Battle of the Yser
Pozières, Windmill
Buried with dead and dying – the capture of Pozières heights
The 2nd Australian Division’s memorial at the Windmill, Pozières, Will Dyson, 1917. [crayon and pencil on paper AWM ART02311]
By the time the infantry of the Second Division AIF fought their way up to the Windmill in the first days of August 1916 they had suffered more than 6,500 casualties (killed, wounded and missing). The division mounted two major attacks from the northern side of the village against German positions on the ridge known as the OG1 and OG2 lines. Their first attack on 29 July failed to make any progress and the German bombardments became even more intense.
The initial failure of the Second Division to take Pozières heights was followed by frenzied preparations for a new assault. Communication trenches and front–line trenches were dug across this devastated corpse–ridden landscape to convey the attacking battalions to jumping off positions east of Pozières village. This was essential work if men were to be able to approach these positions in comparative safety but it was conducted under continuing heavy German shelling of the whole area. Digging parties were driven hard and Second Lieutenant John Raws, 23rd Battalion (Victoria), of Adelaide, wrote of what it was like as he and 200 men of the battalion worked on the night of 31 July 1916 to the north–east of the village:
Just before daybreak an officer out there, who was hopelessly rattled, ordered us to go. The trench was not finished. I took on myself to insist on the men staying, saying that any man who stopped digging would be shot. We dug on and finished amid a tornado of bursting shells. All the time, mind, the enemy flares were making the whole area almost as light as day. We got away as best we could. I was buried twice, and thrown down several times – buried with dead and dying. The ground was covered with bodies in all stages of decay and mutilation and I would, after struggling free from the earth, pick up a body by me to try and lift him out with me, and find him decayed corpse. I pulled a head off – was covered with blood. The horror was indescribable.
Lieutenant John Raws, quoted by Charles Bean, The AIF in France, 1916, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, Vol111, Sydney, 1929, pp.658–9
Grass mound covering the ruins of the windmill, Pozières. [DVA]
The bombardment to which Raws and his men were subjected was described officially as ‘normal’. Charles Bean certainly felt that the shell fire at Pozieres was the worst ever experienced by the AIF at any stage in the war and that by and large staff headquarters well behind the lines had no idea of the reality of these conditions at the front. In writing his official account of these days at Pozières – 29 July to 2 August – Bean made much use of the accounts of Raws, who had been a journalist in civilian life. Bean said Raws had in no way exaggerated. His reports were the ‘fair and accurate record of the experience of a sensitive man.’
Australian officers at what was then known as the Second Division Memorial at the windmill site, Pozières, May 1917. The Second Division eventually built its memorial on the Western Front at Mont St Quentin, Péronne. [AWM E02059]
However, all this furious digging allowed the infantry of the Second Division to assemble, virtually undetected by the Germans, at dusk on 4 August 1916. After a three–minute intense bombardment the Australians advanced at 9.15 pm to seize OG 1, and OG2 was taken soon afterwards. On the morning of 5 August they could look out from the heights of the Windmill on Pozieres ridge over the German rear line and to the rooftops of the village of Courcellette. It was a virtually unshelled landscape of green fields, a great contrast to the devastated terrain behind them and, in Bean’s words, ‘it brought encouragement as a view over the promised land’.
The original Second Division memorial at Pozières on the windmill site, September 1917. The tripod flag pole in the background marks the actual site of the ruined windmill. The Second Division eventually built its memorial on the Western Front at Mont St Quentin, Péronne. [AWM E04578, AWM E04579]
Panorama of the Pozières battlefield as taken from the windmill site in September 1917 [AWM E01003A-J]
Australian officers at the original Second Division Memorial at Pozières on the windmill site, September 1917. The inscription reads: ‘To the Officers and Men of the 2nd Australian Division who fell at the taking of Pozieres ridge, July–August 1916’. The tripod flag pole in the background marks the actual site of the ruined windmill. The Second Division eventually built its memorial on the Western Front at Mont St Quentin, Péronne. [AWM P03631_180]
Looking west towards Pozieres village from the so–called Pozières Ridge and the Windmill site. [DVA]
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© 2008 Department of Veterans' Affairs and Board of Studies NSW :: Last update - November 2008