Zero Hour (7 page)

Few expected to die, or even be wounded, but some believed there was a bullet with their name on it. Others had had premonitions of their death but still stood gripping their rifles as the artillery heralded zero hour.

At 6.20 a.m., four long lines of New Zealand troops, with British divisions on either side, followed the creeping barrage forward as German artillery gunners responded to their men's SOS. Shrapnel pellets and explosives dropped men in mid-stride. On their left, the Germans in High Wood held up the British, then turned their guns onto the New Zealanders advancing past the wood. Those closest to the trees, an Otago Company of the 2nd Brigade, were hit heavily; at the following roll call, only 34 soldiers out of 200 were unwounded.

Despite this, the New Zealanders stormed into Switch trench, shooting or bayoneting the few Germans who had time to react. They rolled bombs into the dugouts as the next wave of New Zealand troops passed over their heads, singing as they advanced towards Flers. Breaking into a charge, the second wave stormed Flers trench, bayoneting German machine-gunners who'd fired until the last moment then tried to surrender. Dead and wounded Germans lay everywhere. In one dugout, several sat around a table with playing cards still in their hands, killed by concussion from an exploding shell.

With the second objective captured, the next wave of New Zealand soldiers ‘hugged' the barrage towards Flers, waiting for each leap forward. They fought desperately in a sunken tree-lined road crowded with German dugouts. Some joined the British and followed a tank up the main street of the village. The tanks hadn't been as successful as hoped. Haig had expected them to replace the artillery, as well as terrify the Germans, but there weren't enough of them and they were still in their infancy. Of the 48 that started, most had broken down or been disabled by shellfire or the terrain. But the New Zealanders had been helped by two of the four tanks allocated to them: the tanks had trampled uncut wire and crushed troublesome machine-gun nests.

As New Zealand and British troops followed the tank through Flers, the Germans withdrew, releasing a pigeon with a note attached reporting the fall of the village. The Allied soldiers searched cellars and dugouts for prisoners, but, after a machine-gun crew surrendered and then opened fire, killing several New Zealanders, anyone surrendering was simply shot. Despite the tanks, the Germans had inflicted heavy casualties, and the Allies hadn't reached the Gird trench system or captured Morval and Gueudecourt. The New Zealanders had gained more ground than the British divisions on either flank, but in doing so had lost over 1800 out of 6000 men.

MANGLED AND TERRIBLE

For the next 19 days, the New Zealand Division stayed in the front-line. They shot down and shelled counterattacks and faced heavy shelling and gas. Flers was flattened, as were the newly captured trenches and a communication trench, nicknamed Turk Lane, being dug by the Maori Pioneer Battalion. Casualties rose.

Private William Gibbard wrote,

The sights to be seen are terrible, mangled bodies lie everywhere, never shall I forget these sights, Mother, some of my best pals have gone this time.

Lance Corporal William Anderson was moving up to the front when he stepped over a body.

The face was turned away but I recognised it as my brother. There was no halting as the Germans commenced lobbing shells in thick and fast.

Another New Zealander was killed beside his twin brother. After sunset, the soldiers buried friends and sometimes family in shell holes, dreading the letters they'd have to write home.

Heavy autumn rains flooded the trenches, and the one road to the front turned to thick liquid mud. Soldiers carrying supplies spent 11 hours travelling three kilometres. The Germans kept shelling the road as fast as the Maori Pioneer Battalion dumped rubble from nearby village ruins into the shell holes. Long lines of mules with artillery shells strapped to their backs struggled to the artillery crews. Drivers of supply wagons steered their horses around other dead beasts and upturned wagons. One horse, ‘Finnigan', laboured on for five kilometres after being wounded by a bomb, only dying when he arrived at the front. Once the drivers had dumped their supplies, they carted away wounded men who cursed at every bump.

When the rain ceased, the New Zealanders continued to take part in small, localised attacks as well as large coordinated advances. In a major offensive on 25 September, the New Zealanders, with British divisions on either side, followed the most effective creeping barrage to date: it was so accurate and well timed that they got as close as 22 metres to the exploding shells. Germans trying to flee the fiery storm were mowed down by machine-gunners, and others were caught in their dugouts. Red flares, signalling success, filled the sky within half an hour. Many of the German prisoners were relieved to get away from what they saw as the ‘Hell on the Somme'. There was success all along the line, and the Gird trench system and several villages were taken. The following day, 26 September, the British finally captured the long-sought-after Mouquet Farm and Thiepval village.

IT'S NOT WAR

The battles continued, all with the aim of breaking through the German lines, including a new fourth line. In one battle, heavy machine-gun crossfire caught the New Zealanders.

Australian ambulance men carrying their comrades, suffering from trench foot, to a transport to take them to hospital.
AWM E00081

Bullets tore up the dirt in front of Lance Corporal Alexander Aitken, who'd served since Gallipoli, ripped his tunic, and whizzed past his ear. When one slammed into his arm, he dropped his rifle; his first instinct was to run away, but he resisted. He'd seen two other wounded men bolt from a shell hole in panic, and run in no particular direction until shot. When he was hit again in the ankle, he fell into a shell hole and waited there for the cover of dark before escaping.

In another battle, the New Zealanders attacked the Germans who'd defeated the Australians at Fromelles. They exploded 30 oil-filled Canister bombs above the German lines, which spat ‘lurid flame'. Then the New Zealanders charged. One soldier, Private Kenneth Barr, ran with only one boot on—his other foot was swollen from a previous injury. They found the trench filled with German dead, piled high in places, scorched and disfigured by the burning oil. Some carried souvenirs taken from dead Australians.

Heavy rain fell again, and sentries stood knee-deep in liquid mud, their shoulders covered with oil-sheets, watching a bleak no-man's-land. On 4 October, after 23 days in the front-line, the New Zealanders tramped to a camp of tarpaulins set up on swampy ground. They were shattered, their uniforms in rags, greatcoats weighed down with mud and blood. One man had lost his pants and wore a ‘sandbag kilt' instead. For many, the Somme was ‘simply Hell on earth', as it had been for the Germans. Private Hector McLeod considered fighting an enemy soldier nothing compared to the artillery fire, which was ‘not war, it's absolute murder'. For Second Lieutenant George Russell, the Somme was a ‘mass of confused memories of heaps of men and bits of men lying about and of hills and villages and woods being torn to pieces'.

The New Zealand Division left the Somme and marched back to Armentières, where the locals greeted them as friends and mourned those who didn't return. Their part in the Somme offensive was over. They'd been in the line longer than any other division, captured 1000 German prisoners and eight kilometres of front-line three kilometres deep. But out of 15,000 men, 2000 had been killed and nearly 6000 wounded.

Newspapers in New Zealand printed lists of the dead, missing and wounded; in one paper the list covered two pages. After newspaper articles that glossed over the reality of battles, the awful truth about the war swept through homes. With the losses of Gallipoli still fresh, these new and far greater losses once again devastated whole towns. Sons, brothers, husbands, fathers and friends had gone to Europe ‘from the uttermost ends of the Earth' and had died there. Their loved ones did not even have a body to bury. Whole communities went into mourning and some began to question the war. Even by 1916, Anzac Day had become a day of remembrance.

GOING INTO HELL

Although the Somme was finished for the New Zealanders, the offensive continued. General Haig wanted further advances of two and a half kilometres to gain higher ground before the winter rains arrived. He was convinced the Germans were losing their fighting spirit, but they were still managing to dig new defensive lines. On 7 October, the British advanced against troops forewarned of the attack by a deserter. The Germans mowed them down as they crossed the flooded land. A week later, men of I Anzac Corps, which had been stationed near Ypres in small dugouts with thin sheet-iron roofs, crammed into cattle cars, slid the doors shut to keep out the cold, and talked and sang around candles as they steamed down to the Somme. They were unimpressed; few wanted to leave the quieter Ypres area and some felt they were being thrown back into battle to save British soldiers. This was not the case; Haig simply considered the Australians to be in a fitter fighting state than the other divisions. The 5th Australian Division, which had been reinforced since Fromelles, was also ordered to the Somme from Armentières.

Icy winds cut into the men's faces on 21 October as they marched through Dernancourt, 16 kilometres from Flers, then past a sign for Fricourt stuck in the ground. It was all that remained of the village—even the rubble had been used to fill shell holes. In the valleys, British troops sang around small fires, or sat in dugouts, candlelight flickering through the blankets that covered their entrances.

Duckboard tracks took the Australians past Delville Wood, now nicknamed ‘Devils Wood'. The dark hid the shattered trees and bodies but not the stench. As they moved up Turk Lane, arcing Very lights and flickering red shrapnel explosions lit the horizon. The dead lined the parapet, and wounded soldiers flowed back the other way. A passing British soldier told them, ‘My God, you are going into hell up there.'

MUDDY RABBITS

When the duckboards ended, near the front, the men struggled through mud ‘churned to the consistency of pea soup'. They passed a dugout in which officers were huddled around a box, reading a map by candlelight. The five-kilometre walk took seven hours, and after passing the ruins of Flers, the exhausted men took over the seized German trenches. Flares lit up severed arms and legs sticking out of the dirt walls.

As they waited for the next major offensive to advance the line, Whizz-Bangs caved in trenches, and blew fountains of mud in the air. The force of shrapnel explosions ripped clothes from the men. In the distance they could hear the staccato bursts of machine guns and the crack of sniper fire. The dead were thrown into shell holes and covered with slop. Soldiers went mad from the shock and tension—one man foamed at the mouth and crawled up the trench on all fours until he was removed.

When not on duty, the men took sanctuary in the German dugouts, even though their doors faced the German artillery. Those soldiers who didn't get a bunk slept on their packs. At least these dugouts were concrete; others were just holes dug in a bank or trench wall and, like ‘muddy rabbits', the men crawled into them to sleep as 5.9s ‘howled out of foggy space and burst with earth shaking fury' around them.

The rain and mud forced the postponement of the major offensive. Instead, smaller operations were ordered—on 5 November and 14 November—to seize a German salient and the higher ground that overlooked the Allied trenches. Despite brutal fighting, the Australians were driven out of the German trenches both times, leaving the men worn out and demoralised. Unable to bear it any longer, one or two Australians left their trenches and surrendered to the Germans. Another soldier, learning he was to be sent to the front-line again, told his mates, ‘I'm not going in—I'm finished,' then shot himself. Even out of the front-line, the soldiers slept in leaking barns on damp straw, without enough firewood to warm themselves or dry their clothes.

With the ground churned to slop by the endless rain, the six-hour walk from the rest camp to the front took 12 hours with men and pack mules constantly falling into mud-filled shell holes. Bogged animals had to be shot, and men dragged from the thick mud. One Australian officer had to be pulled out by a mule, and his back was broken. Exhausted or wounded men fell into the holes at night and died. Those lucky enough to have gumboots lost them as they struggled to get out; and some used corpses as footholds. Soldiers prayed for a ‘blighty'—a wound that would get them out of the front-line. One man walked along the parapet in full view of the Germans, hoping to be hit.

In the trenches, the men stomped their feet to warm up, churning the ground even more. Unable to sit, they were on their feet all day and night. No fires were allowed, food arrived cold, and the tea, carried up in petrol tins, ‘reeked so strongly of gasoline' that the soldiers joked it wasn't safe to light a match. Trench foot, caused by bad circulation, spread. If untreated, it turned to gangrene and often led to amputation. The soldiers were ordered to remove their boots regularly, rub whale oil into their feet and wear dry socks, but this was easier said than done. Soon, hundreds were being admitted to hospitals each week with trench foot.