The capture of Mont Saint-Quentin was a remarkable feat of arms in the final months of fighting on the Western Front. But, as Dr Aaron Pegram, a senior historian at the Australian War Memorial, explains, it was a near run thing.
The original 2nd Australian Division memorial atop of Mont Saint-Quentin. Unveiled in August 1925, the bronze statue of an Australian soldier bayoneting a Prussian eagle was destroyed following the German invasion of France in 1940.
Just before dawn on 31 August 1918, three battle-depleted battalions from the 2nd Australian Division formed up in open ground and waited anxiously for their attack to begin. At 5am, just as the sky began to grey behind the summit of Mont Saint-Quentin, British and Australian field guns belched in unison and began plastering the German positions with shrapnel and high explosive. Australian infantry then charged with rifle and bayonet. One man described “yelling like a lot of Bushrangers. Shouting and yelling all kinds of war cries” as they went into battle. Another said they were like “yelling hounds… one would have thought it was a stockyard broke loose”.
The storming of Mont Saint- Quentin on that August morning represented the high-water mark of…
