You will hold him

The railway bridge at Dernancourt. The Australians established outpost positions east of the bridge, in early April 1918. [AWM E03804]

From the higher ground on the road behind the Dernancourt Cemetery the landscape slopes away back to the tall railway embankment and the railway underpass through which the D52 makes its way before turning sharp left towards the village of Buire-sur-l'Ancre.

On the night of 27 March 1918, the soldiers of the 47th Battalion (Queensland and Tasmania) and 48th Battalion (South Australia and Western Australia) moved across these fields to take up positions along the embankment facing Dernancourt and along the line as it curved away to the north-east, towards Albert. The 48th Battalion sector lay along the straight stretch of track heading towards the main Albert-Amiens road, the D929, and they came to it in the dark:

Darkness came down, and with the fading light the enemy shell-fire died away … From the bank we moved forward by sunken roadways to the railway. Many hundreds of yards we went in the moonlight. At last we reached our sector where the line formed a high bank. Small niches were cut in [it]. The garrison lined the top. The men we relieved were the 9th [Battalion] Royal Scots and the King's Own Scottish Borderers. They asked, 'Who are you?'.

We told them, 'Forty-eighth Australians'.

'Thank God', they said. 'You will hold him'.

[Captain George Mitchell, 48th Battalion, quoted in Charles Bean, The Australian Imperial Force in France, 1918, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, Volume V, Sydney, 1937, p.172]

By 'him' was meant the German Army which on 21 March 1918 had begun a major offensive from positions on the Hindenburg line east of Péronne. The German aim was nothing less than the capture of the city of Amiens and the splitting of the French and British armies in northern France. It was a final grab for victory before the strength of the American forces arriving in France reached a point where the German Empire could not hope to win the war. By late March the Germans had pushed the British right back across the old Somme battlefields east of Albert and were poised for another push towards Amiens. The divisions of the AIF, now formed into the Australian Corps, were rushed south piecemeal to shore up the crumbling British line immediately west of Albert and to relieve exhausted British units.

Sergeant Stanley Robert McDougall, 47th Battalion (Queensland and Tasmania), was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions at Dernancourt, Somme, France. [AWM A05155]

In the half light of dawn on 28 March, as he was looked through the gloom from his position at a railway crossing about half a kilometre north of Dernancourt, Sergeant Stanley McDougall, 47th Battalion, of Recheche, Tasmania, heard 'the sounds of bayonet scabbards flapping on the thighs of marching troops'. It was the Germans advancing towards the Australian positions all along the line. McDougall ran along the railway track to warn his platoon. German grenades were now bursting everywhere and an Australian Lewis machine gun team opened up. The men operating it were wounded but McDougall, an ex-Lewis gunner, seized the weapon and rushed forward firing it as he went. He quickly accounted for two light German machine-gun teams trying to cross the embankment and scared away others. Running on, McDougall saw many Germans forming up in pot holes on their side of the bank—'He hosed them with his gun as he went, and they immediately fled'. From a position on top of the bank he proceeded to fire at the retreating Germans and into other areas from which fire was being directed at the Australians.

At this point McDougall had held the enemy back from the northern end of the 47th Battalion's line along the embankment. Looking around to the south, however, he could see a body of the enemy, which had crossed the embankment heading across the fields roughly in the direction of the cemetery. He switched his fired to them. The casing of the Lewis gun barrel was now so hot that McDougall's left hand was becoming badly blistered so Sergeant J C Lawrence held the gun while McDougall continued firing with his good hand. As Lawrence and another sergeant now advanced to take the enemy party prisoner a German officer rose from a concealed position and levelled a pistol at their backs. McDougall yelled, 'Look out behind you', and Lawrence turned and fired his rifle. As he did so he tripped and fell and the German was shot by the other sergeant. Sergeant McDougall's prompt action had undoubtedly saved the position on that part of the railway and for his cool display of courage and initiative he was awarded the Victoria Cross.

Further to the north along the railway the 48th Battalion also met the Germans coming out of Albert. To the battalion historian, Chaplain William Devine, this German movement was extraordinary:

There was no preceding barrage to give warning of their approach. They did not attack, they simply advanced. Never before in the course of the war had Australian soldiers seemed to be treated with contempt by the enemy, and the diggers felt honestly puzzled as they swept the oncoming Germans with rifle and machine gun.

[William Devine, The Story of a Battalion, Melbourne, 1919, pp.116–117]

Cross erected at Dernancourt by the 45th Battalion (New South Wales) to remember those killed in the battle there in March–April 1918. [AWM E02814]

Dernancourt itself suffered considerably that day. Knowing it to be held by the Germans, the British artillery bombarded the village until 2 pm when enemy soldiers were seen leaving. However, when British troops went forward to scout out the situation, enemy fire from the village drove them back with heavy casualties. To assist in the possible reoccupation of Dernancourt a company of the 45th Battalion (New South Wales) was ordered forward. They were badly hit as they made their way down the hill towards the railway embankment.

Bars of spattering machine gun bullets lay across their path. Shells hounded them the whole way. Men fell at regular intervals. Their mates would kneel to inspect the fallen or pass on with a gesture of finality. One in four was the price left in their tracks.

[Captain George Mitchell, 48th Battalion, quoted in Charles Bean, The Australian Imperial Force in France, 1918, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, Volume V, Sydney, 1937, p.205]

One of 'the fallen' was Lieutenant James Terras, a 33-year-old schoolmaster and a graduate of St Andrews, one of the oldest universities in Scotland. Vera Deakin, of the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau in London, wrote to Terras's mother, Mary Terras of Fifeshire, Scotland, with accounts of her son's death:

5213 Private G Werrick … stated that he was with Lieutenant Terras going up the line … about 2.30 pm, to get from one embankment to another they had they had to duck while passing a level crossing and while doing so Lieutenant Terras was shot through the head by a sniper, and died instantly. Two others were killed in the same way and they were buried the same night behind the railway line left of Dernancourt and between there and Albert. Private Werrick saw the grave the next day.

[Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau file, Lieutenant James Terras, p. 7]

Mrs Mary Terras thanked Vera Deakin for the information and wrote, 'It is indeed a sore cruel time'. Terras's remains were eventually moved into the Dernancourt Communal Cemetery Extension to Plot X, Row B, Grave 5.