Brave beyond bounds

100 years ago today Tasmanian Digger Vic Edwards led the charge on a hill in France in one of the most celebrated victories of WWI, writes

ON this day in 1918 at 1.30pm on a hill overlooking the town of Peronne in northern France, one of Tasmania’s bravest soldiers came of age.

Mont St Quentin is the name of this strategically located hill overlooking a major bend in the River Somme. Known to soldiers of the Australian Imperial Force as “the wicked little hill”, Mont St Quentin was captured after two days’ hand-to-hand combat.

Its capture has been celebrated as the single most brilliant event of the Great War of 1916-1918.

Prior to Mont St Quentin, John Monash was made commander of The Australian Corps and at the Battle of Hamel he employed a setpiece approach to battle. It was the first time the combined forces of air support, tank activity, infantry and large artillery had been used in war.

Monash the engineer advocated a methodical approach to battle. He planned to win Hamel in 90 minutes — the battle was won in 93.

The Battle of Mont St Quentin was not a set-piece operation. It was a manoeuvre, without tanks. Artillery support was not orchestrated to a predetermined plan but controlled by forward observers as the battle unfolded.

Called “a soldier’s battle”, Mont St Quentin called on the experience, skill and tenacity of soldiers on the front line.

A military maxim developed in The Great War, that artillery conquers, infantry occupies, was somewhat overturned at the Battle of Mont St Quentin.

Retrospective reporting of wars focuses on commanders whose glory is writ large by the brave, smart soldiers who have the confidence of their battalion and platoon mates.

Enter: Victor James Edwards of the AIF Second Division, 21st Battalion, 9 Platoon who led a significant charge at The Battle of Mont St Quentin.

Victor was one of five sons who went to war.

Mont St Quentin is a 115m hill with a flat top. There is no defined summit and to win such a battle requires many platoons working together.

Victory in war is simple to claim. It happens when the enemy stops shooting, raises their hands in surrender, or vacates the location.

Vic Edwards was a 26-yearold labourer from Launceston. On voyage from Egypt to Gallipoli the troop carrier he was aboard, the Southland, was torpedoed. This was Vic’s introduction to war.

After four months north of Anzac Cove, Gallipoli, he was redeployed to the Western Front, France, in 1916.

In 1917 the 21st Battalion took part in five great assaults made by the AIF — Menin Road, Polygon Wood, Passchandaele, Poelcapelle and Broodseinde.

In the three days from August 31 to September 2, the 21st AIF took Mont St Quentin and liberated the town of Peronne with 3000 casualties (dead and wounded). Eight Victoria Crosses were awarded.

There were many acts of bravery in the psychological high of this esteemed battle.

The Germans described the attackers as Australians and “storm troopers”.

Monash’s plan for the storm-trooping Australians was to shout and make noises like bushrangers to leave the enemy believing there were many more soldiers in the ranks than there actually were.

Monash’s memoir shows himself as a commander of great daring. Was Mont St Quentin Monash’s greatest triumph or did the battle develop a momentum of its own?

Said Monash: “September 1 was a day full of great happening and bloody hand fighting … it was bayonet work over every inch of the advance and the field was strewn all over with enemy dead.”

The 21st Battalion encountered horror. Dead and wounded Germans lay all over the trenches, huddled in heaps. Some fought while others tried to escape. The Australians grimly fulfilled their order to take the hill.

As the AIF gathered momentum, Nine Platoon noted that 50 Germans and 10 machine guns presented a hopeless task. Nine Platoon was already small and with three dead and four wounded, only five were unscathed

The rigour of training kicked in and it was Vic Edwards’s time to assume a leadership role. He was the only officer remaining and he led from the front. For his heroics Vic was awarded his first Military Medal.

The citation read: “During the attack on Mont St Quentin, north of Peronne on 1 September 1918 this NCO on several occasions organised and personally led attacks on enemy strong posts which were holding up the advance. On one occasion with much skill and determination he dashed forward at the head of a party that he had organised and was the first to reach the enemy strong post where he killed 4 of the enemy and the

Jon Paice

post was captured without further hostile resistance. A few minutes later he again led the attacking party which captured another machine gun post mainly owing to his skilful leadership and daring. Signed Commander Rosenthal.”

Commentators say the victory at Mont St Quentin shortened the war by at least 18 months.

Interestingly, Vic Edwards fulfils another profile as being the typical Australian digger.

The representative Great Australian digger was actually a single, urban Anglican labourer in his early 20s who enlisted in 1915 and who returned, though probably wounded.

Vic Edwards carried a shrapnel wound in his foot. No one but he knew of this.

He committed the crime of being absent without leave on two occasions presumably wanting to spend time with his wartime love of a Scottish woman, Anne McIntyre. His punishment was to temporarily lose his military rank, only to be reinstated because of his leadership capacity.

Vic Edwards was a humble larrikin who returned to Tasmania, followed by his wife to-be, Anne.

Remarkably, all four of Vic’s brothers who served also survived and returned.

Vic and Anne remained childless. Vic was variously a forest labourer in North-East Tasmania, a post office manager with Anne at Weldborough, and a successful baker in Railton.

Thereafter he lived at Squeaking Point where he fished for a livelihood.

Vic’s surviving brothers and sister (Harry, Brightie, Alec and Tas) buried him at Devonport in December, 1971.

There is a cogent case for Vic Edwards’s story, as the typical Australian Digger, who played a significant role at Mont St Quentin, now an extension of Peronne, to be told.

John Monash was the big picture, strategic leader and Vic Edwards, the situational leader, with exemplary skills.

It would be fitting if the Australian Government bookended the Australian tourist experience of visiting the $110 million John Monash Centre at Villers-Bretonneux by profiling Digger Edwards.

Film-makers with an interest in Tasmania and taking a vision of Tasmania to the world have a ready-made basis for a screenplay adaptation given Peter Stanley’s The Men of Mont St Quentin — a book about war and love and the aftermath of both. Jon Paice is a former career educator and partner of Vic Edwards’s great niece. On reading Peter Stanley’s book (2009) it became clear Vic’s story was largely absent from the public domain. Jon’s father and father-in-law served in World War II. Jon walked where Vic Edwards fought on Mont St Quentin on Anzac Day this year.