Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 249
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[Page 249]
124
at night, though, when the front was almost silent, and only an infrequent magnesium flare, shot sizzling skywards to finally burst into light with almost the brightness of daylight, reminded us that we were at war. Offensive operations on a grander scale were precluded by the bitterly cold Winter, which froze the ground to a depth of a few feet, or in the thaw, rendered it sodden and boggy.
At about the end of this Winter, our Commanding Officer, Lt-Colonel Lamb, was invalided back to Australia, and Major Martin, a Mudgee grazier, took command with promotion to Lt-Col, and Major LeRoy Fry as his Second-in-Command; leaving me to be appointed the officer in command of "A" Company, still with the rank of Captain: after which it was a much happier unit.
With the advent of Spring the Canadians, attacking under cover of overwhelmingly concentrated artillery fire, captured the tactically important Vimy Ridge away to our south. Following this great success elaborate preparations were initiated for Second Anzac Corps to wrest the Messines Ridge from the Germans. It lay between Ypres and Armentieres, and on the lower ground between it and the north-eastern edge of the big Ploegsteert Wood, the enemy, a long time before, had taken and occupied a big section of the British front lines, thus forming an intolerable intrusion that enfiladed our trenches on either side. Working very quietly and secretly, skilled miners of the Army Tunnelling Corps, working for several months, had driven thirteen long tunnels from the end of the Wood, and under no-mans-land to place huge explosives charges, under these particular trenches, without detection. In and around the Wood a great number of well hidden and camouflaged guns of every calibre up to 9.2 inch siege howitzers were emplaced, and big stacks of extra shells laid down in convenient positions. On our Division's attacking front of barely a mile and a half, there must have been at least two hundred pieces of supporting artillery.
Second Anzac Corps consisted of the New Zealand Division, our Third Division and another Australian Division, and the