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Clip description
Australian field guns join in the bombardment of Pozières. An artillery officer uses a megaphone to communicate with his gunners. They keep up a constant rain of shells on the German positions on the ridge. Horse-drawn limbers and mules bring up more shells and water along dusty roads. The Germans retaliate with shrapnel, which explodes in the air above the Australian lines. Australians go forward through the tiny village of Contalmaison, almost destroyed by shelling.
Curator’s notes
Audiences in 1917 were not used to seeing images of real warfare. Cameras at the front were a new and powerful thing. The Battle of the Somme, a film based on footage shot by Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell, and produced by Sir William Jury (see main notes), had shocked audiences in Britain in August 1916, while the battle was still going on. Australia in France, Part One contains a number of shots taken by those same photographers and others working for the British War Office. Charles Bean’s frustration at having to borrow these British photographers led to the appointment in late 1916 of the first photographer specifically for the Australians, Herbert Baldwin.
Bean’s notes (Diary 69, p 9) mention Contalmaison, albeit with a question mark. We know that the ‘botched’ version of the film was shown in Australia during 1917, because it was reviewed on page 8 of The Sydney Morning Herald of 17 July 1917 (read it on Trove). We don’t know if Australia in France, Part One (AWM F00047), the more accurate and informative version, was ever shown in Australia – although chances are that it was, given that the War Memorial holds a copy. These scenes of the bombardment of Pozières are real, not generic. More than 6000 Australians died here, killed by machine-gun fire and just such a bombardment.
