[2] For grouping of Australian Brigades into Divisions, see Appendix "A."
CHAPTER I
BACK TO THE SOMME
The early days of the year 1918 found the Australian Corps consisting of the First, Second, Third and Fifth Australian Divisions, while the Fourth had been transferred far south to co-operate in the later developments of the Cambrai fighting. The Corps was then holding, defensively, a sector of the line in Flanders, which had in the previous years of the war become, at various times, familiar to all our Divisions, and which extended from the river Lys at Armentières, northwards, as far as to include the southern half of the Messines Ridge.
It was, indeed, that very stretch of country, which in June, 1917, had been captured by our Third Division, in co-operation with the New Zealanders. Opposite its centre lay the town of Warneton, still in the hands of the enemy. Excepting for a small area of undulating ground in the extreme north of the Corps sector, the country was a forbidding expanse of devastation, flat and woebegone, with long stretches of the front line submerged waist deep after every freshet in the river Lys, and with the greater part of our trench system like nothing but a series of canals of liquid mud.
This unsavoury region formed, however, the most obvious line of approach for an enemy who, debouching from the direction of Warneton, aimed at the high land between us and the Channel Ports; so that, tactically useless as were these mud flats, it was imperative that they should be strongly defended, in order to protect from capture the important heights of Messines, Kemmel, Hill 63, Mont des Cats and Cassel.
During the fighting of the preceding summer and early autumn, which gave the Australian troops possession of this territory, the locality was dry, practicable for movement, and reasonably comfortable for the front line troops. Now it was water-logged, often ice-bound, bleak and inhospitable. The precious months of dry weather, between August and October, 1917, had been allowed to pass without any comprehensive attempt on the part of those Divisions which had relieved the Second Anzac Corps after its capture of this ground to perfect the defences of the newly-conquered territory. At any rate, there was little to show for any work that may have been attempted.
Now, in the very depth of the worst season of the year, the demand came to prepare the region for defence and resistance to the last; for the threat of a great German offensive in the opening of the 1918 campaigning season was already beginning to take shape. It was the Australian Corps which was called upon to answer that demand. There followed week after week of heart-breaking labour, much of it necessarily by night, in draining the flat land, in erecting acre upon acre of wire entanglements, in constructing hundreds of strong points, and concrete machine gun emplacements. Trenches had to be dug, although the sides collapsed unless immediately revetted with fascines or sheet iron; roads had to be repaired, and vain attempts were made to provide the trench garrisons with dry and bearable underground living quarters.
The monotony of all this labour, which long after—when the Australians had disappeared from the scene and were again fighting on the Somme—proved to have been undertaken all in vain, was relieved only by an occasional raid, undertaken by one or other of our front line Divisions, for the purpose of molesting the enemy and gathering information. The Corps front was held by two Divisions in line, one in support, and one resting in a back area; the rotation of trench duty gave each Division about six weeks in the line.