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

Pozières, The First Australian Division Memorial

Men who had been in hell – the bombardment of Pozières, 24-26 July 1916

For three days, 24 to 26 July 1916, the Germans relentlessly bombarded Pozières. The aim of this concentrated shelling was not simply to prepare for a counter–attack but to inflict as much damage and loss on the Australians as possible. Also shelled were the approaches to the village, by which vital supplies entered and hundreds of walking wounded and stretcher–bearers carrying the severely injured exited. One of these approaches was the ‘sunken road’, which reached Pozières from the countryside to the south–west on the other side of the main road just opposite First Australian Division Street. Enemy shells rained down on the village’s main street and along the ‘sunken road’ for most of 24 July. Explosions tore at the landscape around ‘Gibraltar’ and where the First Division Memorial stands today. The 3rd Battalion (New South Wales) took cover in hastily dug trenches:

In this inferno the ‘sunken road’ became known as ‘Dead Men’s Road’. Bodies lay along its flattened banks; trees were uprooted and turned into stumps; over everything lay the dust of explosions. Such situations can bring out the best in men and one who came to the fore was Private Edward Jenkins, age 44, a 3rd Battalion stretcher–bearer. On his enlistment papers in 1915 he had described himself as a ‘bushman’ and Charles Bean described Jenkins as ‘one who had constantly been in hot water when out of the line’. During the worst of the bombardment on 24 July Jenkins was observed constantly caring for the wounded with the ‘uttermost tenderness’, giving them the last of his water, refusing water himself when it was brought up so that the wounded could have it, raising little shelters for them and trying to remove them safely out of danger. Captain James Harris, 3rd Battalion, felt Jenkins saved many lives that day and that all of those he rescued were safely evacuated and lived. That evening, Jenkins himself ‘when taking a dixie of tea to the sufferers’ was blown to pieces by a shell.

Despite the shelling, the First Division mounted repeated attacks and by the evening of 26 July had pushed the enemy from Pozières. However, the bombardment went on, the worst day being 25 July. On that day the 11th Battalion (Western Australia) held positions across the main street in the north–eastern part of Pozières, just beyond the ruins. Here men lay in shallow, hastily dug trenches while German shells rained down:

According to the Australian War Memorial’s Roll of Honour, 57 men of the 11th Battalion died on 25 July 1916. Of these, nine were recovered for burial and the headstones of six of them are in Pozières British Cemetery. Here, for example, in Plot III, Row K, Grave 31, is Private William Clarke, age 27, of East Fremantle, Western Australia. Described as ‘dark, stout and clean shaven,’ records indicate that he was wounded and carried out of the line by battalion stretcher–bearers, one of whom was Private Charles King. King told the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau that he had brought Clarke out but that the shelling was ‘too heavy for us to stop and dress the wounded’. Clarke’s remains were eventually found and identified to the extent that he has a known grave.

Most of the men of the 11th Battalion who died under the German bombardment of Pozières on 25 July 1916 – 48 soldiers – were never found. Their names are commemorated on the walls of the Australian National Memorial at Villers–Bretonneux but their remains lie somewhere in the soil to the north–east of modern day Pozières. One of them is Private Ernest Pirani, age 19, of Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. His disappearance caused his mother much grief which she expressed in a letter written from Kalgoorlie on 29 September 1916 to the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau in London:

This experience of one battalion at Pozières was repeated through all 12 battalions of the First Division and through those support units – pioneers, medical corps, engineers – whose duties took them to the village and the front line.

The German bombardment to which the men of the 1st Division AIF were subjected after their capture of Pozières was perhaps the worst ever experienced by Australians on the Western Front. When the soldiers of the First Division were relieved and came out of the line they were observed by Sergeant Edgar Rule, 14th Battalion (Victoria):

Charles Bean later wrote of how they seemed far different to the jaunty Australian soldiers of old. Taken to rest in Vandencourt Wood they seemed to Bean more like boys recovering from a long illness; they lay around quietly smoking, reading books and writing letters home. After Gallipoli, it had been a terrible initiation to the reality of war on the Western Front.

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