Field Ambulance Cemetery are the graves of eight men of the Australian Army Medical Corps, six of them from the 7th Australian Field Ambulance. This unit was active near the front line at the second battle of Bullecourt, 2–17 May 1917, and helped evacuate hundreds of wounded Australian and British soldiers. In Row C, Grave 14, is Private Eric Willis of the 7th Australian Field Ambulance, who was killed in action, aged 20, on 3 May 1917 near Bullecourt. Willis, a stretcher–bearer from Auburn, Victoria, was hit by a shell and, according to his mates, lived to be carried back to a dressing station. There, calling piteously ‘Mother, Mother’, he died. Close by, in Row B, Grave 17, is another 7th Field Ambulance stretcher–bearer, Private Seymour Healy, who also died on 3 May 1917, aged 27. Healy was carrying wounded on the road between Bullecourt and Vaulx–Vraucourt when he was hit by shell fragments. Private John Kennedy reported that Healy was placed on a stretcher, said goodbye to his ‘very dear friend’ Barry, who was nursing him, and died.
Vaulx Australian Field Ambulance Cemetery. [DVA]
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© 2007 Department of Veterans' Affairs and Board of Studies NSW :: Last update - 17 February 2008