Eyewitness by Garrie Hutchinson Page A

lying round about a house, so we rode on cautiously but hopefully, spreading out and cantering so that probable marksmen would not have too easy a target. Norry yelled: ‘Blow ’em! if the b—s fire at us we’ll turn around and come home.’ I grinned.
    We drew dangerously close to the house. It was surrounded by a hedge of prickly pear, lovely cover for riflemen. So we agreed on an old, old trick that always seems to work. I suddenly stood in the stirrups gazing earnestly, then yelled and instantly we swerved over our horses’ necks and wheeled away at the full gallop. Crack-whizz, crackwhizz, crack-crack-zip-zip-zip. The ground had been ploughed. Our neddies took it at a plunging gallop, knowing the haste necessary as the bullets whizzed by – bullets have a tearing whistle at close range. We cleared the bad ground and took the hard country beyond at an exhilarating gallop, seeing the New Zealand outpost and our own mates on the little hill and knowing how they must be enjoying the joke. I looked at Norry and laughed. His hard face wreathed in an appreciative grin. I waved my hat derisively at the Turks, confident in the little mare racing me away. Suddenly the firing ceased. We imagined we were out of range so pulled up into a canter, laughing, but we had merely ridden into a hollow momentarily out of sight, for as we rode up came whizz, whizz, whizz, whizz, and again into a rollicking gallop. A bullet screeched by my ear, others whizzed between the neddies and stung the ground in front. ‘What splendid range they keep!’ I thought. Then we rode around the little outpost hill and there were the En Zeds and our chaps grinning as they put their glasses away. They had quite enjoyed the fun. They asked if there was any wood in the house. Norry replied: ‘No, it’s in our heads.’ The En Zeds had an ambulance cart with them. They might have had a job for it. However, we scouted around and had luck. Got just enough wood to load the packhorses.
    The guns are booming, machine-guns are stuttering from the Gaza trenches. Damn trench warfare. It gets us nowhere; its monotony is heartbreaking; its loss of life futile.

The Miracle of Villers-Bretonneux
    W.H. Downing
The battle to recapture Villers-Bretonneux on Anzac Day, 1918 by the men of the 5 th Division was a major factor in repelling the German attack that threatened Amiens and the Channel ports. Had the breakthrough been achieved, the war might well have been lost.
    Villers-Bretonneux was the first of Monash’s brilliantly organised and executed actions in 1918, in which Downing’s 57 th Battalion played its part.
    Villers-Bretonneux is the heart of Australia in France. The Australian National Memorial, the Adelaide Cemetery from where the Unknown Soldier was buried and re-interred at the Australian War Memorial, and the school and museum rebuilt after the war with the pennies of Victorian schoolchildren, all testify to the sign on the shelter shed – ‘Never Forget Australia.’
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    English boys of eighteen and nineteen with a very small leaven of older men took over the heavy responsibility of the sector. They were new to the line – drafts hurried over from England in a time of desperate need. The 8 th and 14 th Brigades occupied the trenches on their left, the former near Vaire Wood, the latter between them and the English. The 15 th were immediately behind both, at Fouilloy and Hamelet and in the Aubigny line, from where they could give prompt aid to the front by Vaire, or Hamel, where the line curved back.
    Next morning we stood to arms while French colonials attacked at Hangard Wood and Hangard-en-Santerre, a mile or two on the right of Bretonneux. Here there was heavy fighting, backwards and forwards, day by day. Then for several mornings we stood to arms in the expectation of an attack on the divisional front. It was known that a heavy onset was pending, so we waited every evening, and in the morning long before the dawn. For weeks the enemy had been