Pozieres

Graham Keech

• Publisher: Pen & Sword
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780436095801
• eBook ISBN: 9781473817333
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War II
• Index: History

The village sits on top of the ridge that bears its name, a ridge that was an objective on the 1st July 1916. As it was, the whole position was not finally cleared until early September 1916 as German, Australian and British troops fought tenaciously over it.

CONTENTS

Introduction by Series Editor

Author’s Introduction

Acknowledgements

Maps

Chapter 1 The Opening Phase: July 1916

Chapter 2 The Australians on the Somme I

Chapter 3 Actions adjacent to the Australians

Chapter 4 The Australians on the Somme II

Chapter 5 Lieutenant Butterworth and Captain Jacka

Chapter 6 Seven Victoria Crosses

Chapter 7 Cemeteries and Memorials

Chapter 8 Battlefield Tours

Further Reading

Selective Index

Australian pioneers at work behind the trenches previous to the Great Advance. TAYLOR LIBRARY

INTRODUCTION BY SERIES EDITOR

This latest volume in the Battleground Europe series is the first about the 1916 Battle of the Somme which does not have as its starting point the dreadful day of 1 July. It is a welcome development, always planned, but quite a long time in the coming.

For well over half a century much of the interest of the British public has been fixed on that fateful day. It is an understandable human reaction to what happened to Britain’s volunteer army on the first occasion that it was launched into a major action. Unfortunately this preoccupation has resulted in the neglect of the rest of that battle, which went on for some four and a half months, and indeed it has been argued to the neglect of what happened to the British and Dominion armies over the remaining two and a half years of war. This has resulted in a failure by most to realise what an extraordinary evolution that the British land and air forces underwent in this time span; academics now concentrate on the very steep learning curve that the army underwent, culminating in the victory of 1918, itself possible the most underwritten of any of Britain’s military success stories. The reasons put forward for this lack of interest and the concentration on the disaster of 1 July are numerous and there is no time to rehearse them here; suffice to say that this series aims to move on from the more well worn paths of the visitor and pilgrim and on to other areas where casualties were, undoubtedly, very heavy, but where success and cogent military planning were far more common, though certainly not the rule.

Pozières is a typical Somme village, strung out along the famous Albert-Bapaume road, an early objective of the offensive. It is on a high spot, and rarely is it possible to stand on the site of the windmill of such ill repute without a stiff breeze blowing. The ground round and about, certainly to the east of the village, is something of a plateau, although the eye deceives and cannot see the small undulations and ripples that formed such a vital part of both the attack and the defence.

The fighting around Pozières lasted for some six weeks, though it had played a part in the battle from its earliest days, standing as it did above the British and German Front lines on 1 July. It involved a number of Imperial (that is British) divisions, but its name is of immortal memory to Australia, three of whose divisions (1st, 2nd and 4th) fought long and hard here through the summer days of the latter end of July, August and early September.

Graham Keech gives a full description of what happened on the ground, and the large number of maps makes it possible to follow what happened on the ground in some detail. Devoid of many physical features, this will be an invaluable aid for many of us who have puzzled over just what did happen here, and brings about some understanding of the heroic achievements of those men over eighty years ago. The description also helps us to understand something of the German military mind, how her generals determined to fight the battle and illustrates that suffering on the Great War battlefields was far from being a uniquely British activity. The German soldier was a most formidable fighting man.

With the enormously increased interest in the Great War in the last decade or so, it is now becoming clear that Australia and New Zealand could both do with a museum that can show just what their armies achieved in the war. The Australian War Memorial is, I am told, an outstanding museum. But there is very little on the fields of battle that portrays something of the fighting quality of these men from so many thousands of miles away; nothing that explains why they came, nothing about their vital contribution to the victorious British army of 1918. Travel is now so much easier and cheaper that it is not unusual to find visitors from ‘down under’ visiting these far away places in Flanders and Picardy whose names still sound with resonance on regimental standards and in the national consciousness.

In recent years the South African and Canadian governments have spent large sums of money to ensure that the memory of their men is kept alive. They have provided wonderful educational opportunities for people from all over the world to have a better understanding of a conflict whose nature is extremely difficult for many to comprehend. It must be admitted that in recent years Australia also has provided new memorials, such as at Bullecourt, Passchendaele and, most recently, Mouquet Farm. There is the excellent museum at villers Bretonneux, close to the national memorial to the missing Australians in France. Yet this is off the well beaten track of so many visitors to the Western Front, and at the extremity of the operations of Anzac. Perhaps a site at Pozières would be most ideal; not much further than a ninety minute drive from all the great points of Australian and New Zealand arms - Villers Bretonneux in the south, Mont St Quentin, Flers and Pozières on the Somme, Bullecourt on the Hindenburg Line, Fromelles in French Flanders, Plugstreet and Messines Ridge just inside Belgium and of course the immortal Salient, Polygon Wood and Broodseinde Ridge and the fields around the deeply moving Tyne Cot cemetery and memorial.

These men deserve not only to be commemorated but to be understood — for commemoration without education is of limited value. It is to be hoped that something can and will be done about this in the near future, before the memory of Anzac is confined to plaques, headstones and memorial walls in the green fields of Flanders.

Nigel Cave

Ely Place, London

INTRODUCTION

Pozières lies on the highest part of the Somme battlefield (See map 1). It was to be captured on the first day of the battle, 1 July 1916, but in the event did not fall until almost another month had passed. By then its name, along with those of many other small, insignificant French villages, was well known to the inhabitants of the United Kingdom. When Australian troops finally reached the site of the mill and the main German lines on the far side of the village they were unable to identify them, the effects of the artillery bombardments had been so devastating. The First World War has been called a war of artillery and nowhere is the truth of that statement better illustrated than at Pozières. The shells fell, day after day, on both sides until nothing was left that could be called habitation. The Australian Official Historian, C.E.W. Bean, was convinced that that the divisions involved at Pozières were subjected to greater stress than in the whole of the Gallipoli campaign. ‘The shelling at Pozières did not merely probe character and nerve; it laid them stark naked as no other experience of the Australian Imperial Force ever did.’ The legacy of the battle can be felt even now. The name Pozières is to many Australians synonymous with incompetence and mistrust of British generals in the war.

The village today is very much as it was in 1914. It lies on either side of the Roman road from Albert to Bapaume, the greater part on the left. On the right the line of building quickly gives way to open ground, from where the Australians attacked in 1916. The railway lines, which played such an important part in the fighting, are no more, but in places their remains can still be detected. With the aid of the trench map (See map 5) most of the important features of July ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents