End of the Battle of Pozières Ridge

On 3 September 1916 Major-General Herbert Cox’s Australian 4th Division attacked Mouquet Farm on the ridge north of Pozières for the last time. In British nomenclature this attack ends the Battle of Pozières Ridge, in which since 23 July three divisions of I ANZAC Corps had been pushing in a narrow wedge towards the rear of the German stronghold of Thiepval. The attack was part of a wider operation by General Hubert Gough’s British Reserve Army, which that day struck at Thiepval from three sides, but only on four selected sectors. At noon the same day, a few kilometres further south-east, the Fourth Army and the French advanced on Guillemont and Ginchy. The attack, postponed several times because of rain, went in at 5.10 a.m., just after dawn.

The task fell to Brigadier-General Thomas Glasgow’s 13th Australian Brigade. On the right the 49th Battalion from Queensland took the crest of the ridge and a stretch of Fabeck Graben, from which there was a view from Courcelette to the distant church towers of Miraumont and Grandcourt. In the centre the 52nd Battalion fought a savage battle with grenades, bayonets and rifle butts. In it fell Captain Littler, known from Gallipoli as the “Prince of Anzac”, who led the attack unarmed, with only a walking stick in his hand. On the left the 51st Battalion from Western Australia, following close behind the barrage, burst into the ruins of the farm before the Germans could get out of their dugouts. At 7.30 a.m. brigade headquarters received word that the farm had been taken, and about fifty Germans came up out of the underground passages with their hands raised. Two companies of the battalion went on further and began to dig in about a hundred metres beyond the farm.

The success was short-lived. Beneath the farm ran a labyrinth of cellars and tunnels that the Australians did not know. Soldiers of the Prussian 1st Guard Reserve Division emerged from them and from neighbouring trenches to the north-east, broke into the gap between the 51st and 52nd Battalions and surrounded the forward companies. The last message received from them was sent at 8.30 a.m. by Lieutenant Clifford: “Being heavily pressed. Enemy bombing down our trench from both ends. (…) Trench half full of wounded and dead (…). I have only about 30 men with me.” Few came back from the two companies, and under heavy shellfire the farm passed into German hands again. The Australians held only a few hundred metres of Fabeck Graben on the ridge, where the 49th Battalion, supported by a company of the 50th Battalion and the remnants of the 52nd, beat off German counter-attacks all day. In the afternoon Glasgow threw companies of the Canadian 13th Battalion (Royal Highlanders of Canada), which had just arrived at the front, into the threatened sectors.

The Reserve Army’s other attacks that day failed. North of the Ancre the 39th Division broke into the German trenches, but when it ran out of grenades it had to withdraw, losing almost 1,850 men. The 49th Division was repulsed in front of the Schwaben Redoubt, and the 25th Division at Thiepval itself, although it entered the German trenches, could not hold them. At 6.30 p.m. Gough called off further attacks. The 13th Brigade’s gain was the only one of the day. As early as three in the afternoon General William Birdwood and the staff of I ANZAC Corps handed over command of the sector to General Julian Byng’s Canadian Corps, and at noon the next day Cox handed over command of his sector to General Arthur Currie of the 1st Canadian Division. The last Australian battalions left the line at dawn on 5 September.

According to Charles Bean’s Australian official history, the 13th Brigade lost 41 officers and 1,305 men on 3 September and the following days, and according to the British official history the whole 4th Division lost more than 2,400 men from 27 August to 4 September. In the whole battle I ANZAC Corps lost about 23,000 killed, wounded and missing. The Germans retook the captured stretch of Fabeck Graben on 8 September, during a relief of Canadian battalions. Mouquet Farm, which the Australians had been fighting for since the beginning of August, fell only at the end of September.