FINALLY, it is time.
At 11.45 pm, the word is passed along the line: 'All detachments are in position.'
![Australian soldiers of the 28th Batallon in a front-line trench at Dernancourt, 27 April, 1918.](/web/20161101184328im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/c/0/q/1/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsbdmn.png/1477732088215.jpg)
It is time to move, Dig.
Good.
![A tripod-mounted Lewis machine gun and its Australian crew.](/web/20161101184328im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/c/4/h/q/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gsbdmn.png/1477732088215.jpg)
The order hisses out and spreads along the line: Advance!
Up and at 'em. Their scouts, like Edwin Need, have gone out an hour earlier. In short order, and in good order, no fewer than 3000 Australian soldiers of the 15th Brigade – formed up in two waves across a 2000-yard front, with each battalion splitting up into two companies per wave – begin their flanking movement proper on the north side of Villers-Bretonneux.
After midnight, the moon sinks behind the clouds. The houses still burning in the town off to their right, including the Red Chateau, act as a kind of beacon, always enabling them to get their bearings in the darkness.
The significance of the day is not lost on any of them.
![The ‘Red Chateau’ which served as the Fifth Army’s HQ in Villers-Bretonneux.](/web/20161101184328im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/c/0/q/8/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gsbdmn.png/1477732088215.jpg)
"It's Anzac Day," they mutter to each other, smiling. Three years earlier, near the beginning of the war, Australian soldiers in the Dardanelles had proved to the world just how good they were, and they have proved it many times since. But now, they must do it again.
"The die was now cast," Private Walter 'Jimmy' Downing would recount of the mood of the 15th Brigade. "It seemed that there was nothing to do but go straight forward and die hard."
![The ruined church of Villers-Bretonneux.](/web/20161101184328im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/c/0/q/3/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gsbdmn.png/1477732088215.jpg)
SIXTY minutes after first taking cover there, up ahead, Private Edwin Need is still in his shell hole, glad to be still alive, but is shattered that the attack – which was meant to be right behind him! – has so clearly failed that he tears off his white arm bands in the now clear moonlight. No point in giving the Germans something to aim at if he makes a run for it. For if they don't see him by that bright moon, they will by the glare thrown by those parts of Villers-Bretonneux now truly in flames, "lighting up the whole countryside".
THROUGH the 15th keep advancing, everything is generally so quiet that they can even hear glass shattering in the distance as the fires in the houses continue their devouring path.
![Peter FitzSimons' <i>Victory at Villers-Bretonneux</i>.](/web/20161101184328im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/c/0/q/c/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gsbdmn.png/1477732088215.jpg)
And now the main body of the 15th Brigade encounters strategically placed rolls of barbed wire, forcing them to bunch up from their previous formation so they can struggle through the entanglements when it happens …
The Germans in the old British trenches ahead, on the other side of the wire, become aware of their presence – or at least a worrying noise – and fire a flare. Hey, ho, and up she rises, trailing sparks across the night sky, and down she comes . . . illuminating the scene. And now come more, and then ever more again!
"German flares of all kinds shot into the air," Downing would recount, "reds, whites, greens, bunches of golden rain."
A couple of seconds hang suspended – two ticks on the clock in real time, but an eternity of shocked silence for both the German and Australian soldiers. And now the flares burst to fully reveal them, a body of 3000 men huge men from the Great South advancing in lines.
Thousands of German machine-gun bullets are instantly flying in their direction. Most of the Australians are able to throw themselves to the ground in time. Others die hard.
One Lieutenant with the 59th Battalion, a particularly beloved figure with the name – no, really – of Alison O'Brien, goes down, shot.
"Carry on, boys," he shouts to his men. "I'm hit!"
They carry on, roaring, as they roar forth.
AND now Edwin Need hears it.
"Stick it in him!"
"You f---ers!"
"Come 'ere, you bastards!"
"F--- you, Fritz!"
"No prisoners!"
Music to his ears. Balm for his soul. Australian shouts in the night!
The curses are followed by the familiar rifle-shots of massed .303s, and better still, the chatter of Lewis guns! The attack is clearly back on. Fritz obviously gets it as now still more flares soar high in the hope they can give their machine gunners more time to see die australischen Teufel, the Australian devils, before they are in their trenches.
Unbeknownst to Need, the 15th Brigade's advance had been delayed but has finally come on. For now, Need keeps his head down, the shouting and firing from behind "getting closer until it was like hell let loose".
![A group of German prisoners, captured by the Australians near Villers Bretonneux.](http://web.archive.org./web/20161101184328im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/c/0/q/6/image.imgtype.articleLeadwide.620x349.png/1477617737118.png)
A group of German prisoners, captured by the Australians near Villers Bretonneux. Photo: Australian War Memorial
THE German machine gunners are doing their best, firing their belt-fed light and heavy machine guns, the Maschinengewehr 08/15 and 08s, straight at the oncoming waves of soldiers in the night. Yet, despite the heavy fire upon the Australians, there is no panic in the ranks of the main body of the 15th Brigade. These are veteran troops. They know bullets at that distance are like snakes in long grass back home. They can kill you, sure. But the main thing you need to work out – if you can't keep clear of them – is how to kill them first. They know, too, that scared troops fire too high at night, as do inexperienced ones, and if they keep as low as a snake's bellybutton moving forward, they should be okay.
Now, where are the bullets coming from? That much becomes obvious from careful observation of the sparks flying from the German machine guns straight in front and on the right flank. The Australians quickly revert to their training, employing the tactic of "fire and movement".
Some fire, some move. The Lewis guns ensure the Huns keep their heads down while the riflemen and bombers crawl closer. When they are within range, the bombers will throw grenades and then the riflemen can charge, their bayonets pointed towards the Germans.
As one Lieutenant of the 59th Battalion would recall, the clear voice of an officer rang out: "Charge!"
Oh, they do that, all right – there, and all along the line.
Almost as one, the Australians rise and run straight for the Germans, all with a guttural growl of wild exultation. They are going to get to the brutes at last, unleashing "a savage, eager yell".
NEARLY teary with joy, Edwin Need, the worthy scout still hiding in his shell hole before the German line, can hear his countrymen getting closer now. Timing his move to fit with the oncoming attack, Need takes his grenade, pulls the pin and lets it fly at where he knows the Germans are no more than 20 yards away. He still dare not raise his head to see if it has hit, but he can hear "our fellows cursing and swearing, yelling like madmen, enough to put fear into the gamest Fritz on the Western Front ..."
And one other person besides ... For back in 1808, the Duke of Wellington, after surveying the British troops sent to him in Spain, is reputed to have said: "I don't know what effect these men will have on the enemy, but by God, they terrify me." Edwin Need feels much the same as he turns to see an enormous soldier of the 60th Battalion now bearing down with a bayonet, clearly intent on letting moonlight into his gizzards.
"Australian!" Need roars just in time.
Now that the Australian flood has reached him, he is at last able to grab his rifle and bayonet and "join in the business, everyone mad for a fight, the whole affair a bedlam, the bursting of shells, firing of flares,the town burning fiercely, and our fellows, cursing and yelling, charging on, the Fritzs flying for their lives, having very little recollection of the charge, just stabbing and thrusting with the bayonet at any thing that came in the way, and on again, taking no prisoners ..."
From that instant, the Australian official history would record, "There was no holding the attack. The bloodthirsty cry was caught up again and again along the line, and the whole force was off at the run."
The cry goes on, as one Digger would describe it, in a manner "that would have turned a tribe of Red Indians green with envy ..."
There is no more mucking about with direction now; it is obvious which way to go – straight at the Germans.
"Into the bastards, boys!"
The results are as savage as have ever been recorded in the annals of Australian military history. And it is at the hands not just of isolated pockets of the Australians, but the whole lot of them, even those in the follow-up companies.
"A snarl came from the throat of the mob, the fierce low growl of tigers scenting blood," Jimmy Downing would memorably describe it. "There was a howling of demons as the 57th, fighting mad, drove through the wire, through the 59th, who sprang to their sides – through their enemy."
Australians on the charge, all of them yelling with a primal passion that comes from a place perhaps long ago. In an instant, the sounds of this bursting blood-lust spread as the men of the 59th and the 60th out on the left join in.
"Baying like hell hounds, they also charged."
It is a roar that only gets ever louder.
"A yell from a thousand throats split the night," one officer would recount. All up, the sound of the 15th Brigade, brothers in arms on the charge, released as never before from the hellish cramped life of the trenches, month after sodding month, year after f---ing year, and now able, at last, to get at the Germans, man on man, in open space ...
"Cheering, our men rushed straight to the muzzles of machine guns ..."
It doesn't take long.
"There was a wild rush, a short sharp clash of arms – then pandemonium."
ACH ... mein ... GOTT!
The German soldiers stare, momentarily transfixed by the vision before them of some 3000 wild men from the far south of the planet, running, screaming, hurling grenades extraordinary distances, now exploding among them, firing from the hip ...
"'The [Australians] were magnificent," one stunned German officer would later recall. "Nothing seemed to stop them. When our fire was heaviest, they just disappeared in shell holes and came up as soon as it slackened."
And though, yes, in some parts the German gunners cut down whole rows of Australians, they can't get them all, and it takes a steely nerve beyond most of them to keep shooting straight in front when to your left and right you can see enormous men charging forth with flashing bayonets, who you know will be coming straight for you, if you don't run now ... run now ... RUN NOW ...
Too late. The Australians are on them, shooting, throwing grenades, swinging the butts of their rifles to crack heads, slashing and thrusting with their bayonets to raise geysers of German blood that spurt forth and just as quickly settle.
"They had not had such a feast with their bayonets before," one officer would comment.
"The Germans ran," one Digger would report with no little satisfaction.
"There they go, there they go!" some Diggers shout as some German soldiers who have been taking shelter in a nearby trench decide to make a break for it and run for their lives. And off after them they go, in hot pursuit, with one enormous Australian seen to be running after them even while firing a Lewis gun from the shoulder – no small feat for a weapon weighing 28 pounds. And the ruthless slaughter goes on.
And now, on again! Forward! Forward! Chasing. Chasing.
On it goes. By early the next morning, Anzac Day, 1918, Villers-Bretonneux is in Australian hands once more, and the battle won.
This is an edited extract from Victory at Villers-Bretonneux by Peter FitzSimons; (Random House, RRP $49.99), published on November 1.
![French children tending the graves of fallen Australians at Adelaide Cemetery, Villers-Bretonneux.](http://web.archive.org./web/20161101184328im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/c/0/q/b/image.imgtype.articleLeadwide.620x349.png/1477617088838.png)
French children tending the graves of fallen Australians at Adelaide Cemetery, Villers-Bretonneux. Photo: Australian War Memorial