On the forenoon of the day before the battle, the following message was promulgated to all the troops:
Corps Headquarters,
August 7th, 1918.To the Soldiers of the Australian Army Corps.
For the first time in the history of this Corps, all five Australian Divisions will to-morrow engage in the largest and most important battle operation ever undertaken by the Corps.
They will be supported by an exceptionally powerful Artillery, and by Tanks and Aeroplanes on a scale never previously attempted. The full resources of our sister Dominion, the Canadian Corps, will also operate on our right, while two British Divisions will guard our left flank.
The many successful offensives which the Brigades and Battalions of this Corps have so brilliantly executed during the past four months have been but the prelude to, and the preparation for, this greatest and culminating effort.
Because of the completeness of our plans and dispositions, of the magnitude of the operations, of the number of troops employed, and of the depth to which we intend to overrun the enemy's positions, this battle will be one of the most memorable of the whole war; and there can be no doubt that, by capturing our objectives, we shall inflict blows upon the enemy which will make him stagger, and will bring the end appreciably nearer.
I entertain no sort of doubt that every Australian soldier will worthily rise to so great an occasion, and that every man, imbued with the spirit of victory, will, in spite of every difficulty that may confront him, be animated by no other resolve than grim determination to see through to a clean finish, whatever his task may be.
The work to be done to-morrow will perhaps make heavy demands upon the endurance and staying powers of many of you; but I am confident that, in spite of excitement, fatigue, and physical strain, every man will carry on to the utmost of his powers until his goal is won; for the sake of Australia, the Empire and our cause.
I earnestly wish every soldier of the Corps the best of good fortune, and a glorious and decisive victory, the story of which will re-echo throughout the world, and will live for ever in the history of our home land.
John Monash,
Lieut.-General.
Cmdg. Australian Corps.
Not many days afterwards a copy of this order fell into the hands of the enemy, and the use he tried to make of it, to his own grave discomfiture, as the event proved, is an interesting story which will be told in due course.
Zero hour was fixed for twenty minutes past four, on the morning of August 8th. It needs a pen more facile than I can command to describe, and an imagination more vivid to realize the stupendous import of the last ten minutes. In black darkness, a hundred thousand infantry, deployed over twelve miles of front, are standing grimly, silently, expectantly, in readiness to advance, or are already crawling stealthily forward to get within eighty yards of the line on which the barrage will fall; all feel to make sure that their bayonets are firmly locked, or to set their steel helmets firmly on their heads; Company and Platoon Commanders, their whistles ready to hand, are nervously glancing at their luminous watches, waiting for minute after minute to go by—and giving a last look over their commands—ensuring that their runners are by their sides, their observers alert, and that the officers detailed to control direction have their compasses set and ready. Carrying parties shoulder their burdens, and adjust the straps; pioneers grasp their picks and shovels; engineers take up their stores of explosives and primers and fuses; machine and Lewis gunners whisper for the last time to the carriers of their magazines and belt boxes to be sure and follow up. The Stokes Mortar carrier slings his heavy load, and his loading numbers fumble to see that their haversacks of cartridges are handy. Overhead drone the aeroplanes, and from the rear, in swelling chorus, the buzzing and clamour of the Tanks grows every moment louder and louder. Scores of telegraph operators sit by their instruments with their message forms and registers ready to hand, bracing themselves for the rush of signal traffic which will set in a few moments later; dozens of Staff Officers spread their maps in readiness, to record with coloured pencils the stream of expected information. In hundreds of pits, the guns are already run up, loaded and laid on their opening lines of fire; the sergeant is checking the range for the last time; the layer stands silently with the lanyard in his hand. The section officer, watch on wrist, counts the last seconds: "A minute to go"—"Thirty seconds"—"Ten seconds"—"Fire."
And, suddenly, with a mighty roar, more than a thousand guns begin the symphony. A great illumination lights up the Eastern horizon; and instantly the whole complex organization, extending far back to areas almost beyond earshot of the guns, begins to move forward; every man, every unit, every vehicle and every Tank on their appointed tasks and to their designated goals; sweeping onward relentlessly and irresistibly. Viewed from a high vantage point and in the glimmer of the breaking day, a great Artillery barrage surely surpasses in dynamic splendour any other manifestation of collective human effort.
The Artillery barrage dominates the battle, and the landscape. The field is speedily covered with a cloak of dust, and smoke and spume, making impossible any detailed observation, at the time, of the course of the battle as a whole. The story can only be indifferently pieced together, long after, by an attempted compilation of the reports of a hundred different participants, whose narratives are usually much impaired by personal bias, by the nervous excitement of the moment, and by an all too limited range of vision. That is why no comprehensive account yet exists of some of the major battles of the war, and why those partial narratives hitherto produced are so often in conflict.
In so great a battle as this, only the broad facts and tangible results can be placed on record without danger of controversy. The whole immense operation proceeded according to plan in every detail, with a single exception, to which I must specially refer later on. The first phase, controlled as it was by the barrage time-table, necessarily ended punctually, and with the whole of the green line objective in our hands. This success gave us possession of nearly all the enemy's guns, so that his artillery retaliation speedily died down.
The captures in this phase were considerable, and few of the garrisons of the enemy's forward offensive zone escaped destruction or capture. The Second and Third Divisions had a comparative "walk over," and they had come to a halt, with their tasks completed, before 7 a.m.
The "open warfare" phase commenced at twenty minutes past eight, and both the red and the blue lines were captured in succession half-an-hour ahead of scheduled time. This capture covered the whole length of my front except the extreme left, where a half expected difficulty arose, but one which exercised no influence upon the day's success.