France, August 14th.

You would scarcely realise it from what the world has heard, but I think that the hardest battle ever fought by Australians was probably the battle of PoziÈres Ridge.

There have been four distinct battles fought by the Australian troops on the Somme since they made their first charge from the British trenches near PoziÈres. The first was the heavy three days' fight by which they took PoziÈres village. The second was the fight in which they tried to rush the German second line along the hill-crest behind PoziÈres. The third was the attack in which this second line was broken by them along a front of a mile and a half. The fourth has been the long fight which immediately began along the German second line northwards from the new position, along the ridge towards Mouquet Farm. It has been hard fighting all the way, and what was three weeks ago a German salient into the British line is now a big Australian salient into the German line. But I think that the hardest fight of all was that of the second and third phases—the battle for PoziÈres Ridge.

PoziÈres village itself was not on the crest of the hill. It was on the British side of it, where the German was naturally hanging on because it was almost the highest point in his position and gave him a view over miles of our territory. On the other hand, the German main second line behind PoziÈres was practically on the summit; in some parts farther north it was actually on or just over the summit. It was from two to seven hundred yards beyond the village itself.

The German line on the hill-crest was attacked as soon as ever the village was properly cleared. The Australians went at it in the night across a wide strip of waste hill-top. The thistles there, and the brown earth churned up in shell craters, and the absolute absence of any kind of movement (simply because it was too dangerous to move), call to one's mind Shakespeare's old stage direction of a "blasted heath." There had been a short artillery preparation; the attack reminded one of our old raids up on the ArmentiÈres front.

I have seen Germans who were in the line in front of that attack. They state that they were not surprised. In the light of their flares they had seen numbers of "Englishmen" advancing over the shoulder of the hill. When the rush came, one German officer told me, he, in his short sector of the line alone, had three machine-guns all hard at work. The attack reached the remnants of the German wire. Some brave men picked a path through the tangle, and, in spite of the cross-fire, managed to reach the German trench. They were very few. We have since discovered men in the craters even beyond the front German trench. The German officer told me that his men had afterwards found an Australian who had been lying in a crater in front of his line for four days. He had been shot through the abdomen and had a broken leg, but he had been brought in by the Germans and was doing well. We also afterwards brought in both Australians and Germans who had been out there for six days, wounded, living on what rations they had with them.

It was a brave attack. On the extreme left it succeeded. But the trenches won by the Victorians there were on the flank, not on the hill-top. The country behind that crest, sloping gradually down to the valley of Courcelette and beyond, where the German field batteries were firing and where the Germans could come and go unseen—all this was so far an unknown land into which no one on the British side had peered since the battle began.

Six days later the Australians went for that position again. They attacked just after dusk. There was enough light to make out the face of the country as if by a dim moonlight. They were the same troops who had made the attack a week before, because there was a determination that they, and they alone, should reach that line. The artillery had been pounding it gradually during the week.

The German troops who were holding that part were about to be relieved. They had suffered from the slow, continual bombardment. There were deep dug-outs in their trenches, where they saved the men as far as possible, but one after another these would be crushed or blocked by a heavy shell. The tired companies had lost in some cases actually half their men by this shell fire, losing them slowly, day by day, as a man might bleed to death. The remainder had their packs made up ready to march out to rest. The young officer of one of the relieving battalions was actually coming into the trenches at the head of his platoon—when there crashed on them a sudden hail of shell fire. The officer extended his men hurriedly and pushed on. It was about half-past ten by German time, which is half-past nine by ours.

The first sight that met him, as he reached the support line of German trenches, was two wounded Australians lying in the bottom of it. So the British must be attacking, he thought. He ordered his platoon to advance over the trench and counter-attack. But in the dark and the dust they lost touch and straggled to the north—he saw no more of them. He tumbled on with two men into a shell crater and began to improve it for defence—then they found Australians towering around them in the dark. They surrendered.

It was a most difficult business to get the various parties for our attack into position in the night, and some of the troops behind had to be pushed forward hurriedly. In consequence the officers out in front had to carry on as if theirs were the only troops in the attack, and see the whole fight through without relying upon supports. The way in which junior officers and N.C.O.'s have acted upon their own initiative during some of this fighting has been beyond praise. The attack went through up to time. The supports had to come in parties organised in the dark on the spur of the moment. The Germans had several machine-guns going. But as another German officer told me, "This time they came on too thick. We might have held them in front, but they got in on one side of us; then we heard they were in on the other; then they came from the rear as well—on all four sides. What could we do?"

Almost immediately after the Australians reached the trenches, watchers far behind could see the horizon beyond them lit by five slow illuminations, about ten minutes' interval between each. They were beyond the crest of the hill. I do not know, but I think the German must have been blowing up his field-gun ammunition.

The men in the new trenches may, or may not, have seen this. What they did notice, as soon as the battle cleared and they had time to look into the darkness in front of them, was a succession of brilliant glares from some position just hidden by the slope of the hill. It was the flash of the German guns which were firing at them. It is, as far as I know, the first time in this battle that our men have seen the actual flash of the enemy's guns.

When day broke they found beyond them a wide, flat stretch of hill-top, with a distant hill line beyond. Far down the slope there were Germans moving. And in the distant landscape they saw the German gun teams limber up and hurry away with the field guns which for a fortnight had been firing upon our men.

The Germans have twice afterwards attacked that position. In the early light of the first morning a party of them came tumbling up from some trench against a sector of the captured line. In front of them was an officer, well ahead, firing his automatic pistol as he went, levelling it first at one Australian, then at another, as he saw them in the trenches before him. He was shot, and the attack quickly melted; it never seemed very serious. Two days later, after a long, heavy bombardment, the Germans attacked again—this time about fifteen hundred of them. They penetrated the two trenches at one point, but our company officers, again acting on their own initiative, charged them straight, on the instant, without hesitation. Every German in that section was captured, and a few Australians, whom they had taken, were released.