“In places the
parapet was repaired with bodies – bodies that but
yesterday had housed the personality of a friend by whom
we had warmed ourselves. If you had gathered the stock
of a thousand butcher shops, cut it into small pieces
and strewn it about, it would give you a faint
conception of the shambles those trenches were.”
This is how an
Australian soldier described the land we stand on today
— one hundred years ago.
The stock of a
thousand butcher shops.
The darkest 24
hours in Australia's history.
Here, a world away
from a newly federated nation, over 1,900 of our
nation’s sons charged out of trenches to their death.
They would become
the butchered meat.
They would be part
of the over 5,500 Australian casualties that day, all in
the end, for not a single inch of ground.
As a nation we
have never seen a battle, a natural disaster or a
catastrophe take so many Australian lives in a single
day.
It had been meant
as a distraction from the main offensive across the
Somme, an attempt to put fresh Australian recruits to
use by pinning down the German reinforcements.
Many of the men
here, they would become known as the “fair dinkums”, had
never experienced war, having enlisted too late to
experience Gallipoli.
But here, as one
soldier bluntly put it, “they received their full
education in one day.”
Industrial warfare
on a scale unimaginable, an enemy well entrenched and
seasoned by two years of fighting on this very ground,
and orders that simply ignored the facts.
The commander of
the 15th Brigade, Brigadier General Harold Elliot, was
known for his plain speaking. He did not hold back in
his confronting language, describing the event as a
“tactical abortion”.
He had advocated
that the operation be abandoned.
Taking one member
of the General Staff out in to no man’s land, he showed
him part of the German defences – an emplacement called
Sugar Loaf.
A fortified
concrete structure that rose out of the open terrain.
If his men were to
reach Sugar Loaf, they would have to cross 400 yards
without cover and in full view of the German machine
guns.
The officer
admitted to Elliot that if the attack went as planned it
would be “a bloody holocaust”. Elliot pleaded for him to
have the plans changed. They were merely delayed.
On the 19th of
July, it began with the shelling of the German lines.
They pounded them for seven hours, hoping forlornly to
weaken the enemy for the Australian attack.
Putting on a brave
face, Elliot told his men, “Boys, you won’t find a
German when you get there.”
At around 5:30 the
shelling stopped. In the evening summer light the
Australians rose out of the trenches. They charged
without flinching, resolved in their duty and died.
Private Walter
Downing described the carnage: “The air was thick with
bullets, swishing in a flat lattice of death … The
bullets skimmed low, from knee to groin, riddling
tumbling bodies before they touched the ground.”
The Australians
did not turn back. Downing wrote: “The survivors spread
across the front kept the line straight. There was no
hesitation, no recoil, no dropping of the unwounded into
shell holes … still the line kept on.”
The day after,
many fought bravely to make it back to safety. Many were
surrounded in pockets of resistance and captured.
The dead were so
many that recovering them was a monumental task, which
took three days and as we learn again today was never
completed.
Elliot stood to
watch his returned brigade as they came back through the
lines. Tears in his eyes, he yelled to one Captain:
"Good God Bill, what's happened to my brigade?"
Elliot’s Brigade
would account for one third of the Australian dead.
He took the loss
hard. He would later become another casualty — taking
his own life after struggling to adapt to his return to
Australia.
A generation of
men from many nations were destroyed by the Western
Front. For Australia it destroyed many here in an
instant.
Given the
butchery, it would be easy to push the tragedy out of
our memories, to put it behind us and forget.
But Fromelles must
be remembered. Not just as a tragedy but as an example
of bravery and resolve that we cannot possibly imagine
today.
The men who fought
and died here came half way across the world to this
place without any hope of knowing what awaited them.
On the command of
their country and for their love of it, they fought and
died without recoil.
The men who
Australia lost on its darkest day; fathers, sons,
brothers, uncles and cousins who never came home.
Though time may
have dimmed the memories of these men, we rightly
recognise and remember today their duty.
Amidst the tragedy
of Fromelles we commemorate their actions.
They did not grow
old due to the human butchery that occurred here 100
years ago today.
But we who are
left rightly remember them, their unbridled courage,
their resolve, their sacrifice.
Lest we forget.
