Eyewitness by Garrie Hutchinson Read Free Book Online Page B

they extricated themselves with immense difficulty and heavy loss, and withdrew through saps rushed forward from our line by the Fifth Pioneers. The next night some, after wandering lost in enemy country, returned by immense good luck and after astounding adventures.
    For three days hundreds of wounded lay uncomplaining in their torment, in our line. The survivors were few by comparison with the dead. It was an hour’s hard work for four men to carry one to safety. All joined in the task. The very safety of the line was imperilled by the number of men engaged in this merciful duty. We carried till the mind refused its task and limbs sagged, and always there were hundreds for whom each minute decreased the chances of life. Release came to very many of the stricken. We left the hopeless cases undisturbed for the sake of those whom the surgeons could save.
    For days an officer, blind and demented, wandered near the German lines, never fired on, but used as a decoy to attract his friends to their death. These were shot while attempting to reach him. He wandered up and down the line till he died, avoiding friend and foe alike.
    This charge received a recognition from the enemy which reasons of state denied from our own side. A noble act here lights up the murky record of the German Army. Two gallant enemies carried a wounded Australian to our parapet, stood at the salute, then turned and walked away. They unfortunately neglected to secure a safe conduct, and were shot, to the sincere regret of every Australian there, by someone in the next bay, who, owing to the shape of the line and the direction they had come, was in ignorance of their errand.
    The remnants of the 57 th and 58 th held the front-line system for a further 50 days, making 59 in all, without relief.
    And the sandbags were splashed with red, and red were the fire steps, the duckboards, the bays. And the stench of stagnant pools of the blood of heroes is in our nostrils even now.

With Jacka’s Mob at Bullecourt
    E.J. Rule

Captain Edgar Rule served with the 14 th Battalion – Jacka’s Mob – through the war. He was awarded the Military Medal in 1916 at Mouquet Farm, not far from the Windmill at Pozières – where Australia’s popular hero of the war, Albert Jacka, won a Military Cross. Rule was also awarded the MC in 1917.
    Jacka had won Australia’s first Victoria Cross at Gallipoli, where he performed ‘the most dramatic and effective act of individual audacity in the history of the A.I.F.’, according to Charles Bean. Bean thought the Windmill stunt, and one at Bullecourt in 1917, should also have earned him the VC.
    There were two costly battles at Bullecourt. At dawn of April 11th, 1917, after a night lying in the snow, the Australians were ordered to attack the Hindenburg Line without the aid of promised tanks. The 4th Brigade suffered 2339 casualties from 3000 men sent into battle; the 12th Brigade 950 from 2000. The battle was later used by the British staff as a model of failed planning.
    The second battle, on May 3rd–17th, 1917, was slightly better organised. The 2nd Division was to take the German positions in the village of Bullecourt, but even with better planning, casualties were heavy, totalling over 10,000 for the two engagements. Edgar Rule was there, quietly observing and recording.
    He was born in Cobar in 1886, was orphaned early in life and spent time working at a variety of occupations around the world, including the construction of the Panama Canal. He later became an orchardist near Shepparton, and enlisted as a private in June 1915.
    He was sent as a reinforcement in the 14th Battalion at Gallipoli, and saw action and promotion through the battles at Armentières, Pozières, Mouquet Farm, Bullecourt, Messines and Amiens.
    Captain Rule MM MC died in 1958. Jacka’s Mob was published in 1933, with a new edition in 1999.
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    We went straight out along the road in the direction of Vaulx- Vraucourt, and after about an hour’s good