Battle of the Yser
Pozières, Windmill
Digging for their lives – the 48th Battalion at the Windmill
The Second Division was relieved by the battalions of the Fourth Division. Men of the 48th Battalion (South Australia and Western Australia) were posted in forward positions near the Windmill site itself.
In the early hours of 7 August, the Germans staged a counter–attack across the country to the north of the Windmill. They advanced past a deep shelter in which were men of the 14th Battalion (Victoria), including Lieutenant Albert Jacka who had won a Victoria Cross on Gallipoli.
As the Germans advanced past Jacka’s shelter one threw a grenade through its doorway. It rolled down the stairs and exploded. With pistol in hand, Jacka and some others sprang up into the open. They observed many enemy soldiers between themselves and the Australian lines. Jacka lined up his seven remaining men and was proposing to charge through the Germans back to Pozières when he saw a column of Australian prisoners coming towards him escorted by enemy soldiers. When the column got within metres of Jacka he sprang from a trench and charged forward. Some of the Germans threw down their weapons but others shot back and all of Jacka’s men were hit. Other Australians close by, seeing Jacka’s charge, sprang to his assistance and the prisoners also tried to grab rifles from their German captors. The fight intensified as more Australians now began to attack the Germans:
Some were shooting point–blank at others face to face with them. Others were fighting with the bayonet, this being one of the few occasions when bayonets were really crossed. Others were on their knees in front of standing figures praying for their lives
Charles Bean, The AIF in France, 1916,The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, Vol111, Sydney, 1929, p.720
Concrete remains, Windmill site, Pozières. [DVA]
Jacka went after German bombers, killing and wounding a number of them. He received a wound which nearly killed him. The whole affray was soon over and it ended the last serious German counter–attack on the Pozières ridge. For his courage that day Jacka was awarded the Military Cross for what Charles Bean called ‘the most dramatic and effective act of individual audacity in the history of the AIF’.
The outposts of the 48th Battalion had also fought determinedly against this German attack, especially one commanded by Sergeant David Twining, of Ballarat, Victoria. This position was somewhere out in the fields from the Windmill towards Coucellette and the scene there is depicted in the Australian War Memorial’s diorama ‘The Battle of Pozières 1916’ in the Memorial’s Western Front Gallery. The diorama was produced in 1929–30 as Charles Bean was working on his Pozières history (Volume III of the official history) and the story appears in a caption below the model.
A captured German trench to the north–west of the windmill, Pozières October 1916. [AWM E00007]
It is dawn on 7 August 1916 on Pozières heights. In this huge shell crater shelter the survivors of an outpost of the 48th Battalion. In the previous 36 hours there has been yet another terrible German bombardment described by Padre William Devine in his history of the 48th Battalion:
All through the night of the 5th, all through the 6th it lasted, a great impersonal horror, until noon on the 7th, when it abated so suddenly that one felt as if the world had just been freed from the influence of some foul and demonic oppression. In the front trenches men were digging for their lives. Shrapnel burst over their heads. High explosive shells stove in their wretched parapets. The wounded with the parching thirst of haemorrhage upon them called piteously for water. Ever and anon rang out the weird cry of the trenches ‘Stretcher bearers wanted’. Less and pitifully less became the number of those who dug
William Devine, The Story of a Battalion, Melbourne, 1919, p.40
Pitifully less – in their tour of duty at Pozières heights Charles Bean talked of the ‘shattering loss’ of the 48th Battalion through shell fire: 598 men. The Australian War Memorial’s ‘Roll of Honour’ reveals that 134 of these had been killed in action, and the rest we assume, were the wounded. The diorama caption describes it as ‘the heaviest and most systematic bombardment the Australians ever had to endure in the 1914–1918 war’. This crater was but one of six 48th Battalion outposts in front of the old German trench lines which had all but been pounded out of existence. The shells which ‘had ripped this stretch of tortured earth’ had all but obliterated the other posts killing most of the occupants and six dead can be observed in the diorama’s crater.
Looking across the fields from the Windmail site, Pozières, towards the Tiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme. [DVA]
Peering over the lip of the crater in his shirt sleeves is Sergeant David Twining, the post commander, and beside him, manning the Lewis machine gun, is Private Charles Tognini. Shortly before this point the 48th Battalion had helped Captain Albert Jacka and his men beat back the strong German counter–attack and the diorama caption described the moments after the counter–attack:
Now, the immediate enemy threat having passed them by, they are looking out in the growing light over the crest to the half–hidden mysterious green world beyond … for the next enemy move. They are determined that the vital ridge, won by the men of the Second Division and held by their own Fourth Division, will not be given up. They will remain at their post – alive or dead.
Australian graves near the windmill, Pozières, September 1917. [AWM E00998]
They did not die. The fire from Tognini’s Lewis gun had caused the German counter–attack of that morning to veer away from their position. For his bravery here Tognini was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, the recommendation reading in part:
His work during the whole time was most courageously and cheerfully carried out even after being badly wounded in the leg. He remained in the position until brought in by stretcher bearers on the morning of August 8th 1916.
Private Charles Tognini, recommendation for DCM, www.awm.gov.au/cms_images/awm28/
1/180P1/0122.pdf
That simple description – ‘brought in by stretcher bearers’ – fails to convey the reality of the eventual evacuation of this little outpost. Battalion headquarters on 8 August was unaware that Twining and his mates had survived out there, virtually in no–man’s–land. The commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Raymond Leane, was astonished to receive a message from Twining – ‘I am the only one left. Do you still want me to hold the position?’ Leane ordered Twining back and, as he withdrew, he was wounded attempting to rescue another man. The desperation of this little withdrawal is conveyed in another award recommendation for the Military Medal, that for Private Hugh Davoren:
He with two others who were wounded on the 6th August were found in a shell hole and taken to the Field Ambulance on 9th August. In spite of the fact that Private Davoren had seven wounds he crawled a considerable distance and brought back water for No.4343 Private Tognini, 48th Battalion, the same Tognini portrayed in the diorama who had both legs and one arm broken. The third man became delirious and wanted to shoot himself when Private Davoren took his rifle from him. At the Field Ambulance Private Davoren was cheerful and kept on making jokes
Private Hugh Davoren, recommendation for Military Medal, www.awm.gov.au/cms_images/awm28/1/180P1/0127.pdf
So Davoren too, although not mentioned in the diorama caption, was part of the story.
The 48th Battalion’s departure from the line on 8 August 1916 was later commented on by Padre Devine. To him what came out of the trenches was not a battalion but a ‘jaded, tired, worn out working party’ but one exhibiting ‘war worn weariness never shown by any mere working party’. It is a comment on the fact that more than half the battalion had already been killed or evacuated wounded. When the 48th was eventually withdrawn from Pozières it returned to the small French village of Berteaucourt where it had spent some time before the battle. There they had been warmly received and well looked after by the French farming families. As they marched into the village, the full impact of those few days of their involvement at Pozières were dramatically in evidence to all who saw them:
… when they saw that small party looking so ill–used by war and weather, and understood that it was all that remained of the imposing unit that had marched away, such a wailing chorus of grief and sympathy went up from them as embarrassed the usually casual soldiers. Old men mournfully shock their heads … Old women and young women wept. Many merged with the column, unminded by the officers, to enquire the fate of their numerous friends, of ‘Jack’, of ‘Monsieur George’, of ‘le Sergeant’.
William Devine,The Story of a Battalion Melbourne, 1919, p.50
‘Jack’, ‘Monsieur George’ and ‘le Sergeant’, along with hundreds of other Australians, lay back there at Pozières, on the approaches to Mouquet Farm and on Pozières heights. The experience of the bombardments to which they had been subjected, and the determination with which they had held their ground, would eventually be given some visible expression and commemoration in the Memorial’s ‘Battle of Pozieres, 1916’.
Details from the Australian War Memorial’s ‘Pozières’ diorama in the Western Front Gallery. [DVA]
As Charles Bean knew, the shell hole in the diorama represented the furthest extent of the AIF’s advance through Pozières village and up onto the vital German positions on the ridge over the previous senenteen days. It showed what modern artillery could do, the sort of conditions it forced men to fight in and, if they did not succumb, how they endured. It showed the dead thrown carelessly around the crater, their bodies slowly being absorbed back into the earth itself, their only ‘known grave’. If there is glory in war it is not here but human beings somehow survive. Padre Devine tried to sum up what the 48th Battalion had done on Pozières ridge:
No adequate recognition could come to the battalion for that kind of fighting. Great honours are not given for a Pozières. There you had none of the glamour of an advance, none of the glory of success. There you had only the grim holding–on to ground that was almost untenable. There you had only the sustaining of counter–attacks that were all but irresistible. But the bodies of dead comrades strewn along its shallow trenches: the prostrate figures that lay wounded … these bore their testimony to the heroism that was shown and – it would almost seem – wasted on Pozieres Ridge.
William Devine, The Story of a Battalion, Melbourne, 1919, p.40
When the fighting at Pozieres was over the Second Division placed a memorial on the ruins of the Windmill. Later, however, they decided to place their main battle exploit memorial further to the south–east at Mont St Quentin. In 1932, at Charles Bean’s suggestion, the Windmill site was bought by the AWM’s Council and while it remains in the Memorial’s possession it is today looked after by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. In a sense, given the inscription on the stone there quoted above, the Windmill is the battle memorial for the whole AIF at Pozières. It commemorates them all in that stark phrase, fell more thickly on this ridge than any other. It explains why the Australian War Memorial, in planning a funeral service for an Unknown Australian Soldier in 1993, wanted soil from this particular part of France placed in his tomb in Australia’s capital city.
Autumn, Windmill site, Pozières. [DVA]
The windmill site, Pozières, in the 1920s. The British Tank Corps Memorial is in the foreground. [AWM A03062]
Tanks Corps Memorial, Pozières. [DVA] For more information on the Tanks Corps Memorial go to http://www.webmatters.net/france/ww1_pozieres_tank.htm
The wreckage of a British tank near the windmill site at Pozières, 1917. Tanks were first used by the British at the Battle of the Somme on 15 September 1916 to support the Canadian attack towards Courcelette, a village a little way to the east of Pozières. [AWM P03631_210]
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