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recognisable German trenches. In the dark, they moved through a gas attack into the trench facing Pozières— the gas smelled sweet, like hyacinths.
    The I Anzac Corps was now under the command of General Sir Hubert Gough of the Reserve Army (soon to become the 5th Army), a relatively inexperienced British general who wanted immediate results. On 18 July, Gough had told the 1st Division commander, Lieutenant General Sir Harold Walker, ‘I want you to go into the line and attack Pozières tomorrow night.’ Walker, feeling that he might be rushed into an action that was ‘hasty or ill-considered’ argued for a postponement. The date was set for 23 July, when Haig’s third great effort on the Somme would begin. Six divisions, stretched from Pozières to Guillemont, would advance—the Australians were to attack Pozières; the British, Guillemont. After proper artillery preparations, the Australians were to overrun Pozières trench, which surrounded the hamlet, and go on to capture a main road running through its centre.
    HAIL STORM
    As zero hour approached, the men’s fears grew. It was the worst time, the waiting. According to Lieutenant Ben Champion, ‘The tension affected the men in different ways. I couldn’t stop urinating, and we were all anxious for the barrage to begin.’ Men re-read letters, looked at photos they carried in their breast pocket, wrote farewell letters, prayed silently or chain-smoked to calm their nerves. Some vomited; others told jokes. No one wanted to let themselves or their comrades down.
    Three hours after sunset on 22 July, the first waves went ‘over the bags’ and, keeping low, moved up close to the enemy line, where they waited for zero hour. The Germans waited inside their dugouts; one soldier wrote to his wife and children that he was in ‘Hell’s trenches’, and had ‘given up hope of life’ and would think of them to his last moment. Then the artillery struck. German flares floated downwards as the British bombarded them with such intensity that the shell bursts could be seen 30 kilometres away. The gunners loaded and fired shells as fast as they could. This was the bombardment the Australians had needed at Fromelles.
    At 12.30 a.m., as the artillery lifted off Pozières trench and back to the orchards on the hamlet’s outskirts, officers blew their whistles and the first wave charged. They quickly overcame the shell-shocked Germans holding Pozières trench. Following waves passed over the trench, stumbling over shell holes, through dark hedges and the remains of gardens and houses, to reach what was left of the main street. A three-metre-high reinforced concrete blockhouse was the only structure still standing; out of a slit poked a machine-gun muzzle. The Australians charged from the side, surprising the 25 Germans inside. Down in the lower chamber, Private Jack Bourke found parcels and several letters addressed to soldiers in children’s handwriting. Nearby was a German trench coat with a blood-stained shrapnel hole.
    The Australians gained the only notable success that day; the British troops had failed to secure Guillemont.
    During the day, the Australians shot down three German attempts to recapture the hamlet, then rested or searched the nearby ruins, dugouts and German dead for souvenirs. As they waited for night, the two colonels in charge of the next advance received an ‘urgent and secret’ message that insisted the Australians had to be more disciplined and must salute all British officers, even those driving past in cars. That night the 1st Division captured the rest of Pozières, but from seven o’clock the next morning, the German artillery responded, and for the next three days their shells fell like hail. At times, 15 to 20 shells a minute were bursting in the same spot. The Germans had abandoned the idea of recapturing Pozières, so their gunners set out to make it