In the spring of 1918, Germany launched its greatest offensive of the war. The British Fifth Army collapsed under the weight of it. And somewhere in the chaos of that retreat, on a railway embankment west of a small French village called Dernancourt, four thousand Australians were told to hold the line against twenty-five thousand Germans.

In this episode, Mat McLachlan tells the story of the Battles of Dernancourt, the 28th of March and the 5th of April, 1918, officially the strongest attacks faced by Australian troops in the entire war. Almost no one has heard of them.

Through the words of the men who were there, we follow the desperate defence of the railway embankment that linked two vital French towns. We meet Sergeant Stan McDougall, a Tasmanian blacksmith who single-handedly repelled a German breakthrough, burning his hands on the barrel of a Lewis gun before picking up a bayonet and charging — earning the Victoria Cross and then, eight days later at the same spot, the Military Medal. We hear Lieutenant George Mitchell's devastating account of watching his comrades retreat down a bullet-swept slope, tears running down his face. We read the letter of a German soldier, intercepted by Australian intelligence, describing the enemy opposite as men who "glide about in the night like cats." And we discover the story of two wooden crosses, found months after the battle, where German soldiers had buried Australian dead and written above them: "Here lies a brave English warrior."

Why is Villers-Bretonneux remembered while Dernancourt is forgotten? How did a handful of under-strength Australian battalions hold off multiple German divisions in the heaviest attack Australian forces ever faced? And what happened to the men of the 47th Battalion — who fought so hard at Dernancourt, only to be told two months later that their battalion no longer existed?

A powerful and long-overdue tribute to the Australians who held the line at Dernancourt. In a battle their country forgot.

"The battle of Dernancourt will live long in the annals of military history as an example of dogged and successful defence." — General Sir John Monash

Episode Length: 30 minutes

Features: First-person accounts from Lieutenant George Mitchell (Backs to the Wall), Private Ted Lynch (Somme Mud), Private Edmund Liddell, and Private James O'Rourke; the Victoria Cross and Military Medal citations of Sergeant Stanley McDougall; a captured German letter; and the remarkable story of the Dernancourt Cross, held today in the Australian War Memorial.

Presenter: Mat McLachlan

Producer: Jess Stebnicki

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Ep266: Dernancourt, 1918 - Australia's Toughest Fight