The Australians dealt with Pozieres itself, working round Moquet
Farm, where the Germans refused to be routed from their tunnels, and
up to the Windmill on the high ground of Pozieres, for which there was
unceasing slaughter on both sides because the Germans counter-attacked
again and again, and waves of men surged up and fell around that mound
of forsaken brick, which I saw as a reddish cone through flame and
smoke.
Those Australians whom I had seen arrive in France had proved their
quality. They had come believing that nothing could be worse than
their ordeal in the Dardanelles. Now they knew that Pozieres was the
last word in frightfulness. The intensity of the shell-fire under
which they lay shook them, if it did not kill them. Many of their
wounded told me that it had broken their nerve. They would never fight
again without a sense of horror.
"Our men are more highly strung than the English," said one Australian
officer, and I was astonished to hear these words, because those
Australians seemed to me without nerves, and as tough as gristle in
their fiber.
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