The Attack by 4th Division AIF April 1917

4 Brigade

As already mentioned 4 Brigade advanced without waiting on their tanks leaving their left flank highly vulnerable to enfilading fire.

Leading the assault, the 14th and 16th Battalions came under heavy machine gun fire as they reached the first German line of trenches but these were taken. In places the wire had been cut, but the advancing soldiers found themselves faced with a second belt of wire which was untouched.

The two reserve Battalions: 15th and 13th, now moved forward passing through the other battalions and on towards Riencourt half a kilometre away.

From the German front lines, two communication trenches ran almost perpendicularly back towards Riencourt. The one on the left, in front of the 15th Battalion, called Ostrich Alley and that on the right (16th and 13th Battalions) Emu Alley.

Immediately to the left of Ostrich Alley was a junction called the Six Cross Roads where amongst other roads the Central and Diagonal joined. The Germans had a machine gun post at the junction and it was perfectly sited for causing serious casualties on the 15th as they tried to rush Ostrich Alley from the German front line.

The 16th and 13th also came under heavy fire as they tried to get into Emu Alley from the direction of the village of Riencourt.

Without support and supplies the Brigade was halted.

12 Brigade

The 46th Battalion were to lead the Brigade up the right hand side of Bullecourt. The Brigade interpreted the orders as saying that they were to wait until their tanks arrived and then to advance fifteen minutes behind them.

The tanks arrived late and it was 45 minutes after Zero at 05:15 hours that the 46th launched their attack on the German front line.

Some gains were made where the wire had been cut and as the 46th got into the first line trenches the 48th Battalion came up and through them and began their assault on the second line of trenches. Some parts of the system were captured but just as 4 Brigade had been held up, 12 Brigade found it was unable to push on further.

Looking towards Bullecourt from the Digger Memorial.
The 4th Division were attacking from left to right.

Artillery Support Refused

The only way for 4th Division to make any headway at all was with further supplies of ammunition and grenades and above all covering artillery fire. In the rear though, the commanders were convinced that the breach had been made and that the men they could see were Australians; when in fact they were German reinforcements.

Despite requests for artillery support, none was forthcoming.

The German Counter-attack

At 10:00 hours German infantry started bombing their way into their old frontline: back down Ostrich and Emu Alleys. In under two hours all of 4 Brigade's gains had been recaptured and 12 Brigade's two battalions were being hard pushed. The 48th Battalion who had initially managed to get themselves into the German's second line found themselves fighting off attacks without fully understanding that elsewhere the remainder of the Division had been forced back. Completely cut off, few of the battalion made it back to their own lines.

The Cost

In this one day of fighting, 12th Brigade suffered 950 casualties from the 2 000 men that went into action. On their right 4th Brigade lost 2 339 casualties out of 3 000. This represents about 66% of the entire Division, with over a thousand of them prisoners caught in the counter-attacks.

4th Division had been wiped out in one day, and it would take months for it to recover.

The damage done to the trust between the Australians and the British was just as bad. The feeling within the Australian ranks was that the attack had been ill-conceived and rushed through without any proper planning, relying on tanks to do something and in a manner that had never been tried and for which they were unsuited.

The Second Battle of Bullecourt