A bronze slouch hat must be a unique commemorative device.

A Bullecourt school teacher, Claude Durand, began to translate Charles Bean’s account of the battles, partly for his own interest, partly for the benefit of his students. He was struck by the scale of the British and Australian casualties and realised that they had no local memorial. He and the mayor Jean Letaille started a campaign to build one. The funds were raised locally and the memorial was unveiled outside the village church on 24 May 1981. The ceremony was attended by the Australian ambassador John Rowland.

An Australian contribution was arranged by the AWM from a donation by the RSL and the Department of Foreign Affairs. As the cairn already displayed the Rising Sun badge, the slouch hat was agreed to be a distinctively Australian emblem. A bronze hat, weighing 7 kg, was made by Victorian sculptor Roy McPherson. The AWM director Noel Flanagan presented it to the village of Bullecourt on 17 September 1981.

The belief that the sculpture is an original digger’s hat covered in bronze is without foundation.

In 1982 a stone cross was erected outside Bullecourt in memory of the Australian soldiers who died there but with no known grave. A bronze statue of a digger was erected in the village’s memorial park in 1993.

See more images on the DVA website, Australians on the Western Front – Bullecourt

Read more on Bullecourt:

Blog articles on Bullecourt

Concise account of Bullecourt

Detailed account of Bullecourt

While reading about the Australians at Bullecourt in 1917, it struck me as odd that there is only one official battle honour for what seemed to be two distinctly separate battles, albeit in the same location. Furthermore, the official battle honour only refers to the second battle that occurred in May, and seemingly ignores the first battle that took place on 11 April. To satisfy my curiosity, I looked in to the matter further, with assistance from colleagues at the Australian War Memorial and from the Australian Army History Unit.

The definition of a battle honour according to the British Ministry of Defence is,

‘… an official acknowledgement rewarded to military units for their achievements in specific wars or operations of a military campaign. Granted only through the British monarch’s Royal Authority, the rewarding of battle honours is a military tradition practised not only in Britain but also in Commonwealth countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc. Battle honours are usually presented in the form of a name of a country, a region or a city where the regiment’s distinguished act took place together with the year when it occurred.’

Bullecourt: the wider perspective
If something of a hierarchy of military terms were used to make sense and order for campaigns and battles etc, what’s called the ‘Battle of Arras’ that took place in April-May 1917 should really be considered more an ‘offensive’ rather than a battle. If we look at Wars being the overarching term, we then move down from larger to smaller events with Campaigns, Offensives, Battles and then Actions. In many cases the smaller events can be considered subsets of the larger ones.

The Arras Offensive was coordinated with the ill-fated French ‘Nivelle Offensive’ that was to occur further south in the Champagne region. The plan was for the Arras Offensive to open on 9 April, drawing German forces to it, and away from the French sector thereby weakening the Germans in Champagne. The French offensive, set to kick-off one week later on 16 April was anticipated to be a decisive blow, with the two offensive thrusts joining up after major breakthroughs.

The ‘hierarchy’ of battles and actions in the Arras Offensive may be seen as follows:

• Arras Offensive 9 April – 16 May

• First Battle of the Scarpe (9 – 14 April)
  • Action at Bullecourt (11 April)
  • Action at Lagnicourt (15 April)

• Battle of Vimy Ridge (9 – 12 April)

• Second Battle of the Scarpe (23-24 April)
  • Action at La Coulotte (23 April)

• Battle of Arleux (28-29 April)

• Third Battle of the Scarpe (3-4 May)

• Battle of Bullecourt (3-17 May)

• Action at Roeux (13 – 14 May)

So, what does this mean for the two attacks at Bullecourt concerning Australian troops?

Australian Military Order (AMO) 336 of 1 August 1923 reproduced the tabulated list of engagements identified by the Battles Nomenclature Committee (British). Under the Allied Offensives 1917, the first attack on Bullecourt (11 April) is listed merely as an ‘action’ within the overarching Arras Offensive. The second attack at Bullecourt (3-17 May) is however listed as a proper ‘battle’ in its own right. So it would appear that it is just this second attack in May that the battle honour ‘Bullecourt’ refers to.

Further, AMO 300 of 26 July 1924 indicates that battle honours of the same name fought in the same year would be grouped into one honour. This meant that even if the attacks in both April and May were considered two distinct proper ‘battles’, the resulting battle honour would have been simply ‘Bullecourt’, covering both. But it is clear this did not happen as the attack of 11 April is specifically designated an action and not a battle. So case closed? Not quite.

Australian Army Order 112 of 9 March 1927 lists the units of the AIF and their approved battle honours. Four divisions of the AIF, the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th were all granted ‘Bullecourt’. When operations at Bullecourt opened, I Anzac Corps comprised these same four divisions. But how and when were they each deployed and engaged at Bullecourt?

Only the 4th Australian Division participated directly in the ill-fated assault upon Bullecourt on 11 April, a single-day affair ending in their repulse. Just two days later, this division was pulled out of the line to recover from its grievous losses. The 2nd, 1st, and 5th Divisions (in that order), then participated in the second attack between 3 – 17 May. Midway through this second attack, the 4th Division was transferred to II Anzac Corps in Flanders and was thus no longer even in the Bullecourt area.

So interestingly, though we have established that the battle honour ‘Bullecourt’ was supposedly just for the May attack, and we know that only three Australian divisions participated in this, all four of the divisions actually claimed and were granted the Bullecourt battle honour.

Therefore, even though 4th Division only took part in the 11 April ‘action’ and not the May ‘battle’, and were thus not technically entitled to the battle honour, they were indeed granted it. And rightly so. In light of their outstanding achievement in breaking into and tenaciously holding part of the Hindenburg Line almost completely unsupported, and suffering crippling losses, it would have been absurd to deny this fine division the battle honour of ‘Bullecourt’ on a mere nomenclature technicality.

Read more on battle honours

UK Ministry of Defence (battle honours)

Australian Army History Unit (battle honours)

Special thanks to Bill Houston of the Army History Unit for his assistance with this matter.

Overview

Four experienced Australian divisions of I ANZAC Corps were part of the British 5th Army under Sir Hubert Gough. The general wanted to attack at Bullecourt to support an important offensive by the adjoining British 3rd Army to the north and the French Army further to the south. Relatively young, Gough was an energetic commander. However his aggressive spirit coupled with poor planning resulted in heavy losses. His attack launched at Bullecourt on 11 April 1917 was a disaster. Despite this a further attack across the same ground was ordered for 3 May. The Australians broke into and took part of the Hindenburg Line but no important strategic advantage was ever gained; in the two battles the AIF lost 10,000 men.

Basic Map: Bullecourt from the Official History Vol IV, p 310

‘The death of Major Black’ by Charles Wheeler (1923) (AWM ART03558).

‘Such success as the (Australians) achieved had been won by troops persisting through the sheer quality of their mettle, in the face of errors’.

Charles Bean, official historianFirst Bullecourt (April)

First Bullecourt (April)
General Gough planned to use the 4th Australian Division and the 62nd British Division to attack the Hindenburg Line near the village of Bullecourt. Rather than wait until he had sufficient artillery resources he decided to employ a dozen tanks to lead the troops through the enemy’s barbed-wire. An attack set for 10 April was suddenly abandoned when the tanks did not arrive. It went ahead the next morning with disastrous results. Exposed to murderous machine-gun and artillery fire the Australians were forced back to their own lines while tanks stood burning on the battlefield. The Australians had 3,000 men killed or wounded; many survivors remained bitter about such a futile waste.

‘Bullecourt, more than any other battle, shook the confidence of Australian soldiers in the capacity of the British command; the errors, especially on April 10th and 11th, were obvious to almost everyone’.

Charles Bean, Official Historian.

Second Bullecourt (May)
Despite the failure of the first attack on 11 April 1917, a few weeks later General Gough once again tried to break the Hindenburg Line at Bullecourt. On 3 May 1917 the 2nd Australian Division attacked with the British alongside. Although the brigade on the right faltered under deadly machine-gun fire, the 6th Brigade got into the enemy’s trenches and, despite heavy shellfire and counter attacks, bravely held on. The 1st Division relieved the 2nd, and soon the 5th Division took its turn. Finally, after more than a week, the Germans gave up these blood-soaked fields. Then the depleted Australian battalions were withdrawn to recover. The furious fighting, which in the end only advanced the line a kilometre or so, had been at the heavy cost of another 7,000 Australian casualties.

‘The Second Bullecourt (battle) was, in some ways, the stoutest achievement of the Australian soldier in France’.

Charles Bean, official historian.

German officers with a British Mark II female tank captured near Bullecourt on 11 April 1917 (AWM G01534J).

The tanks
The British had introduced tanks into battle during the previous year on the Somme where they had only limited success. Those available were primitive and unreliable Mark I and II types. When a dozen were provided to General Gough’s Fifth Army he immediately thought to use them to overcome his lack of artillery at Bullecourt. In the battle of 11 April the large and slow-moving tanks were soon hit or broke down leaving the Australian attackers exposed and vulnerable. Many later blamed the tanks for their heavy losses. The Australians maintained a strong mistrust of tanks that was not finally overcome until their success in the Battle of Hamel more than a year later.

Read more about the battles of Bullecourt:

The battles for Bullecourt – a 6 page article by Peter Burness, originally published in Wartime: the official magazine of the Australian War Memorial, Issue 18, 2002, pp 24-29.

Anzac to Amiens by C. E. W. Bean, Chapter 19 (30 pages)

Official History by C. E. W. Bean, Vol IV, Chapters 8-13