On 11 November 1993, Australia’s Unknown Soldier was interred at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. As the coffin was lowered, an 89-year-old veteran named Robert Comb, who had served with the 23rd Battalion on the Western Front, stepped forward and scattered a handful of soil over the casket. It had been brought from the Pozières windmill site, a chalky ridge in northern France. Then he spoke two unscripted words that silenced the crowd: “Welcome home, mate.”
Pozières earned that honour because Australia’s official war historian, Charles Bean, wrote that the ridge was “more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth.” After a century, those words remain unchallenged.
In just 42 days between late July and early September 1916, three Australian divisions suffered 23,000 casualties fighting for a ridge barely a mile long. The 1st Division lost 5,285 men in four days taking the village itself. The 2nd Division lost 6,848 in twelve days capturing the windmill heights. The 28th Battalion went in with 800 men and came out with 130. When the 48th Battalion arrived to relieve the 27th at the windmill ruins, they reported finding no one left alive on the forward positions.
The windmill mattered because it occupied the highest point on the entire Somme battlefield, a position offering unbroken views in every direction. The Germans used it as an artillery observation post. Whoever held it controlled the ridgeline.
It was captured by the 2nd Division on the evening of 4 August 1916 in a dusk attack, after a failed attempt on 29 July had cost 3,500 casualties alone. Five Victoria Crosses were awarded during the Pozières fighting. Captain Albert Jacka, already a Gallipoli VC, was wounded seven times in a single engagement rescuing Australian prisoners from a German raiding party. Many historians believe he should have received a second VC.
Lieutenant John Raws, a former journalist who once described himself as a man who could not “tread upon a worm,” wrote harrowing letters from the ridge about forcing his men to dig trenches under fire, knowing many would be killed. He was killed on 23 August. His body was never found. In 1998, a French farmer ploughing his field at Pozières uncovered the remains of Private Russell Bosisto, discovered 82 years after he disappeared during the 1st Division attack.
Today the windmill mound stands as a quiet ruin beneath grass. The land was purchased by the Australian War Memorial board. A stone tablet reads: “Australian troops fell more thickly on this ridge than any other.” Bean collected the first relics from this shattered ground for what would become the Australian War Memorial, making Pozières the birthplace of that institution’s collection.
The soil Robert Comb scattered came from here. So did the Unknown Soldier.
Fairways & Frontlines visits the Pozières Windmill and Memorial on the Somme heritage day.