The Diggers 3

The Diggers 3

I could picture that old man in days before the war sitting in front

of his house in the summer evenings with the vines trailing round

the front door and the apple blossoms blooming in his garden. In the

distance the mists crept up from the Somme, the village girls leading

the cattle in from the pastures came down the street; the children

played on the pavement, making the night glad with their innocent

prattle. Possibly the church bell was then ringing out the Angelus,

calling the devotees to worship, while the old man sat there smoking

his long-shanked pipe with the tobacco piled high over the bowl and

the gleaming threads falling down on the breast of his coat. Then,

after a while, he might go into a café, drink his glass of red wine

and play a game of draughts or dominoes with his neighbour. And he

knew the village, knew every man and woman there. It was his native

place, loved as only the French can love the spot of earth on which

they were born, and known to him as a painter knows every tint of

colour on the picture which he has completed.

 

We came to a cross-road and here for a moment the driver stopped

to look at his map. Round us the country stretched for miles, with

here and there a ruined village or farmhouse breaking the landscape.

Under us the road was a dun colour, showing that broken bricks had

been used in the fashioning of the highway. Thistles grew by the

roadside and through these could be seen many strands of rusted wire,

with here and there a cross turning green with the rain and topped

with a trench helmet or khaki cap. Flowers grew there, late flowers

nodding gravely in the breeze. Not a house was to be seen, not even

the ruins of a wall. Above this was a board with something written on

it, and leaning over the car I could read the message. This was what

it told me:

 

HERE ONCE STOOD THE VILLAGE OF VILLARS-CARBONNEL.

 

 

THE FIGHTERS

 

The loaded limbers trenchward wend, the straining horses churning

The slush upon the cobbled road that takes them to the fray,

And far ahead in lurid tints the fires of war are burning

And leprous white the poplar stumps that line the soldiers' way.

 

The great rage smites the heavy world and tears the sky asunder

(Oh! silent forms that bow and bend beneath the heavy load!)

The East aflame with war's red strife and riot of its thunder

(Poor weary boys that wend their way along the shrapnelled road.)

 

Oh! hearts that follow, wish them luck and strength in sleep and

waking,

These gallant youths that come and go through all the gloomy night

To labour on the mighty job; its stress and toil unshaking

The fire and faith of mighty souls that battle for the right.

 

Oh! Heaven light their darkest hour and send them safely through it

To reach the goal of their desires and see the struggle through.

The way is rough and hard the fight. God give them strength to do it,

To weather through and finish up the work they've come to do.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER II

 

VILLERS-BRETONNEUX

 

 

Broken walls, littered streets, charred roof-beams rising in

tortured disarray over the piles of red brick rubbish, stumps of

trees, rusty entanglements, battered barricades, pitted pavements,

disbanded vehicles and derelict guns. This is Villers-Bretonneux, the

village from which the Australians drove the Germans on the night

of April 24-25. The story of the attack, of which we have read so

many accounts, was again told to me by an officer as we stopped for

a while in the village to see the ground over which the men of the

South proved their worth in what we hope will be the last battle of

the Somme.

 

Amiens is the last fringe of civilization. Beyond that we come into

the dead world which was over-run by the German hordes in the

summer of 1918. In the late days of August when the battle lines

were penetrated by them an approach to open warfare was reached.

Endless streams of infantry in field grey streaked through and over

the British defences and pushed forward behind light machine guns

which now not alone covered the advance from the rear, but opened up

a path by working from the front of the attacking soldiery. Under

such protection the Germans dribbled through, taking all available

shelter, fighting from behind clumps of trees and broken walls,

firing from folds in the earth and newly formed shell-holes and

driving the men in khaki in front of them. But Villers-Bretonneux,

like a mighty rock, withstood the invasion of the war storm and here

it broke itself against the barrier of flesh and blood which was

Britain in arms.

 

The Germans trying to hammer their way through to Amiens were

stopped here, but, determined to get through, they started a heavy

bombardment which lasted for four hours and in which a lavish supply

of gas, lachrymose, chlorine and mustard, was used. German tanks,

high turreted and gigantic, figured in this attack for the first

time. The battle fine extended from Villers-Bretonneux in the north

to Hangard in the south, and five whole German divisions and some

units from a sixth were engaged in the exploit. In this attack the

Boche pushed the British back to the village of Cachy and on to the

fringe of Bois l'Abbé. This was the position held on the evening of

April 24. Villers-Bretonneux was in German hands, but only as Pompeii

was in the hands of the Romans when Vesuvius was flooding the fated

streets with streams of molten lava.

 

It was at night that the Australians came on to the scene of

conflict, two brigades, one from the Fourth and one from the Fifth

Australian Division attacking. They had marched up to their allotted

positions, but neither brigade had before seen the ground which they

were going to attack.

 

The night was one never to be forgotten, with its battle fights

flaring far ahead, and the roads back from the fighting line crowded

with refugees hurrying away from their devastated villages, their

quiet farms and their burning homes. Old men who had not left their

native place for the past twenty years, came along the roads,

leading little ponies, frightened cows, or some other animals which

belong to the stock of a well-tended farm.

 

Women, old and young, were on the road, carrying their children away

from the horrible holocaust of war. Little boys and girls, wild-eyed

and terrified, plodded along through the press on the roads, not

knowing where they were going, but filled with one thought--to be out

of it, to hide in some humble shelter far from the ravages of the

terrible Boche. Mothers wept and ran backwards and forwards through

the throng of moving figures, calling for petit Jean or petite

Yvette. But the little children were lost, swallowed up in the vortex

of the terrible night.

 

What was happening? What was going to happen? Nobody knew. Only one

thing was certain. The Boche was at the throat of France, putting the

country to the sword, burning the churches, trampling down the little

homes of the simple people. Flying from the menace of the night as

children would fly from a nursery in which a gorilla was loosened,

the poor people were on the road hurrying away from the village of

Villers-Bretonneux, from the town of Amiens, from the fated corners

of France on which the German was pouring his hate.

 

And through this stream of sufferers the Australians, with eyes afire

and teeth hard set, made their way eastwards. That night, above any

other night, they wanted to fight, to get at the foe and send him

reeling back towards the line from which he came.

 

On this night, the 24th, the Australians attacked, driving the enemy

back into Villers-Bretonneux. The struggle was a fierce one in the

dim moonlight and costly to the enemy, who disputed the ground step

by step with bayonet and bomb, through the dark streets lit up by

the flash of explosions, and ghastly with the shrieks of the wounded

and dying. The area of battle was heavy with the gas which had been

thrown into the town in the earlier part of the day and was still

filling shell-hole, creek and cranny.

 

Neither side dared to shell the place, as the artillery of both

friend and enemy were unaware what part of the village was occupied

by their own troops. And so, unaccompanied by the roar of guns, the

grim struggle went on in the darkness, the Germans filled with the

lust of dominance, and the Australians nerved by the sad sights which

they had seen on the road of sorrow that led from Amiens to the

country in the rear.

 

Dawn saw the village cleared of the enemy and saw, too, the dead

lying in heaps on the pavement and gutters. Australians who lived

through that night are of opinion that never yet has the bayonet

found so many victims in one fight. And never was a battle so fierce.

The Peninsula was terrible, Pozieres horrible, Polygon ghastly, but

Villers-Bretonneux was sheer, undiluted hell.

 

 

THE CHARGE

 

The night is still and the air is keen,

Tense with menace the time crawls by--

The ruined houses in front are seen

Blurred in outline against the sky.

 

The dead leaves float in the sighing air,

The darkness moves like a curtain drawn--

A veil which the morning sun will tear

From the face of death. We charge at dawn.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER III

 

TOWARDS PERONNE

 

 

We passed through Lamotte-en-Santerre, a village in complete ruin

like all other villages on the road eastwards from Amiens. The road

to Hamel branches off here, and we were shown the place from a

distance, Hamel, where the Australians fought side by side with the

Americans and came to know the worth of the New Allies which had entered the war.