Zero Hour by Leon Davidson Read Free Book Online

unliveable. Trenches disappeared and the debris from one exploding shell would simply fill in the crater next to it. Men were blown to pieces, or killed by the concussion waves from the blasts. Others were buried alive. If they were lucky, their comrades dug them out in time and they gasped for breath as the air about them shrieked and whistled with incoming shells. On 25 July, Sergeant Leonard Elvin wrote:
    Heavy firing all morning—simply murder. Men falling everywhere…expecting death every second. 23 men smothered in one trench. Dead and dying everywhere. Some simply blown to pieces.
    Many men couldn’t cope. One runner, unable to face the barrage again, handed over his last message and shot himself. Others delivered their messages then fell dead from wounds.
    With the shelling making it difficult to remove the wounded, Private Edward Jenkins, a bushman from New South Wales, worked with others to carry as many as they could to safer areas. Jenkins set up shelters for them and gave out the last of his water. His officers considered him a larrikin and a troublemaker, but at Pozières he worked tirelessly and without orders until a shell killed him as he was carrying his dixie of tea to give to the wounded.
    The bombardment was as severe as any experienced at the Somme or Verdun, and when it died down, on 26 July, over 5000 Australians had been killed or wounded in their seven days in the front-line. When the 1st Division was relieved by the 2nd Australian Division during the night of 27 July, the men marched out, dazed and staring into space, some wearing souvenired German spike helmets and belts inscribed with the motto ‘ Gott mit uns ’—God with us.
    POZIÈRES HEIGHTS
    The 2nd Division was confronted with a land littered with blackened, bloated, fly-ridden bodies and limbs. German shells continued to pulverise Pozières to dust and ash. With the trenches levelled, supply parties had to walk over tracks in the open. There was no safe place to rest. Men expected death or to be buried, ‘dug out and buried again’. One group tried to distract themselves by playing cards. When their sergeant was killed, they threw his body out of the trench, then kept playing until an exploding shell killed them all.
    Even though the Germans were clearly expecting an attack, General Gough insisted that the Australians seize the Old German Lines on the heights behind Pozières. The 2nd Division commander, Major General Gordon Legge, did not ask for a postponement despite a report from an artillery commander that the dust and haze meant he couldn’t be certain that the wire had been cut. Legge, commanding a battle of this scale for the first time, was certain that the entanglements would be cut in time. Just after midnight on 29 July, the Australians advanced. It took them eight long minutes to cross no-man’s-land, and, as flares turned night to day, the German machine guns opened fire. The bombardment hadn’t pierced the wire and the men that made it through the gunfire used wire-cutters, their rifle butts and their bare hands to try to get through. Men fell dead or wounded into the wire, which tightened around the living as they struggled.
    In half an hour, 2000 men had been killed or wounded. As the 2nd Division withdrew, the sky was lit with red and green German flares of success. General Haig reminded the Australian commanders that they weren’t fighting Turks any more but the ‘most scientific and most military nation in Europe’. Legge insisted his men be given another go, but this time the attack would begin only when everything was properly prepared—a one-metre-deep jumping-off trench would be dug closer to the German trenches.
    DOING IT PROPERLY
    On the night of 31 July, 500 soldiers moved into no-man’s-land to dig the trench. Melbourne journalist Lieutenant John Raws, unaware that his brother had been killed in the previous attack and was lying in