The village of Le Hamel [DVA]

Tanks, pigeons and bullets 'by air'

A British tank in Le Hamel, 5 July 1918. [AWM E02864]

Watching the Battle of Hamel unfold, an observer would have seen some interesting innovative aspects of a World War I battlefield. There was the sheer number of tanks supporting the advance of the infantry, helping them overcome enemy machine gun nests and strong points. A good example of the cooperation with the tanks was the overpowering of enemy positions in and around Le Hamel village itself. As the men of the 43rd Battalion (South Australia) worked their way towards a small well-defended wood to the north of the village they came under heavy machine gun fire. As they tried to deal with it, another gun opened up from the village. An Australian platoon sergeant, spotting a tank with little to do, went over to it and pulled the bell handle at the back of the machine. A door opened and the Australian showed the tank crew the position of the gun operating from the village. The tank obligingly ‘went straight over and rubbed it out', although Charles Bean later surmised that the crew had most likely already fled before the tank arrived. German machine gun crews, however, were among the elite of the German army and the British tank commander at Hamel reported that the crews ‘showed extraordinary courage and tenacity'.

Tank H52, 8 Battalion, 'C' Company, Royal Tank Corps, suffered a direct hit at the Battle of Hamel on 4 July 1918 and was put out of action. [AWM E03843]

During the battle, Tanks H41, 42 and 44 (from the same unit) fought with the 44th Australian Infantry Battalion during the battalion's attack on the German positions on the hill east of Le Hamel village.

For the first time on a battlefield the tanks were also used to bring up supplies rapidly behind the advancing infantry. Normally, these would have to be carried up by support battalions and some units used this system at Le Hamel. The colonel of the 13th Battalion, however, reached the position where the unit's forward dump was to be established only to find it already covered by stores. ‘Why, what's this?' he asked. A soldier jumped from behind a pile and replied, ‘It's from our tank, sir'. Their carrier tank, in a number of journeys, had delivered 134 coils of barbed-wire, 180 long and 270 short screw-pickets for placing the wire, 45 sheets of corrugated iron, 50 petrol tins of water, 150 trench-mortar bombs, 10,000 rounds of ammunition, and 20 boxes of grenades. Charles Bean concluded that ‘never had supplies reached the front with the swiftness with which they were delivered that day' and one battalion commander felt that ‘in this achievement lay the outstanding lesson of the battle'.

A British aircraft diving earthwards during the Australian attack at Le Hamel on 4 July 1918. [AWM E03912]

An even more innovative method of supply to the front involved aircraft. Twelve planes of No 9 Squadron RAF appeared over the battlefield about 6.30 am carrying ammunition while a host of other British planes appeared and engaged enemy ground positions well to the German rear. The ammunition carriers dropped their loads of two boxes of 1,200 rounds by parachute from about 800 metres. In all, 93 boxes were delivered to the infantry in this way and many units reported the experiment useful. One pilot and his observer were killed in these operations when a parachute caught in the wing. The pilot climbed out and managed to clear the chute but at 30 metres from the ground something else went wrong and the aircraft crashed.

Aeroplanes were also used to plot the extent of the advance. Contact aircraft of No 3 Squadron AFC (Australian Flying Corps) flew over the infantry and ‘tooted' at them to light concealed flares to mark their positions. The Australian observers in the planes then marked these positions on maps and dropped them ten minutes later at 4th Australian Division Headquarters.

An R.E.8 aircraft of 3 Squadron AFC, France, November 1917. [AWM E01359]

A carrier pigeon carrying information being released from a British tank, France, 1918. [AWM H09572]

Another, less successful experiment, was  sending messages by rocket. Some of these were recovered with the message burnt; others landed a fair way away from their destination in fields of crops; and many flew off undetected because of the enormous amount of smoke put up by the smoke screens. Wireless sets were also in use, as well as the tried and true method of dispatching a carrier pigeon. Many of the tanks carried a pigeon and sent messages back in this way. Two-and-a-half hours after the opening of the attack signallers had telephone lines through to the front and thereafter spent the day repairing any breaks in the lines from enemy shell fire.

A mobile pigeon loft of the Australian Corps Signal Company, Australian Corps Headquarters, Bertangles, July 1918.

The pigeons were used to deliver messages to and from the front line.

[AWM E02672]

Sleeping Australian stretcher–bearers, Le Hamel, 4 July 1918. [AWM E02701]

German weapons captured in AIF operations at Ville-sur-Ancre and Le Hamel, on display during an address by Lieutenant General Sir John Monash, 13 July 1918. [AWM E02732]

Le Hamel was the first battle fought by the Australian Corps in which an Australian general—Lieutenant General Sir John Monash—was in command. An engineer in civilian life, Monash was one of those who in the British Expeditionary Force in 1918 embraced technical innovation and grasped that it could have a real effect on restoring mobility to the battlefield, a mobility that had been lost for nearly four years in defensive trench warfare. Monash and his staff meticulously planned every aspect of the Le Hamel attack and made great efforts to ensure that all sections of the Corps—tanks, infantry, artillery, aircraft, signals etc—worked together. Although by Western Front standards Le Hamel was a small operation, the lessons of the battle, principally the efficacy of careful planning, clear objectives, and effective coordination of different arms, were circulated in a report to all commanders in the BEF. Individual aspects of the Le Hamel plan had been used before but it was Monash's achievement to bring them all together at the one time.