MOUQUET FARM

Otago Witness, Issue 3275, 20 December 1916, Page 27

MOUQUET FARM

DAYS OF HEAVY FIGHTING. AUSTRALIANS ENGAGED. (By C. W. Beam, Official Correspondent with the Australian Forces.) (Copy right.) (Rights specially secured by the Otasro Daily Times.) On the same day on which the British took Guillemont and Lcuzo Wood and reached Ginehy, on the same day on which the French pushed their line almost to Combles, at the same time as the British attacked Thiepval from the front, the Australians for the fifth time delivered another blow at the wedge which they have all the while been driving into Thiepval from the back, along the ridge whose crest runs northward from Pozieres past Mouquet Farm.

It was a very heavy blow this time. On each occasion tho wedge has been driven a little further forward. This time the blow was heavier and the wedgo went further. The attack was made just as a summer night was reddening into dawn. Away to the rear, over Guillemont —for the Australians were pushing almost in an opposite direction from the great British push—the first light of day glowed angrily on the lower edges of the leaden clouds. You could faintly distinguish objects a hundred yards away. Our field guns from behind the hills broke suddenly into a tempest of fire, which tore a curtain of dust from the red shell craters carpeting the ridge. A few minutes later the bombardment lengthened, and the line of Queenslanders. Tasmanians, and Western Australians rushed for the trenches ahead of them.' MOUQUET FARM.

On the left, well down the shoulder of ths hill towards Thiepval, was the dust heap of craters and ashes, with odd ends of some shattered timber sticking out of it, which goes by the name of Mouqilft Farm. It was a big. important homestead some months ago. To-day it is the wreckage of a log, water-logged in a boundless, tawny sea of craters. There is no sign of a trench left in it; the entrances of the dug-outs may be found here and there, like ratholes, about half a dozen of them, being dishevelled heaps of rubbish. They open into craters now. No doubt each opening has been scratched clear of debris a dozen times. You have to get into some of them by crawling on hands and knees. The first charge took the Western Australians far beyond tho farm. They reached a position 200 yards further, and started to dig in there. Within an hour or two they had a fairly good trench out amongst the craters well in front of tho farm. The farm behind them ought to be solidly ours with such a front line in front of it. A separate body of men. some of them Tasmanians, came like a whirlwind on their heels into the farm. Part of the garrison, which was lying out in front in a rough line of shell 'craters, found them on top of the craters before they knew that there were British troops anywhere about. They were captured and sent back. Tho Australians tumbled over the debris into the farm itself.

The fight that rased for two clays on this ridge was not one of those in which the enemy put up hid hands as soon as our men came on top of him. Far up on tho ton of the hills to the right, and in the maze of trenches between, and in the dugouts of the farm on the left, he was fighting stiffly over the whole front. In the dim light, as the party which was to take th-3 farm rushed into it, a machine gun was barking at them from somewhere inside that rubbish yard itself. They could hear the bark obviously very close to them, but it was impossible to say where it came from—whether 30 yards away or 50. They knew it must be firing from behind one of tho heaps of rubbish where the entrance of the dug-outs probably was, firing obliquely and to its rear at the men who rushed past it. They chese tho heap which seemed most probable, and fired six rifle grenades all at once into it. There was a clatter and dust. The machine gun went out like a candle. Later they found it lying smashed at the mouth of a shaft there. The Germans fought them from their rat holes. When a man peered down the dark staircase shaft he sometimes received a shot from below, sometimes a rifle grenade fired through a hole in a sandbag barricade which the Germans had made at tho bottom of the stair. Occasionally a face would be seen peering up from below—for they refused to come out, and our men would fling down a bomb or lire a couple of shots. But those on the top of the stair always have tho advantage. The Germans were bombed and shot out of entrance after entrance, and at last came up through the only exit left to them. Finding Australians swarming through the place, they surrendered, and, the whole garrison of Mouquet Farm was accounted for. Those who were not lying dead in the craters and dust heap were prisoners. Mouquet Farm was ouvs, and a line of Australian infantry was entrenching itself far out ahead of it. ON THE RIDGE. On the ridge the chargo had further to o-o. It swarmed over one German trench and on to a more distant one. The Germans foaght them from their trench. Tho rush was a long one, and tho German had time to find his feet after the bombardment. But the men he was standing- up to were the offshoot of a famous Queensland regiment, and, though the German guardsmen showed more light than any Germans we have met, they had no match for tho fire of these boys. The trench is said to

have boon crowded with the German deacs and wounded. On the left the- German tried at onco to bomb his way back into the trench he had lost, and for a time he mude some headway. Part of the line was driven; out of the trench into the craters on our side of it. But before the bombing party had gone far the Queenslanders were into the trench again with bomb and bayonet, and it wae not long before the trench waa solidly our:-.

The Queenslanders who reached Ihia trench and took it found themselves looking out over a wide expanse of country, Miles in front of them and far away to their flank stretched a virgin land. They were upon the crest of the ridge and the landscape before them was the country behind the German lines. Except for & gentle rise somewhat further northward behind Thiepval they had reached about th« highest point upon the ridge.

THE STRUGGLE IN THE CENTRE. The connecting trenches, between Mom quet farm and the ridge above and behind! it, were attacked by the Tasmairans. The lire was very heavy and for a moment it looked as if this part of the lino and the Queenslanders immediately next to it would not be able to get in. Officer after officer was hit. Leading amongst these was a senior captain, a man old for hia rank, but one who was known to almost every man in the force as one of the most striking personalities in Gallipoli. He had two sons in the Australian force, cfiicera practically of his own rank. He waa one of the first men on to Anzac beach and was the last Australian who left it. 7. had seen him just as ho was leaving for the fight some hours before. He carried no weapon but a walking stick. "I have never carried anything else into action," he said, ''and I am not going to begin now." Ue was ill with rheumatism, and looked it, and the doctor had advised that he ought net to bo with his company. But he came back to them that evening for the fight, and one conld s c that ; t made a world of difference to them. He was a man whom hia own men swore by. Personally, ono breathed more easily knowing that he waa with them. It would be his last bis fight, he told me. Halfway through (lint charge, in the thiclf of the whirl of it, ho was seen standing! leaning heavily upon his stick. It wast touch and go at the moment whether .thA trench was won or lost. ''Are you hit, sir?" asked several around him. Then they noticed a gash in his log and the blood running from it, and he seemed to bo hiti through the chest as well. f . '" I will reach that trench if the hoys do, 5 he said. j " Have no fear of that, sir," was th 9 answer.

A sergeant asked him for his stick. Theity with the voice of a big man, like his officer, the sergeant shouted and waved the stick, and took the men on. Half dark, his fig-lire was not unlike that of his commander. They made one further rush and were into tha trench. TO THE BITEH END. They were utterly isolated in the trench] when they reached it. A German machine! "•un was cracking away in the same trench to their right, firing between them and thai trench they had come from. There wa4 barbed wire in front of it. When they tried to force a way with bombs up the trench to the gun, German bombers in craters be* hind the trench showered bombs on to them* Then a sergeant crawled out between tha wire and the machine gtin —crawled on hid stomach right up to the gun and shot tha gunner with his revolver. "I've killed three of them.'- he said, as he crawled back. Pre* scntly a shell fell on him and shattered hinac But our bombers crept out into cratfltt behind the trench also and bombed tha German bombers out of their shelters* That opened the way' along the and they found the' three machine gunners shot, as the sergeant had said. Tha Tasmanians went, swiftly along the trench after that, and presently saw a row of good Australian heads in a sap wall in front of them. There went up a cheer. Other Ger* man guardsmen, who had been lying iqi craters in front of the trench and a scrap of trench beyond, heard the cheering; seeing that there were Australians on both sides of them they stumbled to their feefc and threw up their hands. They were' marched off to the rear and the Tasmaniana joined up with the Queenslandcre. So the centre was joined to the left. Qni the right it was uncertain whether it was joined or not. There was a line of trench to be seen on that side running back towards the German lines It was merely a mora, regular line of rnud amongst the irrcgula* mudheaps of the craters; but there were tha heads ot men looking out from it—so clearly it .was a trench. As the light grew they could make out men leaning on their arms and elbows looking over the parapet. Every available glass was turned on them, but i« was too dark still to see if they were Au 3» tralians. Two scouts were sent forwardg creeping from hole to hole. Both were shot, A machine gun was turned at once to_ tha line of heads. They started hopping baolc down their tumbled sap towards the Ger« man rear. Clearly tliey were Germans* The machine guns made last practice as tha line of backs showed behind the parapet.

There were Germans, not Australians, lilj the trenches on tlio Tasmanians' left—in the same trench as they. The flank there ivaS in the air There was nothing to do except to barricade the trench and hold the fiankj as best they could.

And for the next two days they held . it, shelled with every sort of gun and trench mortar, although fresh companies of the Prussian Guard reserve constantly filed into the gap which existed _between this: point and Moquet Farm. Their leader, who had promised to reach that trench with them, was not there. They found him lying dead within a few yards of it. straight in front of the machine jjun which they had silenced. So ho had kept his promise—and lost his life. iThey had a young officer and few sergeants. All through that day thehr numbers slowly dwindled. They held the trench all the next night, and in the grey dawn of the second day a sentry looking over the trench saw the Germans a little way outside of it. As he pointed them out he fell back shot through the head. They told the Qucenslanders. and the < landcrs came out instantly and bombed from their side in the rear of the Germans. The Queensland officer was shot dead; but the Germans were cleared out or killed. That afternoon the Germans attacked that open flank with heavy artillery. For hours shell after shell crashed into the earth around. A heavy battery found the barricade and put its four heavy shells systematically round it. They reduced the garrison as far as possible, and four or five only were kept by the barricade. The inevitable shell came through thehr shelter and left only two. Then ethers were brought to stand by—shells were fall> ing any thing from 50 to 40 in the minute*

Tho garrison, dwindled to a handful, had to shorten its length of trench, bringing m the wounded with it. One of the remaining sergeants— a Lewis gunner—came back from an errand crawling, wounded dangerously through the nock. "I don't want to go away," he said. "If I can't work a Lewis gun I can sit by another chap and toll him how to." In the end, when ho ■was sent away, ho was soon crawling on two knees and one hand, guiding with the other hand a fellow gunner who had been hit, "HAVE WE THE FARM?" That night a big gun, much bigger than tho rest, sent its shells roaring down through the sky somewhere near —the men would be waked by tho shriek of it. and then fall asleep, and waked again, by the crash of tho explosion. And still they held the trench. Messages used to come into headquarters—l saw them myself—giving the exact state of affairs. Every other message ended, "But we will hold on." The relief came. Tho fresh troops were able quickly to re-establish the line where it had been shortened and to round off unoccupied corners—grand fellows, thoso relieving troops, and in great heart. And the men who had hung on to that, flank almost within shouting distance of Motiquet for two wild days and nights camo out of the fight asking, "Can vou tell mo if we have got Mouquet Farm?" We had nefc. The fierce fighting in the broken centro had enabled us to hold all the ground gained upon tho crest. But through this same gap the Germans had come back against tho farm. They swarmed in upon the garrison of the farm, driving the men who were holding tho flank gradually in. Under heavy shell fire the line dwindled and dwindled until tho Western Australians who had won tho farm and held it for five hours numbered baroly .sufficient to make good their retirement. Tho officer left in charge there, himself wounded, withdrew the remnant. And tho Germans entered the farm again. But on the crest the line still held. Ihe guard reserve counter-attacked it throe times, and on tho last occasion the Queenslanders had such deadly shooting against, Germans in tho open as cheered them in spite of all their failure. I saw thoso Queenslandcrs marching out two days later with a step which would do credit to a Guards regiment going in. So ended a fight as hard as Australians have ever fought. The Western Australians were robbed of tho victory which their great charge deserved. The Tasmanians in some ■ways" had tho hardest fighting of all.