The struggle for the Pozières ridge and High Wood lasted from the beginning of August until the middle of September—six weeks of fighting as desperate as any in the history of the world until that time. The Australians dealt with Pozières 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 Pozières, for which there was unceasing slaughter on both sides because the Germans counterattacked 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 Pozières was the last word in frightfulness. The intensity of the shellfire 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.