France 27/4/1917

Dear Father,

It is some time since I wrote a letter to you as I really have very little time to spare of late and that time I have generally used in answering my minor correspondents and parcel senders etc. Also I generally try to make your letters interesting and give you full strength of the situation as I find it, as some people get different things to what I do. I think in my last letter, I gave a bit of an idea what the Somme battle field looked like. This time I propose to tell you of some of the parts of the lines which we held since last November, and after we came back from Ypres in Belgium. lt will pass the censor as it’s all stale news by now.

Last November we entrained in Belgium and after a very roundabout trip in a train, which travelled slower than the Moree mail does, we finally arrived back in Albert which used to be a starting off point for all parts of the British Somme front. This place was reached after our Brigade had boarded a fleet of motor lorries containing 25 men each and on our journey of 25 miles or so passing many towns full of French munition workers who were duly “cheeked” by our lads, especially the girls. On our arrival at our destination just outside Albert, we were bundled into temporary shelters made of tarpaulins over a frame. These contained about 2′ of slushy mud and served as our lodgings for 4 or 5 days. Outside the shelter was like a piece of ploughed land after heavy rain, which conditions caused my first attack of Pyrexia which landed me in Rouen some days later. From this camp our company was sent up to a camp about 7 miles away towards the line to build huts for the housing of troops on their way to and from the line. We were on this job for a week when we went into the line at Flers, which was absolutely the muddiest, boggiest, hardest shelled and most difficult of the whole Somme front at that time.

Well, after enduring a couple of weeks of conditions guaranteed to kill a mule of fatigue, and after spending night and days (sometimes 3) in frozen water up to the knees in the trenches and communication saps, the Battalion was asked to go over the top in support of another Battalion in the next Brigade. Our Colonel however would not allow the whole Battalion to go over as they were too weak and knocked up with hardships to do so. In the end two companies (not including mine) had a go to charge over the top and the majority got “murdered” since they stuck in the mud and had to wait in a conspicuous position on the parapet to pull their mates out of the mud in the trench until knocked over by machine gun fire. The attack was a failure and our boys were relieved just after.

When I came back from Rouen I hardly knew my own friends, they were so thin and knocked about. The whole Battalion then and during the following three months was like a fly crawling on a paper, except when it was frozen as it was for 6 weeks. After coming out from Flers we rested for about a month near Amiens when we had some decent food including porridge and eggs etc. which we of course purchased with our own money, and we were given leave occasionally to Amiens with the result that the Battalion soon got fit again. We always drill a lot when out of the line, practising different formations and bayonet fighting etc.

About the beginning of December we began to move up again towards the line and finally arrived at a camp called Scott’s Redoubt, near the famous Pozieres and Sausage Gully where we had our first great push in July. We were here a few days and the weather was bitterly cold, a freeze being on at the time and an arctic wind blowing which cut like a knife making us feel very miserable and sorry for ourselves. Since firewood was scarce and we only had one thin blanket we generally used to shiver all night and snatch a sleep in the day time when we got off parade.

We then sent into the line at Le Sars. The line here is very famous for Australia, the front line ran through the ruins of the village and a chain of outposts were a few 100 yards in front of it. The snow was lying on the ground and it was full moon and as bright as day when we changed over. We relieved some Scotchmen and settled down in our post which resembled an ice chest and was only about head high. We were in this for 24 hours and suffered from thirst as there was no water and we could not melt ice for fear of giving our position away. We used to suck ice and when we were relieved from the post we all gathered some and I can tell you it was laughable to see 100 men all huddled together, each sucking a piece of ice which made us more thirsty.

We were around Le Sars opposite the famous White Hump of the Butte-de-Warlencourt for about a month, going in the line and out of the line in turns and doing fatigues, such as salvaging, rations carrying and ammunition carrying etc. and then came out for 4 or 5 days. Two weeks of this month I spent at a Lewis Machine gun school and returned a machine gunner and was drafted into a gun team. On going back into our old line which we had begun to know like a book, we found one night that the night flares were falling further back towards Germany and that Fritz was shelling his own line. A Sergeant Major of my company immediately took out a patrol party and discovered that the enemy had evacuated his front trench opposite us and the White Hump. Next morning, our Brigade went “over the top” in artillery formation (e.g. extended order) and advanced about a mile and chased the Huns out of a couple of trenches including Malt trench. This we held for a couple of days (and my word we all had to work, I can tell you.) We built roads and helped to lay train tracks, shifted ammunition dumps closer to the line. The Huns tried to destroy the roads by blowing huge mine craters at places where the two roads meet, thus endeavouring to check traffic. However we were far too quick for them and traffic proceeded as usual in a very short time.

Traffic over here would surprise you. lt is just as well regulated as it is in Sydney and if you could imagine all the traffic of George, Pitt and Castlereagh Streets all going in a continuous stream up on the right and down on the left with hardly a yard between the two lines and over a shell holed road, covered in mud and slime at that, you could just about get an idea of the main Bapaume Road, just after the evacuation. lt was all guided and directed by the hand of the Military Policeman too. The Huns continued to evacuate little by little and pressed hard by the British and Australians in the centre along the Bapaume Road. As we pushed them, we mended the roads, shifted the surplus and laid train tracks and generally got after them lock, stock and baggage as quickly as possible. As we moved on we found our spirits rising as we could see the open country as flat as a ?? with very few shell holes and no mud which for four months had been the curse of our existence.

Sometimes the Hun rearguard stood and fought to the death but mostly bolted. Suddenly our lot received the order to move to another part of the lines which we accordingly did and finally found our selves at a place called “Yarra Bank” near Factory Corner on the left of Flers and opposite Ligny Hilloy and the Barque. Here we were for about 6 days and held the line in front of Ligny Hilloy , our platoon was in a big dugout built by the Germans and which gave us very good shelter from the numerous shells as we were quite 30 ft, underground. One night in this place a party of us had to fill our water cans at a well in the village and we were all standing in a heap when 3 shells were fired. Two of them exploded and did no harm but the third was a “dud” and landed right among us. lf it had burst we would have mostly been in Blighty or Heaven now.

Another day an aeroplane shrapnel case weighing about 8 lbs. buried itself at my foot not 8 inches from me. But such things as these happen daily. I just missed an 8 lb. brick and beam of wood etc. at another place. Half a brick hit me on the steel helmet and knocked me down on another occasion so that you see we often have narrow squeaks. lt is marvellous how close a bullet or shell piece can go without damaging our beauty. Australians don’t often run or hurry when in the line and in fact I have known men to run like the dickens from a sudden shower of rain and never take the slightest notice of shells bursting nearby. ln fact it is such behaviour that make other troops think we are peculiar people.

To get back to the yarn though, on the first or second night we held the line at Ligny Hilloy, the boys were building a wire entanglement in front of the posts and happened to run out of wire. Between the two lines was a dump of a few coils of barbed wire belonging to the Huns. So our fellows crawled and pinched the wire and finished the entanglement. For cheek and daring the Australians are the limit, I thought. The sixth night at Hilloy we were relieved by another Brigade and we went back to our old position at Le Sars. I happened to be detailed off as a company guide and left the village of Hilloy at 3am with shells and machine gun bullets flying thick and fast. After falling into shell holes and other accidents which are all part of a soldiers life I finally arrived at Battalion Headquarters about 1000 yards behind the line. Here I joined the other guides and the lot of us went to inspect the new quarters the battalion was to occupy. This meant a walk of 6 or 7 miles walking over the slush and mud to Martinpinch (?) where we joined a trench with splinter proof dugouts and here we lived for the next 6 days, moving dumps of ammunition etc. We then moved to Le Sars cutting where our old line used to be.

The Germans by this time had evacuated as far as Gorre —– rrs? and I was on a fatigue one day carrying picks and shovers up to the line opposite the white Hump. The Germans had mined some of the dugouts and buildings but no one was blown up. The Germans use an automatic detonator for exploding these mines which may not happen for a fortnight after being set. It was one of these mines which later blew up the Bapaume Town Hall, 3 hours after party of ours had left and which killed and wounded 29 people including 2 French MPs.

We have found them in wells and buildings and dugouts so we have to be a bit careful on going into a new village. Some days later we got the order to move up to Bapaume, occupying the town. Naturally this caused some excitement as that town was our aim and goal for months and we could see the pall of smoke as it burned after the Huns had been pushed out by a Victorian battalion. As we approached the town we were struck by the amount of wire entanglements, earthworks and trenches etc. which had been lined up for the last 2 years and which had made the place immensely strong. As we entered the town we noticed the fronts of all the houses had been blown away by dynamite. Every house was smashed and pillaged so that it was difficult to find one which could be used as a billet. Cellars were plentiful however and we were soon installed in them with roaring fires to warm us and chairs and sofas to rest on. We then got to work to clean up the streets and roads for the traffic as they were covered with fallen house debris and mud and the ruins were smoldering still.

In Bapaume the Germans destroyed or carted away everything of any value at all and left the town a total wreck. The houses were first tarred and then burnt. The cathedral which was a ruin still had an odd picture hanging on the walls while in a vault underneath the church is a rather gruesome sight of a heap of skulls, the origin of which I can only guess They also mined several buildings and I was lucky in not being present at the time the Town Hall was blown up as we had been billeted in a vault underneath for the previous 6 days. Some of the men who were killed in this horror we buried in the Bapaume cemetery amongst the French dead and we played the Last Post over their remains and stood to, then present arms.

After going into the firing line for a couple of days about 6 miles east of Bapaume we finally went out for a spell for a few days before coming in again at Le Sar where we gave the Prussians the devil of a hiding of which I will you later, in fact it was the prettiest bit of work I have seen yet in the war

Well I hope I have not bored you with all this war stuff.

Will close now.

Your affectionate son, Walter.

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