Lest we forget, big win had huge cost
Iwonder if any of you were awake, up and moving at 4.20am today? One hundred and four years ago this morning at that time, Gunner Armitage wrote in his diary, ‘… all hell broke loose and we heard nothing more. The world was enveloped in sound and flame and our ears just couldn’t cope. The ground shook.’ It would be over a week before anyone wrote in their diary again.
The troops were all assembled ready on the night of August 7, 1918. They had come in under cover of darkness and taken up positions on the marshy ground. The sound of the moving tanks was disguised by the Allies flying noisy planes overhead, ostensibly engaged in information gathering. I imagine little sleep was had as men struggled to quieten horses while they prepared for the heaviest barrage ever to be launched on the field of battle.
The Allied Forces planned to force their way through the German front lines and snatch victory. Thousands of men were involved – the 1st French army joined with the 4th British army, but were led by the combined Australian and Canadian forces.
A heavy mist had come in around 2am and lay thick on the ground. It was, no doubt, to the advantage of the Allied Forces as tanks and infantry appeared more like trees as the swirling mists were illuminated by starlight. Then at 4.20am the heavy artillery gave it all they had holding at bay any German fire and allowing the men to get across the ground.
The Australians had headed out from positions at Villiers-bretonneux and Le Hamel. Within two hours, the Australian troops had met all their objectives.
The Canadians, who had begun beside them, had advanced several kilometres, a significant progress.
Within three hours the German front line was breached and completely overrun with 29,144 prisoners taken and 338 guns commandeered by men who were severely under-resourced.
Better still, as the Australians approached, they liberated 116 towns and villages.
This success came at enormous cost. While the Australian 31st Battalion, 5th Division, may have captured the mammoth ‘Amiens Gun’ which had rained hell on the township of Amiens when fired from a railway carriage 25km away, but 21,243 Allied casualties were inflicted and almost one quarter of this number made the ultimate sacrifice.
The gun had to be stopped and to do so, the Allies had a plan. A British Sopwith Camel was sent into the air to locate the giant gun, once located, they dropped the bomb out of the plane by hand hitting the tail end of the train. The carriage burst into flames causing the German soldiers to quickly evacuate the train and run for their lives as two freight cars were filled with explosives and the fire was rapidly spreading. While an RAF aircraft engaged with the gun, it was the Australians who quickly overcame it and claimed it as ‘spoils of war’.
The initial plan had been to use their supply of Ammanol – an explosive made up using ammonium nitrate powder and aluminium powder – to blow it up, but one of the Sappers, Les Strahan, had been a train driver in Western Australia before the war and he discovered the train still had a full head of steam. Changing plans, he decided it would make a mighty trophy, so separated the gun from the blazing carriages and took the train into a cutting where is was camouflaged.
Just so you have an idea of how enormous this Amiens Gun was, it weighed 40,824kg (that’s over 20,400 big bags of sugar!) and its calibre measurement was 28cm (almost a school ruler). The gun was originally designed by Friedrich Alfred Krupp (who had inherited his father’s iron and steel business), who was notorious during World Wars I and II for armaments production. Krupp had designed and built the gun for the German navy, but modified it so it could be taken by train into battle positions. It was placed on display in France after the end of WWI, before being shipped to London for transportation to Australia as a ‘trophy of war’. Once in Australia, it was placed on display in Sydney in 1920 at the east end of Eddy Avenue near Central Railway Station. During the 1960s some genius with no sense of history sent the gun carriage to be turned into scrap, but was stopped from destroying the barrel which is still on display at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
This new form of multifaceted warfare became the defining mark of the Australians and Sir John Monash in particular. His style of warfare was not stuck in trenches sending men over the top to be exposed to enemy fire, his was the combination of air, artillery, a mobile land army and up to the minute reconnaissance. This was the new strategy which won battles and saved more lives, as it kept the enemy off balance and unsure of what might happen next.
Amiens was, like Mont St Quentin, Villiers-bretonneux, Le Hamel and Péronne, a strategic battle in which Monash brought the Australians’ skills and bravery to the fore and wrote large on the pages of history the endurance, intuition and heroism of the Australian soldiers.
In my life, I have been privileged to know men who fought in those theatres of war described above. Some have been family, others friends of family. I imagine many of you also have friends and family who served there. I carry their tales with me to share, so that in speaking their names, they live forever – men who freely gave their youth so that we might freely enjoy ours.
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