Part of the British offensive on the Somme, the fighting at Pozières cost almost 23,000 Australian casualties in July and August 1916. By 1917 the front had moved on and little remained of the village. During their regular visits to the nearby censor, Hurley and Wilkins often photographed the scene of the previous year’s fighting, sometimes wandering the field for days.
Of these trips Hurley wrote, “one was beyond the war afflicted zone – (it being only about 30 miles away!!) and there was nothing whatever to convey any warlike impressions – everything was so quiet and peaceful.” But the photographs they took at Pozières record a time and place that quickly vanished. In March 1918 the Germans overran the old Somme battlefields, and Australians were once more fighting over the ground that Hurley and Wilkins had found so peaceful in 1917.
Frank Hurley
Scattered graves, Pozières battlefield, September 1917
print from Paget plate
P03631.216
Frank
Hurley
Derelict British tank, Pozières battlefield, September
1917
print from Paget plate
P03631.210
This British Mk I “male”tank had been abandoned after it became stuck in the difficult terrain during the attack on Courcelette on 15 September 1916. This was the first time that tanks were used on the Western Front. The driver, Private H. Brotherwood, was mortally wounded by a fragment from a shell that landed nearby as the crew struggled to free the tank.
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