A Norfolk Pine stands as a sentinel guarding the memory of a Geelong engineer and his two brothers, who made the supreme sacrifice in The Great War. BARRY ABLEY recounts their tragic tale in the year of the Anzac centenary.
Hussars, dragoons and a myriad cavalry regiments exercised and watered their steeds 20 miles behind the front lines.
Horse-drawn artillery limbers, ridden postilion fashion, galloped to and fro.
Field Marshal Haig, Commander in Chief of British forces on the Western Front, had little time for new military ideas and industrial warfare. He was very much steeped in the ways he knew – infantry and horses.
The agrarian Commonwealth troops would lead one mighty push in the valley of Somme, enabling the cavalry to break out, as they have always done in the past. The Pozières’ Heights would be the fulcrum.
This distorted vision, lacking in appreciation of the new mechanized war led to the loss of 400,000 Allied troops.
Twelve days of fighting on the Somme cost Australia’s 2nd Division 6848 men, almost a third of its strength. Among those killed in the futile onslaught was a Geelong engineer and his two brothers.
Read more about engineer Harold Smith and his brothers Richard and Walter in the latest Geelong Coast Magazine.
