The battalion paraded early on April 7th and once more we were on the march. We were working north and were to go into billets near Cassel. The intended attack on the Rue D'Enfer never took place. It was only an April fool joke.
We did the twenty mile march to Cassel in heavy marching order in good style and got into our new quarters at four in the afternoon. We were to have a week's rest there. Then we were to take over a piece of trench east of Ypres from the French so that the British line would extend between the Belgians and the French. As it stood, we were in the French line. Our billets at Cassel were excellent. We were in the Second Army under Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien.
The battalion paraded on April 10th at 9.15 and marched off to Cassel to be reviewed by General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien. The city of Cassel is situated on one of two sugar loaf hills that rise about a thousand feet above the adjoining plain. There is a wall around the city and it is now strongly garrisoned by French troops. From the summit of the castle you can, on a clear day, see Dixmude, Calais and the sea. You can also view Ypres, Armentieres and many other towns and villages. The city was not taken by the Germans in their rush last fall. The hills around Cassel are rich in historical associations, dating back to the Roman period. There is still shown the remains of one of Cæsar's Camps, and underneath its walls William the Silent of Orange fought one of his most notable battles.
For review our brigade was drawn up in a field below the city walls. This field was in the form of an amphitheatre and the troops looked splendid in the bright spring sunshine.
General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien did not keep us waiting long. We presented arms, and he went over each platoon most carefully. While he was inspecting one battalion, the others rolled in the grass or enjoyed themselves by tossing bits of turf at the tame pheasants that gazed on the soldiers in wonder from the hedges surrounding the enclosure. The General reviewed the 48th and expressed much admiration for the fine physique and soldierly bearing of the men. He said it was a pity that such fine men should be taken from their homes and sent to war, but he was sure they would give a good account of themselves.
When the review was over the General called the officers and non-commissioned officers together and told them that he had never seen a steadier or finer body of troops; that we would soon have some stiff work to do and he knew we would do it, but that he considered the war would be over in a year. He told us that when the Canadians came to France they had been preceded by rumors that questioned their drill and discipline, and that the British doubted their soldierly qualities. They were, however, much surprised to find that the Canadians were most excellent soldiers, that they were as highly trained as any British soldier who had come to France, that their discipline could not be questioned, and that their behavior in the trenches had been splendid. The British generals at first thought the Canadian technical troops, such as the artillery and the engineers, might lack skill. They found that the artillery knew their business as well as the best British artillery, that the engineers were superior in many ways and that now every corps commander wanted the Canadians.
General Smith-Dorrien, at the conclusion of the review, called the men together and addressed them in a similar strain, and then we were ordered to march our battalions off to their billets.
It was a great pleasure to hear a few words of commendation from such a great soldier as General Smith-Dorrien, for the first Canadian Division had been greatly lied about andmaligned in England. Every offence on the calendar had been charged against it, and one would have thought, instead of being composed as it was of young, well educated and well-behaved men, it was the off-scourings of the Canadian prisons and jails.
If we were well drilled we owed it all to ourselves. We went to England filled with high hopes that we were to be associated with British Regulars and to have the best of British instruction. We were disappointed from the first. No British troops were associated with us. We had to work out our own salvation.
But the Canadian officers were a self-reliant lot, so the drill manuals were conned carefully and the men were exercised in a sound system that made the companies great self-confident fighting machines. Every officer was on his metal and worked hard to bring his men to perfection in spite of mud and rain and all sorts of difficulties worse than we ever encountered in Flanders.
Comparisons are odious, but experience has shown that the Canadian officer, on the whole, is equal to any officer in the British army. His Majesty graciously ordered that we were to be classed as "regular Imperial officers." We had to line up to that standard.
The present war is altogether unlike previous experiences in the British army. "Forget South Africa" became a byword. The numbers are so great and the ground so restricted that new conditions have arisen. The Canadians quickly assimilated the new conditions.
On the morning of April 15th the battalion paraded at its billets at Ryveld and marched to Beauvoorde. This hamlet consisted of a couple of stores and a saloon. The men were quartered on farms. On one side of the road is Belgium, the other side is France. I was quartered in the estament or saloon, and the landlady told me that in the room in which I slept a German Prince Este had slept the night before he was killed by the British near Caestre. This was very cheerful news, and I am thankful I did not have his luck.
Trenches at Neuve ChapelleTrenches at Neuve ChapelleToList
Trenches at Neuve ChapelleToList
The night before we marched we chopped down a tree at my headquarters and had a bone-fire and singsong. The Germans east of Ypres must have thought Cassel was on fire. The tree was an old dead one and burnt beautifully, but next day the owner put in a demand for one hundred francs. I agreed to settle for twenty francs cash, or a requisition for one hundred francs. The shrewd old Fleming chose the gold. We had the worth of the money.
Early the next morning the battalion paraded again and marched to Abeele, where thirty-eight motor busses that had been brought over from England carried the men with their kits to the eastern outlet of Poperinghe, where we alighted and marched down the famous road to Ypres along which thousands of Canadians marched never to return.
We crossed a stone bridge over the Yperlee Canal, passed by a large basin for ships with docks and warehouses, and found our billets in the north section of the city. My billet was at an old gas works by the railway and the house, which was a modern brick, had previously been shelled, as a large hole through the wall and floor of the parlor showed. The chimney of the old gas plant made an excellent mark. The man of the house, his wife and nine children, were living in the house. I took the front dining room as an office, put the telephones up in the back parlor and took down the half inch steel plates that were over the windows to keep out the shrapnel and let in the light of day.
It is wonderful what fatalists we become in the trenches. This war is not like any other modern war. In previous wars if a man was under fire once a month he was doing well. Here on the western front of Flanders in the British section if he gets out of rifle and shell fire one day in a month he is doing well.
The effect upon the men is very evident. They sobered up as it were. They were very happy and cheerful, but every man that goes in the trenches soon makes his peace, with past, present and future. The Protestants attend service every timethey get a chance. There was a great service in Estaires before we left for Cassel and every man attended. The Roman Catholics attend Mass regularly and there is very little attention paid to politics. At home in Canada they were warring in Parliament over giving the soldiers the vote. In the trenches no one cared. What did it matter to a man who was appointed pound-keeper or member of Parliament, at home in Canada, if to-morrow a shell should take his own head off. The petty affairs and jealousies that affect politicians at home and give them spasms and sleepless nights do not interest the man who sleeps on his arms in a dugout with the thunder of cannon shaking down the clay on his face. Religious controversies are also forgotten. The men of this war are not inspired with religious enthusiasm like the men of Cromwell's time or the Japanese and Russians. There is religion of a deeper kind. The Bible is constantly in evidence. The Protestant and the Roman Catholic sleep side by side in the consecrated ground of Flanders. Both deserve the brightest and best Heaven there is, for they were all heroes and gave their lives for the cause of justice and humanity. In the church yard at Estaires, close by the wonderful church steeple which no German shell had so far been able to find, they buried the dead heroes of Neuve Chapelle in long trenches, three and four deep, with the officers who fell at the head of the mounds. In the corner of every farmyard and orchard you will find crosses marking graves, black for the Germans, and white for our soldiers.
In the presence of constant death, of wounds and anguish, it is wonderful the spirit that pervaded our men. They were reconciled with death and, often when I took a wounded Canadian by the hand and expressed regret that he was hurt and suffering the answer always was, "Its all right, Colonel, that's what I came here for." We all realized what we were fighting for, and the destruction wrought upon the poor Belgians has been so great that we all felt if we had a hundred lives we would cheerfully give them to rescue stricken Belgium and aid brave unconquerable France.
The Canadians that survive this war and return home will have a higher viewpoint, and there will be very few reckless drunken men among them. The "rough-neck" swearing soldier has found no place in this war.
With our brigade was Canon Scott of Quebec, an Anglican clergyman with a stout heart and a turn for poetry. He never tired of going about the billets among the men. There was no braver man in the division and his influence was splendid. Everybody loved him, and he was an ornament to the church to which he belonged. He reminded us often of the old fighting Crusaders.
On the evening of our arrival at Ypres I visited the Cloth Square a short distance away, and reviewed the ruins of the fine Gothic building known as Cloth Hall. This building was one of the glories of Flanders. In every niche over its hundreds of pointed windows there was a full-sized statue of some noted Count of Flanders and his wife. But the place was one great ruin, the inside having been blown out, and now it is turned into an horse stable. The town itself was resuming some of its wonted activity and workmen were busy mending the scars of war in the tiles and brick of the houses of the city.
Ypres was, in days gone by, the capital of Old Flanders. Within its walls there was an Irish convent, and in this convent was shown one of the few colors ever taken from a British regiment. Clare's Irish Regiment in the service of France, it is said, took this flag at the Battle of Fontenoy.
We were now among the Flemings proper, and they are a fine race of tall people, some with light brown eyes and flaxen hair, a rather odd combination. They are very clean and very friendly, worthy descendants of the warlike Belgae. They worship King Albert, who they say is the greatest warrior and king that Belgium has ever seen. The Belgians of to-day will not rank him second to even Claudius Civilis, the companion of the Roman Emperor Vespasian, nor to any of those heroes of Tacitus, who took up arms for Belgian liberty againstthe Romans, nor yet to Charlemagne, the great conqueror of Middle Europe.
We were to garrison Ypres for four days, and then we were to take over the piece of trench occupied by another battalion in our brigade, the Canadian Scottish. Our position in the line was the extreme point of the great salient of Ypres that has been held so valiantly for months by the British, French and Belgians.
On April 17th we received orders not to gather in groups on the street if hostile aircraft were seen, and also that officers were to keep close to their billets. Three of my companies were moved out to farms in the outskirts. They had been billetted in a big factory, and if a shell had come in many would have been killed. I went out to see Brigadier-General Turner at noon. His headquarters were located at a large farm northwest of St. Julien. I found General Alderson and several of his staff there, and the matter of the defence of the Canadian line was discussed. From this point with my field glasses I could get a good view of the greater part of the salient at Ypres.
Let me here explain the line of the salient of Ypres held by us. South of Ypres, about four miles away, at St. Eloi, the opposing trenches ran straight south of Armentieres, a city named after Thomas de Armentieres, envoy of Flanders to Philip of Spain of Armada fame. From St. Eloi the German line was bent northeast running to what is called Hill 60, and from there northeast past Chateau Hooge to the village of Zonnebeke. From there the line ran almost north across Gravenstafel ridge to where Stroombeek Creek crossed the road from St. Julien to Poelcappelle, thence the line ran northwest past Langemarck to Bixschoote, on the Yperlee Canal which runs northwesterly. The British held the southern face of the salient as far east as Zonnebeke. The Canadian Division replaced a French division on the extreme toe along Stroombeek brook almost to Langemarck. From there on to Bixschoote two French divisions were garrisoning the northern face until they came in touch with the Belgians.
Roughly speaking the whole British front from north tosouth on the whole Flemish frontier is only about forty miles. All the Ypres salient is historic ground and every foot is rich in sentiment. Every farmhouse, every field bore the scars of war,—the houses and barns with their broken tiles, the fields with almost every hundred feet, a "crump" hole where a shell had fallen and exploded! Some of these holes were ten feet deep and thirty feet across. Life was cheap in this great salient and the Canadians were given "the post of danger, the post of honour."
There was no strategical reason why this salient should be held so far east of Ypres. If we kept our artillery west of the canal where they could not be enfiladed, the shells would not reach where the Canadian battalions were holding the trenches six miles away. If the guns were brought into the salient they could be bombarded by German artillery from each flank as well as the front. If the infantry line was broken at any point the whole would be compromised. There was the danger also of the canal in the rear with only a few pontoon bridges. The canal would be filled with our guns and dead. Very few of our men could escape. There were no troops but ours and the French on the left between us and Calais. Two weeks after the Battle of St. Julien the salient was flattened to conform with sound strategy.
The weather had been very fine and it was a bright clear day with clouds scudding across the sky, such as we see in Flemish pictures. Everywhere tall lines of elms and stubs of pollard willows filled the landscape. The cattle were grazing in the field and everything looked very peaceful. The larks were soaring and singing on high. Every now and then a muffled roar alone told us that there was war. Somewhere along the horizon to the south I could see the famous Hill 60, and east of it the Zillebeke ridge where, on October 31st, Moussey's Corps, with a division of the French Ninth Corps, made a great stand against the Germans and foiled their attack by calling in the cooks and transport men and dismounting their cavalry. There again in the evening of November 6thour Household Brigade under Kavanagh saved the situation that cost the British Blues and Second Life Guards their commanders. Along the same ridge towards Gheluvelt Cawford's Brigade came out of action reduced to its brigadier, five officers and seven hundred men.
A little to the north, on the afternoon of October 31st, the Worcesters made a famous stand, and on November 10th the Prussian Guard was wiped out by the Black Watch on the same spot. They tell how General French told the Black Watch that they had many famous honors on their colors that told of many glorious days, but that the greatest day in the history of the Black Watch was that on which they met the Jäger Regiment of the Prussian Guard and the Jägers ceased to exist as a unit.
Every little farm was dotted with graveyards where the British and French had buried their dead. On the way back to Ypres, Major Marshall and I took a short cut across the fields and ran into a battery of 4.7 British guns, Territorials. When they saw us coming they loosened up for our special benefit, and the first thing we knew the answer came back in the form of a heavy German shell that came within a few hundred yards of the British batteries.
That evening the British blew up Hill 60. Captain Frank Perry had been told off to assist the British engineering officers in this work. The explosion was followed by a most terrific cannonade and rifle fire which continued all night. This was a hot corner. During the night my slumbers were disturbed with the whistling of German high explosive shells in our vicinity.
On Sunday, April 18th, Canon Scott preached a sermon to the men. During the day several shells burst in the town and some of them not far from our billets. The inhabitants had begun to flee.
About eleven o'clock at night Canon Scott wandered into my billets. He had been holding service with the men and had lost his way. I was afraid he would get killed or drowned.He was so zealous, and such a charming character, he made an ideal chaplain. No hour was too late, no road too long for him. His son was wounded with another corps and would lose his eye.
Early in the morning Sergeant Miller of the headquarters staff called me to witness a duel between a German and a British aviator. It was a beautiful bright morning, with not a breath of air stirring and not a cloud in the sky. Away to the north the two aviators were at it, circling about each other like great hawks. The British aviator was the smarter of the two, and he finally got the Hun, whose machine started for the earth nose down at a terrific speed. Both of the German air men were killed we learned later. It was certainly a thrilling sight.
The next day, the 19th, more shells were thrown into the town. One shell fell into the billet where Lieutenant Frank Gibson was quartered. It killed an old man, his wife and daughter, a beautiful girl of seventeen. The back of her head was blown off. Lieutenant Gibson got a splinter of shell in the calf of the leg and had to be sent to the hospital to have it cut out. The Germans continued shelling the town all day. When they get beaten they always start shelling the nearby towns and work their spite off on the inhabitants. The blowing up of Hill 60 seemed to have stirred them to an extraordinary degree. Towards dusk I went down the Menin road to watch the bombardment. Some of our batteries, hidden in the hedges away on my right, were sending shrapnel across the German lines beyond Hill 60. I could watch the flight of the projectile and its bursting in a sheet of flame over the enemy's line. The opposing guns were hard at it, while away in the distance the rapid rattle of rifle fire told of the tragedies that were being enacted near the crater that Captain Perry had blown in Hill 60. Away to the south a momentary flash like sheet lightning on an autumn evening would light the horizon with a baleful gleam, and after a long interval the muffled roar of a "Grandma" would mingle with the twangof the bursting shrapnel. Truly as one British Tommy, who watched the battle, said, "Hell was let loose that night." As I returned to my billets along the ancient moat that at one time defended the city, shells passed over my head and a dozen or so aimed no doubt at the tall chimney of the ancient magazine de gaz fell within a few yards of my quarters.
On the evening of April 20th we were to take up the line of trenches held by the Sixteenth. The Germans still continued to shell Ypres, (which is pronounced Ep-r-r, E as in fee, two syllable r-r, the R sounded the Scotch way with a burr aspirate).
Shortly after luncheon Captain Warren and Lieutenant Macdonald came to the orderly room to ask some questions about the order in which we were to march into the trenches. An officer from each company had gone into these trenches the night before and looked them carefully over. The left section was given to Captain Osborne, the right to Captain McGregor and the centre to Captain MacLaren. The position consisted of seventeen half moon redoubts and they were not at all strong. Captain Alexander's company was to be in reserve with headquarters at St. Julien. As the officers had received orders not to go away from their billeting area, and had to receive permission to do so, both Warren and Macdonald asked me if they could go up to the Cloth Square to buy some comforts to take down into the trenches for the men. I gave my consent, but warned them to be careful and take cover from any shells that came along. About ten minutes later Lieutenant Macdonald arrived back breathless. He asked quite coolly, "Where is Major MacKenzie? Trum's hit with a piece of shell."
I immediately called the major, who was in the next room, and we learned that "Trum," as Captain Warren was affectionately called, had been badly wounded. He and Macdonald were standing in a grocery store at the north side of the square when a "Jack Johnson," as the huge seventeen inch shells fired by the Germans from the Austrian howitzers they havebrought up to shell this town are called, fell into a building in the south side just opposite. The shell wrecked the building into which it fell, killing an officer and seventeen men. A piece about an inch square flew fully two hundred yards across the square, passed through a plate glass window, missed Macdonald by an inch, and struck Warren below the right collar bone piercing his lung. "They have got me in the back, Fred," were the last words he said. He was carried on a stretcher to the hospital a few hundred yards away, and the surgeon made an examination of his injury, cutting hisclothing away. In a moment we saw there was no hope for him. It was only a matter of a few minutes. Canon Scott heard that he had been injured and hurried to the hospital. He had only time to repeat the prayer for the dying as poor Warren passed away in Major MacKenzie's arms. His death was a great loss to the regiment.
Map of the BATTLE OF ST JULIAN April 22nd May 4th 1915. Position April 22.The Original Salient at YpresToList
The Original Salient at YpresToList
I left the arrangements for the funeral with our Quartermaster, Captain Duguid. He was to be buried the next night at the Place D'Amour.
Truly, this was a war of attrition. One by one we were losing the gallant young officers that came over with us to Flanders. Darling was wounded, Sinclair wounded, Warren killed. Sinclair had had a dixie of boiling water spilled on his leg while in the trenches and had received a very severe burn.
In the evening Captain Perry arrived from blowing up Hill 60. He had escaped as usual without a scratch. Perry bore a charmed life. I suppose it was because he lived so much in the north country in Canada among the miners who always carry a stick of dynamite in their boot legs. At the Rue Pettion billet he escaped the "coal box" that entered the next room in which Captain McGregor slept. The shell made pulp out of McGregor's clothes and belongings, but Perry was not scratched, although not ten feet away from where the shell burst. At Hill 60 he assisted the British engineer to run several mines under the German trenches. He was the last man out of the tunnels when they were loaded with several car loads of dynamite, and his was the grimy hand that touched the button that sent half the Hill and about eight hundred Germans into the air. He had a narrow escape from being buried alive.
Captain Perry had a terrible experience after the mine was blown up. As soon as the mine blew up the Germans turned all their artillery on the crater to prevent the British from taking possession till they could bring up reserves. The place became a living hell. Perry, after examining the crater witha lantern, found a German counter mine with a candle still burning in it. It had been vacated. He started to make his way out through a communication trench to make his report when he ran into a British brigade coming in and had to lie down in the trench and let the brigade pass over him. He was mud and sand from head to foot.
On the afternoon of the 19th I was very busy closing out my correspondence. I always made it a point while I was out of the trenches to answer all the letters I had received, and that usually occupied three or four hours every day while we were out of the trench line.
Previous to this our battalion has alternated with the Royal Montreal Regiment in our tour of trench duty. The rule used to be for each battalion to be three days in the trenches, and then three days out. In these trenches we were changed around. The 16th Canadian Scottish were to alternate with the 48th Highlanders. The 16th reported to us that the trenches were very bad, and we were to go into them the next night. This evening Majors Marshall and MacKenzie were out visiting company billets, and my Adjutant, Capt. Dansereau and I went into a small Flemish restaurant to have our dinner. While we were seated at the table an officer of the French Flying Corps and several of his men came in for something to eat, and we engaged in conversation. The French Officer, whose name is well known, and who was afterwards killed, was a small perky chap with black hair and eyes. His cheeks were hollow, as like most of the top-notch aviators he had had his teeth pulled out.
Many of the aviators have all their teeth drawn because when at very high altitudes it is very cold, and the nerves of the teeth become affected and give them most intense pain.
These officers told us that the French Flying Corps was going to leave that night for a district further south where there was going to be some "nibbling" at the German front. He told us further that the Germans were moving a great number of guns into the Ypres section, and that he had anidea that as soon as the Canadians and British took over the salient we would be "jolly well shelled," if not attacked in force. This was very cheerful news, and sure enough the next day they began shelling the city with big Austrian siege mortars, a shell from one of which killed Captain Warren.
In the evening of the 20th I rode out to the company billets to see that everything was in readiness for the battalion to take over the right section of our line from the 16th. The companies were to march into three sections independently, shortly after dark, and the idea was to have the relief over as quickly as possible. I found the men and officers in excellent spirits. Captain McGregor was to take the right section of our line, Captain Alexander the left and Captain McLaren the centre. They started off a little too early in the evening, and I had to send couriers to halt them and wait for the darkness. It was a beautiful spring evening, bright and warm. The larks were still soaring and singing in the sky, and the sun in the west was going down in a sea of gold and amethyst. South of us at about Hill 60 the guns were growling, the only sound at the moment to remind us of the war. But there was something else of ominous portent noticable. Simultaneously, northwest, east and southeast of our line three huge German captive balloons reared their heads for all the world like golden hooded cobras. Away, twenty miles to the south, in the sky could be seen the snaky outline of a zeppelin. The Germans were taking observations. When I reached the headquarters' line of trenches in front of our brigade headquarters, a few hundred yards west of St. Julien, I sent the horses back with Smith, my groom, and stood by the roadside to watch the companies go by. First came Major Osborne, who was to take the left, with his tam-o-shanter bonnet cocked on the side of his head, as jaunty a Highland officer as ever trod the heath in Flanders. His company swung after him, marching like one man. The trenches had certainly not taken anything out of them, for if anything they looked steadier and sturdier than they did the day they left their billets in Hazebrouck to take their first march in France.
Some distance behind came Captain McGregor, his two hundred and forty men tall as pine trees, with Lieutenant Langmuir and Lieutenant Taylor at the head of their platoons, both well over six feet. Next came Captain McLaren, always staid and correct, his company well pulled together, going so fast that a word of caution had to be given to them. Last of all came Captain Alexander, whose turn it was to be in reserve. His company was to occupy and act as part of the garrison at St. Julien, there to cover themselves with glory.
When I reached the village I found that Major Leckie was occupying the reserve headquarters of the 16th, and across the road was Colonel Meighen of the 14th or Montreal Regiment. The south section of the village was ours and the north was for the reserve corps of the battalion holding the left section of the line. The house in which we were quartered had at one time been a small restaurant, but the village had several times been shot up. The walls almost to the ceiling were plastered with blood. There was hardly a house in the village without several shell holes in the roof. Terrible tragedies had been enacted here. The gardens had a full crop of black and white crosses.
Colonel Meighen had a very swell house, the windows looking south towards Hooge and Hill 60. He came over and welcomed me to St. Julien and showed me his trench diary and plans of the trenches. Colonel Meighen was a very thorough and painstaking officer, very much loved by his men. Several companies of his battalion were French Canadians and they fairly worshipped him. He was a model trench commandant, never tired of strengthening the works, and always ready himself to do anything that he asked of his officers or men. He had made an excellent battalion out of his corps, and as we had alternated with them in the trenches until this turn, we knew their worth. His second in command, Colonel Burland, was also a keen and efficient officer. The commandant of the 14th was not a "fusser." He was always cool and collected and his example permeated his whole staffand officers. Captain Holt, his adjutant, was one of the hardest working officers in the division, cheerful, obedient and alert. He was a model staff officer.
Major Leckie turned over the trench diary to my adjutant. He reported that the 16th were hard at work fixing up the trenches which were in a very poor condition. His brother, Colonel Leckie, was down at commandant headquarters in the supporting trenches. Major Marshall went down to take over from Colonel Leckie, and I stayed at report headquarters to report back as quickly as possible that the trenches had been taken over. The 16th Battalion did not take very long to get out, and one by one our Captains reported their companies in place.
The battalions in the trenches reported that the front was quiet, and it was added that there had not been a casualty in our section among the French troops for a month.
My sleeping bag was placed in a corner of the only room with a sound roof in the house, and I slept soundly in spite of the blood-bespattered wall which told of a desperate struggle in this room during the great battles of the previous November.
In spite of the fact that the French had not had a casualty for a month, the map told me we were in the hottest corner in the whole of Flanders. I did not feel at all nervous, as a matter of fact after a person has been under shell and rifle fire for a few days he ceases to be nervous. Nerves are for those who stay at home. At first the heart action quickens a little with the sound of the explosions and the crack of the Mauser bullets, but after a while the nerves fail to respond and the action of the heart becomes slow and the beats below normal. The explosion of a "Jack Johnson" in the next room will not give you a tremor. Why should it? Jock will say, "If you are going to be kilt, you will be kilt ony-way." That is the everyday religion of the trenches. "When your time comes you will get yours, and all the machine guns and shells in Germany can have no potency if your time has not come."
The Famous Road To Ypres.The Famous Road To Ypres.ToList
The Famous Road To Ypres.ToList
War tends to make us all fatalists, and the officers have to be continually on the alert to keep the men from becoming careless.
In the morning I tried to arrange to go down to Ypres to the funeral of Captain Warren. Major Osborne wanted to go also and take a firing party with him, but much as he would have liked to acquiesce, General Turner had to refuse, for we were in a dangerous corner and no one could be spared. Lieutenant Drummond, his brother-in-law, was permitted to attend. Captain Duguid, the quartermaster, with the assistance of the engineers, had a metallic coffin made for him and they buried him in the Canadian burial plot.
That morning I learned of the death of Captain Darling in London. We had expected that Captain Darling would be convalescent shortly after he went to England, but about a week before news had come that gangrene, the terrible disease that took so many of our wounded, had infected his shoulder, and a number of serious operations had to be performed. Still we had hoped that his splendid physique would pull him through. But it was not to be, and the two comrades that had been the pride of the regiment died within a few hours of each other.
The whole Empire did not possess two kinder or braver men than Captains Darling and Warren. It is only when men go down into the valley of the shadow of death together that they learn to appreciate each other. In the trenches soldiers are true comrades, backbiting, lying and slandering is left to the slackers and "tin soldiers" who stay at home. Both these young men were in the flower of their youth, both left young wives, both were men of means, brought up amidst wealth and refinement. They gave up a good deal to go to the war, and their example and their lives should fix a tradition not only for their fellow officers of "The Red Watch" but also for the whole Canadian Army. They did not hesitate to "take their place in the ranks," and they died like the heroes of Marathon and Salamis.
Early in the morning a German aeroplane, an albatress, came over St. Julien. The German aeroplanes have a large, black maltese or iron cross on each wing. The allies have a red, white and blue rosette. Shortly afterwards the German artillery started to shell the southern section of St. Julien. They threw a few shells at the remains of the church, then they started after a house and large barn south of us, about half way to the village of Fortuin. The barn was a large structure covered with a couple of feet of rye straw thatch beautifully put on. In a moment there was smoke and we saw some Canadian artillerymen running towards the barn which was apparently full of horses. One after another the beautiful artillery teams were chased out of the burning structure which the Germans continued to shell. The horses were turned loose in the field and proceeded to enjoy themselves like colts, and although the Germans fired shrapnel at them they did not hit one. In a moment the "red cock," as the Germans say, "was crowing on the roof." The flames rose to a great height and in a few minutes there was nothing but the charred rafters left.
The trenches reported everything quiet for the rest of the day.
That afternoon along with one of my signallers, Sergeant Calder, I made my way to commandant headquarters at the northern extremity of Gravenstafel ridge, northeast of St. Julien. I met Colonel Meighen, who showed me a line of trenches east of the church which his battalion was putting in order. When I got down to commandant headquarters General Turner came along with his Brigade-Major, Colonel Hughes. They were looking over the position with a view to having some dugouts and rifle pits established about five hundred yards south of my headquarters to support our right in case of trouble, the intention being to put a company in reserve there. I found commandant headquarters located in a dugout in the rear of a ruined windmill. The charred timbers of the mill lay scattered about, and all that remainedof the dwelling house was a heap of bricks and some tiles still sticking to the roof. A line of short irregular trenches ran across the front of the slope. Behind headquarters the hill sloped back to Haenebeek brook, northwest and southeast. Five hundred yards behind the Gravenstafel ridge ran the road from Zonnebeke to Langemarck. On this road immediately in our rear there was a ruined blacksmith shop and several old farm engines. Some of the implements bore the name of Massey-Harris, which brought back visions of Canada, and was another evidence of our coming world-wide trade, the possibilities of which first struck me when I saw the name of another Canadian manufacturer, Gurney & Co., on a heater alongside the tomb of William Longsword in Salisbury Cathedral.
A few yards south of the blacksmith shop a dressing station had been fitted up in the ruins of another farm house at a cross-road which subsequently came to be known as "enfiladed cross-road." In front of the blacksmith shop a clear spring of water ran out of a pipe and the water was cool and good. I quenched my thirst from the steel cup taken from a French Hussar's helmet. The man who wore the helmet was no doubt sleeping peacefully beneath one of the crosses that were strewn thickly over the little cemetery of St. Julien. These little graveyards were to be found in all the fields and gardens. It was wonderful how the French soldiers cared for them. Wherever a soldier of France lay there you would find a cross, with his name and the legend that he fell on the field of honor. The graves were usually decorated with tile and flowers, some real, some artificial. France thus silently worships the memory of her gallant dead.
"Be careful there," said Capt. McGregor. "The French were short of sandbags here and they have built several dead Germans into the parapets." I was examining our new trenches in the twilight and my nose had been assailed by that peculiar odor which emanates from the dead.
"Get plenty of quicklime down here to-morrow," I suggested. "Build some traverses where they are laid."
"You're pretty heavy, don't step too hard. Dead Germans there." Lieutenant Langmuir was then piloting me along his section.
"Out in front, there on the left, there is a dead French officer caught in the German wire. He has been hanging there since last November. The Germans have left him there. There is nothing now but a blue coat and red trousers."
This certainly was the worst corner in the way of trenches I had seen since we came to Flanders. Behind the ditch rows of crosses, black and white, stood up a few feet away, ghastly reminders in the half darkness of the toll that had been paid to take and hold the trenches. The defenders here were buried where thy fell.
Earlier in the day I went down to the front line and had leisure to examine the commandant's headquarters, which had been held by our gallant French Allies since November, 1914. It was a dugout in the rear of a ruined windmill, and contained several pigmy rooms. There was a room for the signallers, another for the adjutant and one for the commandant. The French officers had left behind them excellent maps of the German position showing their trenches, also panoramic sketches showing the roads, villages and housesopposite, with compass points. These sketches were the work of their gunners. No wonder the 75's were so deadly. Their efficacy is in their recoil and the "graze" fuze they use. Their high explosive shells strike the ground, bound in the air and burst about thirty feet forward from where they strike. In this way they form a curtain of fire filled with splinters of steel, over the German trenches.
I turned a copy of the panoramic sketch over to Major MacDougall of the Toronto Battery, when he went into the loft of a ruined house some distance away to check up his guns as they fired on the Poelcapelle road in front of us.
I slipped quietly into a fire trench on the forward slope of the ridge to observe the guns at work also. I had sent word down to Major Osborne in the forward trenches to clear the men out of the redoubts on either side of the road so that if a shell fell short it would not hurt anyone. The Canadian "observing officers" were always very careful in "registering," as they called it. They began by sending their shots well over the German parapets, and gradually coming closer, instead of firing a shell short, another long and dividing.
While we were observing the Germans replied to our guns, and very nearly got Major MacDougall. Poor chap, he was subsequently assassinated by a German spy or sniper behind in billets. His clothing was stolen and worn by the assassin who was caught and suffered the death penalty.
Major Marshall came along to see what was going on and stood for a minute at the head of my trench. The Germans spotted his Glengarry and began shelling my trench with "Jack Johnsons," and Major Marshall had to clear out. I stayed until they got tired of shelling and then had a good look at their lines through my field glasses. The ground sloped gently down from where I stood in the sap-head for about three hundred yards to our forward line of redoubts. Away to the northwest the double line of parapets disappeared in the trees and hedges around Langemarck. Just short of the village the Third Brigade (ours) took up thedefence. The trenches here for about five hundred yards were held by the Royal Highlanders of Montreal. Major Osborne held several half moons on the far side of the Poelcapelle Road. Then our battalion lines continued southerly, running for about eight hundred yards till there came a gap which occurred between us and the Winnipeg Rifles. Immediately behind our line ran Strombeek River, (we would call it a creek). It marked the bottom of the slope and crossed the line of trenches held by the "Little Black Devils," as the men of the Winnipeg Battalion were called.