[1]Major Hamilton Gault, referred to above, did not die of wounds as first reported, but suffered the loss of a leg by amputation.
[1]Major Hamilton Gault, referred to above, did not die of wounds as first reported, but suffered the loss of a leg by amputation.
After a very rough passage from Avonmouth the Division landed at St. Nazaire in the Bay of Biscay, the last transport arriving some time in the second week of February.
From there they were taken in box cars to that mysterious region known as "the front," travelling forty men or eight horses to a car, a state of affairs that one man complained "showed undue regard for horses."
But five whole battalions and a number of surplus officers who had managed to get over to England supernumerary to their battalions were left behind on the Plain as a base depot.
Amongst the latter were the writer and Begbie Lyte, and when they rejoined a month or two later their battalion had been cut to pieces and some twenty-five of the officers with whom they had trained were casualties.
It is hard to imagine anything sadder than rejoining a battalion after fighting such as that unless it is the saying of good-bye.
plain
Manœuvres on Salisbury Plain.
INTERIM
For a time there was little news from the Canadians at the front, for they were not immediately placed in the trenches. Trench warfare was then still a novelty; its exact principles had not been developed, and all the training done on the Plain had been the ordinary open style of fighting—quite useless against the strongly entrenched positions the Germans had taken up.
So while lying in reserve behind the lines the First Division dug and manned trenches and practised themselves in the new warfare. Selected officers from each company spent days in the front line with other battalions and returned to their men bristling with information.
A little later selected platoons and companies took their turn in the front line, and before the end of February the Canadian Division was holding its own sector of the British line.
Casualties began to drift back to the Canadian base, which had now become centred at Shorncliffe, and letters began to arrive with details of the new methods of fighting. There was other news, too, of a more cheerful sort that showed brighter glimpses of life that occurred when enjoying brief rests from the firing line.
"Don't sympathise with us too much," wrote one officer; "we would sooner be here than on the Plain. Last night we gave an oyster and champagne supper at —— to three Ottawa ladies who are running a soup and coffee waggon for our battalion. We had a great time. D—— Dang and the Cat (another subaltern) were in fine fettle."
But more serious work was in view.
On March 10th the British commenced an offensive at Neuve Chapelle which, had it proved successful, would have involved the Canadians in the projected advance upon the Aubers Ridge, which formed the key to Lille.
But Neuve Chapelle, although a victory in one sense of the word, was a very costly lesson, but a lesson that showed that our artillery must be enormously increased if any further effort to break through the German line was to be made.
For, having taken their objective, the British troops found not only a second but a third line of trenches protected by entanglements of a most formidable nature, and so situated as to render the ground recently won at such heavy cost almost untenable. To carry these lines would require another bombardment more intense even than that which had preceded the attack. Our line had advanced one mile and there it stayed.
So ended the first attempt on our part to renew the offensive after the stagnation of a winter of trench warfare. For years we had been taught that an army that relinquishes the offensive acknowledges itself as beaten. It now began to look as though military science had undergone a complete revolution and that trench warfare and the policy of attrition were to be the normal methods of the future.
But Neuve Chapelle showed something else—it showed that the indomitable spirit of our men had not been quenched by the misery and suffering of the winter months and that the British bayonet was as much to be feared as ever.
"We were kept pretty busy," wrote a friend, "doing rapid fire, and lost quite a few from shell fire. But our artillery had the time of their lives, and fired pretty steadily the whole three days of the show."
Later he wrote that they were moving northward—probably to Hill 60—and we could expect there would be something doing shortly.
It was not to Hill 60 that the Canadian Division went, but further northward in the Ypres salient to the left of the 27th Division, where the "Princess Pats" were winning immortality at St. Eloi.
So the days wore on, the surplus officers chafing at the monotony of drill on a barrack square, relieved as it was by "Thés Dansants" at the Metropole and promenades along the Leas at Folkestone.
Then one day a medical officer dropped a sure tip. He had been warned to prepare beds for a thousand casualties—the Canadians were in something big at last!
Just how big it was we realised a week later when the newspapers broke forth into flamboyant headlines, "CANADIANS SAVED SITUATION," "FOUR GUNS RECAPTURED," and other startling sentences that danced before the eyes.
Lyte and the writer were returning from some light festivities, when the hoarse cry "All about the Canadians" arrested their attention. Papers were hurriedly bought, and the brief vague lines of the officialcommuniquéeagerly scanned. "By Jove!" was Lyte's exclamation; "but isn't that great!" The writer, however, hardly heard him; he was thinking of the many good friends who had taken part and the price they had to pay, and his answer was the monosyllabic "Huh!" of the aborigine.
That evening we packed our kits.
YPRES, 1915
The Second Battle for Ypres, as the fighting at Langemarck and St. Julien is officially designated, was largely a regimental and company officers' battle. This does not, however, reflect adversely on the brigade and other staffs, who did all that was humanly possible with the information that was at hand. Even at this date there are questions about the action that cannot be cleared up until it will be permissible to reproduce the whole of the war diaries of the various units that took part.
On the 2nd and 3rd Canadian Brigades fell the brunt of the fighting in which the Canadians took part, as the 1st Brigade was in rest billets in reserve.
But, without detracting from their work, it must be admitted that the account by the official "Eye Witness" does not give the 1st Brigade the credit it deserves. This, however, is inevitable. In a modern battle one sees nothing but what happens in the immediate vicinity of the observer, and we must therefore depend largely on the accounts furnished by others of what occurred in other parts of the field.
It will do no harm, however, to quote from the description by an officer, since killed, of the action of one of the battalions of this brigade, which from respect for the censor must remain nameless.
It would, however, serve no purpose to conceal the true names of those officers and men whom he thought fit to mention, for the majority of them have also laid down their lives in the field.
"During the latter part of the evening of April 22nd French and Algerian troops in large numbers began retreating throughVlamertinghein the utmost confusion, throwing away their arms and crying 'Asphyxie! Asphyxie!!' Empty limbers and gun teams without their guns dashed down the road, already thick with refugees and fugitive soldiers. Captain Culling therefore ordered the company to stand to arms and be ready to move off as soon as orders were received.
"Orders came about 9 p.m., and we moved off to the battalion rendezvous at the junction of theBrielenroad, where we found the rest of the battalion formed up. From here we continued north easterly up theBrielenroad, across the canal towardSt. Julien.
"A short distance past the canal the battalion deployed from the road, No. 3 Company being on our (No. 2 Company's) left and continued to advance.
"Moving forward in this formation was very difficult owing to the thick darkness and the ground being so cut up by hedges, but Captain Culling got in touch with the battalion on our left, which turned out to be theCanadian Scottishunder Lieutenant-Colonel Leckie, at about the farmhouse that afterwards became our dressing station. The advance continued slightly more to the north, and a few minutes later the company lay deployed about fifty yards in rear of a trench (A B) occupied by the 10th Canadian Battalion. They were enfiladed from a German trench to their right rear (C) and an adjoining farmhouse (M G).
"Wounded men, including their commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Boyle, lay everywhere about the trench and parados, but they were too weak to attack this short piece of trench, although it was rendering their position quite untenable.
map
"One of our platoons successfully attacked this trench, while another under Mr. Doxsee attacked the neighbouring house and succeeded in driving the enemy from it with a loss of only two men killed and another wounded.
"Steps were then taken to improve the position by reversing the parapet of the captured trench (C) and extending the original trench to the right. The house (M G), too, was prepared for defence, and thus the night was passed and no man slept.
"At dawn of the 23rd the enemy commenced shelling the house and trench, but the losses inflicted were slight owing to the two parallel hedges, which made both ranging and observing difficult. They then commenced an attack on the house supported by machine-gun fire, which proved a far more serious affair, as in the house itself we lost two men killed and some wounded, while in the trench we lost two valuable men, Platoon-Sergeant Abelarde and Lance-Corporal McGurk. The former had crawled out along the hedge to a dangerous and commanding knoll, and from there put eighteen of the enemy out of action before a sniper's bullet found him. The dead lay exposed where they fell, and could readily be counted from the house.
"About 9 o'clock, while Captain Culling was organising a counter-attack on a small portion of the German trench (D E), two companies of the Toronto Battalion under a major arrived as reinforcements, and took cover behind our parados as there was no room in the trench. Captain Culling asked that they take on the attack, and Mr. Doxsee volunteered to lead it. The response was feeble, and the attack petered out to nothing, Bugler Hunt and a man of theTorontoBattalion being killed by the side of Doxsee, who, finding himself alone, returned to the trench unharmed.
"TheTorontomen now tried a flanking movement on our immediate right, but lost eight men and had to abandon the attempt. However, coupled with our fire from the second story of the house, the effect was sufficient to cause the enemy to retire from this point, and the remainder of the day passed quietly, though the enemy's artillery continued to shell our position and a machine-gun played on the house at every sign of movement. By evening we had some seventeen casualties, a remarkedly small number considering the shelling.
"As soon as darkness set in, under cover of a few skirmishers, two platoons continued our original trench (A B) along a line (B B 1) about fifteen feet in rear of the forward hedge surrounding the house and linked this trench to the position in our right rear with a communication trench, the majority of this work being done with the small entrenching tool.
"This enabled us to get the whole company under cover, and with a machine-gun of the10th Battalionin the house we felt fairly secure. Captain Hooper held a house immediately in front of our lines calledHooper House, and our original trench was held by a mixture of our own men and the Canadian Scottish under Mr. Hugill.
"Dawn on Saturday found our positions unaltered, but about 7 o'clock orders came from Lieutenant-Colonel Rodgers, our second in command, to take over all of the original trench and relieve theScottish.
"Simultaneously Mr. Doxsee called for reinforcements to repel a direct frontal attack on our forward trench and machine-gun house.
"Reinforcements hurried up along the new communication trench, but were anticipated by Mr. Scott and a score or so of men, who dashed across the open and repelled the attack, Mr. Doxsee being unfortunately killed at this point.
"Captain Richardson now took overmachine-gun house, and his company (No. 2) relieved us along our original trench. The two Toronto companies had entrenched to our right, forming a narrow and very dangerous salient (C F).
"All day this house was the target of the enemy's artillery and machine-guns, the latter sweeping the building so effectively that the garrison was forced to lie flat on the floors.
"Six attacks were made by their infantry and repulsed before they could get closer than two hundred yards, in spite of the fact that our only machine-gun jammed incessantly owing to the rapidity of its firing. About 2 p.m. one of our own guns came up, and from then on both guns remained in action.
"About this time troops in French uniforms were seen moving down a road on our right towardSt. Julien. At first no notice was taken of them, but presently it became apparent that these were Germans, who had adopted this ruse to get behind our flank.
"Fire was immediately opened on them with what rifles could be spared from our front line, and one machine-gun was hastily posted in a barn (G), from which it did excellent work.
"At 3.30 orders were received to retire in the direction of battalion headquarters. (These orders had originally been sent out at 2 o'clock, and when Lieutenant-Colonel Watson received no response he sent them again and again until he finally saw the last company passing the shattered house that had served alike as dressing station and battalion headquarters, and not till then did he leave the field himself.)
"The retirement took place across open ground swept by both shrapnel and machine-guns, and the men just seemed to melt away.
"Men straggled in for hours, and when the battalion finally assembled at brigade headquarters atSt. Jeanthe company had lost one hundred and thirty-nine of all ranks, of which four were officers."
It was a black situation. No one knew how other parts of the field had fared or how much ground had been lost. British troops were being rushed up to relieve the 2nd and 3rd Brigades, who in some incredible manner still held on in spite of two attacks with the gas. But they had paid a terrible price. Of the former brigade there were scarcely a thousand men and of the latter not many more.
If this, then, is the account of what one battalion—nay, what one or two companies—accomplished, what must be the stories, as yet untold, of those other battalions of the First Canadian Division that filled the gap that led to Calais?
WITH THE DRAFT
On returning to our barracks we found notices that "the following officers will hold themselves in readiness to proceed to their respective units with the next draft." Eagerly we scanned the list to make sure our names had not been omitted, and then transferred ourselves from the crowd that gathered in the ante-room to those who waited their turn outside the telephone cabinet. Letters and telegrams were being feverishly written in all parts of the building, and a hurly-burly of voices in the mess-room proclaimed the general opinion that we had been pretty badly cut up. A tailor's agent had somehow made his way into that sanctuary, and voices were demanding "Who can lend me a blank cheque?" in a wild endeavour to get him out again.
Telegrams were also arriving, one or two from the front. A subaltern spread the sheet of flimsy in his hand to find his cousin had been killed in action. There was a sudden hush in the turmoil as he turned and walked slowly to the window; men at such times are mute and trust to the simple pressure of the hand to tell that sympathy which the tongue cannot frame.
A colonel whose hair had grown grey in the service passed from one group to another, giving a word of advice here and receiving a word of sympathy there, for his age had debarred any further activities in the field. "But I have one son over there now," he proudly told you, "and my other is coming with the next contingent!"
The orderly room clerk entered and pinned up the daily orders. These were at once surrounded, and would have perished in themêléehad the colonel not taken the situation in hand and read them out in his sternest parade voice with appropriate comments of his own.
"All officers and men warned for draft will parade to the ranges at 5 o'clock tomorrow morning—that will teach you to sit up all night playing cards!
"Markers and other details—that includes you, Lyte—will be at the butts and all targets ready for firing at a quarter before the hour, &c., &c.
"Light marching order will be worn by all ranks, including one hundred and fifty rounds per man. Haversack rations to be carried.
"Officers' valises—maximum weight thirty-five pounds—to be rolled ready for transport by 2 p.m., &c., &c."
This last caused an immediate thinning of the crowd, and till late that night we struggled over our kits, rolling and unrolling them to try and bring their weight down to something like the regulation amount.
At 4 o'clock next morning we fell in to march to the ranges, Lyte and his ill-fated companions having left half an hour before, and from then on till the afternoon we toiled in the hot sun. Returning about 3 that afternoon, we found the draft ordered to be ready to proceed at 6 o'clock, barely time for the men to get their tea; and tea in the Army is a meagre meal at the best of times.
Then after some hours waiting on the barrack square the draft moved off down the Cheriton road and through the streets of Folkestone to where the transports lay awaiting us.
Here the British Navy took hold of us again, and there were no further delays. The men were led below decks and packed as close as they could stand to one another, the officers having the privilege of being able to sit on their valises, which were piled unceremoniously on the deck.
Then when all were accounted for the mooring ropes were cast off, and with no more ceremony than the tinkle of the ship's telegraph we slid out of the harbour under cover of the scudding clouds.
But we were not alone. A long, lithe shape, strangely suggestive of a greyhound, crept out of the darkness around us and came up alongside, and a brief conversation, ending in "All right, full speed," was held.
The telegraph tinkled again and our ship bounded forward, leaving a long trail of phosphorescent foam in her wake.
The sighing of the rigging in the wind, the slap-slap of the Channel breakers at our sides, and the lashing "hish" of the spray across the decks blended with, but did not break, our thoughts.
And the dark shapes of the destroyers and the other transports momentarily revealed by gaps in the scudding clouds, the gleaming wake of the ship, and the faint white of the life-belts, that showed dimly where little groups of two or three stood or sat together, made a fitting scene for such an orchestral accompaniment.
Thus we reached France.
There followed a long march through the darkened streets of Boulogne to a camp on the Plains of St. Martin, not far from the tall column that marks where Napoleon gathered his great army and waited for the time that never came, when he would be master of that little strip of water we had just crossed.
A drizzling rain had started, and the men had now been nearly eight hours without food and practically a whole day without a proper meal. We were able to draw bully beef and biscuit at once from the stores, but the situation was really saved by the ladies at the Y.M.C.A. tent, who supplied hot cocoa and cake to all who cared to apply. A nominal charge of one penny was made to those who wished to pay, but no man was refused because of his inability to find this sum, small as it was.
Only a small thing, you may think, but it is only the smallest part of what this wonderful organisation is doing for the soldier at the front.
And a smile and a cup of coffee at 5 o'clock in the morning "look pretty good to me," as one recipient expressed it.
We were held in camp all the following day and then, carrying two days' rations, we entrained for the north. For a while we made vain attempts to find our destination from the French railway staff, but concluded they either did not understand our variation of their beautiful language or were sullen brutes knowing nothing.
As we continued northward the throbbing of distant gunfire became plainer, and a strange flickering could be seen in the morning sky. This strange light, caused by the flash of the guns and the flares or illuminating fuzees shot up by the infantry, resembled nothing so much as our own Aurora Borealis, and we were not surprised to find, a little later, that our men had already nicknamed them the "Northern Lights."
Dawn brought us to a halt by some little town where the engine-driver proceeded leisurely to fill his boiler. We availed ourselves of the chance to exercise our French on some Algerian troops who were lying wounded all over the platform. A rough tent had been made with waggon tarpaulins, and under this lay the worst cases—ghastly wrecks of men with blood-soaked bandages and blood-encrusted clothing, face muscles twitching convulsively as masses of flies settled on them. One French medical orderly with a strip of silver on his sleeves and an assistant seemed to be the whole staff of the place.
One tall chap with a handsome beard showed us how a bullet had torn through his cap and grazed his head, while a rude sling and a crutch spoke of a more serious injury of which he said nothing. His white teeth and smiling face turned to a horrible scowl as he continued talking, and thinking we were over-exciting him, we moved away. Had we only known, he was trying to describe to us the terrible effect of the asphyxiating gas on his comrades who were less educated than he!
A few miles further on we detrained at Poperinghe and were soon marching along a beautiful avenue of poplars—now perhaps the most famous highway in Flanders, the Vlamertinghe road.
Refugees passed us with all their worldly effects piled on a waggon, the women and little children clattering along behind in their wooden sabots. It seemed so unnecessary. The guns that had been pounding away all night were now strangely silent, and the fields on either side seemed peaceful enough. There was even a farmer plowing stoically in one.
A little further on we saw a horse that had been hurriedly cut out from a gun or waggon team. It needed but one glance to tell us that shrapnel had done its deadly work there, and we wondered vaguely what had become of its rider, for the saddlery and harness were still on it.
On entering Vlamertinghe we saw signs of shelling on most of the buildings, particularly around the church and the square, the steeple of the former forming, of course, the aiming mark for the German guns. Here, too, the body of a woman lay half in and half out of a doorway. The place seemed absolutely deserted. An aeroplane droned overhead, but whether our own or the enemy's we could not ascertain. However, we took no chances and marched on, hugging the shelter of the walls on either side of the street.
In this formation we were met by the gaunt figure of old Joey ——, our quarter-master. He fell in beside Major V—— and guided us to our transport lines, a farm a little on the Ypres side of the town. Here we lay for half an hour munching biscuits and bully beef and watching an anti-aircraft gun shelling the aeroplane we had noticed before, which was now low enough to distinguish the sinister black crosses painted on its wings.
This was the reason for the extraordinary silence on the part of the guns, so skilfully hidden all around us.
The "Archibalds," as the anti-aircraft guns are popularly known, seemed to be making extraordinarily bad practice as the fleecy puffs of shrapnel burst all around the plane without apparent effect, and the machine, having spotted something, dropped a signal that burst into brilliant sparkles and turned for the enemy lines.
At this moment Joey returned from the outhouse concealing the telephonists with instructions that we were to proceed to the field, where the battalion was dug in at once.
THE BREAKING IN
"We take the old road we have taken for years;For you cannot cut corners in war, it appears."
The truth of this old maxim was impressed on us by the roundabout route we took to reach the field only a few hundred yards away where the remainder of the battalion lay.
Actually about two companies strong, they looked a mere handful as they lay huddled close to the hedges in the shallowest of shelter pits scratched in the soil with the field entrenching tool.
The draft was immediately ordered to "dig in," as the plane we had been watching a few minutes before had dropped its signal directly over this position.
We lost no time in digging more of these shallow pits, that reminded one rather gruesomely of graves, and had barely scraped them deep enough to roll into before a hail of small high-explosive shell fell all around us.
For half an hour the whoop and crash of falling and bursting shells kept us alternately ducking our heads and raising them again to see "where that one went," for curiosity is many times a stronger impulse than fear.
Curious things happened. A tree was cut in half by a shell, and the plumed top, falling clear of the stump, planted itself like a dart in the ground a few feet away.
A pack horse suddenly bolted across the open field with a slight cut on one flank, and half a dozen men made wild grasp at its bridle before one succeeded in recapturing the brute. And here and there groups of men finding their corner of the field a bit too "hot" for comfort would just as suddenly bolt across to another part and start feverishly digging in anew.
The shelling ended with as little warning as it had begun. There came a pause, and we thought naturally, "Well, thank God that's over!"—and said so. "Just a minute," said my companion; "there are the Three Sisters to come yet!"
Before one could say "Here they are!" the rush of much larger projectiles was heard, and in quick succession three heavy shells crashed into the foot of the field, throwing up black columns of smoke. "Those are coal-boxes," continued my tutor; "they used to have four guns in that battery, but they are only using three now."
The chuckle with which he added this last showed that he, at any rate, had no doubt as to the fate of the fourth gun.
This was evidently the end of the shelling, the enemy having, theoretically, made the field untenable. The actual casualties were, however, very slight, and the field entrenching tool, until now regarded as a toy, became a valued possession. We were already beginning to learn that the British infantry equipment is the finest in the world.
The shelling over, the draft was divided up amongst the remnants of the four companies, and Lyte and the writer had the good fortune to be placed with the same one.
Our company commander had been a lieutenant till a few days before, and was now a temporary captain. His senior subaltern was wearing a "British warm," the skirt of which had been riddled by machine-gun bullets, and a sergeant was to come out in orders that evening as an officer to take the remaining platoon.
A machine-gun duel in mid-air between one of our planes and an enemy machine that was eventually driven off and the dropping of some large shells into Ypres were the only other events of the day. Most of us slept, as there was work for us to do that night, until the joyful sound of "Tea up!" and the smell of hot "Maconachie" rations told us that supper was ready.
At 7 o'clock the battalion fell in to move up to the front line and dig some trenches. Hardly were we formed up when another violent shelling started, and we hurried back to the cover of our funk-holes.
Again the shelling was singularly ineffective, due, probably, to the fact that the enemy was using high explosive and not shrapnel. One shell by an unfortunate chance caught an artillery limber full of ammunition on the roadway, and it blew up with a sickening roar. The double report of this explosion evidently satisfied the German gunners, for a few minutes later the bombardment ceased and we again fell in.
The greatest secrecy was observed, and nobody but the guides knew our destination, and we followed them in silence up the shell-pitted road and across the pontoon bridge that spanned the Yser Canal. Various dark forms hobbled past, their baggy trousers showing them to be Algerians. A French outpost challenged us, and a party of Ghurkas passed us leading pack horses with the bodies of their fallen officers lashed across the saddles. The Ghurkas never leave an officer's body on the field, so the sergeant in rear of the platoon ahead informed us.
On either side of the road was a ruined trench, and even in the weird half-light of the flares we could see what a shambles they had become. The road was well called "Suicide Alley!"
Then suddenly we left the road and took to the open fields on the left, passing a trench occupied by some Imperial troops—it was our own first line trench. Then we knew what our work was to be; we were to dig an advance trench to link up with the French on our left and the English on our right. The advance continued up a gentle slope across which—nearly a thousand yards of bare bullet-swept field—the Ghurkas had a day or so previously tried to charge. The bodies still lay there in rows just as they had fallen under the bursts of fire that mowed them down—pitiful huddled figures in the grass staring ahead into the great void. Few of the faces showed signs of suffering—such is the mercy of the rifle bullet; and so great was the resemblance to sleep that later, when we came to retire, the writer and others shook the bodies mistaking them for our own men.
In the midst of this ghastly scene, lit up by fitful glances of moonlight as clouds scudded over the sky, two companies moved forward, a long line of shadowy forms, to act as a covering party while the remaining half-battalion dug the new trench.
As we moved forward and lay down we could hear the thudding of the picks as they were driven into the ground, and from somewhere in the darkness ahead the plick-plock of the sniper began. Captain H——, our new company commander, passed down the line to warn us to count our men and see that all bayonets were fixed and magazines loaded.
The sniping increased, and a farmhouse ahead of us that had been smouldering for some time burst into flame. Two colts that were evidently confined near the blaze started to whinny and neigh, and a man who had been hit began to curse vilely.
From somewhere in rear a battery of French "seventy-fives" opened up with their ear-splitting reports, and we could see the outlines of the ruined farm ahead of us silhouetted against the crimson flashes of their bursting shrapnel. But of the enemy there was no sign—nothing but the arching trail of the flares that shot up and the steady plick-plock of the snipers. It was most trying.
It was nearly 2 o'clock before the trench was completed and we wakened our shivering men to retire, for so exhausted were they that, despite the cold and danger, many had dozed there on the body-strewn field with one hand firmly grasping the rifle.
By this time traces of dawn began to show themselves in the eastern sky, and the moon seemed to flood the whole country with light.
Platoon by platoon in Indian file we drew off the field, carefully checking the count of our men as they passed until all were accounted for. Then the march back to billets began. And such a march! Worn out by the week's hard fighting, the older men staggered all over the road, all but dropping out from sheer exhaustion. Nor were the new men in better condition. Unaccustomed as yet to the weight of their packs, shaken by shell fire, and in some cases still weak from the sickness of the rough Channel passage, it was only sheer pride and the cruel taunts of the older men that kept them in the ranks. And thus we straggled on past the French outposts and over the Yser again, and on, on past the field we had lain in all day, on through Brielen to Vlamertinghe, back to billets. But the draft was broken in.
RESERVE BILLETS
It was only the prospect of several days of comparative rest that held us together at all as we floundered over the slippery cobble stones into Vlamertinghe. At the cross-roads that formed the battalion rendezvous in case of alarm, we got into some kind of military formation, for we spied the gaunt figure of the colonel there sitting his horse like a centaur. A grim man he was, who never spared his horses, himself or his men, and his only comment as we hobbled past was, "Dress up those fours!"—and tired as we were, the fours dressed up. When, however, Captain H——, who had gone to the rear of the company to chase up stragglers, came by, his greeting was a little more personal. "All well, H——?" he asked, and our gallant skipper answered, "All present, sir." It showed rather plainly the difference in feeling that existed for some time between those who had been through the Second Battle of Ypres and those who had not—a difference that it took much hard fighting to outweigh.
At last the company ahead turned down a side street, and we marched into our billet alone. It was a deserted warehouse with plenty of straw and quite comfortable, and, having got our men safely stowed away, the officers walked across the road to an empty house that formed our billets.
On the way H—— pointed out the coffee waggon of which mention has been made. A sad-looking wreck it was, too, as a result of a stray shell. The ladies who had been in charge of it had been swooped down upon and gathered in by an irate provost-marshal some days before the shelling, and were, I am told, sent back to England for venturing so near the front line. The loss to the battalion was, however, immeasurable, as the ladies had been most devoted, and no matter at what hour the troops came in there was always a cup of coffee or soup awaiting them, and a smile—a smile that means so much to men whose hearts are lonely. Truly Raemaekers struck a key-note when, in his address in London, he asked England to "keep on smiling."
Arriving at the house, we found coffee ready and breakfast in the process of preparation. Bacon, an omelette, toast and marmalade (plum jam being out of season), it was a feast for the gods, any minor deficiencies being overcome by the keenness of our appetites. Then, having satisfied the inner man, we climbed the crooked little stairs to the bedrooms, where we found our bedding rolls stretched out on some mattresses the owners had left in their haste, and in three minutes we were asleep. Never did any bed seem more welcome.
We did not stay long in this billet, however, as we shifted the following day to a farm on the Brielen road. It was well we did so, for the enemy bombarded the town again and dropped one shell in our old billet a few hours after we left.
The farm we moved into is worthy of a little description, as it was typical of any farm in Flanders. The three buildings that constituted the house, barn, and cowbyre were arranged in a hollow square around a brick courtyard, the centre of which was graced by a large pile of manure in an advanced stage of decomposition. Outside the square of buildings was a moat full of green slime and mosquito larvæ. Here the men washed, and here, too, our buckets were filled each morning for the "lick and a promise" that served as a substitute for a bath.
kitchen
Field Kitchen in Reserve Billets.
Yet in spite of its unsanitary surroundings the house itself was beautifully clean inside, and no one could be healthier than the two buxom girls who formed part of the family that lived within. An exact census of the family was never obtained, as they poured out from nooks and crannies into the living-room occupied by us as sleeping quarters, generally at such awkward moments as when we were dressing or undressing. This was a matter of constant annoyance to Lyte, as the people persisted in announcing themselves with a "Bon jour, monsieur," no matter what state of nudity they had caught you in.
We shared this room with an artillery officer, a young Irishman named Lee, who had a battery hidden somewhere near. We saw little of him, however, as we were generally falling in to move off when he came in for the evening, and when we returned after a night dug in in rear of some other troops, he was leaving to go up to his guns.
On some occasions we returned so late that the family were already up and at work, and instead of unrolling our valises we popped right into their beds. This was the subject of much joking of the simple peasant sort on the part of the young ladies, and consequent blushing on the part of poor Lyte. We all accused him of being their favourite, as he had nicknamed them "Ox-eye" and "Freckleface," names much more descriptive than the Marie and Jeanne their parents had chosen, and, having taken "Ox-eye" into our confidence, told her that poor Lyte was "très timide." That was all she required, and from then on she directed all her charms toward him.
The next morning, his servant being as usual somewhere else, he ventured to ask for a little shaving water, in French of the first-steps variety. "Oh, monsieur speaks French," she answered, quite ignoring the mess-tin he held out. "Why did you not tell me?"—this last with an accusing glance at A——, the senior subaltern. Lyte began to deny all knowledge of the language, and she suddenly swung into English. "Nevair mind, I speak bloody good English," and then amidst our whoops of applause she demanded "It ees good? What!"
Lee came in one morning in a great state of excitement, his rich brogue being augmented with the news he brought. It seemed that on going up to his guns that morning he had found the farm there, till then occupied by a Belgian family, vacated and the white half-door—so familiar in all peasant countries where they keep pigs—placed lozenge-wise on the red roof. A hasty search revealed a partly burnt map and other papers of a military nature, and a German plane was already buzzing aloft. He had hurriedly withdrawn his guns; but siege guns take time to move, and before they could get away the shells were upon them and one gun crew had been practically wiped out. He was much excited, as became a man who had seen his first death.
We, too, had passed a very strenuous night. The Germans had commenced another attack on our line, using the gas again. We were wondering how much good the little respirators we were carrying would be, and the answer came soon enough.
As we moved forward we met men falling back gasping, coughing and sobbing, and the stink of their clothing was of hell's own reek, a choky mixture of chlorine and sulphur. "It's not war, mate; it's bloody murder!" was all one man gasped as he threw himself coughing on the ground, where he died before we moved on. It was not a pretty sight, and more than one rifle-butt was grasped the tighter and more than one oath sworn to get at the fiends who had let loose this vile poison, against which the only protection we had was a little pad of gauze to fasten over the mouth and nose after soaking in water from our water-bottles. These had been supplied by the thousand as soon as the authorities made known their wants by the women and children of England, and, feeble though this protection was, these simple little pads saved many lives that week.
But it was not our fate to meet the enemy again while in the salient. After continuing our march about another quarter-mile we lined a roadside and commenced digging another trench.
Here we lay and shivered all night, the men crouching in the trench, every fourth man alert and watching, the officers lying on the ground behind in shell holes or walking up and down swinging their arms and trying to keep warm. It was only one night of many.
The Germans continued to discharge gas against our line until May 15th, when they retook Hill 60. The bitter struggle of the past three weeks had begun as a mere counter-attack to our capture of this small but important mound.
By this time, however, the Canadians had been withdrawn, and we left the salient with few regrets. But somewhere on the German side of our trench line there are thousands of graves of our fellow-countrymen, and when the time comes for the balancing of accounts we shall expect these to weigh heavy in the scales.
Our brigade was the first to be relieved, marching out on the night of May 3rd, wondering vaguely where we were going, and also, perhaps, what would become of our friends "Ox-eye" and "Freckleface," with their stolid faces, their ample bosoms, and their square hips.
BAILLEUL
Our next stop was Bailleul, a town of some fifteen thousand inhabitants just over the Franco-Belgian frontier. Possibly it was never known before the war, but it is now, for sooner or later everyone goes to Bailleul: it was, until the taking over of the line below Arras, the Mecca of the British Army.
But it was fifteen weary miles from Brielen, fifteen miles that we stumbled over in a drizzling rain on slippery cobblestones before turning up through an archway off the main street to our billets. Good billets they were, too—a loft with ample straw for one platoon, a school-house for the other three, and houses on another street for the officers.
In spite of the early hour, about 3 o'clock, Madame was up and around and soon made us fresh coffee and the inevitable omelette; then we clattered up the steep little stairs to bed. F——, the sergeant who had been promoted, joined us here and proved a jolly good sort. We went out to hunt up new billets the next day. He, being a Quebecker, acted as interpreter, as our room was too small and stuffy for two, and, moreover, looked into the operating-room of a hospital opposite.
We were fortunate in finding another billet quite close—an important point, as we were to mess together—and then took a stroll around the town.
Bailleul is, like most French provincial towns, arranged like a star, the Grande Place and Hôtel de Ville forming the centre. We found our way to the cathedral, where a white-haired oldcuréshowed us around, pointing out the door leading to the great square tower and the axe marks left by the German soldiers who burst it open. They had used the tower as an observing post during the week their cavalry had held the town the preceding October. The old man had been held as hostage by them, together with the mayor and some other notables, but when asked if he had been badly treated he was very non-committal. "Qu'est-ce que vous voulez?" he answered. "C'est, la guerre!" That is the doctrine of humility taught France in 1870. "C'est la guerre!" It is used to explain anything from the shooting of civilians to the high cost of hand-made lace!
In a jeweller's on the Grande Place we obtained a little fuller information as to the Germans' actions. They had robbed Madame of all her rings, deliberately broken up all her watch glasses—there was not one to be obtained in the town—and smashed with their sword hilts the glass of her show-cases. And across the square they had confiscated all the champagne in acafé, and when no more was forthcoming they piled the tables on thepavéand burnt them; also she had heard——; but here F——'s patience had worn out, and as he said "Hearsay evidence is not admitted," so we said "Bonjour" and returned to billets.
Fortunately we did so, as we found we were slated to take a bathing parade at 1 o'clock and would barely have time to lunch. However, we caught the parade in time and marched the men to an old factory labelled "Divisional Baths." Here each man was supplied with a hot tub, soap and a clean towel, and was issued on stepping out from his tub with freshly-washed underwear, turning his soiled clothes in. This was a splendid system, and when later the clothes were not only washed but sterilised it ensured the men freedom for a short time at least from vermin.
It took some time running the whole company through in batches of forty, so we had a brief look around that part of the town. We also found that at the asylum officers could get a real bath—full length that one could stretch out in—at any time, but as it was late when our last man was ready to march off, we simply returned to billets.
We found the streets full of ambulances, most of them being gas cases from around Hill 60, and, in spite of the respirators, most of them pretty bad cases.
Being somewhat of a chemist, I managed to see some of these cases a few days later. The hospital was so crowded that many cases were lying on stretchers in the garden that lies at the back of all these hideous perpendicular French houses, shielded from the weather by an awning only. But the worst cases were upstairs in a long hall—some eighteen of them, none of which had any hope. Reeking with chlorine, their faces a livid purple or an even ghastlier green, they lay there on the stretchers, each with a little bowl beside him, coughing his life away. And gradually the body would become weaker, the poor tortured lungs fail to clear themselves of the secretion that poured from their outraged tissue, and the fluid would accumulate slowly—oh, so slowly!—and the agonised victim died, not with the merciful swiftness of a bullet, but by gradual drowning.
This was the death that the Germans—ashamed of their own brutality—afterwards described as painless and merciful!
They may find justification for their crimes in Belgium, they may even smooth over the sinking of theLusitania, but it must always be remembered that they, and they alone, are responsible for introducing into warfare this most ghastly and hideous death. It is said that German scientists spent years in perfecting this horror, practising its powers on plant life in the desert parts of Australia.
And the neutral nations—what of them? Are they not after all "accessories after the fact" and equally guilty? For, having sworn in solemn convention at the Hague to abstain from the use of asphyxiating gases, they entered no definite protest, though public opinion ran high on the subject.
Silence gives consent, and the poisoning of your enemy by chemical gases has now become the proper and chivalrous thing to do, and warfare has an added horror.
But the Allied chemists were at work devising means of lessening and preventing this danger, and already success was crowning their efforts; a new pattern respirator was devised and being issued, and a solution for dipping it in was already available. Dr. G——, of Queen's University, then serving as a subaltern in No. 2 Company, had been experimenting in private and devised a solution which varied only in the proportion of one of its elements from that adopted by the British Army, so we were probably the first brigade in the B.E.F. to receive this protection. Bottles of this fluid were carried by that long-suffering man the platoon sergeant, and parades held showing the men how to adjust and use the respirators.
Later we received flannel hoods, with mica windows, that had been dipped in the same solution, and these gave place in turn to the present gas helmet—a fearsome-looking affair, which, however, gives almost complete protection.
Our stay in Bailleul was enlivened by the arrival of a draft and the posting up of a schedule of training. The draft, needless to say, was the more welcome of the two. With the draft—who were magnificently-built men from the Middle West—we received a major who took command of the company, Captain H—— dropping back as second in command. We thought this was rather hard lines, but H—— made no complaint, though he felt it rather keenly, but finding our new man had the South African ribbon, we were a bit mollified.
Here, too, we held a memorial service for our fallen comrades, a powerful address being delivered by Major the Rev. William Beatty, one of the brigade chaplains. The troops, both old and new, were addressed, too, by Major-General Alderson, the divisional commander, who spoke of what the old men had done that the new men might understand what was expected of them, and stated that from now on he would count on us all as old troops.
Then we marched away feeling we were now a definite part of the old regiment, and a few days later started our trek southward.
We had entered another epoch!
THE TREK SOUTH
Until we left Bailleul the Canadian Division had been a part of the 2nd Army under Sir Herbert Plumer. We were now to go to the other end of the British line and become part of the 1st Army, then commanded by the present Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig.
The news of this change was greeted with little enthusiasm by the old soldiers in our midst, but old soldiers are invariably pessimists, and imagine that every inspection is the prelude to more "dirty work at the cross-roads" and that every change made in their dispositions is for the worst.
Still, we were all sorry to leave Bailleul, with its bright little shops, and to say good-bye to thecuréand our other friends there.
We fell in at night in the Grande Place—the little square that has probably seen more British troops come and go than any other town in northern France—and waited there for the battalion to form up. It was a beautiful summer night, the square tower of the cathedral and the Moorish spire of the Hôtel de Ville forming perfect silhouettes against the starlit sky.
We were not kept waiting long; the shrill of a whistle from somewhere in the darkness put an end to all talking, and we hastily slung our packs on our shoulders again and started on our long tramp south to La Bassée.
For a while our route lay through country that some of us had traversed before, and Merville, Vieux Berquin, and other places were hailed with delight. There is a certain charm in returning to places that one has never expected to see again. Much speculation began as to whether we were going back to our old trenches at Bois Grenier and Fleurbaix or not, but all hopes of this happening were dashed to pieces when, after passing through Neuf Berquin, we turned sharply to the right.
After this disappointment our packs began to weigh more heavily; the mouth organs and vocalists were less persistent in their efforts and gradually stopped in disgust, and only an accordion, wielded by a husky Scotchman at the rear of the company, strove to cheer us up. It was probably "Lochaber no more" or some other dirge he was playing, as he always showed unnatural fondness for the weird and the sad—probably due to the difficulty of fingering lively airs while on the march.
Passing through Merville, A——, who was marching beside me, regained his spirits sufficiently to point out a shop where a pretty girl sold champagne, and then relapsed into silence again.
A little further along the road we saw the adjutant riding alongside the major, and we knew we were nearing our billets. We turned up a side-road through Calonne, and the companies again broke off in different directions to the various farms to which they had been allotted.
We were again fortunate in getting very good accommodation—good airy barns, a mill-pond for washing, and a well of no-worse-than-the-ordinary water. But imagine our surprise to find chalked on the gate of the largest and best farm a sign:—
"SMALL POX.BY ORDER."
Here we were in a fix, as the men would not enter the place till we hunted up that long-suffering individual the interpreter. Then we found the placard to be only a ruse on the part of the unsophisticated peasantry to avoid having troops billeted there.
Having been found out and beaten at this game, Madame produced a sheet of paper she called a "reclamation," for some straw she claimed had been stolen by the preceding troops, and while she and the interpreter harangued over this we stowed our men away and sought our own billets a little distance up the lane.
At Calonne we received newspapers telling of the starting of the French offensive in the Artois district and prophesying an attack on our part to co-operate with them. We got out our maps and saw we were quite close to Neuve Chapelle, and as the Aubers Ridge—the great natural barrier to Lille—formed the obvious point to attack, we were not greatly surprised when a day or two after arriving at this peaceful little village we again took the route—this time toward Neuve Chapelle. We had heard the guns drumming along the Aubers Ridge all the day before during church parade service (May 9th), and were, on the whole, rather disappointed when after a few miles' march we turned off the road into a farm near "le Cornet Malo" and lay there in the mud all day. Some of the Lahore Division passed us on their way into the affair, the Indian gunners sitting on their limbers like statues.
It was rather a wretched day we spent in this farm. A heavy rain had turned the orchard in which we lay into a "bit of a bog," and all the straw we could buy or steal from the inhabitants could not keep us out of the mud. Here, too, we found the first instance of friction between the troops and the civilian populace, and the old lady made no bones about telling us how unwelcome we were. She opened hostilities by taking the rod from the pump so that we could not fill our watercart, and the troops retaliated by stealing bundles of unthreshed wheat. This was speedily put a stop to (and paid for) by the officers, and, for a while, peace reigned supreme while a thriving trade was done in coffee at two sous a cup and beer at three sous a glass.
Then some of the officers, seeing a lot of freshly-baked bread in a room just off the kitchen, offered to buy some. To our surprise the old woman started to wave a knife around dangerously and screamed: "You take my wheat, you take my water, and now you won't even leave me my bread! I would rather the Germans had come; they at least pay for what they take!"
As we had just paid her for the straw we thought this was going a little too far, and F——, who had a fine taste for sarcasm, waved his coffee-cup eloquently in the direction of the two slatternly girls that were peddling the coffee to the soldiers through the window, and said "What? With all these beautiful daughters," and then continued with a graphic description of the horrors in Belgium.
This quieted the old lady down, but we were not sorry to leave there and shift to billets further up the road that night. It was the only instance we encountered of our being unwelcome in France, and the billet we occupied that night, although one of the filthiest houses we came across, was marked by a much more cordial spirit.
We were fortunate to get into this farm, as two of the companies had to bivouac, there being only accommodation for the staff and two companies in the area. The matter was decided by lottery, the major being lucky enough to draw a long straw.
theatricals
Amateur Theatricals Back of the Line
It was rather a squeeze getting the company stowed away that night, but we managed somehow, and then turned into the kitchen. Here we were entertained with a graphic description by an old hag of how she had been wounded. It seemed that in some of the preliminary fighting she had run across a field between our troops and the Germans and received three bullets. She was quite cheerful about it and showed us two wounds, and when A—— casually asked about the third she collapsed in a chair and went into spasms of laughter. All the rest of the evening she would point her finger at him and start again to tee-hee. A—— was much annoyed.
We stayed in that vicinity another day, as it was not certain whether we would be thrown into support in the attacks on the Aubers Ridge at Fromelles or the Bois de Biez, but it was eventually decided that the artillery preparation had been inadequate, and the following night we continued our march southward.
Near Locon we passed some of the Indian Cavalry, gigantic-looking men with their turbanned heads. They surveyed us gravely as we passed, one or two flashing brilliant smiles in response to some friendly greeting. Then shortly afterwards we crossed the canal, and without further incident reached the outskirts of Bethune, where we went into bivouac in an open field, being favoured, most fortunately, with fine weather.
Our long trek had ended.
FESTUBERT, 1915
While the 4th Army Corps were trying to gain a footing on the northern end of the Aubers Ridge near Fromelles the 1st Army was making an equally desperate attempt to the south in front of Festubert, a village already in our hands.
But here, as at Neuve Chapelle, we found that the enemy front line, once penetrated, brought us in front of a series of strong points bristling with machine-guns, with dug-outs of almost incredible strength, some of them twenty and thirty feet under ground and safe against anything but the heaviest of field-guns, weapons that we were lamentably short of.
We could batter their front line to bits, for, like our own, it was situated on lower ground, and consisted of breastwork parapets owing to the water-soaked state of the whole plain; but their infantry would retire to these deep dug-outs, only emerging when their sentries warned them of the lifting of our fire to permit the attack.
We could, and did, drive the enemy from his front line, and once there we held on, but that was as far as we could go, for each of these strong points presented a new and entirely different problem to attack, and required a separate bombardment.
Our offensive had started on May 9th and reached its height about the 16th, by which time we had won ground to an average depth of six hundred yards on a front of four miles.
At daybreak on the 16th the 7th Division attacked in the direction of the Rue D'Ouvert and Canteleux, and by 7 o'clock had entrenched themselves in a line running roughly north and south, half-way between their original trenches and La Quinque Rue. The remainder of the day and the following night were spent in consolidating this position and trying to drive the enemy from some short trenches and posts that prevented this division from linking up with the 2nd Division on its left. This was accomplished by noon of the 17th, and by nightfall further ground had been gained to the right. Slight advances were also made on the 18th, but bad weather had greatly hindered the operation of our artillery.
On the 19th, the 2nd and 7th Divisions, having suffered very severely, were withdrawn, the latter being relieved by the Canadians.
Part of the 3rd Canadian Brigade had already become involved and had taken part in an attack on La Quinque Rue, where they succeeded in advancing the line some five hundred yards and linking up this ground with the Wiltshires on their right and the Coldstreams on their left.
Further advance was held up by one of the enemy's strong points known as the "Orchard." This position was naturally strengthened by a deep ditch full of water on three sides, besides hedges and wire entanglements.
During the afternoon of the 19th the Orchard was heavily bombarded by our guns, the shelling continuing till 7.45 p.m., when the Canadian Scottish advanced to the assault, supported by the 13th Royal Highlanders of Canada. Simultaneously the 48th Toronto Highlanders attacked some hundred yards to the right of the Orchard.
These attacks were made in broad daylight, and, despite the torrent of fire with which the enemy opposed them, the objectives were quickly gained, though the casualties were most severe, and by night the new line was consolidated.
Meanwhile the 2nd Brigade, which had been occupying trenches to the right of the Orchard, had attempted to take a position known as the "Bexhill Redoubt," but with less success, as the preliminary bombardment had been quite ineffectual.
Another bombardment of the position was made, and, supported by the Grenade Company of the 1st Brigade, a portion of the enemy's line to the right of the Bexhill Redoubt was gained and barricades erected and this portion held, in spite of a shelling that continued without ceasing the whole of the 22nd. The enemy attempted a counter-attack during the afternoon, but were repelled by our machine-gun and artillery fire. During the night the troops holding this line were relieved by Strathcona's and King Edward's Horse, then, of course, serving as infantry.
On the night of May 23rd the Bexhill Redoubt was taken by the 5th and 7th Battalions of the 2nd Brigade, reinforced by a squadron of the Strathcona's Horse. The captured positions were held all day, despite the enemy's bombardment—the heaviest shelling this brigade had yet experienced—and when they were relieved that night by the Royal Canadian Dragoons and the Eastern Ontario Battalion the brigade had lost 55 officers and 980 men.
The 1st Brigade, during these operations, had been occupying a portion of the line and suffering severely from shell fire. The writer's battalion, the Eastern Ontario, had relieved a battalion of the Black Watch on the night of the 19th near Indian Village. The Highlanders seemed glad to be leaving; one or two expressed their opinion that it was a "hell of a hole," a statement no one contradicted, as the place was vile with mud and stank from unburied corpses.
Between our line and the Western Ontario men, who held the old German trench ahead of us, lay hundreds of bodies that had been there since the last winter, for this narrow strip—not much more than a hundred yards in width—had been "No Man's Land." Attempts made by day and night to bury some of these bodies had to be given up, as the enemy swept the parapets of both trenches, on the least sign of movement, with "whizz-bangs." The Western Ontario Battalion suffered horribly, a constant stream of stretchers coming through our lines, starting with daybreak. These small shells were fired from light field-guns that had been brought up to the trenches, and were in consequence so close that the shell arrived and burst almost simultaneously with the report of the gun. Shells fired at the ordinary ranges announce their coming by a prolonged whirr, allowing a certain amount of time to get under cover before the burst comes.
We held this line till the night of the 24th, when we went forward to relieve the 3rd Brigade and consolidate the ground won by them. Each man carried two days' rations, a shovel, an extra bandolier of cartridges, and twelve sandbags, in addition to his ordinary fighting equipment.
Most of the companies had some kind of trench to start work on, but at our end there was nothing but a line marked out by the engineers. Listening posts and covering parties were sent out, and by morning we were occupying a ditch about three feet deep with a fairly good parapet in front. No fires were permitted, as we were hidden by grass from the enemy and the trench was not yet in shape to stand any bombardment.
The next night we were fortunate in obtaining more sandbags and some timber from a German trench we had passed on the way up. Some mail and parcels of food came up, and we managed to clear out our wounded. Most welcome was ammunition for the flare pistols the officers carried. We had come into the trench with six rounds for each pistol and had been carefully saving them in case the enemy attacked.
Our parapet was now high enough to be easily visible to the enemy, and we received considerable attention from his snipers and artillery the following day. No serious damage was done, however, and we were relieved the following night by a Territorial battalion of Highlanders.
On the 26th General French, having attained for the moment the immediate object in view, ordered a curtailment of the bombardment and a consolidation of all positions won, and the Battle of Festubert came to an end.
By the 31st of the month the whole Canadian Division had been withdrawn and lay in reserve billets around the outskirts of Bethune.