Pozieres 1916 : Australians on the Somme

In July 1916, the battles of Fromelles and Pozières marked Australia’s entry onto the Western Front of the Great War.

These were two of many battles fought during the Somme Offensive, in which for nearly half of 1916, British and its Dominion’s soldiers fought alongside their French Allies, in a bid to break through the German’s entrenched positions to the north and south of the Somme River.

The battles of the Somme were a turning point in the First World War. They forced a German retreat and ensured that from the end of 1916, until March 1918, Germany remained on the defensive along the Western Front.

But this turning point came at great cost, as the overall offensive became characterised by battles of attrition involving loss of life on an epic scale. Men in their hundreds of thousands fell on the Somme battlefields, most the victims of duelling artillery and eviscerating machine gun fire.

Beginning on 1st July 1916, with battles fought on both sides of the river Somme, the offensive continued through the summer months, into a wet autumn and brutal winter, concluding on the 18th November. By its end, there were more than a million casualties on both sides, marking the Somme as one of the bloodiest conflicts in history.

For the Australian Imperial Force, two of these battles would become devastating introductions to war on the Western Front.

Where Fromelles was a feint in an attempt to deceive the Germans, the ambition at Pozières spoke directly to the principal strategy of the Allied armies: to take high ground held by the German Army and force a breakthrough in their front line.

Both battles are infamous for the terrible loss of life suffered by the men of the all-volunteer Australian Imperial Force. Today their sacrifice is remembered as the profound cost of one of the most momentous changes in human history. pp. xiv, 318 illusts First Edition #0618