53rd Australia's Battalion
Our battalion the 53rd Australian infantry battalion arrived in France on the 27th of June, 1916. We then caught a train straight to the western front on July 10 for the first time, we spent some time there getting used to the conditions and feel for the war zone. Before we arrived in France, we were getting trained in Egypt around February. The half of us were veterans fighting in Gallipoli from the 1st battalion. The other half are like me, fresh reinforcements from Australia. We were being trained to use the weapons include: rifles, machine guns, Mills bomb, grenades and especially the bolt shot rifle. The whole training was tough but all the preparation will be useful for the battle.
Our months of preparation was over, we then moving towards
France to help out the British. We arrived at the sugarloaf salient near the small French village of Fromelles. The battle starter at 6 pm, our goal was to feint the Germans to prevent them from reinforcing their troops around the Somme. Towards the evening, our division and the British division attempted to seize 4000 yard of front line centered on the ‘sugarloaf’. The attack stared with three and a half hours before daylight remain. The front line was about 200 meters wide on the north of ‘sugarloaf’, the Australians quickly crossed the no-man’s-line’, captured the German’s front line, we then kept pushing on to the or hundreds of meters in search of a supposed third or last line of the German trench system. The whole battalion was dynamited. is now about 8 in the night, it’s dark outside. I can still hear the charges surrounding me, shells bursting, machine gun rattling and rifle cracking. Each one of us don’t include the equipment and rifle, all carried either spade, picks or rolls of matting or scaling ladder. From my shelter,
I could see lad rushing in the face of death, it was fine but though horrifying. This is the worst scene I have ever seen. My mate next to a few minutes ago could just pass put now. For the next two days, through the same night I laid in the trenches, too much anxious to move on count of snipers and machine guns which they kept play on the ground. At last I realized I am getting weak and my water bottle was now empty, I decided to go back to the lines on the next day. I cannot help think the terrible nights I spent, for companions I had 2 yards from me a dead comrade and 5 yards behind me a Sergeant with smashed hip unable to move. All the nights before were in the days of awful sound, which was the the sound that they were heard the zip-zip and ping of bullets would in the direction of the cries.
Our months of preparation was over, we then moving towards
France to help out the British. We arrived at the sugarloaf salient near the small French village of Fromelles. The battle starter at 6 pm, our goal was to feint the Germans to prevent them from reinforcing their troops around the Somme. Towards the evening, our division and the British division attempted to seize 4000 yard of front line centered on the ‘sugarloaf’. The attack stared with three and a half hours before daylight remain. The front line was about 200 meters wide on the north of ‘sugarloaf’, the Australians quickly crossed the no-man’s-line’, captured the German’s front line, we then kept pushing on to the or hundreds of meters in search of a supposed third or last line of the German trench system. The whole battalion was dynamited. is now about 8 in the night, it’s dark outside. I can still hear the charges surrounding me, shells bursting, machine gun rattling and rifle cracking. Each one of us don’t include the equipment and rifle, all carried either spade, picks or rolls of matting or scaling ladder. From my shelter,
I could see lad rushing in the face of death, it was fine but though horrifying. This is the worst scene I have ever seen. My mate next to a few minutes ago could just pass put now. For the next two days, through the same night I laid in the trenches, too much anxious to move on count of snipers and machine guns which they kept play on the ground. At last I realized I am getting weak and my water bottle was now empty, I decided to go back to the lines on the next day. I cannot help think the terrible nights I spent, for companions I had 2 yards from me a dead comrade and 5 yards behind me a Sergeant with smashed hip unable to move. All the nights before were in the days of awful sound, which was the the sound that they were heard the zip-zip and ping of bullets would in the direction of the cries.