For Christ’s sake write a book on the life of an infantryman, and by so doing you will quickly prevent these shocking tragedies.
Corporal A. G. Thomas, 6th Battalion, Letter, under fire at Pozières, 25 July 1916
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| The Men Who Carried Out the First Australian Trench Raid on the Western Front (Click to Enlarge) |
Trench raiding had been largely abandoned at Gallipoli after early June 1915, when the staff decided that they lost much and gained little. Both both sides preferred to fight the war underground, by mining. When the Diggers arrived on the Western Front, however, they learned both tactics were pushed by the high commands. Raids in France and Flanders were vicious and bloody affairs. Later they became the least popular infantry tactic: within a few months of this time men were writing:
They are not worth the cost. . . None of the survivors want to go in any more. Mac’s nerves are very jumpy now, and many of the others are the same’, and ‘my word it was hot. My mate was killed alongside me . . . the bulletts were like hailstones. No more raids for me if I can help it.
But during the first half of 1916, the Australians were fresh, confident, and eager to match themselves against the Hun. The enemy raided first, on the night of 5 May 1916, against a sector held by the 20th Battalion. They laid down
a shocking bombardment, hell let loose . . . it seemed as though every gun the enemy possessed was ranged against us & then when our artillery got going behind us, it was God darn awful,& . . . the Germans set up a cheering & shouting, the like, I have never heard before & simultaneously charged us in mass formation . . . they reached our left flank & got in amongst our fellows. It was fearful yet awe-inspiring, for the first few minutes I felt sick, then as steady as a rock, I was right in the line of fire & the shells came straight for my bay . . . some fellows nerves gave way & they became gibbering idiotes Seargeants & all sorts, god it was little wonder for .. . fighting here is just simply massacre.
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| Post Raid Australian Troops |
The raiders inflicted 131 casualties, and apparently suffered none. Worse, they captured two Stokes mortars, then so secret that Haig had ordered that they never be left in the front line. Their loss embarrassed the AIF along the entire British battle front, and made the Australians eager for revenge. A month after the calamity a 27th Battalion NCO related,
I was going to England on my leave on June the second. But I volunteered to go on a raiding party & l have been picked & I wouldn’t miss that for anything. We are going to go into the German Trenches & suprise them or else bomb them out. It will be a fairly risky job but I think we can carry it out alright. . . The Germans made a raid on our Trenches down at the 20th Batt. & killed or wounded a hundred men. so l may assure we won’t take no prisoners.
This first Australian raid, on the night of 5/6 June, succeeded. Seventy-three AIF soldiers took part. (Photo top of page.) Its purpose was to obtain prisoners, intelligence, and weapons. Two Australians were killed and another four wounded while they were returning to Australian trenches. The soldiers were given eight days leave in London where they were feted by the press who labelled them the Black Anzacs because they had blackened their faces with burnt cork for the raid.
Soon the Australians, never lacking volunteers, were raiding almost nightly, agitating every quiet sector they held, and winning an ascendancy over the enemy which they retained for most of the war.
Usually, when a raid was decided upon, a raiding team would be selected, withdrawn from the line, and trained against a model of its objective:
Each man in the raiding party had a certain job to do [for examples, demolition, collecting booty, taking prisoners, killing, building defensive barriers, and looking for mine galleries] . . . and he had to be a specialist in [it] . . . We were trained . . . for three weeks just like a football team.
We don’t take a single thing with us to show who we are if Fritz gets our bodies. We wear Tommy uniforms . . . Only about 4 men out of the 66 carry rifles and bayonets . . . The rest carry weapons according to their job.
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| Australian Trench Raider |
When all was ready, an artillery barrage saturated the objective, and the raiders struck:
when we did our dash all went like clockwork except one thing, and that mistake proved very costly to us . . . the artillery had been firing just too far, and nearly all their shells had landed in Fritz’s front trench instead of in his wire (which was uncut). I don’t know how we did it, but we got through into the German trench and did our job in full. A piece of shrapnel got me through the left thigh . . . one of our chaps . . . managed to get me out to a drain about the centre of No Mans Land. It was impossible to get back to our own trenches until Fritz’s bombardment lifted . . . [and] The beggars . . . started spraying with machine guns and shrapnel. . . We had to lie there for an hour and three quarters before their guns lifted off our trenches . . . my leg was quite stiff by this time . . . and as they were still playing the search lights and machine guns all over us, our only way out was along the drain . . . I hung on to [a fellow’s] braces and tried to keep my face up out of the mud as he dragged me through . . . [At] the end of the drain a big sergeant of ours was waiting . . . he picked me up and carried me right across to our trenches with the bullets snapping all around . . . he brought in four more.
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| German Dead from a Successful Allied Raid |
It is not surprising that raids became unpopular, for few succeeded faultlessly. When they did succeed, men often enjoyed them In the last year of the war, when the tactics of raids had improved a little,. . . Australians became notablly proficient raiders.
Sources: The Australian Army Museum of Western Australia; The Broken Years: Australlian Soldiers in the Great War; Australian National University Press, 1974
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