After the war, the Australian First Division built its official divisional memorial—the obelisk at the western end of Pozières—the First Division's first operation since its withdrawal from Gallipoli in December 1915.

The German bombardment to which the men of the First Division were subjected after their capture of Pozières was perhaps the worst ever experienced by Australians on the Western Front.

During the last week of July 1916 shells fell in their thousands on Australian soldiers in a village they had captured from the Germans—Pozières. I had not the slightest idea where our lines or the enemy's were, and the shells were coming at us from, it seemed, three directions, wrote Australian Lieutenant John Raws. Pozières was reduced to rubble and shattered earth, but here the men of the First Australian Division later built their memorial in France. They remembered the tenacity with which they had held their ground and the comrades who had perished in the horror of those bombardments.

The Dead Runner, Pozières

23 July 1916

This extract, from a letter written by Sir Nevill Smyth, commander of the First Australian Infantry Brigade at Pozières in 1916, describes the fate of a runner (messenger) of the Second Australian Infantry Battalion during the battle on 23 July 1916.

At daylight on 23rd July 1916 Pozières was in the hands of the First Australian Infantry Brigade. The other Brigades of the 1st Australian Division were echeloned to its right and rear and units detailed to attack on its right under Brigadier General Sinclair MacLagan (I think) had been held up by heavy fire into their flank from the German Main Trench Line.

During the morning the First Brigade. Commander, who was 400 yards from the Village of Poziéres, sent an order in duplicate by runners attached to Brigade. Headquarters to the Front line which was occupying houses and the church ruins north of the Bapaume Road ordering a further advance at a given moment in co-operation with a bombardment.

There was a continuous enemy barrage of shellfire on the Bapaume Road … [and] it was necessary (pending the digging of a trench) for our reinforcements to run the gauntlet across the road. Near this point, about thirty men (Australians and Germans) had been killed. One of the two runners fell on his way to the road. The second one, who belonged to the 2nd Battalion, seeing the great peril which he must face, and realising that if he fell the fact of his being a runner bearing a message might be overlooked by those who passed him among so many fallen soldiers, he must have deliberately taken the message from his breast pocket and as he was struck dead he held it up in the air so that a small party of men making their way forward with ammunition within about 20 minutes saw that he held a paper in his hand and taking it from his fingers carried it on to the officer it was addressed to, thus enabling the further advance to be successfully carried out.

Note: The man was fair and muscular, wore the Second Battalion badges on sleeve and a red band to denote that he was a runner. The bands were made very raggedly by the men themselves of red calico bought in the villages. Sleeves were rolled up above the elbow (as a recognition mark in the night and afterwards). The man's name and number is not known.

[Sir Nevill Smyth, letter, 2nd Australian Infantry Battalion, War Diary, July 1916, 23/19/15, AWM4.]

The Gibraltar blockhouse was taken from the Germans when the Australian First Division attacked, took and held Pozières village between 23 and 26 July 1916. This was one of the many battles between 1 July and 19 November of that year known collectively as The Battle of the Somme.

This is the magnificent view of the Somme countryside from the ruins of the Gibraltar strong point at the southern edge of Pozières village, which was captured by Australian soldiers when they seized the village on 23 July 1916.

The ruins are hidden behind the flowering tree to the left. The road at [A], seen here travelling south-west out of Pozières, is the main Albert-Bapaume road which was the proposed axis of the British advance at the opening day of the Battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916. Beside the road at [B] we can see the high walls of the Pozières British Cemetery. Here are the graves of 456 identified Australians, many killed between 23 and 25 July 1916 during the struggle for Pozières. That action is commemorated by the First Australian Division Memorial in the centre of the panorama. The dedicatory plaque lists the battle honours of the division and the first name on the plaque is 'Pozières'. The whole landscape to the right of the memorial was the scene of further Australian advances beyond the village. Australia's official war correspondent, Charles Bean, described what this view would have looked like between July and September 1916:

Over the whole face of the country shells have ploughed up the land literally as with a gigantic plough, so that there is more red and brown earth than green. From the distance all the colour is given by these upturned crater edges, and the country is wholly red.

The scene is indescribable … the roar of the guns … the bursting shells … the smell of powder … the atmosphere is choked with dust and fumes, and one can hardly breathe the air.

[Lance Corporal Roger Morgan, 1st Field Ambulance, attached 2nd Australian Infantry Battalion, diary, quoted in RW Taylor and TA Cusack (compilers), Nulli Secundus: A History of the Second Battalion AIF, 1914–1919, New Century Press, 1942, p.178.]