POZIERES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17284, 27 September 1916, Page 10

POZIERES.

A TREMENDOUS FIGHT.

WILD STRUGGLES IN THE DAWN

(From C. E. W. DEAN, Official Correspondent with Australian Forces.)

(Copyright.)

(Rights specially secured by "Lyttel-

ton Times.")

BRITISH HEADQUARTERS, FRANCE, July 26

I have been watching the units of a certain famous Australian force come out of action. They have fought such a fight that a famous division of British troops on their flank sent them a message to say that they ..were prouu to fight by the side of them. Conditions alter, in a battle like, this from day to day; but the time when the British attack upon the second German lino in Longueval and Bazentin ended, the further villago of Pozieres was left us tho hub of the battle for the time being. This point is the summit of a hill on which the German second lino ran, and probably for that reason the new lino which tho Germans had dug across from their line—so as to have a lino still barring our way when wo had broken tkrougu their second lino—branched off near Pozieres to meet the third lino near Flers. The map of the tituation at this stage of the battle will show better than a page of description why it was necessary that Poaiores should next be captured. There were several days' interval between the first attack on" Pozieres and the night on which tho Australians were put at it. The Germans probably had little chance ot improving their position in the meantime, for the village was kept under a slow bombardment with heavy shells and'shrapnel, which mad© movement dangerous. Our troops could see occasional parties of Germans' hurrying through tho tattered wood and powdered, tumbled foundations. The garrison lost men steadily, and on about the night of Thursday or Friday, July 20 or 21, tho second Guard Reserve Division, who had boon mainly responsible for holding this part of the line., were relieved, and a fresh division from the lines'in front of Ypres was put in. The new troops brought several days rations with them, and never lacked food or water. It was probably a belated party of these newcomers that our mon noticed wandering through the village in daytime. WHAT ONCE WAS POZIERES.

During the afternoon of Saturday, oiir bombardment of Pozieres became heavier. Most of these ruined villages are marked on this shell-swept countrv bv the trees around them. It is not that they originally stood }u a woodland, but when tho village is a mere heap of foundations powdered white the only relic of it left standing erect, if you except, a battered wall or two, is the shredded trunks and stumps of trees which-once made the gardens or orchards or hedges behind tho houses. Our troop 3 had.three obstacles beyond them—first, « shallow, hastily dug trench in the open in front of the trees around tho village, then certain trenches miming generally through the trees and hedges and behind: thirdly, such lines as existed in the village itself. The village is standing out along tho road from Albert to. Bapaume, up to which the fcattlo has advanced from thp first. Just beyond th.» village, near what remains of the Pozieres mill on the very'top of the hill, is the German second line still m possession of the Germans. Another line crossing the road in front,of the village was still in their hands. - On Saturday afternoon our heavy shells were tearing at regular intervals into the heart of the brickheads, flinging up brandies of trees and great clouds of black earth from the woods. A letter was found next day dated "In Hell's Trenches.'" "It xb not reallv a trench, but a little ditch shattered with shells—not the slightest cover, and no protection. We hove lost fifty men in two dnys, and Me is unendurable." White :mfta of shrapnel from tlie field wer->>i«ermg the place persistently, so that when the German trenches were broken down it was difficult to repair tk?m or to move m them. ~ . „ Our men in their trenches were cleanin* rifles, packing away spare kit yarning there as much as they ynrneo of old over the stockyard fence or the gate of the horse paddock. THE ATTACK LAUNCHED. There broke out fearful bombardment. As one walked towards the battlefield, the weirdly shattered woods' mid battered houses stood out almost all the time against a continuous band of flickering light-.along tho eastern skyline. It was far away to the east of' our battlefield, in some French or British sector on th* far right, there must have been fierce fire upon 1 oziercs, too for the Germans were replying, hailing the roads with • shrapnel, and on their wing filling the hollows with gas shells. They must' have suspected an attack upon this part of the , line as well, and were,trying to ham- ' per the reserves from moving in opposition. Our field artillery lashed down iU shrapnel upon the. .German front line in the open before the village. A few minutes later this fire lifted, and the Australian attack was launched. The Germans had opened in one par. ■with a machino gun" before that final burst of shrapnel, and they opened again immediately after. -Bui"there would have been no possibility of stopping that charge had the fire been twenty times as heavy. The difficulty was not to get the men-forward, but to hold them. .With a complicated night attack, to be carried tlvrdugh it was necessary to' keep the men well m hand. ■•. ' ! The first trench was a wretchedly ' Fballow affair in place 3. Most of the ten Germans in it were dead—some of them had been lying there for days. The artillery in the meantime had lifted on to the German trenches further back. Later th?V lifted to a. further position yet. The Australian infantry dashed at onco from tho first position captured across the intervening space over tho tramway and into the trees. A POWDERED VILLAGE.

It. was bore that the first real diffi:ultv arose along parts of the line. Sonie sections of it found i:i l front of the the trench which they were looking for —an excellent deep trench which had survived -tho bombardment. Other sections found ho recognisablo t.reneh at all, but a inaza of shell craters and jumbled rubbish, or a «implo ditch red'acod to

white, powder, The parties went on through tho trocti into tho village searching for the .position,, and pusikKi up to the irluge of tiieir own she!' Ore. However, whole they found no trench they started to dig on;.- as host they could. Shortly after the bombardment shifted a little rurtner, and .a third attack came and swept m most' parts right tip to the position which the trocps had been ordered »to take upAs daylight -gradually spread over that bleached surface Australians could bo seen walking about in the treea and through the part of tho village they had been ordered to take. The position was being rapidly " consolidated." German snipers in the north-east of the village and across tho road coMld seo them too. A patrol was sent across the main road to find a sniper. It bombed some dugouts which were found there, and out of one of them appeared a white flag, which was wared vigorously. Sixteen prisoners

came out, including a regimental doctor. There were several' other dugouts in this part, and various scraps of old trenches, probably the sito of an old battery. The Germans, now that they have been driven from thoir main lines, were naturally fighting from tho various scraps of isolated fortification which exist behind all positions. During the afternoon two patrols were sent to clear out other snipers from these half-hidden lurking-places. But the garrison was sufficiently organised to summon up some sort of reserve, and the patrols had to como baok after a short, sharp fight, more or less in the open. That night, howcveT, after dark the Australians pushed across the road through the village. , By morning the position had been improved bo that nearly the wholo village was secure against sudden attack.

THE SIGHT OF THE BATTLEFIELD. An official report would say, "The same progress continued on Tuesday night and by Wednesday morning the whole of Pozieres was consolidated. That is to say, in the heart of the village itself there was little moro actual hand-to-hand fighting. All that happened there was that from the time when the firßt day broke it found tho Pozieres position practically ours. Tho enemy turned his guns on to it. Hour after hour, hour after and night, with increasing intensity as tho days went on, he rained heavy shell into tho area. It was the sight of the battlefield for miles around—that reeking villago. Now ho would send them crashing in on a line south of the road. Eight heavy sholls at a time, minute after minuto, followed up by burst upon burst of shrapnel J Now he would place' a curtain straight across this valley or that till the landscape was blotted out except for fleeting glimpses seen as through a lift of fog. Gas shells, musty with chloroform, sweet scented tear shells that made your eyes run with water, high bursting shrapnel with black smoke and a vicious high explosive rattle behind its heavy pellets, ugly green bursts, the colour of a fat silkworm, huge black clouds from the high explosive of his five-point-ninos. Day and night the men worked through ij fighting this horrid machinery far over the horizon as if they were fighting Germans hand to hand-—building up whatever it battered down, buried, some of them, not onco but again and again and again. What is a barrage against such troops? They went through it as you would go i-hrough a. summer shower, too proud to bend their heads, many of them, because their mates were looking. I am telling you of things I have seen. As one of the best of their officers said to me. "I have to walk about as if I liked it—what else can you do when your own men teach-yon P" The same thought struck mo not once, but twenty times. THE GERMANS RAN.

On Tuesday morning the shelling, of the day before roso to a crescendo and then suddenly slackened. The German was attacking. It was only a. few of the infantry who even saw him. Tho attack came in lines at fairly wide intervals, at the reverse elope of tho hill behind Pozieres windmill. Before it reached it it came under the sudden barrage of our own guns' shrapnel. Tho German lines swerved away up the hill. Tlie excited infantry on the extreme right could see Germans falling over as quickly as they might from one shell crater to another, grey backs hopping from. hole to hole. They blazed away hard, but most of our infantry never got the chance it was thirsting for. The artillery beat back that attack before it was over the crest and the Germans broke and ran. Again the enemy's artillery was turned on. Po. zieres was pounded more furiously than before until by four in the afternoon it seemed to onlookers scarcely possible that humanity could have endured such an ordeal. The place would be picked cut for miles by pillars of red and black dust towering like a Broken Hill duststorm. Germans were seen to be coming on again exactly as in tho morning. Again our artillery descended upon them like a hailstorm and nothing came of their attack.

During all this time, in spite cf tho shelling, the troops wero slowly working forward through Pozieres, not backwards. , Every day saw fresh ground gained. A great part of the men who were working through it had no more than two or three hours' sleep since Saturday—some of them uono at all, only fierce hard work all the time. The only relief to this one-sided struggle against machinery was the hand-to-hand fighting that occurred in the two trenches before mentioned, the second line German trench beyond Pozieres, and the similar trench in front of it. Those episodes deserve an article to themselves. _>