19 July 1916

Whilst the Battle of the Somme was raging, the British Commander in Chief General Sir Douglas Haig decided to open a more modest battle in the area of Armentières near the Belgian border.

Part of his reasoning was that the German Army was moving men south away from this area in an effort to shore up their defences on the Somme. An attack here towards Lille would put them in a dilemma as to whether or not they could thin out this sector any further.

Fromelles is a small village on the Aubers Ridge to the south of Armentières. Most of the area that was held by the Allies is very flat with a number of water features and streams.

Behind Fromelles and Aubers lies the ridge which easily overlooks the battlefield.

Attempts by the British to take the area in 1915 had been repulsed with heavy losses.

The Battle

The objectives of the Australian 5th Division and the British 61st Division on their right were to capture the village and the ridge.

The attack was centred around a point known as the Sugarloaf and at 1100 hours on 19 July 1916 the British artillery put down a bombardment on the German front line as the infantry made their way up to their jumping off points.

Baptism of fire

For the Australian Imperial Force this was to be their baptism on the Western Front, for although other Divisions from 1 ANZAC had been sent down to the Somme they had not yet been committed. The Australians had not been in France a fortnight.

From their vantage point and on a bright summers day the Germans could see the attack preparing and launched a counter bombardment onto the communication trenches as the men were making their way to the front.

The German bombardment wreaked havoc on the Australian's lines. As men were trying to get forward, wounded were trying to push their way back to the Aid Posts adding to the chaos.

The two bombardments continued until at 1800 hours the infantry finally launched their assault.

On the left of the Australian line, the 8th and 14th Brigades swiftly took the German front line and started to consolidate their positions. The 15th Brigade next to the British in the centre however was struggling across wide open ground in the teeth of fierce machine gun fire.

On the right of Sugar Loaf the 61st Division had also been halted by uncut wire. In a scene familiar to those on the Somme not three weeks earlier, the Allied bombardment had failed in its objective of cutting the wire and destroying the German positions.

Bunkers from the old German front line

As night fell the Germans launched a counter-attack which managed to force its way between the Australians furthest forward and the Australian trenches. By dawn on the 20th many of the Australians found themselves cut off and having to fight their way back to their own front line.

All around the battlefield Australians lay dead and wounded. In the one night they had suffered 5 533 casualties, 400 of whom had been captured.

An attempt to organise a truce with the Germans to bring in the wounded was refused by the Allied Commanders, despite having been agreed to by the German Commander.

The battle had been a complete disaster.

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Archaeological Dig at Fromelles 2008

In May 2008 at the behest of the Australian Government a team from Glasgow University began work on the site of a possible mass grave created by the Germans for the dead British and Australians.

Fromelles 2008

The Cobbers

The Cobbers

Today a tall bronze figure of an Australian bringing in a wounded comrade commemorates this battle and the heroism of the many unknown soldiers who ventured out into no-mans land to bring in the wounded cobbers still there. The statue is by Peter Corlett of Melbourne and was inaugurated on 5 July 1998.

It stands on the old German front line captured by the 14th Brigade and held overnight.

It is a depiction of a 40 year old ex farmer from Victoria: Sergeant Simon Fraser of the 57th Battalion AIF. As already mentioned the Allied Command had refused to enter into any negotiations to bring in the dead and wounded. Over the next three days survivors of the 5th Division went out into no-mans land to retrieve their comrades.

Whilst he was out on the battle field Fraser heard a wounded man shout out:

Don't forget me, cobber.

The injured soldier being duly rescued on Fraser's next venture out.

Simon Fraser carrying in a wounded mate

Fraser was later promoted to 2nd Lieutenant in the 58th Battalion. He was to be killed at 2nd Bullecourt the following year. His body was never recovered and he is commemorated on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial.

The Battles of Bullecourt
Villers-Bretonneux Memorial

German bunkers

Behind the statue you will find German bunkers which had been subjected to damage following the war in an attempt to remove them. They now form part of this small memorial park.

One of the German bunkers

VC Corner Australian Cemetery

Only a hundred metres away you will find VC Corner Australian Cemetery. In a large unmarked plot lie the remains of 410 unidentified Australians. Behind these mass graves a wall carries the names of 1 299 men from the 5th Division who died in the fields and have no known grave.

VC Corner Australian Cemetery

This is one of the very few Commonwealth War Cemeteries that have no individual headstones, and is the only one to be a resting place and memorial solely to the missing and unidentified.

VC Corner Cemetery

The Hitler Bunker

A little further away near Aubers village you can find a large German Bunker. This is known as Hitler's bunker as it is believed to have been the one that Corporal Adolf Hitler was stationed in during his time in the sector between 10 March and 25 September in 1915. It was here at Aubers that he won the Iron Cross for his bravery in rescuing a wounded officer.

How much truth there is in the matter is another thing, but in 1940 after the crushing of France, Hitler came here and was photographed in front of it.