The Australian Victories in France in 1918

by Sir John Monash

The First Australian Division, together with the Fourth Infantry Brigade, which was then under my command and subsequently became the nucleus of the Fourth Australian Division, were raised in Australia in 1914, immediately after the outbreak of war, were transported to Egypt, where they underwent their war training in the winter of 1915, and ultimately formed, with the New Zealand Contingent, the body known as the "Anzac" Corps, which carried out, on April 25th, the memorable landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula.

The Second Australian Division speedily followed, being raised in Australia during 1915, and the greater part of this Second Contingent joined the Anzac Corps in the later stages of the Dardanelles Expedition. Another independent Brigade (the Eighth) was also sent to Egypt in that year.

The raising of the Third Australian Division, early in 1916, was the magnificent answer which Australia made when public men and the Press declared that the Australian people would resent the Evacuation from Gallipoli, and the seemingly fruitless sacrifices which it entailed. This Division was shipped direct to England, and assembled on Salisbury Plain during the summer of 1916, where I assumed the command of it. There it underwent its war training under conditions far more advantageous than those which confronted the First and Second Divisions in the Egyptian desert. The Third Division entered the theatre of war in France in November, 1916.

In the meantime, the Evacuation of the Peninsula, in December, 1915, led to the assembly in Egypt of the First and Second Australian Divisions, the Fourth and Eighth independent Infantry Brigades and some thirty thousand reinforcements and convalescents.

Out of this supply of fighting material it was then decided to constitute two additional complete Divisions, the Fourth Brigade forming the nucleus of the Fourth Australian Division, while the 8th Brigade formed that of the Fifth Australian Division; the remaining Brigades and the Divisional troops were drawn from reinforcements, stiffened by a considerable contribution of veterans taken from the four Infantry Brigades who had carried out the landing on Gallipoli.

The Fourth and Fifth Divisions were thus formed in Egypt in February and March, 1916, and the conditions of their war training were even less satisfactory than those which had confronted the earlier Divisions. The hot season speedily arrived; equipment, munitions and animals materialized slowly; training equipment and suitable training grounds were of the most meagre character; and upon all these difficulties supervened the urgent obligation to undertake the strenuous toil of organizing and executing, on the Sinai desert, the field fortifications required for the defence of the Suez Canal zone.

The method in which the Divisions then available in Egypt were to be grouped for the purposes of Corps Command was ripe for decision. It was then that the determination was reached to constitute two separate Army Corps, to be called respectively "First Anzac" and "Second Anzac." The former embodied the First, Second and Fifth Australian Divisions, under General Sir William Birdwood; the latter comprised the Fourth Australian and the New Zealand Divisions under Lieut.-General Sir Alexander Godley.

This was the organization of the Australian troops when the time arrived, in May, 1916, for their transfer by sea from Egypt to the scene of the titanic conflict which had been for nearly two years raging on the soil of France and Belgium.

This grouping did not, however, persist for more than a few weeks. The opening of the great Somme offensive in July 1916 found the First, Second and Fourth Divisions operating under First Anzac in the valley of the Somme, while the Fifth Australian and the New Zealand Division constituted the Second Anzac Corps in the Armentières-Fleurbaix sector. There followed other interchanges as the campaign developed, and by November of 1916, the grouping stood with First Anzac employing the First, Second, Fourth and Fifth Divisions, while Second Anzac comprised the Third Australian, the New Zealand and the Thirty-Fourth British Divisions.

The series of offensive operations opening with the great and successful battle of Messines on June 7th, 1917, found the Fourth Australian Division once again under the command of General Godley, only to be again withdrawn before the concluding phases of the Third Battle of Ypres, in September and October, 1917. The autumn offensive of 1917, aiming at the capture of the Passchendaele ridge, was the first occasion on which the whole of the five Divisions were simultaneously engaged in the same locality in a common enterprise; but even on that occasion they still remained distributed under two different Corps Commands, and had not yet achieved the long-desired unity of command and of policy.