THE HAMEL ATTACK

Manawatu Times, Volume XL, Issue 13941, 19 July 1918, Page 7

THE HAMEL ATTACK

FOLLOWING THE TANKS. PLUCKY AMERICANS. (Commonwealth Official Correspondent) LONDON, July 8. The prisoners taken in the Hamel attack now (Sunda}') night total 1500. Many of the details of the fighting by which Hamel was captured are intensely interesting. When our barrage came down and the infantry advanced in the grey morning light towards Hamel, the wind continually carried the drifting mist from the smoke barrage across the front. This made the dawn far darker than it would otherwise have been. The burst of our own shells was most difficult to sec through the mist ahead. The Australians, many of whom had followed a barrage like this many times before, could often only tell where the barrage was by seeing their own shrapnel shells bursting overhear!. The American infantry, who had m>t seen or heard a shell before, plucivily faced the extraordinary difficulty. Knowing where they were by keeping an eye on the Australians. ,( Wo just looked out to see that, we kept in line with them,” said one of their officers. “So long as we kept going while they were going we knew that we were all right. ’ ’ At the beginning of the fight one American platoon, for example, was pushing straight on into our barrage. An Australian company commander saw this, and pulled it back. Next time when the barrage started he noticed that this platoon had not moved to follow it, “Well, how about getting on with the fight,” he asked. “Has the barrage moved yet?” they asked him simply. “Why, it has gone on a good half-minute,” he said. The Americans wore up at once and hurrying after it. The .men of The two forces worked shoulder to shoulder wherever the fighting was thick. An Australian Lewis gunner was facing a German machinegun team with his gun at his hip when an American sergeant dashed out and bayoneted three. Another Australian with two Americans who spoke German was detailed to search for dugouts. Working by themselves immediately after the attacking troops passed they found a dugout which realised important captures —a battalion commander, three officers, and 28 men. Many Americans are still wearing the colours of the Australian ba( talions to

which they were attached. Many others, who should not have been in this light, hid themselves successfully when ordered to go out. Indeed, Americans lost their lives fighting beside the

Australians 'in Hamel who by rights should have been many miles away. Never a firmer friendship was ever sealed than on this battlefield. One American platoon went in under an Australian officer. When he was hit it went out under the guidance of his runner,, who had experience from other battlefields. Three times in one corner of this fight one heard of privates playing the part of officers. One company commander, in the dense smoke drifting through Hamel Wood, lost touch of his main body. Later he found it again. It had gone on exactly as planned, swung round the flank of the village, then struck in along the cross road, and proceeded to mop up the dugouts till the programme was finished to the letter.

At the opposite corner of the village an Australian corporal found in a house, which was burning from the shell fire, a dump of rifle ammunition and bombs. This turned out to be an old store of British ammunition which had remained there since the village of Hamel was taken by the Germans on April 4. The corporal saved from the house 73,000 rounds of ammunition and some bombs. The same Australians who fought at Bulleeourt, where the tanks were not so successful, arc now full of warm praise for the tanks. Time after time the tanks went straight at the obstacles which the infantry wanted removed and flattened them out. One tank moved straight along the bank of a sunken road, breaking down the shelters on the whole length where the Germans had been holding out. Naturally the Germans would not face them, though they fired on the tanks with a special giant rifle. '‘Just the sort of thing one would expect the German anti-tank rifle to be,” one officer told us. But out of a whole battalion the tanks only had twelve men wounded. The tanks constantly rubbed out machine-gun posts where the Germans did not await their approach. “Australian infantry would come rip point out a machine-gun, and ask us ’to smash it,” said one tank officer. “And when we reached the objective the Australians sat about the top of the trenches amusing themselves firing off rifle grenades. Stout follows!” That’s whnt a British tank officer said of the infantry. If ho only knew the Australians were expressing exactly the same sentiment, though in different words, about him.

The Australian infantry behaved precisely as the Australians might know they would behave. Here is one last example. As the line swept on in the grey light past an awkward point known as “Pear Trench” machineguns opened from ahead and the platoon commander was killed. In the advancing wave one big, quiet, slow'moving, slow-speaking South Australian caught from the corner of his eye the dim forms of about a dozen heads and shoulders behind the bank perhaps 70 yards away from the top of the bank, then came the flash of machinegunfire. The youngster immediately made towards these Germans. When he got within 50 yards the German officer in the party fired at him with his revolver, but missed. The Australian fired his Lewis gun from his hip and killed every German in the party except one, and he made a rush at him. The Australian, whoso Lewis guu magazine was now r empty, hit the German over the head with the butt-end of his revolver, and then shot him. There were twelve German soldiers and one officer in that party. Later comes news of another of those extraordinary adventures whereby our men have been puzzling, oven some of those who know them longest. Yesterday (Saturday) morning on part of the line on the edge of Villers Bretonneux plateau one of our posts had been harrying the German post opposite with rifle grenades. After this was finished one man volunteered to go out and sec what damage had been done. He crept out, but when ho was nothin a short distance the sentry saw him, and the machine-gun fired. The Australian dropped into a shell hole, and presently the German sentry threw a bomb. The Australian shot him dead and then stood up, bomb in hand, with the pin drawn, and threatened to throw it into the post unless the post surrendered. The post consisted of one German officer and 12 men. They surrendered to this single Australian, who brought them in.