Zero Hour (3 page)

THE NEW YEAR DAWNS—1915

Despite enormous losses, the Great War was now a stalemate. The Germans maintained their defensive position on the Western Front and put their energy and resources into helping Austria defeat Russia on the Eastern Front, where a similar network of trenches had formed.

Russia had to survive; if it fell, the German commanders would move all their troops to the Western Front, which would overwhelm the Allies. With fresh troops from Britain, Canada and India, major campaigns were launched along the Western Front to break the German lines and take pressure off the Russians by preventing the Germans from moving more troops to the Eastern Front. But the British and French couldn't break through.

Some British military commanders, like First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Winston Churchill, believed that the stalemate could be broken by knocking out those that supported Germany, in particular the Ottoman Empire, and a plan was made that would plunge the Anzacs into the war.

After a disastrous attempt by British battleships to sail up the Dardanelles Strait and capture the Ottoman capital, Constantinople (now called Istanbul), it was decided that Australian, New Zealand, French and British troops would land on the Gallipoli peninsula on 25 April 1915, cross overland and knock out the Turkish forts that had stopped the ships. It would be the Anzacs' first battle, and newspapers in both countries called it their ‘Baptism of Fire'.

But the Turks halted the Anzacs on the hills overlooking the beaches. For eight months the Anzacs tried to break through. During this time news from the Western Front continued to reach the troops at Gallipoli. Three days before the Anzacs landed, the Germans had used poisonous gas for the first time in the Second Battle of Ypres. Carried on the wind, the green-yellow gas cloud killed thousands in minutes. The Germans had come within two kilometres of Ypres, but the town had still not fallen.

German submarines had also begun sinking any vessel approaching Britain, whether military or not. A British naval blockade was causing serious food shortages in Germany, and the Germans also wanted to starve Britain out of the war. But when one of their submarines sank the
Lusitania
passenger liner, killing more than 1100 people, the opinion of the world was further inflamed against them. The killing of Belgian civilians, the use of gas and now the sinking of the
Lusitania
were used as propaganda against the Germans. But the United States, with its large number of German-born citizens, remained neutral, though it warned Germany against sinking any further non-combat vessels.

In December, the battered, defeated Anzacs were evacuated from Gallipoli and returned to Egypt to guard against a possible Turkish invasion. Fresh Australian and New Zealand reinforcements, who'd continued to volunteer in their thousands, were already in Egypt, and, once they'd filled up the depleted battalions from Gallipoli, the remainder were used to create two new Australian divisions.

A FRESH START

Little had changed on the Western Front. Italy had sided with the British and French, but several Allied attempts to break through at Aubers Ridge and Loos had failed, despite longer artillery barrages of the German trenches and the British using gas for the first time. The failures resulted in Field Marshal French being replaced by General Sir Douglas Haig, who had led one of the British Army corps in the Battle of Mons. Haig, who'd served with the cavalry in the 1899–1902 Boer War, had been at the front since the beginning. He believed the outcome of the war would be decided at the Western Front, and that it would be won with a cavalry charge once the German troops had been worn down and a gap created in their line.

A German machine-gunner lying dead at his post, Somme region.
AWM E03351

Both sides continued to look for ways to break the deadlock. The British, Russian, French and Italian commanders met at Chantilly in France on 6 December and agreed to fight with a common strategy—out of this, the British and French planned to attack the Germans at the Somme in July 1916. But the Germans struck first. Knowing it was no longer possible to break through to Paris, the new German commander, General Erich von Falkenhayn, set out to draw the French to one area—Verdun—and ‘bleed' France ‘to death'. Afterwards the smaller British force would have little choice but to surrender.

BLED WHITE—1916

Over several months the Germans concentrated over 1400 guns in the forests surrounding Verdun, in the north-east of France. Falkenhayn knew that the French would fight to the last man to hold the town, which was of great historic and symbolic importance.

On 21 February 1916, as the Anzacs continued training in the sliding sand of Egypt, the Germans struck at Verdun. The forts crumbled and trenches were churned to dust and blew away. As the French poured more troops into holding the town, the British ordered the Anzac corps to the Western Front. The newly formed I Anzac Corps—the 1st and 2nd Australian Divisions and the New Zealand Division—under Lieutenant General Sir William Birdwood, was to go first. The II Anzac Corps—the 4th and 5th Australian Divisions— under Lieutenant General Sir Alexander Godley, was to follow after more training.

KILLED IN ACTION
____________________

SERGEANT GERALD SIEVERS
Fell monger. 8 August 1915

PRIVATE LEONARD HURSE
Sheep farmer. 12 October 1917

CHAPTER TWO
RATHER LIKE HEAVEN, 1916

BLAKE —Killed in action on 19 July 1916 (previously reported
missing). George Francis, No. 4737. late of 59th Bn, sailed only
on March 7 of the same year.

I have lost my soul's companion
A life linked with my own
Each day I miss his footsteps
As I walk through life alone.

INSERTED BY HIS LOVING WIFE .
NEWSPAPER ‘IN MEMORIAM ' NOTICE

THE TRANSPORT SHIPS carrying I Anzac Corps from Egypt began reaching the southern French port of Marseilles on 19 March 1916. The soldiers were bound for Armentières, a British-held sector close to the Belgian border. The 58-hour train journey took the soldiers through lush green countryside being farmed by women, boys and old men. The men of fighting age were gone; they were dead, wounded or still fighting at the front, many at Verdun. The land was very different from what the Anzac corps had become used to in Egypt. ‘It is an immense relief to be away from all the sand and dirt and smells,' wrote New Zealander Gunner Eric Burnett.

Just past Paris, the sky darkened and bitter winds lashed the slow-moving trains. Later, the troops disembarked and were billeted in villages several kilometres behind the frontline. Despite the distance, the soldiers could hear the dull rumble of artillery, particularly when the wind blew from the east. At night the horizon flickered with flares used to illuminate no-man's-land.

British soldiers and lorries crowded the countryside. The British, who held the front-line from Ypres in Belgium to the Somme River near Amiens in France, had over 1,263,000 troops in Europe, with 100,000 more arriving each month. They held 128 kilometres of trenches, while the French held 595 kilometres. Opposite them, 120 German divisions held the whole line. The British force was divided into four armies; the 40,000 Australians and 18,500 New Zealanders of I Anzac Corps were incorporated into General Sir Herbert Plumer's 2nd Army.

‘THE BIG-LOOKED-FORWARD-TO DAY'

The Australians and New Zealanders were to take over a 16-kilometre sector from Armentières village to the Sugarloaf salient in front of the German-held village of Fromelles. It was a relatively quiet sector, nicknamed ‘the Nursery', where newly arrived divisions were sent to gain experience. But before taking it over, the men trained—passing through gas-filled trenches wearing the cumbersome gasmasks, marching long distances on the cobbled roads and learning to lie down and not panic when faced with the gushing jet of the new German flamethrower. Even the grenades were different. Those who'd served at Gallipoli no longer needed to make their own from jam tins: they now had boxes of the new and more powerful Mills bombs.

After their training, the soldiers moved to villages closer to the front-line. Here the effects of war were more obvious: the guns were louder, and villages and farm buildings were either demolished or sandbagged for protection. They were used as billets, casualty clearing stations or army headquarters. Despite this, some farmers still worked their land, while school children ran about with gasmasks.

From 7 April, as German gun muzzles flickered in the distance, the Australian troops took over most of the 16-kilometre sector. The New Zealanders took charge of the rest on 13 May. Each of the three divisions was responsible for maintaining and protecting a small five- to six-kilometre zone. New Zealander Private Walter Carruthers, a Gallipoli veteran, felt ‘quite happy now that we are into it again'. He was keen to see the Germans get ‘a hiding', and hoped their army ‘has to run like blazes and doesn't stop until he get across the Rhine'. Sergeant Cecil Malthus, another Gallipoli veteran from New Zealand, couldn't pretend to rejoice at going in again. ‘The front line is rather like heaven,' he said, ‘everybody writes it up but nobody really wants to go there.' Australian Sergeant James Makin called it ‘the big-looked-forward-to day.' He was filled with questions:

What will the actual trenches be like? What is the feeling of one ‘under fire' for the first time? Are we to occupy a ‘hot' part of the line, or a place of comparative quiet?

SANDBAGS, POPPIES AND WIRE

From their billets the soldiers walked down the cobbled streets, then slipped through hedges or broken walls into communication saps—protected lanes leading to the trenches. Here, the low-lying land was too wet to dig trenches and saps. Instead, ‘breastworks'—12-metre-wide walls of sandbags—were constructed. The back areas were crowded with soldiers, ammunition dumps, war refuse, billets and hospitals, all within shelling range.

The breastworks, like the trenches, were not built in a straight line but zigzagged in a series of bays. They were in a bad way. The sandbags were mildewy and sprouting grass, while the duckboards—wooden boards laid over muddy ground—rotted under stagnant water. Barbed-wire barriers protected the breastworks of both sides and between them was a no-man's-land of damaged trees, long grass, crimson poppies and self-sown crops. In places no-man's-land was as narrow as 55 metres, in others it stretched to 270 metres wide.

The land sloped slightly up to the German lines, where snipers and machine-gunners watched for anyone who showed themselves above the sandbags. The snipers fired through concealed loopholes in the sandbag parapet, or from trees. The machine guns were concealed behind steel screens and sandbags. The strategic placement of these guns prevented enemy soldiers charging across no-man's-land without proper planning. Fortunately, the German artillery wasn't as active here as in other sectors, but this meant the Australians and New Zealanders weren't as careful as they needed to be. Aeroplanes—made of wood and canvas—were still a novelty in 1916 and the men stood out in the open to watch them dogfighting, or dodging anti-aircraft fire. At first they had been used only for observation but now they carried machine guns. Air dominance was essential for obtaining information about enemy trenches and movement. Observers also spied from church towers, trees or the baskets of gas-filled balloons.

On 19 April, Australian troops were spotted lighting fires and hanging out clothes around their billets three kilometres behind the front-line. Within a few minutes, German shells had killed or wounded over 70 and destroyed the farm building. The Australians and New Zealanders quickly learned to be as inconspicuous as the Germans opposite them.

A NUMBING FURY

Shortly after the Australians arrived, a German morse code message flashed:

‘Australians go home.'

‘Why?' the Australians signalled back.

‘We are too good,' was the answer.

The Nursery became more deadly as the joint Somme offensive planned by the British and French at Chantilly drew near. To distract the Germans from the military buildup at the Somme, 100 kilometres south of Armentières, the artillery in other sectors increased its shelling of the enemy line. The Germans retaliated and their exploding shells heaved and shook the ground like earthquakes. The high-explosive shells tore holes in the breastworks and ripped men in half. Many were killed by the concussion waves alone. New Zealander Rifleman William Wilson was stunned after German shells exploded nearby: