Solomon's Song (65 page)

‘Righto, this is Sergeant-Major Ben Teekleman, he’s a ring-in, a Victorian from the 5th Battalion, 2nd Brigade, but a very welcome one.’

‘Tasmanian, sir,’ Ben says promptly and the men laugh.

‘Tasmanian, eh?’ says Foss. ‘Well, in that case, if you have any doubts about him you are advised to look at his ribbons, he has earned his crown the hard way but has volunteered to act as the sergeant for our right section. I guess you’ll get to know him soon enough, as for me, I’m bloody glad to have him on board.’

Ben, accustomed to big men and himself about average height for the Victorians, finds that he is much shorter than these West Australians. They are magnificent specimens, few of them are under six feet one inch while most are taller. They’re hard and well trained and at first he finds the going tough. After almost three months spent on his back, he has lost much of his fitness and the first few days leave him exhausted, so much so that he wonders if he should tell Foss he’s not up to scratch.

The whole of the raiding party is withdrawn to a rear area along the railway line between Armentieres and Wavrin where they are trained as if they are a football team preparing for a grand final. Each section is subdivided into right and left trench parties, parapet parties, intelligence, linesmen, messengers, telephonists, scouts, stretcher-bearers and covering parties. The Canadians have worked it all out, learning from bitter experience, and they prove to be excellent instructors.

The men’s first task is to dig a replica of the German trenches copied carefully from photographs taken by an aeroplane sent over especially for the task. Each night they practise the raid, learning to co-ordinate the various tasks and sections quickly without talk. The Canadians believe that silence, hitherto never attempted, is a critical aspect for the success of the raid. While the practice works well, the aerial photography isn’t detailed enough to tell how effectively the trenches are protected, or what state the barbed wire is in or if there are any other obstacles other than craters.

Two nights before the raid Ben is still not satisfied with his fitness. Though considerably hardened by the rigorous work of the past couple of weeks he goes for a run in his full uniform, carrying a wire-cutter and the weapons he will take with him on the night of the raid. He runs along the railway line, passing five or six hundred yards from the German trenches they are to attack. On a sudden impulse he crosses the railway line into no-man’s-land and finds himself moving in a circular direction towards the right-hand side of the enemy lines.

At first it is not a conscious decision, he simply wants to feel the nature of the ground they will pass over on the night of the raid. But soon he is taken by the notion of getting as close as he can to the first line of German trenches. Foss, their commander, had some weeks earlier done the same thing, ending up close enough to see that the trenches on his left (the German right) were protected by barbed wire in poor repair and that they were vulnerable to an attack. It is on this premise that the raiding party is being undertaken.

However, it is not known if the right-hand sector is in the same poor condition and this is the area Ben will be moving into with his men. Progressing from one ditch to another, he slowly makes his way to the German lines, eventually coming to the lip of a bomb crater in which there isn’t the usual pool of muddy water. He jumps into the crater, a large one that brings him at its extreme end to a point no more than ten yards from the parapet of the enemy trench. He can actually hear someone shouting out a command and a loud ‘Jawohl!,’ the reply from whomever the direction is intended for. Someone is playing a mouth organ and in the darkness Ben can see a thin curl of wood smoke coming from the trench.

He crawls out of the crater and examines the wire, which is newly constructed, well tied down with stakes hammered into the ground in an ordered pattern and calculated to make it very difficult to penetrate. But further up to his left the newly laid wire suddenly ends and the old wire is partially pulled up in preparation for the laying of a new pattern. However, there appears to be no sign of work taking place or spare bales of wire lying about. The ten-yard gap where the old wire has been ripped up is quite sufficient to put his section through. It seems the Germans have simply run out of wire and are waiting for more to arrive, their ordnance no more efficient than that of their British counterparts.

Ben makes his way back behind the lines and the following morning reports his findings to Captain Foss.

‘You’re a bloody idiot, Sergeant-Major Teekleman, but thank you.’ He thinks for a moment. ‘This means Lieutenant Gill can bring four scouts with him to the left-hand sector to cut the wire and guide us through and we’ll send only one along with you to your section. Are you quite sure you can find your way through the gap again?’

‘It will be around the same time as last night and, if anything, a little lighter, shouldn’t be a problem, sir.’

Ben salutes him and turns to depart when Captain Foss calls out, ‘Sergeant-Major?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Bloody beauty, mate.’

During the last week in May and the first few days in June the artillery has bombarded the sector to be entered but not so heavily that the Germans will think it a precursor to an attack on their section. The idea is that they should regard the artillery action as routine, their turn to cop a few medium trench mortars. This may well have been the reason why work was stopped on repairing the barbed wire.

June the fifth is the night set aside for the attack and the raiding party is given a special set of clothing. They are fitted out with English tunics that contain no badges or identification marks, these being thought to be by far the most common on the battlefield and identical for every English unit. If any of them are killed, the enemy will gain no information from looking at their insignia. Their faces are blackened and their bayonets painted, though the scouts, messengers and carriers, as well as the bombers, will carry revolvers instead of rifles.

They are also issued with a device called a ‘knobkerrie’, which ordnance will later refer to as a ‘life preserver’. This short, stout stick with a knob on the end, in this instance a heavy iron bolt, comes out of the previous century and the Zulu Wars in South Africa. The knobkerrie was used in conjunction with an assegai, a short fighting spear, by the Zulu Impi and used well the knobkerrie is a highly effective weapon at close range. A blow directed to the head will quite easily kill a man. Ben declines one of these, explaining that he would prefer to take his Maori fighting axe and Captain Foss quickly agrees. Ben also shows his section how to use the knobkerrie as a fighting stick in the Maori manner, a skill learned from Hawk as a child. Utilised correctly it can ward off a bayonet attack and, at the same time, kill the attacker.

They are all issued with black plimsolls to quieten their footfalls on the hard ground, though later, with even small falls of rain, these will prove impractical in the muddy ditches and craters of no-man’s-land. Finally, an idea from Gallipoli suggested by Ben is adopted and they wear white armbands on either sleeve, covered with similar-sized black ones, which are to be ripped off to reveal the white when they begin the attack.

The two Canadian instructors, both of them extremely popular with the Australians, request permission to come on the raiding party but Foss refuses. ‘Jesus, imagine if one, or both, of you blokes got killed because of something stupid my boys did. We’d have a diplomatic incident on our hands the like of which would see me demoted to the rank of corporal, if I was bloody lucky.’

The plan is for Ben and another scout, a lad named Wearne from Donnybrook, a small town southeast of Bunbury, both with wire-cutters, to move up to the gap in the wire and, if it is still there, wait for Gill and his scouts to cut through their section of the wire to the left. If the gap has been repaired, Ben, using his electric torch, is to signal for another wire-cutter to join them. On the command of Captain Foss, who is to move up the centre between them, the attacking units of the two sections, situated in a rifle trench some way back in no-man’s-land, are to move up into position. Both sections of the raiding party will then mount the attack, entering the German trenches together.

The concept behind the raid is not to capture the German trenches but simply to surprise and harass them, killing as many of the enemy as possible in the time allotted, and then to withdraw, leaving the Germans feeling vulnerable and demoralised. This will give the Australian infantry, who have not yet experienced a full-scale battle in France or are not familiar with this type of trench warfare, the confidence that the Germans can be intimidated and their trenches entered almost at will. After the fierce and bloody resistance of the Turks at Gallipoli when the Anzacs attempted to raid their trenches, Ben wonders privately how successful this tactic will be. When he questions the ever-ebullient Foss, he is told that the fighting is different here and that a raiding party is not a tactic used in France and will come as ‘quite a surprise to the Boche’.

Ben and his scout, Wearne, and Lieutenant Gill and his three scouts leave the rifle trenches just after nine-thirty at the first sign of darkness. At this time of the year the night lasts only until 2.15 so they are aware that the whole operation must be concluded in under four hours. All goes well and Ben and Wearne, following the ditches Ben previously used, reach the gap in the wire without any trouble. At the same time they lay a magnetic wire so that their section of the raiding party can find their way safely home.

Things at first go well in Lieutenant Gill’s section. They make comparatively short work of cutting through the dilapidated defences. Gill and a scout named Tozer lie on their backs and cut a front path through the wire, while those behind them expand it. So that the clicking of the wire-cutters can’t be heard by an alert sentry, they do not entirely cut through each strand, a skill that comes from much practice. Later the wire can easily be snapped by hand. Gill and Tozer have cleared a passage almost through the German wire when they see that it is destined to come out directly under an enemy listening post. In fact, a man in a spiked helmet now peers over it, apparently looking over their bodies directly below him and into the darkness beyond. Both lie frozen, hardly daring to breathe. The sentry must have been made aware of something because moments later two other heads appear and some discussion takes place. Then, as suddenly, the heads of all three disappear beyond the parapet.

Gill and Tozer, hoping that the other two scouts working further back will have seen the Germans, wait another ten minutes before they begin to withdraw, inching backwards, wriggling their way through the wire, joining those parts further back where they have been forced to cut it. By now it is half-past eleven and Lieutenant Gill, using his electric torch at an angle and in such a manner so that its beam cannot be detected by a German sentry, signals Ben to withdraw.

By the time Ben and Wearne arrive back at the assault group and are, shortly afterwards, joined by Gill, Tozer and the other two scouts, it is nearly midnight, too late to attempt and complete the raid.

The excursion isn’t entirely wasted. They have learned a fair bit and at the same time on the following night the raid is repeated. This time, at 11.15, the artillery and medium trench mortars open up and appear to be shelling the German positions considerably to the north and south of the one Captain Foss and his raiders will attack. The raiding party moves into position and with the wires already cut the previous night they are, hopefully, in a much better position to attack. During the day medium trench mortars have played on the area where the wire has been cut to discourage the Germans from looking too closely at it or to repair the section on Ben’s side. At 11.25 the guns are switched onto the trenches Foss and his men will attack and they are heavily bombarded for ten minutes. The direct fire into the trenches ceases and a box barrage to either side and the rear is formed around the position to be attacked. This is so that no German reinforcements can be brought up from the rear or the side trenches.

It takes only two minutes for the assault party to reach the German trenches and to leap into them with Captain Foss, revolver in one hand, knobkerrie in the other and a whistle in his mouth, leading the attack. The Germans, thoroughly cowed by the bombardment minutes earlier, are found hiding in dugouts and anywhere else they think themselves to be safe.

A large German sergeant comes out of a dugout brandishing a bayonet and goes straight for Foss, who has moved to Ben’s end of the trench. Foss doesn’t see him at first but turns as the German has his hand raised with the bayonet above his head. The raiding-party leader hasn’t even had time to bring his revolver around to fire, when the German simply crumples to his knees, the blade of the Maori fighting axe cleaving the back of his skull. He falls, his head actually bumping against the toe of Foss’s plimsoll. Foss looks up to see Ben grinning at him ten feet away.

However, most of the Germans are caught completely unawares. The Australians go to work with their bayonets though none of them finds it necessary to use their ‘life preservers’, their bolted stick, except for one incident when a prisoner attempts to escape and one of the Anzac raiders, his blood up, chases him and brains him with his knobkerrie.

In just under five minutes six Germans are captured and the remainder killed. The raiding party withdraws without a single Australian being killed or injured, though later two of the scouts are killed when an enemy mortar lands among a group retreating back to their own lines.

The Germans grow much more skilled at resisting the raiding parties in the weeks that follow, but the raids are a source of great pride among the Australian infantry. Although the credit for inventing them must be given to the Canadians, the lads nevertheless see their raiding parties as an original contribution to the war in France.

Ben returns to the 5th Battalion where he becomes the sergeant-major of D Company under the command of Major Joshua Solomon and where he will also train several raiding parties.