Battle Of Pozieres Essay

Battles such as Pozieres and Fromelles should be featured more prominently during the first world war. The battle of Pozieres and the battle of Fromelles, while both failures and successes, where hugely significant during the first world war for Australia. The effect that Fromelles and Pozieres had on Australia were extremely momentous, especially in comparison to more idolised events such as Gallipoli. They suffered even larger losses and casualties than Gallipoli and the battle of Fromelles was even listed as “the single worst day in Australian history” by many such as the Australian war memorial and AWM London. The battle of Pozieres, while it was a “success” had a massive death toll, making the accumulative death toll of Fromelles and Pozieres possibly worse than Gallipoli, even though one of them was a win.

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Why Fromelles was significant

The battle of Fromelles was a small futile battle which took place on July 19th which was quickly overshadowed by much larger battles occurring at the time. However, while it

More than 5,500 soldiers of the Australian Fifth Division, many own whom recently arrived from the failed Gallipoli campaign in Turkey, wounded, captured or killed in less than 24 hours. Over 1,600 Australians died and many of their bodies were never even found. The British 61st Division, which was mostly untrained volunteers, suffered over 1,500 casualties, including 500 deaths, which is why the battle of Fromelles is truly considered “the worst 24 hours in Australian history”. The battle of Fromelles’s original purpose was to take control of the German front lines in an effort stop German reinforcements from Fromelles being sent to the more major and focused battle Somme, also the main assault that drew attention away from Fromelles, which was taking place about 80 kilometres away. Fromelles involved about 20,000 troops from the 61st British division and the