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It’s time. Just hours before, the 14th Battalion had been told that there was a stunt going on at Bullecourt this evening, and they were to pack their equipment with rations, rifles and Mills bombs, sharpen their bayonets and prepare for battle.
There is no mention of tanks, because that information has been withheld from them, just as it has been from everyone except their commander. As an intelligence officer, Captain Albert Jacka is already well on his way, but the rest begin their march forward in the dark, along the cobbled streets to the east, as light snow begins to fall, exhaling steaming plumes into the cold with every breath . air.
On they go, under the imperceptible moon with an apparent swirl of fireflies at their feet, the result of their hobnailed boots striking sparks on the cobblestones. And now listen, lean closer, as the metallic rhythm of those nails and horseshoes on cobblestones comes closer and closer, along with the shouts of the sergeants and corporals along the column keeping the men on time, and on time.
German trenches and wire defenses on the Western Front.Credit: Daily mirror
Occasionally a soldier begins a marching song, which flares up like a lit match in the darkness, blooming for a short time before slowly dying away, replaced again by the rattling of equipment and flailing legs and slow. . . silence once more, as they disappear into the night.
Further along the roads, further into the night.
Both Captain Harold Wanliss and Captain Albert Jacka have been busy in the run-up to the attack.
“The battalion staff was on the concert field making final preparations,” one soldier documents, “and Captain Wanliss’ cheerful, optimistic smile was infectious. Captain Jacka had taken over the duties of IO and everything was completed down to the smallest detail with unsurpassable thoroughness. Everyone welcomed the instruction to proceed to the starting point in a sunken road, approximately 800 meters from the Hindenburg Wire.”
But just before they leave, it’s Jacka herself who has to start the battle before it even begins. His role as an intelligence officer is to slither, run and crawl to the edge of the German wire, and ideally into the trenches beyond, to find out exactly what they will face tomorrow. No man’s land is Jacka’s land. He seems nervous to his comrades, but that is not the case. It’s simply that Jacka’s jingle of nerves, that flicker of shock that haunts him in everyday life, disappears when he’s in the thick of it. Only then is he really cool and collected; a diamond created by pressure. Jacka knows that the more he can see, the more Allies will live when the sun rises, and the more Germans will die. One of his hopes is that because “the firing of our artillery last night was very accurate” and “the heavy guns and field guns along our front played well on wire”, most of the wire between them and the German trenches will be destroyed find. . But there’s only one way to find out.
Artillery was used to prepare the battlefield at Bullecourt.Credit: Australian official photo
So now they set out in the company of Lieutenant Henry Bradley and Lieutenant Frank Wadge – the latter is the intelligence officer of the 16th Battalion. Jacka sets the pace, and it is slow, as they creep closer and closer, over the mud, through the mud, sometimes under the bloody mud, gripping the grass, wriggling their way, wide-eyed and alert, until they approach the first . line German wire.
Damn, it held up after all! Yes, it is “destroyed by shellfire in some places,” but only in some places. For the most part, it is “generally uninterrupted,” which is not what the generals want to hear. In some places the “frontline wire is about twenty feet in diameter, and some of it is as thick as your finger.”
The previous artillery fire was not enough, the running will be tough tomorrow. Okay, pause now, it’s time to go beyond the wire, this is the end of No Man’s Land and the beginning of madness. Jacka goes solo here; leaving the other two grateful for this most dangerous part. If he buys it, they have to return with what they already know. Jacka finds the winding narrow path that goes through the wire and begins to crawl forward alone.
But he is not alone, for as he approached the other side, and as he will tell Ted Rule, “I saw with my own eyes the density of machine guns and men in their trenches.” It is stacked and packed, a tinderbox that will explode the tanks. To think that some of their senior officers had insisted that the Germans had abandoned the Hindenburg Line, and that it was theirs for the taking!
Far from it.
Because make no mistake. . .
“The garrison held strong and was wide awake.” And, good Lord! Now a German patrol of almost a dozen men is walking towards him, and Jacka can do nothing but roll herself under the barbed wire, lie completely still, stop breathing and pray. In his right hand he holds his pistol, ready to spring into action at their first cry of alarm. However, nothing for now. The soft guttural sounds of the Germans are like drumbeats in Jacka’s ears, closer and closer, still he is, and pray that he does, just like them… . . stroll along. . . and past. Thank Christ!
British tanks maneuver through landmines and barbed wire on the Hindenburg Line.Credit: Australian War Memorial
As Jacka continues on his path, he can necessarily see clearly how impenetrable this wire is, as he will record in his intelligence letter for this battle that should not be: ‘Wire for the front line is very enormous and with an average depth of between 30 and 50 meters. This is supported by heavy wooden posts, with few iron pickets in use. . . The wire between the front and support lines is thin, only about 5 meters wide, and is supported by ordinary corkscrew posts. This was found almost unaffected by our gunfire, but was generally negotiable.
The negotiations continue, Jacka gets through and sees that the second row of barbed wire further up is also completely intact. There are endless rolls of vicious barbed wire, and a mass of men running against it would have no chance of pushing through before being cut to pieces by machine guns. The only hope now would be that the barrage would specifically target this line and blow it to pieces. That would no longer be a surprise, because the Germans would know that it was a prelude to an attack. Now that he’s closer to the trenches, he can definitely hear movement, and it sounds like there is one lot of German soldiers.
Jacka has seen and heard enough and crawls back through the barbed wire to rejoin Bradley and Wadge, his head spinning with the likely consequences of what he has seen. The dejected lieutenants are the first to hear the bad news. Jacka also reports on his encounter with the patrol.
“It was a mystery that they didn’t see me,” Jacka whispers. “They almost stepped on me.”
But what would you have done if they had stepped on you? Weren’t you afraid?
Captain Jacka VC MC and Bar receives a bar for his MC for bravery during the first attack on Bullecourt.Credit: Australian War Memorial
“Oh no,” Jacka mutters. “I was quite calm because I knew what I had to do.”
Oh yes? And what would that be?
“I was watching them, and if they discovered me, I would get in between them and shoot the place up before they knew what had happened.”
Right. Good to know.
“I would have gotten away easily enough.”
Yeah, he damn well would have. Bradley and Wadge, who are not immortal, imagine their very different fates. But here is the shocked Jacka, the man who trembled for an hour in a military hospital when a drawer closed too quickly, gone.
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In fact, he is now So confidently that when one of his companions notices how quiet the Germans are, and airily wonders whether that can really be so That Many of them, Jacka decides to do that prove it to him. He takes off his helmet and starts hitting the wire with it, the shocking sound cutting through the night.
Everyone down!
There is an immediate and fierce firefight from the German lines, so strong that his companions are shocked.
“How many do you think there are (now)?” Jacka asks, once it dies down.
“A million,” comes the gurgling answer.
“Don’t exaggerate,” says Jacka, “I want to make a report. I don’t think that’s the half of it.”
But let’s turn back now, guys, because we have a disaster to avoid! For Jacka, the situation is as plain as day: the attack as currently contemplated is doomed to catastrophic failure.
This is an edited excerpt from The legend of Albert Jacka by Peter FitzSimons, published by Hachette Australia on October 30.
The latest book by Peter FitzSimons.Credit: Delivered
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