Captured at Meteren
While researching a book, Owaka historians regularly found references to a little known and unusual battle. Unusual not because of the numbers killed and wounded, but because of the large number of our soldiers who were captured.
The road to Meteren
The date was April 16, 1918, the place Meteren in northern France, close to the border with Belgium, and the unit nearly destroyed was the 2nd New Zealand Entrenching Battalion, a labour battalion made up of men from Southland, Otago and Canterbury.
The three New Zealand entrenching battalions (nominal strength 750-1000 men each) were created after the New Zealand attack on Polderhoek Chateau in the Ypres Salient on December 3, 1917, where the 1st Otago and 1st Canterbury Infantry Battalions were decisively defeated.
Questions were asked and it was decided, perhaps unfairly, that the men were at fault.
Their morale was low, they lacked confidence in themselves and their fighting spirit had been further reduced by weeks in the nightmare conditions of the Ypres Salient in winter.
The solution arrived at by the New Zealand army was to incorporate new reinforcements, and men returning from hospitals in England, into the frontlines gradually, by sending them to work for a few weeks in entrenching battalions where they could acclimatise themselves to trench warfare and gain confidence before being used as fighting troops.
The scheme was reasonable but had to be altered following the huge German Spring Offensive of March, 1918. French towns, villages, and territory previously captured, or held at great cost, was lost within days.
The Allies had their backs to the wall and after three years of fighting and millions of casualties, faced total defeat.
Hospitals, camps and depots in France and England were emptied of any men capable of fighting.
The New Zealand Division was sent south to help stop the German advance near Amiens, an important railway junction.
The 1st and 3rd NZ Entrenching Battalions went with them to provide support but the 2nd NZ Entrenching Battalion remained in the north and was strengthened by drafts of men from the 30th Reinforcements.
It was then re-organised as a fighting unit and dispatched to Meteren to support the hardpressed British 33rd Division.
The road to Meteren was a nightmare of retreating and advancing soldiers, ambulances, artillery, and thousands of French and Belgian civilians fleeing the approaching German army.
No sooner did the New Zealanders arrive at Meteren and try to dig in than the Germans attacked. The 33rd Division carried out a planned withdrawal on the night of April 15, but in the confusion failed to inform the 2nd New Zealand Entrenching Battalion, or their runners carrying the message did not get through.
Captured at Meteren
At dawn, the Otago and Southland men who made up the forward platoons found themselves practically surrounded and under attack from three sides.
They suffered severe casualties, 42 killed and 138 wounded, and soon ran low on ammunition.
They were not well supplied with extra ammunition as they initially believed they were going to Meteren to dig trenches, not to man them.
Their officers soon became casualties and it was left to Sergeant Tom Souness, of Kakanui, to send a messenger, Private James McLelland, of Owaka, to seek help.
Events moved quickly and before McLelland could return, Sgt Souness attempted to withdraw his platoon but the attempt failed; he, his men and the other forward platoons were caught in an impossible situation, and everyone still alive was forced to surrender.
At Meteren, 210 men were captured, the largest and only mass surrender of New Zealand troops during World War I.
Prior to this, the static nature of trench warfare meant the numbers captured were very low.
During the whole war only 400 New Zealanders were captured.
The Black Hole of Lille
For the men, their change in status from soldiers to prisoners came with a high price.
Most were thrown into the dungeons of a fortress at Lille where conditions were so bad, it seemed to them that they were the victims of deliberate and calculated German torture aimed at breaking their spirit before being sent out on work parties.
Ian Sharpe, of Owaka, Arthur Bell, of Stirling, Felix Edwards, of Balclutha, Andrew Henderson, of Benhar, William Conley, of Dipton, Tom McDonald, of Edendale, Charles Valentine, of Bluff, James Caldwell, of Mokotua, and all the other men knew the prison as ‘‘the Black Hole of Lille’’, harking back to the Black Hole of Calcutta of 1756, a notorious Indian prison where captured British soldiers and civilians suffocated to death.
A daring escape
Clive Wells, of Papatowai, couldn’t stand the beatings, lack of food and mistreatment, and escaped as soon as he could.
He headed north hoping to cross the border into neutral Holland but could not get through the electrified border fences.
Wells then went south, travelling at night, to try and make his way through the German frontlines and into Allied territory, but after three attempts found this to be impossible.
By now starving, he had the good luck to meet and befriend a local family, the Martel-St Jean’s, who supplied him with false documents, food, and civilian clothes.
He later joined a refugee column with them and hid in Brussels to avoid re-capture, eventually handing himself over to Brigadier Freyberg of the British 88th Division when the Allies finally drove the Germans back.
Twenty-one years later, during WWII, Freyberg commanded the New Zealand Division and Wells lied about his age, re-enlisted and served in Fiji and North Africa as Regimental Sergeant-Major with the 27th Machine Gun Battalion.
While under the protection of the Martel-St Jean family, Wells witnessed an incident which, combined with his own mistreatment as a prisoner-of-war, might account for his eagerness to serve a second time against the Germans.
The Martel-St Jean’s 9-year-old son failed to stand up when a German officer rode by.
This sort of disrespectful behaviour was not tolerated by the Germans and a soldier following the officer beat the boy with a walking stick, his mother and older sisters protested and were later beaten with rifle butts.
Wells and Mr Martel-St Jean were held back at bayonet point when they tried to intervene and all they could do was carry the unconscious women upstairs and put them to bed.
German soldiers returned to the house that night, smashed the windows and doors, thrust their rifles through the openings and threatened to kill the family.
Medal at Meteren
Lance-Corporal James McLelland was awarded the Military Medal for gallantry for his work at Meteren.
He had earlier shown a newly arrived Commanding Officer around the New Zealand positions at great risk to his own life.
He was one of only two soldiers from the forward platoons to escape capture.
Sergeant Tom Souness had served at Gallipoli in 1915, and been wounded on the Somme in 1916, and twice more at Messines in 1917.
Following his release from imprisonment, he and the others were granted 20 per cent disability pensions (about 30 shillings, or $3) for one month in recognition of the starvation and mistreatment they had endured as prisoners of war.
The Canterbury companies of the 2nd NZ Entrenching Battalion also suffered casualties at Meteren but were not as isolated and most of their men managed to extricate themselves.
They returned to the New Zealand depot at Abeele and formed the core of the battalion when it was rebuilt with large numbers of reinforcements.
Casualty lists of the time state 28 Canterbury men were captured, along with 50 from Auckland, 63 from Wellington, and 79 from Otago and Southland.
The overall situation later improved. The New Zealand Division, the five Australian Divisions, and some fresh British Divisions stopped the German advance in the Ancre Valley, near Amiens.
The Germans had captured an enormous amount of territory but none of the vital railway towns.
Their various attacks and offensives ground to a halt and the Allies began to receive large numbers of American reinforcements.
By August, 1918, the Allies were attacking the German army and driving it back all along the Western Front.
The New Zealand army adopted a tactful approach towards the survivors of the Meteren battle.
Instead of being disciplined for surrendering too soon, the soldiers of the 2nd NZ Entrenching Battalion were awarded 16 medals for bravery and congratulated for doing their best in difficult and unusual circumstances.