Mouquet Farm, 26 August, 1916

My rough draft introduction for the Mouquet Farm Map:

Australian Introduction:



The time is 04:45 hours, 26 August, 1916


"My tinnie is as dry as a dead dingo's donger!"

The Australian 2nd Division is in the frontlines near Mouquet Farm, about five miles north of the River Somme and about one and a half miles east of the Somme's tributary, the River Ancre, in Picardy, France.

The advance from the summit of Pozieres Ridge to Mouquet Farm has lasted for almost three weeks now and has been painfully slow.

The landscape looks like something from the planet Mars: a sea of blown up reddish chesnut colored earth pierced by thousands of red shell craters.

The only signs of human civilization are an overturned abandoned wagon on the horizon, and several piles of white rubble with some beams of wood protruding from them: Mouquet Farm.

When the 2nd Division came over the slope to the frontlines facing Mouquet Farm just eighty-two hours ago during the early evening of August 22, an intense barrage from the German lines of shrapnel and high-explosive shells immediately descended on the whole area from Mouquet Farm to Pozieres, lasting from 6:00PM until midnight, and Lieutenant W.A. Coward of the 24th Battalion was killed.

The Germans have an advantageous position; Mouquet Farm and their trench lines are on the top of a gentle rising slope, and thus they can see any movement along Poziers Ridge by day.

The German artillery shells fall for hours at a time like a deadly cosmic storm, killing, maiming, and burying the men in your battalion.

Because of the heavy German barrages, communications is severely impaired and telephone lines cannot be maintained.

Instead, foot messangers are used to send messages; it takes them several hours to reach Brigade Headquarters which is a little less than 1,000 yards away near Pozieres Cemetery.

You have heard stories men being relieved that our own artillery has killed scores of our own men through friendly fire, and continued to shell our frontlines, even after messangers were sent, because things are not being coordinated properly.

Yesterday, ninety-six men in a single company of the 21st Battalion were killed or wounded during a German barrage.

Because of the heavy German barrages, communications is severely impaired and telephone lines cannot be maintained.

Just about half the supplies of grenades, small arms ammunition, flares, and water are able to get through to the front. The two days of line rations that you brought with you ran out over a day ago.

In order to reduce the horrendous level of casualties that were sustained on the opening day at the Somme and at Pozieres over a month ago, new tactics have been issued to General Headquarters by Field Marshal Douglas Haig, Commander of the BEF.

In order to avoid detection from the German artillery and to lower casualties, lighter forces are to be employed in assaulting enemy positions.

Objectives will be carefully selected, and instead of attacking in overwhelming numbers, sufficient levels of troops will be used to capture and hold them; yet not using forces that are too weak.

Also a "creeping" artillery barrage will be utilized.

The creeping barrage will move ahead of the advancing infantry at a set rate of 50 yards a minute, so that the infantry will be protected by a curtain of fire and will attack the enemy positions as soon as the barrage moves on to the next enemy line.


On August 16, Haig informed General Gough, the Commander of the Reserve Army, that heavy armoured "caterpillar" cars which, for secrecy, had been referred to as "water tanks," would shortly reach France, and that a new major offensive with fresh reinforcements will probably take place in the middle of September.

It is hoped that this planned September offensive with the tanks might at last break through the German front and enable the British to "roll it up".

But before the September offensive can be effectively launched, the Thiepval-Pozieres Ridge must be seized.

General Gough originally defined the purpose of capturing Mouquet Farm as "cutting off Thiepval and getting observation over Coucelette and Grandcourt."

Gough has amplified the order: the object of Anzac operations is to cut off the heavily defended German position at the village of Thiepval and the nearby Schwaben Redoubt from the Germans' resupply depot at Courcelette to the east, and to capture of Thiepval itself by converging attacks by the Anzacs from the north-east and by the newly arrived British II Corps to the south-west.

The date for this assault on Theipval is set for 28th of August, and will coincide with the British 4th Army's assault on Ginchy and Guillemont to the east.

In preparation for the offensive on Thiepval, tha Anzac line west of Mouquet Farm must be straightened to the Courcellette Road and the substantial German trench line called the Fabeck Graben to the east must be taken and secured.

Zero hour is at 0445 hours.

At 0415 hours, Captain Sale gives the order to climb out of the front-line trench and lay down in proper order in shell craters 25 feet ahead of the trench.

As you lie in the shell crater, waiting for the artillery to open up, you think about the letter you found in the shirt pocket of one your friends who was killed by the German artillery.

It said "Dear Mother, sisters, brothers, and Auntie Lill.

As we are about to go into work that must be done, I want to ask you, if anything should happen to me, not to worry. You must think of all the mothers that lost ones as dear to them. One thing you can say-- that you lost one doing his little bit for a good cause.

I know you shall feel it if anything does happen to me, but I am willing and prepared to give my life for the cause."


In the summer of 1916, Mouquet Farm would reap a harvest not of wheat, but of thousands of corpses. The total casualties incurred in attempting to take the farm from 7 August to 12 September cannot have been much short of 20,000 men, including Britons, Canadians, Tasmanians, and men of Aborginal ancestry, but the bulk of the men lost were from Australia.

The Australian Imperial Force's casualties(including Tasmanians and Aboriginal peoples) numbered 15,400 out of the 20,000 men killed or wounded.


Copyright 2008, USA