The Slaughterhouse of Fromelles

Known as the Diggers, the men of the 5th Australian Division had been in their trenches most of that clear summer's day of Wednesday, 19 July 1916. They had only arrived in France a few weeks earlier, some raw recruits like a young 18 year old named Roy Frederick Heard of Ryde, New South Wales, Australia. The Diggers were now preparing themselves to go over the top when that whistle blew. The intense fear they must have felt in those minutes before the sound of that dreaded whistle, one can only now imagine 100 years after that day. But on that summer's day in July of 1916 they did their duty, they did their job even unto death. These Australians would be thrown against the German front line as a diversion to support the British operations at the Somme which was then in its 19th day just 49 miles to the south. The infantry assault would begin a little before 6 P. M. that evening. Heard would be in the first wave. To reach the German lines, the Diggers had to cross no man's land, run a deadly gauntlet, through a constant artillery bombardment past nests of machine guns, each capable of spewing 600 round a minute. The whistle blew and the young Private climbed over the top to a hail of bullets. This is his story to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the Battle of Fromelles.