CANADA IN FLANDERS
BY LORD BEAVERBROOK
THE OFFICIAL STORY OF THE
CANADIAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE
VOLUME II
CANADA IN
FLANDERS
By Lord Beaverbrook
VOLUME II
WITH MAPS AND APPENDIX
HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON TORONTO NEW YORK MCMXVII
PREFACE
The narrative of the Second Battle of Ypres was written on the spot and immediately after the action. It was not until long afterwards that it was possible to collect and collate the whole of the battalion diaries. The story, therefore, could only be compiled from the personal reports of the officers commanding units, and in some cases these were not available, and certain regiments did not therefore receive the prominence which was their due. These regiments will, I am sure, readily understand that the omission was not intentional, but due to the impossibility of making sure of all the details of a great and confused action until months after the event. Although the material has become available, I have decided not to attempt to rewrite the story. It is, in its main features, absolutely accurate, and has the advantage which must belong to any narrative written within sound of the guns, and while the impressions of the battlefield are still vivid to the mind. I am, in fact, afraid that any attempt on my part to reconstruct the narrative would spoil whatever merit it may possess.
In the first place, it is necessary, however, to make good some mistakes in the first volume which have been pointed out by persons who were engaged in various actions.
The majority of errors occur in the matter of names, which, in about a dozen cases, have been given inexactly. In some cases it has been possible to make the requisite corrections of initials, rank, or spelling in succeeding editions. I particularly regret the confusion between the two brothers, Sergt. L. G. Newell and Sergt. F. C. C. Newell, both of whom took part in the charge at Langemarke. The first-named, the older brother, died of his wounds after that attack, while the second and younger recovered, returned to the trenches, and won the D.C.M. at Givenchy. With reference to the names of regiments concerned in the Second Battle of Ypres, the King's Own Royal Leinsters have been named by a misprint instead of the King's Own Royal Lancashires, as part of Colonel Geddes' command, on page 56. King Edward's Horse should have the prefix 2nd throughout. I offer my very sincere apologies to both regiments.
As to the position of various units, it is stated on page 74 of Vol. I. that Lieut.-Col. Watson, of the 2nd, was employed with his regiment on a dangerous digging operation to connect a weak point in the line on the night of April 28th, 1915. It should have been added that the entire 1st Brigade took part in this, the 2nd Battalion being on the left, the 3rd in the centre, and the 1st on the right, the 4th Battalion digging in the meanwhile a support trench close in rear. The omission of the description of the part played by the 5th Battalion (Colonel Tuxford) in the Second Battle of Ypres was a serious one, but this is dealt with in the course of the next few pages.
The only serious accusation of inaccuracy in the tactical survey of any situation is preferred by those who maintain that the sketch of the action at Festubert is wrong or misleading. I have communicated with Colonel J. E. Leckie, of the 16th Battalion, who, as a major, took a prominent part in the assault and succeeded to the command of the regiment, when his brother, Brigadier-General R. G. E. Leckie, was promoted to a brigade. He assures me that the sketch of the two positions occupied by the Canadians in their successive attacks is quite accurate, and, in fact, it is so. None the less, it is easy to see how the idea that there was an error originated. In an attempt to secure largeness of scale in the map, the area is unduly limited in its scope. The position from which the Canadians attacked is not given, and the extent to which the Germans were forced back is only just indicated. In consequence, the words "First Canadian Position" might be held to imply that this was the line from which they sallied forth instead of the first position they occupied before they advanced to the final attack on the orchard. It is a misfortune if the plan underestimates the ground won by the 14th and 15th. No further serious errors have been suggested so far as Vol. I. is concerned.
Mistakes will no doubt be discovered in the second volume. They will be found, however, to apply to the misspelling of the names of individuals and to an occasional mistake or doubt as to the precise position of a particular unit on a certain date, and not, I hope, to any main question of the tactics or strategy of battle.
The contemporary historian cannot hope to avoid these errors. He has at his disposal neither the leisure nor the information of the writer of after years. He must take his information as it comes to him and trust that rough justice is done, believing that his honest misjudgments will be cleared up when the full history comes to be written. In the meantime, he may hope to supply material of value for subsequent examination and use. But for this final judgment we may have to wait some years. In the confusion and isolation of a modern battle men are acutely aware of their own experiences, and can have little knowledge of what is passing to the right or left, while the staff behind have the same difficulty in discovering what is happening on their front. In these circumstances, the eye-witnesses themselves often disagree. Even the historians of the past have not infrequently made mistakes and waged with the pen as fierce battles over stricken fields as were ever fought by the opposing hosts with the sword.
There is, of course, one easy way out of these troubles; it is to have no immediate record, but to await the official publications of after time. The Dominion Government has, and I think rightly, declared against this policy. It has been from the start in favour of publicity so long as there was no danger to national interests. It has not concurred in the suppression of the deeds of regiments or individuals, believing that in a democratic country the greatest stimulus to exertion is the knowledge that one is known and approved by one's fellow-citizens. Its eye-witness accounts, therefore, set in many respects the tone for similar publications, and it has adopted the same liberal view in authorising a contemporary story. In another respect, the Dominion Government has been wise. Enormous sums were spent after the American Civil War in collecting the official records. The units had been disbanded and the witnesses scattered to civilian pursuits all over the country, and the inquiry was in consequence laborious and expensive.
The Dominion Government, warned by this example, have taken prompt measures to secure from day to day and week to week full reports of the movements and actions of all units, at a cost which is trifling compared with what it would cost in after years; in this way the framework has been erected for an official narrative. This is a prudent measure which will be endorsed by Canadian students of history, since there is a growing tendency to demand a full and intelligent documentary record of our progress. All the officers of the Canadian Corps have in one respect or another contributed to the collection of these facts, and have done so often in the face of grave danger and complete exhaustion, when they might well have been excused from troubling about such trivialities as to what posterity would think about them. The members of the Record Officer's Staff have been unwearied in collecting all the available material, and this common sense of duty has laid the foundation of our records on a substantial basis of fact.
For all mistakes which occur, and more particularly for the omissions, I, as Record Officer, take full responsibility, for the Record Officer is no more exempt than others from the fog of battle. But I would point out that my task would be rendered less difficult, and the chances of error or injustice diminished, if the commanders of units would supply exhaustive diaries and reports on all occasions of importance. I have particularly in my mind's eye the case of Brigadier-General (then Lieut.-Col.) Tuxford, of the 5th Battalion, who with his regiment conducted a most heroic defence of the extreme right of the position during the Second Battle of Ypres. His regiment was, in fact, the pivot of the retirement, and, had it given way, very few of the 1st Division would have come back to tell the tale. The General is well known as a man of action and a brilliant soldier, and is perhaps, therefore, though well qualified to write, little disposed to do so, and so it was long after the stress and confusion of the great conflict that I became fully aware of the part that he and his regiment had taken. Yet his defence of the Gravenstafel Ridge was a great feat of arms, well worthy of the 7th Division, the Household Cavalry, and the Guards Brigade, who had fought up and down that bloodstained soil against overwhelming odds in the autumn of 1914.
I hope to make all mistakes good in some final edition of "Canada in Flanders"; if not, posterity will vindicate any who have been wronged by accident. But in return for such confessions as I have made, I would give one word of warning to the critics. The original twelve battalions have become an army corps, and if one division or another happens to find itself involved in a great battle, it is not unnatural that the attention of the public should be concentrated on its achievements, failures, or losses, even though the others are doing their work equally well. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the turn of each division comes, and the 1st is known by Ypres, the 2nd by St. Eloi, and the 3rd by Sanctuary Wood. There is enough glory and enough suffering to go round.
My thanks are due to those who have helped in the production of this volume.
To Chapters II. and III., which deal with the period from the embarkation of the 2nd Division at Folkestone in September to the beginning of March, 1916, Capt. Theodore Roberts has contributed much valuable information and material. So excellent was it, that I have availed myself of his permission to insert many passages in the very words that he employed, and the Canadian public will be a gainer thereby. His services were very valuable in the post he occupied at the Front. The April and June operations involved the reading and careful consideration of a great mass of documents. To reduce them to a satisfactory form entailed an extraordinary effort of intense concentration; for this work I am indebted to Capt. Maurice Woods and to Capt. Talbot Papineau. Capt. Woods in particular has largely contributed to the fabric of the chapters which deal with this part of the story. In placing these services on record, I must make mention of Lieut.-Col. Sims, who performed at the Front the difficult and onerous task of preparing the weekly communiqué to the Canadian Press and of organising the collection of the various diaries and other data with great success, and of Lieut. Bradley, who was indefatigable in collecting material.
The kindness of the public in England, Canada, and the United States called for fourteen editions of the first volume of this work within a very few months.
I am encouraged to hope that the attempts to continue the narrative which I began nearly two years ago may not be unwelcome.
The present volume contains no central drama quite comparable to that presented by the Second Battle of Ypres, but I believe it will be found to present an accurate account of much suffering and much glory.
BEAVERBROOK.
CHERKLEY, LEATHERHEAD,
Jan. 27th, 1917.
CONTENTS
THE SECOND DIVISION
Canadians in the clash of World Powers—Effect of losses on Canadian people—Tribute of the British—The Service in St. Paul's—"Pure gold"—Eighteen hundred fresh troops cross the Channel—Prompt action of the Minister of Militia—Call for men from the third contingent to refill the ranks—Outstanding feature of the Second Battle of Ypres—Colonel Henderson on volunteer armies—Adaptability of the Canadians—Gallantry and intelligence v. lengthy training—The real strength underlying great national movements—The superiority of volunteer armies—The conduct of Canadian and Australian troops—The landings at Gallipoli—Lone Pine Hill—Recruiting for the Second Division—Unbounded patriotism of the Provinces—The Commanding Officers—Mid-winter training—Sailing of the Second Contingent—Major-General Steele—Training in England—Ready for any emergency—Divisional Artillery—A satisfactory inspection—Visit of the Prime Minister, the Colonial Secretary, and the Minister of Militia—The great achievement of Sir Sam Hughes—Words of praise from the Colonial Secretary—The New World ready to redeem the balance of the Old—Our King, Our Country, Our Empire—Special message from the King—Towards the firing line—A startling incident in the Channel—The historic landing-place—The French Canadians in France—A dramatic moment
PATROLS
An interval of calm—Process of forming the Second and Third Divisions—St. Eloi—The sector of Bailleul—Work of the Army Corps Staff—Changes in the Higher Command—The first experience of the Second Division—A demonstration opposite La Douve Farm—Dummy trenches—Smoke sacks—Veterans of the Third Brigade act as instructors—Bombardment of the Fifth Brigade—The gallant deed of Major Roy—Steadiness of the French Canadians—New Brunswickers on their mettle—Heroism of Sergeant Ryer—Canadians at home in patrol work—Stolidity of the Germans—Inventiveness of Canadians—Plucky rescue of Corporal May—Deadly land mines—Lucky escape of the Winnipeg boys—A thrilling adventure in the air—Capture of a German 'plane—Singular recovery of a Colt gun—the value of model trenches—The formation of a Brigade—Difficult night work—Havoc wrought by storms—Useful work of Labour Battalion—Holy ground
TRENCH RAIDS
The manner of raiding in "No Man's Land"—Winter in grim earnest—The use of the grenade—Changes in methods of warfare—The musket and the field gun—Adaptability of Canadians—Rehearsal of each assault—Good work of the Headquarters Staff—General Lipsett—A bold decision—A gap in the wire entanglements—A desperate venture—A welcome storm—Canadians in the German trenches—The exploit of Captain Costigan—A hot twenty minutes—German prisoners—Bridges placed across the Douve—Lively times in Ploegsteert—Good work of the Seventh Battalion—A series of failures and a stirring success—A "crack shot"—"Missing"—Its significance—The German line pierced—Careful work of the General Officer Commanding—At work in the enemy's wire—Into the jaws of death—Canadians disguised—The Huns caught napping—Captain McIntyre's report—A timely shot
FORMATION OF THE THIRD DIVISION
Coming events cast no shadows before—General Seely's command redistributed—The Seventh Brigade in the trenches—Heavy bombardment at Messines—Fortified positions of the Huns battered—Good work of the Artillery—Three privates distinguish themselves—Death of a daring explorer in "No Man's Land"—Visit of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales and the Colonial Secretary—Canadians co-operate with British—A terrific bombardment—The Huns establish themselves in British trenches—Canadian guns aid the British—"Tobin's Tigers"—The Tenth Battalion in a serious encounter—A fierce medley in the dark—An unfortunate day—Two Generals wounded—A survey of the strategic position—The force of massed artillery—A new era—Mr. Lloyd George's work—Iron lips produce conclusive arguments—A successful ruse—Ingenious device of Captain Costigan—A swollen river aids the Canadians—A hero indeed—An exchange of front—The value of salients questioned—The problem of transferring a sector—The Battle of St. Eloi a joint affair—Description of the ground—The process of exchange described—Adequate reasons for changes—A critical moment—Second Canadian Division supports the British—Six huge craters created by exploding mines—Activity of Northumberlands and Royal Fusiliers—Timely assistance of Canadians acknowledged—The "Canadians' Trench"—The enemy cleared out of debatable land—Good fighting of the enemy at St. Eloi—Trenches filled with the dead of both combatants—The Sixth Canadian Brigade to the relief
ST. ELOI
Canadians in a serious engagement—The old German line—The new British line—The effect of the eruption—Trenches little better than drains—The Second Division in "No Man's Land"—The situation described by General Turner—A gap in our line—The call for additional guns—Welcome relief—The importance of rear exits—Evacuation of the wounded—Our weak spot discovered—Prompt and intelligent action by General Turner—Steadfast endurance—The bravery of Privates Smith and Bowden—Conspicuous gallantry of Captain Meredith—Miscalculation—The enemy dashes through the zone of our artillery—Desperate situation of the Canadians—Communication by telephone intermittent—Confusion in the trenches—Under bombardment for sixty hours—The enemy's artillery preparation begins—Pandemonium inevitable—Clogged rifles and machine-guns—A brave struggle for existence—A moment of doubt—The enemy gains the craters—An unfortunate mistake—Unorganised retirement—Precipitate action—A case for help—Dilemma of the Higher Command—Trench mortars put out of action—Full story of the retirement cut short by death—A hand-to-hand encounter—Failure less welcome than success—Reasons for retirement only appreciated by those experienced in trench warfare—The Fates unpropitious—The error of the craters—Success denied though well deserved
ST. ELOI (continued)
Counter-attacks—Obstacles to victory—The ground described—The enemy deceived—Ravage wrought by heavy guns—Impassable ground—Schemes based upon unreliable information—Forward movement ordered—The 28th severely shelled at Voormezeele—Confusion regarding the occupation of the craters—Raid on Craters 2 and 3 fails—Wrong craters attacked—The Canadian infantry in Craters 6 and 7—Enemy patrols walk straight into Canadian trenches and are taken prisoners—The actual situation revealed by aerial photographs—Unit follows unit to certain death—The brave 28th—Heavy casualties—Determination of the Higher Command—Sniper Zacharias—A gallant deserter—Imperative order to take the German positions—Crater No. 1 captured—Unfortunate lack of reliable information—Four privates hold an exposed position for 70 hours—Individual acts of bravery common—Good work of the Lewis gun team—"Get on at any cost"—Brave though fruitless attempts—A glorious failure—Repeated counter-attacks unsuccessful—The third phase of the Battle of St. Eloi—A parallel of Verdun—The enemy seizes a dominant position—A deadlock—General Turner's suggestions—Reconstruction of the old British line under General Watson—The inglorious drudgery of digging—Perilous position of Canadians in advanced positions—Carrier pigeons used as messengers for the first time—Value of position problematical—Superior trenches of the enemy—Useful work of aircraft—Historic ground—First and second great actions of Dominion Army contrasted—Failure and success enter into the education of a nation
ST. ELOI (conclusion)
The enemy's final effort to capture Canadian trenches—The Higher Command decides to hold on—The precise position of affairs—The 5th Brigade in inferno—Loneliness of the watchers—Carrier pigeons killed by shell-shock—Crater No. 6 abandoned—The enemy's lack of imagination—The power of the British Army "to come again"—Troops of the Allies able to act without support—General Watson on the state of the craters—The report of Lieut. Vernon—Linking up the craters with the old British line—Advantageous position of the Huns—Four attempts to take Canadian craters—The Huns driven back—The assault on Craters 6 and 7—Isolated position of the Canadians—Aeroplanes reveal the true position—Army Commanders blameless—The importance of dominant ground—Difficulties of the Higher Command—The enemy begins an intense bombardment—Many casualties—Permission to surrender—-Lieutenant Myers fires his last round—Five survivors—Sergeant Bostel's narrative—The failures at St. Eloi—The garrison of the Canadian craters swept out of existence
THE BATTLE OF SANCTUARY WOOD
Moving northwards—The immortal field of Ypres—The greatest of all Canadian battlefields—Description of the ground—Who holds the rim holds the saucer—Advantageous position of the enemy—Sanctuary Wood—Observatory Ridge—The unpleasantness of life and the prevalence of death—Situation of the Canadians—Fortified posts—The German attack begins—The artillery preparation—Jack Johnsons—Whole areas destroyed—A tornado of iron and steel—Canadian trenches swept out of existence—The thunder of high explosives—German guns on the second line—The capture of General Williams—Tragic death of General Mercer—The 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles swallowed up—Heavy casualties—A gallant advance—Machine-guns on Hill 60—Lieuts. Key and Evans make a brave stand—The Princess Pats in the firing line—The exploits of Captain Niven—The gallant-hearted gentleman—A mix-up—Between two fires—Game until the last—Major Critchley—Rescue of men buried alive—Lieut. Glascoe—Canadian guns spotted by the enemy—Attacks repulsed by the Royal Canadians—Plucky deed of Corporal Hood—Loss of sacrifice guns—Lieut. Cotton killed—Faithful unto death—A critical position—The colours of Princess Pats returned to Headquarters—Second Canadian Mounted Rifles move under heavy fire—The enemy loses an opportunity—Energetic action of General Macdonell—The Seventh Brigade in peril—Timely support of the Royal Canadian Regiment—General Butler sends relief—The Fifth Canadian Mounted Rifles hard pressed—Daring reconnaissance of Sergeant Jones—Fifth Canadian Mounted Rifles save the Salient—Heavy losses of the Eighth Brigade—Help at hand
THE COUNTER-ATTACK
Method of counter-attack—Successful efforts of the French—The question of time—Attacks which failed—Precipitancy of main counter-attack—Enemy reinforced—The assaulting forces—Inadequate system of railways—Failure of well-laid plans—Value of armoured cables—A stroke of misfortune—Uncertainty as to the enemy's positions—A test of endurance—Defective communications—Artillery unable to support infantry—An American officer gives a lead—The death of Major Stuart—Observatory Ridge—Enemy well supplied with machine-guns—The fatal trench—Heavy casualties—Gallant attempt of the 15th Battalion—The 14th Battalion digs itself in under heavy fire—The fateful gap bridged—Lieut. Beaton and Sergt. Topham—The Higher Command misinformed—Misfortunes of the 52nd and 60th Battalions—The Princess Pats cheer their comrades—Gallant officers of the 49th—Main object of the counter-attack fails—The road to Ypres blocked to the enemy—The 3rd Division wins its spurs—A prospect of defeat turned into an achievement of victory
A LULL IN THE STORM. THE FIGHT FOR HOOGE
Relief of the front-line Battalions—Heavy losses of the Seventh Brigade—Good work of the Third Pioneer Battalion—Sudden advance of the enemy—The Knoll of Hooge—The Menin Road—Description of the scene—The 28th relieves the Royal Canadians—Heavy bombardment by the enemy—The importance of the Knoll of Hooge—The enemy springs four mines under the first-line trenches—A company of the 28th perishes—A terrific explosion—Fierce fighting of the 6th June—Effective work of Captain Styles—The enemy in dangerous proximity to our support line—Former tragedies in Zouave Wood—Serious casualties of the 6th Brigade—The effective loss of the village of Hooge—Preparations for retaliation
THE FINAL VICTORY
Canadians take the initiative—The Anglo-French offensive—Good fellowship between the Imperial and Canadian Army—British Brigade supports the Canadians—The Württembergers and the Canadians—General Burstall commands formidable assembly of heavy guns—Aeroplane photographs—Battalions massed in strength—Divisional Commanders—Artillery pounds the German position—The enemy demoralised—The advance to the assault—Intense artillery preparation—A struggle between weapons of attack and methods of defence—Unforeseen developments of trench warfare—The significance of the Battle of the Marne—The use of gas a failure—Terrific force of great guns—Mr. Lloyd George and the industrial development of England—The 3rd Toronto Battalion advances—The centre attack—A daring scheme to baffle the enemy—The front line moves forward unnoticed—German listening post captured—The forward rush—The bayonets clear the trenches—Captain Bell-Irving's daring exploit—The 16th and the 3rd Battalions recapture the heights—The 13th Battalion to the charge—Machine-gun fight and bombing encounters—Hill 62 in Canadian hands—Real gain of the day—Counter-attacks dispersed—The enemy dazed by the suddenness and the success of the onset—Splendid arrangement and precision of the attack in face of difficulties—Ypres salient reconquered with bayonet in semi-darkness—A devastated territory—The natural green blotted out—Earth churned up into masses of mud—The sight after the battle—Where captains and soldiers lie—Those we shall remember—Defeat turned into victory
"CANADA IN FLANDERS"
Conclusion—Canada will meet new necessities with fresh exertions—The Military co-operation of all parts of the Empire to lead to closer Political Union—Significance of the title "Canada in Flanders"—French General's views—British Infantry have never had to protect their own soil—Devotion of Australians and Canadians for an ideal—They felt the Empire was in danger—Lack of foresight in England—Prevision of Mr. Hughes, General Botha, and Sir Robert Borden—Recrimination in War-time useless, but the feeling for closer union and more responsibility growing overseas—Difficulty of organising this sentiment in a constitutional form without imperilling the liberty of the Dominions—Perils of refusing to do so—Controversy between Captain Papineau and Mr. Bourassa—Risk of reaction after the War—"Admit us to your Councils"—Reorganisation of Imperial resources the first constructive task for the Statesmen of the Empire
CHAPTER I
THE SECOND DIVISION
Canadians in the clash of World Powers—Effect of losses on Canadian people—Tribute of the British—The Service in St. Paul's—"Pure gold"—Eighteen hundred fresh troops cross the Channel—Prompt action of the Minister of Militia—Call for men from the third contingent to refill the ranks—Outstanding feature of the Second Battle of Ypres—Colonel Henderson on volunteer armies—Adaptability of the Canadians—Gallantry and intelligence v. lengthy training—The real strength underlying great national movements—The superiority of volunteer armies—The conduct of Canadian and Australian troops—The landings at Gallipoli—Lone Pine Hill—Recruiting for the Second Division—Unbounded patriotism of the Provinces—The Commanding Officers—Mid-winter training—Sailing of the Second Contingent—Major-General Steele—Training in England—Ready for any emergency—Divisional Artillery—A satisfactory inspection—Visit of the Prime Minister, the Colonial Secretary, and the Minister of Militia—The great achievement of Sir Sam Hughes—Words of praise from the Colonial Secretary—The New World ready to redeem the balance of the Old—Our King, Our Country, Our Empire—Special message from the King—Towards the firing line—A startling incident in the Channel—The historic landing-place—The French Canadians in France—A dramatic moment.
The repercussion of the battle of Ypres was immediately felt in Canada. It was an event unique in the history of the Dominion. The numbers engaged, the high proportion of casualties, the character of the enemy, and the desperate nature of the fighting made the engagement the most serious military action in which Canadians had ever borne a part, and the effect upon home opinion was proportionate. The American attack of 1812, the Red River Expedition, the abortive Fenian raid, and even the South African Campaign, were by comparison affairs of minor importance. The Canadian regiment had indeed made a name for itself at Paardeberg, and the 7,000 Canadians who volunteered for service in Africa had set a high standard of soldierly virtue in more than one engagement; but as the European conflict dwarfed the struggle of 1899-1902 for the Empire as a whole, so the share taken by the Dominion in the war against the Central Powers entirely overshadowed the effort she had made against the Transvaal and Free State. Here at last in the clash of World Powers a new nation had come into its own. Twenty thousand Canadian troops, many with less than one year's service, had, almost unsupported and wholly outflanked, held their own for days against the vastly superior numbers of the most highly trained troops in Europe, who, in addition to their usual weapons of warfare, had suddenly and unexpectedly made use of a vile and inhuman method of attack. Of these 20,000 nearly one-third were casualties, and the list of six thousand killed, wounded, and missing came as a shock to a public which had not been hardened as Great Britain had been by the battles of Mons, the Marne, and the Aisne to the colossal sacrifices involved in war. So our land grieved her losses, and set herself to make them good.
From each one of our provinces came the same voice of mingled sorrow, pride and invincible determination. The feeling found expression in the memorial services for the dead held on April 31st in Montreal, in five churches representing all religious denominations. The flags were flown at half-mast and the troops turned out to attend the services. "The achievements of our men," said the Bishop of Montreal, "have brought Canada into a new and more honourable place in the Empire. They endured privation, they suffered greatly, and now they have paid life's greatest tribute with their lives."
May 2nd, 1915.
Nor was Great Britain without her tribute. A memorial service was held in St. Paul's on May 2nd, 1915, for the Canadians who fell at Ypres. The officiating clergy were the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, the Chaplain-General to the Forces, and the Dean of St. Paul's. The ceremony took place not without propriety in the City Cathedral of St. Paul's; for though Westminster Abbey is consecrated by long tradition and the immortal tombs of great monarchs and statesmen of times almost out of remembrance, yet the shrines of Saxon, Norman, Angevin, and Tudor kings are a little remote from the dead of a far-off country with which these recumbent figures were never concerned. But St. Paul's possesses not only the monuments of the great soldiers and sailors who laid the foundations of the Empire of to-day, but enshrines that spirit of patriotic and constrained freedom which has made the citizens of London both "the regular army of Liberty" and the firm supporters of all those statesmen, from Chatham to Disraeli, who have combined freedom with Empire. Here the volunteer army of Canada committed to the Imperial cause would find that its dead might speak without constraint to those of an older time. In this temple of a magnificent sobriety was held the funeral service of the heroes of Ypres. In the stiff and formal tombs of their age lay the mortal remains of Wellington and Nelson, who, if there be remembrance among the shades, might well have been present to pay tribute to men whom even they would have been proud to command. But round the walls hung a more significant witness to the fallen in the countless tablets which still hold the memories of the soldiers and sailors, now long forgotten by history, who in many a desperate battle by sea and land laid the enduring foundations of a Canada which has proved itself not unworthy of its origins. Among these records are those of the City merchants whose purses and patriotism supplied the sinews of war to remind us that the great material resources of the Dominion are not inferior to the patriotism of its sons, and are no less a vital factor of national victory. Here, then, were gathered the representatives of an Empire united both by pride and sorrow. Over the vast assembly which thronged the building on that dim summer evening the half-lights scarcely illuminated the interior of the spacious dome. As those lights grew and shot up into the gloom the massed bands opened with the "Dead March," and a thrill ran through the multitude—one of those waves of emotion which only great occasions can evoke. The Bishop of London was the preacher, nor was his eloquence wanting to the occasion. "It was on that tremendous day when French and British had been overpowered by poisonous gas that the manhood of Canada shone out like pure gold. The example of these men will never die, but will remain as a perpetual inspiration to their successors." Those successors were already on their way.
Within three days of the Ypres fight 1,800 reinforcements from the Canadian Training Division crossed the Channel to bring new blood to the decimated battalions in Flanders. The Commander-in-Chief in France at once dispatched Lieut.-Col. Carrick, M.P., to ask for a further supply of new Canadian formations. The Minister of Militia and Defence, General Sir Sam Hughes, did not wait for any request to deal with the instant need. He called for a draft of men from the 3rd Contingent, still training in Canada, to go abroad and help refill the ranks. The losses of the 1st Division were thus partially made good, and it was able now to inscribe on its banners the proud name of the Second Battle of Ypres.
To the military writer of the future the amazing feature of the Second Battle of Ypres will always be the courage and discipline shown by the Canadians, equal to the best to be found in the armies with which they were associated. The greater proportion of the Anglo-French Armies were composed of Regular soldiers in the broadest sense of the term, and it has been held by most military historians as an axiom that no amount of gallantry and intelligence can make up for a lack of prolonged training and discipline.
Ordinary military writers put the case even more strongly. They maintain in effect that the value of troops depends on the length of service and on the character of their training, and on these things alone. This point of view ignores the other factors which go to the making of a soldier or a regiment—physique, natural boldness and resource, intelligence, and high patriotic motives; and would claim that a body composed of naturally inferior but technically better trained troops could defeat an equal number of men possessing the qualities I have mentioned, but deficient in discipline and experience. I would submit that the Second Battle of Ypres does not accord with the expert theory, but rather teaches the reverse.
The late Colonel Henderson, perhaps the best known of modern historians of war, goes so far as to countenance the suggestion that had either the North or the South in the American Civil War possessed at the start a single army corps of Regulars, the struggle would have been decided instantly in favour of its possessors instead of lasting over four years and necessitating the calling to arms of the great majority of the citizens of the United States! Colonel Henderson states the matter more moderately in a passage I cannot forbear to quote at some length, because it embodies the best which can be said for the professional military point of view. Speaking of American Volunteer troops, Colonel Henderson says:
"The Volunteers had proved themselves exceedingly liable to panic. Their superior intelligence had not enabled them to master the instincts of human nature; and although they had behaved well in camp and on the march, in battle their discipline had fallen to pieces. It could hardly be otherwise. Men without ingrained habits of obedience, who have not been trained to subordinate their will to another's, cannot be expected to render implicit obedience in moments of danger and excitement; nor can they be expected, under such circumstances, to follow officers in whom they can have but little confidence. The ideal of battle is a combined effort, directed by a trained leader. Unless troops are thoroughly well disciplined, such effort is impossible; the leaders are ignored, and the spasmodic action of the individual is substituted for the concentrated pressure of the mass.... The Volunteers, although on many occasions they behaved with admirable courage, continually broke loose from control under the fire of the enemy. As individuals they fought well; as organised bodies, capable of manoeuvring under fire and of combined effort, they proved to be comparatively worthless." ("Stonewall Jackson," Vol. I., p. 49; Longmans, 1913.)
Colonel Henderson quoted in support of his view the undisciplined advance and disorganised retreat of the Federal levies at the battle of Bull Run, and the utter failure of the brave French Territorials of the Army of the Loire in 1870-71 to relieve Paris or to make any headway against the Germans when once the French Regular armies had been destroyed at Gravelotte, Metz, and Sedan.
Such views, by ignoring the real strength which underlies great national movements and supports national armies, however ill-trained, lead to that kind of miscalculation which lured Napoleon to his destruction in Spain. They spring chiefly from a study of those periods in history when small mercenary or highly-trained bodies of troops existed side by side with a population whose civic organisation and patriotic ardour were at a low ebb. Such conditions occurred at certain periods of mediæval history, in the Italy of the Renaissance, and during the end of the seventeenth and throughout the eighteenth centuries. But even in those epochs we can notice the victories of the ill-organised levies inspired by Joan of Arc over the highly-trained British men-at-arms and archers, the successful resistance of Volunteer troops in Holland to the veterans of Alva, and the contest waged by the House of Orange with the levies of the United Provinces against the flower of the French Army led by Condé and Turenne. And the system of small, trained armies, and most of the lessons derived from it, were utterly shattered by the armed development of the French Revolution. The Prussian and Austrian Armies which crossed the French frontiers in 1793 were the last word in disciplined perfection. The Prussian Army in particular was the exact model of the instrument which, fighting against similar organisations, had made Frederick the Great. The French Regular Army had vanished with the old régime. In its place was nothing but a mass of ill-trained, ill-armed, ill-supplied National Volunteers, whose only strength lay in a passionate determination to drive the Invader from the soil which they had consecrated to Liberty. The field of Valmy decided the issue in favour of the Volunteers, or, more strictly, of the levée en masse, and it was not till the humiliation of Jena and the slackening of French enthusiasm for the Napoleonic cause had given Germany the National Movement which was ebbing from France, that the military rôles of the two countries became reversed. The armies which finally drove Napoleon back across Europe to abdication and Elba would have compared unfavourably in technique with the old Prussian Regulars, but they were armed with an enthusiasm for their cause which their predecessors had utterly lacked.
The lessons of history receive a startling reinforcement from the conduct of the Australian and Canadian troops. Both were volunteer and semi-trained troops in the strictest sense of the term—and what was true of the rank and file was, with a few distinguished exceptions, true of its officers and of its higher command. Both forces were confronted, the one in Gallipoli and the other at Ypres, with circumstances of unprecedented difficulty and danger. The landings in the Peninsula and the fierce fighting at Lone Pine Hill were certainly operations of an unusual character in war, and just of a kind, if Colonel Henderson's view is correct, to bring out the unsteadiness and unreliability of Volunteer troops, however brave. The same is true of Ypres. Here we find an attack by a new, horrible, and terrifying instrument of war, accompanied by a massed assault of the flower of the Prussian Army; the left of the position becomes a huge gap with the Canadian trenches in the air. Communication between units becomes more and more difficult in the swaying mêlée of the battle, and the senior officers are falling fast; supports for many hours there are none. If our semi-trained troops had broken under these combined stresses, who could have blamed them?
But in the face of these almost unparalleled difficulties, the Canadians showed the world an example of courage, steadiness, and co-ordinated discipline which could not have been surpassed by that Guards Brigade which stemmed the German tide in the first great onslaught at Ypres. The truth would appear to be that although, when other factors are equal between opposing forces, training and discipline will win, yet there resides in intense patriotism, high physical courage and endurance bred of pastimes which are akin to war, and superior personality, a force which can only be equalled by the last word in highly-trained infantry. Sudden and unexpected emergencies, so far from breaking the nerves of great Volunteer armies, as they do those of inferior trained troops, who are confused if the drill book fails them, bring out the resources of an individuality not yet crushed by tradition. The Volunteer adapts himself more quickly than a machine-made soldier.
April, 1915.
But it is time to turn to the fortune of the 2nd Division, part of which was already crossing the Atlantic at the time of the Second Battle of Ypres. The original offer of the Dominion Government had been a full division of all arms numbering 20,000. But the patriotism of the country outran the offer of the Government, and the actual number of the first contingent was 33,000 men. Of these, five battalions, the 6th, 9th, 11th, 12th, and 17th, had been left in England when the 1st Division sailed for France to act as the nucleus of a Drafting and Training Division. But even before the 1st Division had left for England the Dominion Government was feeling its way towards a further offer. The day after the great review of September 7th, 1914, at Valcartier, the Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Borden had cabled Sir George Perley that there were 43,000 men under arms in Canada, and had requested him to sound the Colonial Office as to the dispatch of a second contingent. In the first week of October, 1914, the offer of the 2nd Division of 20,000 men was made by the Dominion and accepted by the Imperial Government, and recruiting for it was started at once.
The 2nd Division consisted of the usual three brigades of infantry, but at the start each battalion was raised as a separate unit, for the purposes of enlistment and training. In fact, in some cases, companies of the same battalion were raised and partly trained in separate localities.
Oct., 1914.
The 4th Brigade was for a time under the command of Col. Denison. Illness intervened, and the high hopes of an officer with a splendid record were completely destroyed. The brigade then passed to the command of Brigadier-General Lord Brooke. The battalions were recruited from such well-known regiments as the Queen's Own (of Toronto), Royal Grenadiers, 21st Essex Fusiliers, 24th Kent Regiment, 28th Perth Regiment, 29th Highland Light Infantry, 7th London Fusiliers, 14th Prince of Wales' Own Rifles, 45th Victoria Regiment, the Brockville Rifles and the Governor-General's Foot Guards. Mobilisation commenced in October, 1914, and the 18th (Western Ontario Battalion) was commanded by Lieut.-Col. Wigle, the 19th (Ontario Battalion) by Lieut.-Col. MacLaren, the 20th (Northern and Central Ontario Battalion) by Lieut.-Col. Allan, and the 21st (Eastern Ontario Battalion) by Lieut.-Col. St. Pierre Hughes.
The 5th Brigade consisted of the 22nd (French Canadians), the 24th (Victoria Rifles), the 25th (Nova Scotia), and 26th (New Brunswick) Battalions. All these regiments began their mobilisation in the latter part of October and the first week in November, 1914, but they completed it for various reasons at very different dates. The brigade was taken over by Brigadier-General Watson, formerly commanding the 2nd Battalion of the 1st Division.
The 22nd Battalion, under Col. Gaudet, was recruited entirely from the French Canadians, and nearly all its officers and men hailed from Montreal or Quebec. Its point of concentration was St. John's. Some two thousand recruits offered themselves, and of these 1,100 were finally accepted or retained, the process of enlistment being completed by November 27th.
The next battalion of the brigade, the 24th (Victoria Rifles), Lieut.-Col. Gunn, was mobilised in Montreal on October 22nd, 1914, but did not complete its mobilisation until May 8th, 1915. There appears to have been a great rush of recruits, no fewer than four thousand offering themselves. The method here was to accept 1,800 men and continue to weed them out by a process of selection for several months until the full complement of the regiment was obtained. A great proportion of this battalion came from Montreal, and, like the 22nd, had carried out most of its preliminary training in the middle of the winter snows.
The 25th Battalion was recruited in Nova Scotia, including a contingent from Cape Breton. Lieut.-Col. Le Cain was in command, and Halifax was its main centre of mobilisation.
The 26th Battalion, commanded by Lieut.-Col. McAvity, was recruited in New Brunswick and mobilised in the first three weeks of November at St. John's.
The 6th Brigade, which when constituted was taken over by Brigadier-General Ketchen, was mainly raised in the West.
The 27th Battalion (City of Winnipeg) was mobilised in Winnipeg and the surrounding districts, and was almost entirely composed of local recruits. Lieut.-Col. Snider was in command. The next battalion, 28th (North-west), under Col. Embury, was more composite in its origin. From Regina came 12 officers and 246 men; from Moose Jaw, 6 officers and 246 men; from Saskatoon, 6 officers and 228 men; whilst smaller detachments were raised at Fort William, Port Arthur, and Prince Albert. It reached Winnipeg on November 1st, 1,025 strong; and it was there able to take part in combined training with the 27th.
The 29th (Vancouver) Battalion was raised entirely in British Columbia and was mobilised very rapidly in the last week of October, 1914. Lieut.-Col. Tobin was in command.
The 31st (Alberta) Battalion, Lieut.-Col. Bell, was mobilised at Calgary in November, and was recruited from that town and from Edmonton, Medicine Hat, Lethbridge, and Red Deer.
The two regiments, which had joined the brigade in Winnipeg on March 1st, were somewhat handicapped in battalion training owing to the bad weather. However, all ranks were kept hard at work at platoon and company training, and route marching was freely indulged in. The 29th and 31st, on the other hand, found the climates of Calgary and Vancouver more fortunate, and were able to carry out battalion training to a fairly large extent.[[1]]
The sailing of the second Canadian contingent was less spectacular than that of the first.
The 1st Division had started from the mouth of the St. Lawrence as a single whole under the escort of warships—the most formidable Armada which had ever crossed the Atlantic. The 2nd Division left in single ships and without the picturesque accompaniments of the first embarkation.
The units had been raised separately and were transhipped separately to their point of union and divisional concentration in England. The voyage was accomplished in safety, and nothing except speculations on possible submarine attacks relieved the ordinary routine of the voyage. A recapitulation of the dates of arrival of the various units and of the vessels which carried them would be tedious. It is enough to say that the transhipment was begun in April, 1915, was in the main completed by May, and that the last body arrived in August. May to Aug., 1915. Although some of the units did not join up till August, the division was actually constituted on May 24th, 1915, the first divisional standing orders being issued on that day by Colonel Dennison. On the 25th Major-General Steele assumed command.
The 2nd Division was fortunate in the man who was appointed to command it. Major-General Steele, C.B., M.V.O., had taken part in practically every event in the military history of the Dominion since he joined the 35th Regiment of Militia as an ensign at the age of sixteen during the Fenian raid of 1866.[[2]]
In December, 1914, he became Inspector-General for Western Canada, and organised the 6th Infantry Brigade. In all these activities he was ably assisted by Lieut.-Col. Ketchen, whose efforts were largely responsible for the success of the recruiting in the West, and who finally took over the command of the 6th Brigade. He, too, like the Divisional Commander, had served in the North-West and in South Africa, where he obtained a commission from the ranks.
April to Sept., 1915.
The further training of the units began as soon as each was landed. Up till May 25th those which had arrived took part in the work of the Training Division at Shorncliffe. After that date the 2nd Division was constituted as a separate formation, and as each battalion, battery or squadron was landed it was gradually brought up to full strength. The 2nd Division was, in many respects, more fortunate than its predecessor. It had the best of an English summer, since its time at Shorncliffe ran, roughly, from April to September of 1915; the high green downs above that well-known seaside resort abut on a charming country, and the pleasure of being able to go into a town was added. The men thus avoided the hardships, mud, and isolation of a winter on Salisbury Plain which had fallen to the lot of the 1st Division, and they carried away to France, no doubt, a more pleasant impression of English weather and scenery. All these months they were to be seen tramping the Kentish lanes, the very picture of health and vigour. Their work, of course, was heavy, special care being given to musketry. From the first it was impressed upon every man that he must learn to shoot, and to shoot straight. The musketry courses began in the middle of May, and so great was the number of men to be trained, so limited the time and range accommodation available, that rifle practice went on continuously at Hythe from 5 a.m. until 7 p.m. The 29th and the 31st Battalions carried out their musketry training at Lyd, marching eighteen miles to the ranges and camping on the flats for three weeks. The men, needless to say, were as keen as mustard, and their Regular instructors found them apt pupils. A machine-gun school was set up. Practice in bayonet fighting and the ordinary processes of infantry training went on simultaneously with musketry. The method of preparing new units to take their place in the field is, however, much the same all the world over, and by now only too familiar to millions of the citizens of the British Empire. It is the old story of learning to do things under favourable conditions so thoroughly and completely that in moments of stress they are done almost sub-consciously, leaving the mind free to grapple with anything novel there may be in the situation or in the actions of the enemy. It was in this quality of rapid decision in the face of unexpected emergencies that the Canadian Contingent proved itself pre-eminent.
The Divisional Artillery was far behind the rest of the formation as regards training. Drafts of artillery reached England as late as the middle of August. For some time practice was retarded by lack of equipment, and even so late as October 10th, when the infantry were becoming used to life in the trenches, progress made by the artillery in England was poor. It stands to reason that far more time and trouble are required to make an efficient gunner than an efficient infantryman. The personnel of the Artillery brigades was, however, such as to inspire high hopes, and these were fully justified by the 2nd Divisional Artillery when it finally reached the Front.
Ten weeks later the Inspector of Royal Horse and Field Artillery inspected the training, and congratulated Brigadier-General Morrison, D.S.O. (who had returned after serving with great distinction with the 1st Division in France), and Major Constantine on the work accomplished. "All ranks," he reported, "know their work, the drill at the guns is good and quiet, and good effects were obtained. I consider them the best Divisional Artillery I have seen on Salisbury Plain this year."
A break was made in the daily task of training the Division by two weeks' field manoeuvres in August in the valley. Here the Division operated as a whole and existed entirely under Service conditions.
The 2nd Division had now gone through its preliminary training both in Canada and Europe and was ready for the ordeal of battle. It has, however, always been the habit of statesmen, leaders, and commanders to address their troops in the field before the hour of action comes. The Great Causes which inspire volunteer armies to supreme exertion gain added strength from the presence of the leaders themselves.
Aug. 4th, 1915.
The Prime Minister of the Dominion had visited the troops at Shorncliffe in July, 1915 (Vol. I., page 165). He was followed on August 4th by the Rt. Hon. A. Bonar Law, M.P., Secretary for the Colonies, who was accompanied by General Sir Sam Hughes, K.C.B.
The presence of General Hughes was significant, for he above anyone else was the embodiment of Canada in arms. He had performed the amazing feat of raising a huge army in a country remote from Europe to do battle for the Imperial cause. When one remembers that the presence of 7,000 men in South Africa at the beginning of a century only fifteen years old was regarded at the time as a crowning achievement on the part of the Dominion; that the enrolment of 40,000 men for the camp at Valcartier and the dispatch of the First Contingent had been considered only twelve months before this review as a triumph of patriotism and organisation, who would have ventured to predict that in September, 1915, another contingent of equal strength would be about to set sail for Flanders; that by the dawn of 1916 a 3rd Division would be in the trenches and engaged in the death grapple of June; and that far beyond this huge reserves would lie waiting in Canada to create yet other divisions or replace the fallen in the field? Great Armadas had crossed the Atlantic carrying armies beside which those dispatched by the might of Great Britain against Washington and his levies in a day when Chatham still lived, dwindle into insignificance. And the tireless energy of Sir Sam Hughes directed the system which procured the men to meet the demand. Like all strong men he has, and has had, not only friends, but opponents; but if these will set aside the controversies of the present and look down the vista of the future to an impartial and final judgment, both alike will perceive the singleness and simplicity of purpose which constitute greatness of character, and, joined to strength of will, lead to greatness of achievement. As the General looked on the march past of the 2nd Division he might well have been thinking of the pride of work well done; but in reality his heart was with the men, who were going out to fight, suffer, and perhaps to die for their common cause; and in such thoughts there is no room for any pride except that of the aim and the race.
The Colonial Secretary has a natural claim to address a force of Imperial troops, but in this case there are special reasons why Mr. Bonar Law should have been given a cordial welcome. He is Canadian born and British trained, and therefore represents a natural link of union between the Dominion and the Mother Country. Direct and business-like, at once enthusiastic and unimpassioned, he is the natural interpreter between the newer nations and the old.
The conditions of the review were not happy. A heavy thunderstorm had broken the summer weather, and the troops were wet through long before the inspection began. The men, of course, were not worried, and it struck more than one observer that the driving rain and heavy cloud-wrack behind it gave a solemnity to the occasion which might have been lost in the mere picture of green glades, tall immemorial trees, and brightly-dressed spectators. Rain, after all, has about it a certain air of reality for anyone who is going to Flanders. As the artillery removed itself on its own devices, the long columns of infantry, platoon by platoon, began to swing past the saluting base, where stood the Colonial Secretary and the Canadian Minister. The dull afternoon light shone on the rippling bayonets, beneath which thousands of men, superbly fit, marched by to prove to Canada and the Empire that the New World was still ready to redress the balance of the Old. Something of this seems to have stirred in the Colonial Secretary's mind as he addressed the officers. In simple language he told his hearers that when he watched them marching past he thought how strong had been the call of duty which had brought them there. The world knew what they had sacrificed, and that every one of them was prepared to face danger and death and to give a good account of himself when the opportunity came. He realised their courage and their devotion, and he thought also, when he saw so many young faces, that, after all, their sacrifice was not perhaps so great as that of those whom they had left behind in anxiety as to the fate of their dearest. He himself was born in Canada—he was proud of what Canadian troops had done and of the future which lay in front of them. "After the war things would never be quite the same again." Already by an arrangement with the Mother Country and the self-governing Dominions it was understood that when the time came for peace, the Dominion Governments were to have a say in the negotiations. That marked a great step onwards, but it was only a step. It had long been his hope and was now his belief that as a result of the war the time would come when the whole of the self-governing Dominions, in proportion to their population and resources, would share with the Mother Country in the duty and honour of governing the British Empire.
Sept. 2nd, 1915.
The 2nd Division had at least the sense that they were contributing to the making of history. Nor were they without the further assurance that their efforts were appreciated. On September 2nd, 1915, his Majesty the King, accompanied by Lord Kitchener, inspected the Division before it left for the Front. Once more, under a grey and gloomy sky, it marched out—this time to parade before its Sovereign. The 2nd Division was only following in the steps of the 1st, which had already received that supreme honour. But the 1st Division had already earned the King's accolade in the field, and there was a rigid determination on the part of the 2nd to do the same. So, as line after line of infantry went by the saluting point, the unspoken homage was in the heart of every man: "One King, One Country, One Empire."[[3]]
Sept. 14th, 1915.
Major-General Turner (Vol. I., p. 190) had taken over the Division from General Steele, who had been appointed to command the troops in the Shorncliffe area. Preparations were now begun for departure. The Divisional Supply Column had already started on September 5th. The real crossing, however, began on September 13th, 1915, when the transport, with the 4th Canadian Infantry Brigade, the Borden Machine-Gun Battery, the Divisional Signallers, the 4th Canadian Field Ambulance, and all the motor ambulance wagons of the Division, left Southampton for Havre. On the night of September 14th the Headquarters Staff and the bulk of the Division embarked, including the 4th Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery. The rest of the Divisional Artillery, the 5th, 6th[[4]] and 7th Brigades, were left behind for a time to complete their training, proceeding later to France on January 18th, 1916.
Eight battalions were left in reserve and absorbed in the Training Division at Shorncliffe—the 23rd, 30th, 32nd, 36th, 39th, and 43rd, to supply drafts for the Infantry, the 48th for the Pioneers, and the Royal Canadian Regiment afterwards incorporated in the 3rd Division. The 2nd Canadian Division Headquarters in Shorncliffe were then closed.
The voyage of the 2nd Division was not to be a long one like that of the 1st, from Bristol in the West of England to St. Nazaire on the coast of Brittany. The high, white cliffs of Folkestone by day and the light of its lamps by night are clearly visible from the high downs above Boulogne in fair weather; while the light of Gris Nez flashing like a wheeling spearshaft has long been familiar to the Canadian troops. It was for Boulogne that the 2nd Division set out—to the harbours below the heights from which the statue of Napoleon on its great bronze column still looks out, as he did all the summer of 1805, at the white cliffs on which he was never to set foot, to the coast, too, whence Cæsar first saw the almost fabulous land of Britain. Those conquerors of the modern and ancient worlds would have marvelled had they beheld the sailing of 20,000 men of French and British birth from the other side of the Atlantic across the narrow salt-water trench, once the confluent of the Thames and Rhine, to defend the land of Gaul against that Teuton menace which both of these had overthrown.
Who of the millions that have undergone the experience will ever forget their first crossing of the Channel in a troopship? The absence of any lights and the swift drive of the engines give the sense of a stealthy escape from the unseen perils of the deep. Dimly visible for a moment is a dark shape of another transport or some destroyer of the escort. The men who can crowd below are perhaps asleep, but to the remainder, shivering a little on deck in the sea breeze, the whole air and the chopping seas seem to breathe something of danger, of the mystery of the dark, and the romance of the High Adventure yet ahead. It was in this atmosphere that a serious collision occurred. The Staff of the 4th Brigade under Brigadier-General Lord Brooke and the 10th Battalion were aboard a paddle-wheeled steamer when a dark mass suddenly shot out of the night and rammed her amidships. The shock threw everybody off their feet; no one could tell at first whether it was a German cruiser or a friend; and had panic broken out among the massed humanity of over a thousand souls on board it would not have been surprising. But the Volunteer troops showed themselves in calmness and discipline the equal of any Regulars. The instant the collision occurred the troops were paraded on deck with the life-belts which had been provided for them. For a time it was thought that the ship was going down. But the men ranged on deck remained steady in the ranks, and the parties told off to loose the rafts carried out their duties swiftly and surely. The incident adjusted itself. The stranger, which turned out to be one of our own destroyers, had by a fortunate chance struck the great wooden paddle-box of the steamer, and though the latter was for a time out of control, no irretrievable damage had been done. The transport carrying the Divisional Staff stood by and endeavoured to tow her in, but the hawsers and steel cables parted under the strain of the rough weather. It was necessary to send for tugs from Boulogne, and, finally, at five in the morning, that port was made. All through the night an escort of destroyers which had raced up at the first news of the accident circled round flashing their searchlights over the seas to guard against a possible submarine attack, but no enemy appeared to disturb the work of rescue. The remaining ships of the Division, despite the heavy weather, made the passage in security, and the whole body began to pass up country to effect its junction with its comrades of the 1st Division.
The landing in France possessed one feature both of racial and historic importance. The 1st Division had included one company of the 14th Battalion, which was entirely composed of French Canadians, and many others of the same race were scattered among the various units. The 22nd Battalion of the 2nd Division was entirely recruited, as has been recorded, from the French of the old province, and its appearance on the sacred soil of France serves to awaken a host of memories.
There is no parallel in history that matches the picture of the descendants of the men who founded Port Royal and Quebec under Champlain in the first decade of the seventeenth century returning, after three hundred years of absence and a hundred and fifty years under a different flag, to fight once more for the soil whence their ancestors sprang. The German menace has welded the two great nations of the West on the two sea-boards of the Atlantic and linked the centuries together beyond imagination and almost beyond belief. In the firing line at Ypres were found side by side not only the successors of the British who had stayed in their island home and of the French who had remained in France and dealt with the British since on many a hard-fought field in Europe, but the sons of those who had struggled together before the entrenchments of Ticonderoga or on the fateful Plains of Abraham. When after the Seven Years' War in 1763 the Empire of the West passed finally to Great Britain under the pressure of British sea-power and the military inspiration of Chatham, France must have mourned what seemed the irrevocable loss of her sons. Yet in France and Flanders to-day they are risen again for her service, returned across the Atlantic by that same sea-power that once claimed them, and are now warring on the very fields their fathers held, with the same courage and fortitude their race displayed in the eighteenth century against Great Britain.
The French are of all people the most susceptible to an appeal to the imagination. One can imagine their feelings when they learnt that a whole regiment of French Canadians had landed with the 2nd Division. Very strange must have been the meeting between these two branches of a race separated so long by the Seas of Time!
Gradually it dawned on these people that among the strange soldiers from across the ocean were men speaking their mother tongue—not the French, perhaps, of modern Brittany and Normandy, but French none the less. One must picture the joyous effort to find the common idiom and accent, the older country casting back in memory across the years to the point where the two streams of speech had divided, the younger nation of the older speech casting forward to catch the new French which had sprung up since the division. The scene is one for the painter or the novelist, and this wonderful journey's end in lovers meeting must leave an ineffaceable imprint on the memories of both England and France. Dramatic moments are few in modern war, but this was one of them—a fitting pendant to that other scene when the joint memorial to Wolfe and Montcalm was unveiled on the heights of Quebec.
[[1]] The Divisional Artillery consisted of the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th Brigades of the Canadian Field Artillery, and the 97th, 98th, and 107th Siege Batteries. The 4th Brigade was recruited in Toronto, and commanded by Lieut.-Col. W. J. Brown, the 5th (Lieut.-Col. Dodds) came from Winnipeg, the 6th (Lieut.-Col. King) was raised from various quarters, and the 7th (Lieut.-Col. Stewart) from Montreal, Toronto, and New Brunswick. The Divisional Ammunition Column was under the command of Lieut.-Col. Harrison. The entire artillery of the 2nd Division was commanded by Lieut.-Col. Thacker, until June 25th, 1915, when that officer took command of the 1st Divisional Artillery and was succeeded by Brig.-General E. W. B. Morrison. Mention must also be made of the other units of the Division. The Divisional Engineers were under Lieut.-Col. J. Houleston until September, 1915, when Lieut.-Col. H. T. Hughes took over command; the Divisional train was under Lieut.-Col. A. E. Massey, the Cyclist Company under Lieut.-Col. Denison, and Nos. 4, 5, and 6 Field Ambulances under Lieut.-Cols. Webster, Farmer, and Campbell respectively, with Col. J. T. Fotheringham, C.M.G., as A.D.M.S.
[[2]] Major-General Steele's career in the army reads more like a romance than reality. Having distinguished himself as a mere boy in all his examinations while attached to the British Regulars then stationed in Canada, he left the Service, only to rejoin as a ranker in the Red River Expedition of 1870. Here he spent a year in Fort Garry, which was then "the farthest West." After a short time in the Royal Canadian Artillery he went West again, became a Major in the Alberta Field Force during the rebellion of 1885, having raised his own corps of "Steele's Scouts." He was through all the fighting of that summer, and finally broke up Big Bear's band at Loon Lake, a place in the Great Northern Forest where no white man had ever before set foot. In 1898, as soon as the Klondyke gold rush began, he was dispatched at once to secure the frontier, erect customs posts, and prevent American miners establishing claims on the wrong side of a vast and ill-defined frontier. In 1899 he was promoted Lieut.-Colonel, and became the military representative of the Government in the Yukon. The South African War brought him immediately into the field. Within the space of five days he recruited "Strathcona's Horse" from the Western provinces; within a month he had them ready to move from Ottawa—truly a miraculous performance. In South Africa he saw a good deal of fighting in Natal and the Lydenberg district east of Pretoria, notably at Belfast. On August 26th, 1900, he was mentioned in despatches, obtained the Queen's medal with four clasps, and finally took command of a division of the new South African Constabulary. At this stage he was for six months under the direct orders of Lord Kitchener, with whom he became intimately acquainted. In 1906, after a period of mixed civil and military administration in South Africa, he returned to the Dominion to take over the command of the Western Canada military district, a post he occupied until December, 1914. Seven thousand six hundred men went from his command in the West to the First Canadian Contingent, and before he left to take command of the 2nd Division no fewer than 24,000 men in his district had joined the Colours.
[[3]] The Special Message from the King to the 2nd Canadian Division was published after the inspection:—
"Officers, Non-commissioned Officers and Men of the 2nd Canadian Division,—Six months ago I inspected the 1st Canadian Division before their departure for the Front. The heroism they have since shown on the field of battle has won for them undying tame. You are now leaving to join them, and I am glad to have the opportunity of seeing you to-day, for it has convinced me that the same spirit which animated them inspires you also. The past weeks at Shorncliffe have been for you a period of severe and rigorous training; and your appearance at this inspection testifies to the thoroughness and devotion to duty with which your work has been performed. You are going to meet hardships and dangers, but the steadiness and discipline which have marked your bearing on parade to-day will carry you through all difficulties. History will never forget your loyalty and the readiness with which you rallied to the aid of your Mother Country in the hour of danger. My thoughts will always be with you. May God bless you and bring you victory!"
[[4]] The 6th Brigade was formed by reorganising the 8th Howitzer Brigade from the Reserve Brigade at Shorncliffe.
CHAPTER II
PATROLS
An interval of calm—Process of forming the Second and Third Divisions—St. Eloi—The sector of Bailleul—Work of the Army Corps Staff—Changes in the Higher Command—The first experience of the Second Division—A demonstration opposite La Douve Farm—Dummy trenches—Smoke sacks—Veterans of the Third Brigade act as instructors—Bombardment of the Fifth Brigade—The gallant deed of Major Roy—Steadiness of the French Canadians—New Brunswickers on their mettle—Heroism of Sergeant Ryer—Canadians at home in patrol work—Stolidity of the Germans—Inventiveness of Canadians—Plucky rescue of Corporal May—Deadly land mines—Lucky escape of the Winnipeg boys—A thrilling adventure in the air—Capture of a German 'plane—Singular recovery of a Colt gun—The value of model trenches—The formation of a Brigade—Difficult night work—Havoc wrought by storms—Useful work of Labour Battalion—Holy ground.
Sept., 1915.
With the junction between the two divisions the work of the Canadian troops in Flanders enters on a new and broader phase. The meeting took place in time midway between the tempest which raged on the plains of Ypres in May of 1915 and that scarcely less violent iron-storm which, in the same month of 1916, burst in the fields of St. Eloi. An interval of calm, or such calm as modern war knows, was permitted for that reunion. It is well for the soldier that there should be such intervals, for the strain of modern action, were it never relaxed, would destroy the mind and nerve of man as surely as the continuance of its shell fire must destroy the body. But though modern armies cannot always be locked in desperate conflict, the reader may not find the ensuing chapters altogether dull. He will be able to trace the steps by which the original 1st Division added unto itself first a second and then a third, and developed into an army corps. He can watch the multiplication of the Staffs, the promotion of Brigadiers to command divisions, of Colonels to brigades, and of Majors and Captains to regiments; the process of the division of labour as the specialists develop in bombing, mining, or machine-gunning; the foundations of schools of instruction behind the line; the methodical study of the arts of patrolling and raiding. He can survey, in fact, the full range of those methods by which large bodies of men carrying rifles gradually develop into a self-sufficient army far greater in numbers than the British troops that the Duke of Wellington commanded, not so far away, on the field of Waterloo. As a stream draws into it confluent after confluent until it attains the dignity of a river, so the original Canadian Expeditionary Force, by the flow of men across the Atlantic, is becoming an army; and it is the history of this process that the next few chapters must relate. In artillery alone is the development a slow one, and here the 2nd and 3rd Divisions were for long dependent on the assistance of the British gunners.
The scene is laid in a sector to the south of Ypres and to the north of Armentières. Its more southerly position in the line is marked by the greater number of spinneys, small eminences, and commanding heights, such as that of Kemmel, from which the enemy's lines can be overlooked. But portions of it are a dead level, and it is very far from the well-covered hills of the real southern line. The main features are still those of Flanders—the slightly rolling flat where the transparent richness of the crops which spring from the sand and the clay seems no deeper than the paint of a fresco on the wall, and the scraggy trees and ragged woods mock one with a delusive memory of forest cool and shade. As the army grows the winter draws on, and the fine, hot autumn days and brilliant nights with the moon high in the heavens behind the trenches turn to the rains of November and the mists and frosts of Christmas. The ground grows wet underfoot and the air is clammy and cold. Such is the winter season of Northern Europe, when most of the campaigners of history allowed their troops to hibernate in warm and comfortable billets.
The 1st Division had spent the later summer on a sector the right of which rests on the northern edge of Ploegsteert. As the 2nd Division came by degrees into the fighting line the Canadian sector was extended northwards until the left of the Corps finally rested on a spot a little to the south of St. Eloi. The moves which resulted in the final disposition were not all made in a day, but it would be tedious to do more than note in passing the various shifts the new corps made with the II British Corps to the south of them and the V British Corps to the north. Roughly speaking, the northern line ending by St. Eloi was taken over by the 2nd Division while the 1st Division remained in the Ploegsteert area to the south. The dividing point was a little to the north of Wulverghem, facing the German trenches half-way between Messines and Wytschaete. For the sake of clearness one might call it the sector of Bailleul.
The distinguishing feature of the line is length rather than depth—the precise converse of the subsequent St. Eloi position. The line from that place to Ploegsteert is not excessive for a corps of three divisions, but it is distinctly so for one with only two. In fact, on March 1st, when the whole three divisions were assembled, the frontage was occupied by six out of the nine brigades, and this six brigade frontage was throughout the normal one. But the 3rd Division was not in full existence till the middle of January, 1916, and in the meantime the reliefs could only be effected by such elements of corps troops as happened from time to time to be in readiness. Thus on October 3rd, when an additional two thousand yards were taken over, and the 2nd Division occupied our final position to the north, the only corps troops available for reliefs were Brigadier-General Seely's force, consisting of three regiments of the Cavalry Brigade and the 1st Canadian Mounted Rifle Brigade. The 42nd Battalion (Royal Highlanders of Canada) and the 49th Battalion (Edmonton Regiment) did not arrive till the middle of that month, the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifle Brigade till towards the end of it, the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry and the Royal Canadian Regiment till November, and the various units which finally formed the 3rd Division were not completed till January. This necessarily entailed a somewhat extended sojourn in the front line area by the various brigades of the first two divisions.
The task, therefore, of interchanging the different units was one that required careful working out on the part of the Corps Staff. The ordinary divisional front is held by two brigades, with a third at rest well in the rear. The business of interchanging them becomes as mechanical as that of a bridge-player opening a long and strong suit; every unit knows to within two or three days its time in the front line, support line, reserve line, or rest billets. As the units of the 3rd Division began to arrive, matters, of course, became simpler, but in the last months of the year the Corps found itself compelled to make heavy calls on the endurance of the various battalions.
Sept. 14th, 1915.
To return to the narrative. The 2nd Division arrived at Caestre on September 14th. On the previous day the Canadian Corps had been formed. Upon his appointment as Corps Commander, General Alderson relinquished the command of the 1st Division to Major-General Currie, who was in turn succeeded in the 2nd Brigade by Brigadier-General Lipsett. Major-General Turner was already in command of the 2nd Division, and he was succeeded in the command of the 3rd Brigade by Brigadier-General Leckie. The 16th Battalion was taken over from Brigadier-General Leckie by his brother, Major Leckie. The changes in the Higher Command were now for the moment complete. The duty of the 2nd Division was to relieve the 28th British Division in what may be called for convenience the Kemmel section of the line, which stretched north from the ground of the 1st Canadian Division. As in the case of all inexperienced troops, they were given a "trial trip," and their officers went in with the 84th and 85th British Brigades for a few days to learn the tricks of the trade and the lie of the land. Sept. 23rd, 1915. The relief was finally accomplished by September 23rd, 1915. The 4th Brigade, 2nd Division, took the north of the line; the 5th Brigade the south; while the centre was stiffened by the hardened veterans of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Division. The 6th Brigade remained in reserve at Kemmel.
The first experience of the 2nd Division and of the new Canadian Corps was a curious one, as a glance at the dates will suggest. The last week of September was the time of the great Anglo-French offensive, which to us spells Loos and to our Allies Champagne. The advantage of the initiative is the uncertainty for the enemy as to where the real blow will fall. Until he knows, he dare not shift his reserves. The ingenuity of the Canadian Force was, therefore, exercised to produce without loss of life the appearance of an attack which would pin the Germans opposite to their ground and prevent them from going to the assistance of their sorely-pressed colleagues to the south. The new corps rose gallantly to the demand for theatrical effect, and a demonstration was arranged along the whole line, but particularly in front of the 1st Division, opposite La Douve farm. It must have been exciting for everyone to think out methods of simulating a bogus assault to keep the Germans on tenterhooks. On the night of the 24th the guns opened on the enemy wire and cut great gaps thirty yards wide in it as though to open the way for the assaulting columns. Dummy trenches were dug close behind the firing line to hold the supports of the supposed assailants. Sept. 25th, 1915. In the early dawn of the 25th the Germans could see great and dangerous activity in the Canadian trenches, which hummed like a hive of bees about to swarm. At 5.45 a.m. sacks full of wet straw were fired and thrown on the parapets whenever the wind blew towards the enemy. That same morning real gas was covering in grim earnest the rush of the British over the stricken field of Lens and to the Hohenzollern Redoubt. To intensify the effect, the platoon commanders shouted orders and blew their whistles, while scaling ladders and the shimmer of bayonets were shown above the edge of the parapet. Our troops then opened fire, both with rifles and machine-guns. The Germans, in the face of this provocation and menace, became convinced that an attack was imminent, though reflection might have convinced them that serious assaults are seldom so well advertised. They put down a heavy barrage behind our firing line to prevent the arrival of supports, and thronged their own second-line trenches. This was precisely the intention of the Canadian Command, whose gunners shelled the communication and support trenches severely. About six o'clock in the morning, when it was too late to move troops to Loos, the false smoke thinned, and the enemy could see clearly that no attack was in progress. The fire died away; but the German bulletin announced the successful repulse of a determined advance. It is not surprising that the Canadians have achieved a certain unpopularity among their vis-à-vis in the trenches owing to their predilection for "slickness." Such incidents, as the men know well, relieve the monotony of trench warfare.
Sept. 26th to 30th, 1915.
From September 26th to 30th, following this episode, certain changes were made in the British line on the right of the Canadian Corps. The 12th Division was pulled out, to be sent further south, and a new division, the 25th, was brought up to take its place. During the change the 3rd Brigade took over a part of the British line and acted as instructors to the inexperienced troops of the 75th British Infantry Brigade for the space of a week, when the scholars took over from the tutors. Their place in the 2nd Division was occupied by the 6th Canadian Brigade, commanded by Brigadier-General Ketchen, and until then in reserve at Kemmel.
All three brigades of the 2nd Division were now in the front line, and, as has been mentioned, they were extended two thousand yards to the north to complete the final frontage of the corps. They possessed in Divisional Reserve Brigadier-General Seely's force, which had been replaced in the firing line by the 2nd Infantry Brigade. The line of the 1st Division was held by this brigade and by the 1st Brigade, while the 3rd enjoyed a well-earned rest as corps reserve. These two brigades were, however, holding the frontage of three, and it must be observed once more that the forces behind the entire British line were at this period hardly sufficient to supply adequate reliefs, much less to resist a strong attack. This state of affairs was merely the result of the general lack of preparation of the British Empire for the duration and scale of the land war. In the first week of October five brigades were in the front line of a six-brigade frontage, and their total reserve was four battalions of infantry and six regiments of cavalry. During the month, however, the situation was improved, since the 42nd (Royal Highlanders of Canada), under Lieut.-Col. Cantlie, and the 49th (Edmonton Regiment), under Lieut.-Col. Griesbach, arrived on October 10th, and the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifle Brigade, under the command of Colonel Sissons, on the 26th.
Oct. 5th, 1915.
The beginning of October was not, however, by any means without its incidents, both tragic and glorious. On the evening of October 5th, while the great struggle round Loos was still raging, the 5th Brigade was subjected to its first severe bombardment. The perpetual pillars of yellow and green smoke, slashed with black débris spouting to heaven, and the earth-shaking roar of heavy shells, are enough to try the nerve of the most trench-hardened warriors, and this brigade was but a week in the trenches and entirely new to the experience. In these cases all depends on the example and leading of the officers. It may be recorded here how that example was set. Brigadier-General Watson had been moving continually up and down in the front of his brigade, and was passing through the line of the 22nd (French Canadians). He passed Major Roy of that regiment in the muddy trench and spoke a word to him. Hardly had he turned the traverse when out of the sky fell one of those huge abominations fired from a trench mortar. There it lay in a trench full of men, ready to explode any second. Like a flash Major Roy took his risk and dashed to save the lives of the rest. As he stooped to pick up the great greasy cone of steel and hurl it over the parapet he slipped in the mud, and the shell exploded in his arms. There died a very gallant gentleman, and with him all doubts as to the steadiness of the French Canadian regiment under shell fire.
Throughout the early part of October the enemy exhibited great activity in mining on the front of the Corps. It was the turn of the New Brunswickers to show their mettle in a first raid into "No Man's Land." The fibre of the race that province breeds has become indurated by generations of contest with the elements, and has taken on something of the unbending hardness of the North. They were now to test these ingrained qualities against a new antagonist, for immediately on their front the enemy one day blew up a great mine.
Oct. 13th, 1915.
The 26th (New Brunswick), under Lieut.-Col. McAvity, was ordered to make a reconnaissance on October 13th, and the company commanded by Major Brown held the post of honour. If the mine crater could be occupied with advantage, then it was to be held by the attacking party; if, on the other hand, it was useless to hang on there, the crater was to be abandoned. Imagine the infantry, bombers and bayonet men in four successive lines, straining on the leash till the artillery had finished pounding and the smoke-bombs which had been prepared to cover the advance from the sight of the German trenches had been let loose. Thrilling is the moment when warriors climb their trenches to the assault. The New Brunswickers were untried. But before dawn, at four o'clock, out they came from a saphead dug in advance of their trench, and raced for the crater over forty yards of open ground. The weight of a threefold decision lay upon them. Major Brown and Lieutenant Fairweather, of the 26th, and Lieutenant McPhee, of the Engineers, had to survey the ground, determine whether to hold on or retire, and guard against counter and flank attacks. One party at their order rushed to within throwing distance of the German side of the crater, where the enemy occupied a saphead from which noises of tapping had been heard, and held off assault with bomb and rifle. Shielded by their efforts our officers examined the ground, while Major Brown extended the supports right and left of our saphead to ward off a flank attack. Both advanced support parties were met by high-explosive bombs and a heavy crossfire from enemy machine-guns. In the words of Captain McMillan, of the 26th:—"In the face of a shower of bombs from the front, and enfiladed from both sides by machine-gun fire, the first and second lines went forward and gained the crater. After a careful reconnaissance made by the officers in charge it was found inadvisable to remain in the crater, and the order to retire was given. Nor did that order come a moment too soon. Just as the officers and party cleared the crater, a mine trap, whose existence had been suspected, was fired by the Germans and the whole force barely escaped destruction. At this moment the ground between the crater and our trench was covered with a hail of bullets from the machine-guns of the enemy, and by flying shells and bursting bombs." The explosion stunned everyone within reach. Sergeant Ryer, a well-known scout and trapper in civil life, remained unshaken. "Instead of retiring at once, he kept in the open, using his rifle as opportunity offered with good success, accounting—it is believed—for eleven of the enemy." After he had helped to cover his comrades, with an indifference to orders not unlike Nelson at Copenhagen, Ryer turned to the wounded. The losses of the 26th had been severe. Imagine a ground swept by machine-gun fire "with a noise like a giant tearing calico," the shattering crash of bombs, and the perpetual spit-fire rattle from the enemy. To live in it seemed impossible. But Sergeant Ryer, his fancy shooting done, tried to give assistance to Sergeant Cotter, who had led the first line to the German sap. Finding him beyond all aid, he turned to Pte. D. Winchester, who was badly wounded, unwound one of the wounded man's puttees, passed it under Winchester's armpits and around his own shoulders, and crawled back to the trench, struggling under the weight of his comrade. Pte. Daly came to his help, and between them they dragged Winchester into safety.
For all kinds of patrol work between the lines the Canadians showed an inherent aptitude from the start. The art of woodcraft, the inherited instinct of men whose fathers and grandfathers had been mighty hunters before the Lord, gave the corps supremacy almost at once over their adversaries in these contests of small groups in the dark.
Except for one brief period, when a particularly adventurous Saxon corps developed a tendency to dispute the mastery of "No Man's Land," the Canadians throughout the winter of 1915 ranged almost at will over that doubtful territory. They won the right by their conspicuous victories over larger bodies of the enemy in struggles where good shooting, steady nerves, and individual initiative were more vital to success than drill or routine. They excelled in the most fascinating of pursuits which modern war has left to its votaries. The sharp night air, the rustle in the grass or the trees which may mean an enemy, the stealthy crawl with the fingers on the trigger, the fitful flare of the star-shells, the rasp of barbed wire, the knowledge that life depends on one's own personal swiftness of action, wake again in civilised man the old instincts of the hunter and the hunted. Life runs keen in the veins because Death lurks under every shadow. In spite of their personal courage, the disciplined stolidity of the Germans is hardly adapted to this peculiar kind of sport. They lacked the range of inventiveness of their opponents, and by posing opportunities of quick action they lost the initiative of attack. Instances without number could be given of these small engagements on the front at night in which every regiment has borne its share. One could almost select one's instances at random and do no injustice to the general picture.
Oct. 20th, 1915.
On the night of October 20th, 1915, a patrol from the 4th (Central Ontario) Battalion, in charge of Sergt.-Major Matheson, became enveloped in a heavy fog in "No Man's Land" and lost its way. While trying to regain direction, Pte. Inwood was wounded. Corporal May went to Inwood's assistance, and found him lying in the German entanglements. In attempting to remove Inwood from the wire, the corporal's foot struck a tin can, and the sound drew an instant volley of fire from the enemy's parapet. Inwood received another wound in his body and May was hit in the thigh and shoulder. The corporal remained with Inwood in the German wire until the latter's death, and then crawled into the cover of a clump of bushes close at hand. In the meantime, the other members of the patrol had been forced back to our trenches by a converging fire from the enemy. Sergt.-Major Matheson, accompanied by Sergt. Norwood, went out and searched unsuccessfully for the wounded men. At dawn the Sergeant-major went out again, this time with Pte. Donoghue. These two separated soon after leaving our trench, the better to cover the ground in their merciful quest. Donoghue found Corporal May in the little clump of bushes near the German wire, dressed his wounds, and slowly, tenderly, and under the constant menace of death, removed him to the head of one of our saps.
On the same evening Lieutenant Cosgrave, of the Engineers, supported by a small party of the 15th (48th Highlanders), under Lieutenant McLaurin, of the 16th (Canadian Scottish), who had reconnoitred the ground beforehand, went out two hundred yards from our trenches and blew up a heavily-wired and fortified house.
The weather during the latter part of October was inclined to be misty, and this led to a considerable activity on the part of the patrols in front of the line by night, and of the digging parties behind it by day.
Oct. 23rd, 1915.
But a new horror was added to life—the discovery of land-mines laid down by the Germans between the lines, some fired by trip-wires after the fashion of the spring gun in forbidden woods, others electrically connected by wires with the hostile trenches. On the 23rd, a whole party of the 8th (Winnipeg Rifles) nearly fell victims to one of the former kind, and Pte. Green, who actually touched off the wire, was blown to atoms.
The end of the month was marked by one or two very daring reconnaissances by Lieutenant Owen, of the 7th (British Columbia) Battalion, up the bed of the Douve River, and by a great aeroplane battle.
The aeroplane battle occurred upon a morning warm and bright with sunshine. The conditions were admirable for flying and observing, and, as usual, a German Albatross took advantage of them. Soaring high against the warm blue of the sky, over Bailleul, over the headquarters of a division, over our brigades and trenches and back again, it glinted like silver in the morning sun. The snow-white blobs of bursting shrapnel from our anti-aircraft guns followed its graceful sweeps and curves—followed and followed, but never caught it up; and thousands of our men stared after it. But a more dramatic spectacle was in store for the watchers on the brown roads and in the brown trenches.
A British machine appeared suddenly low against the blue, mounting and flying out of the west. The men in the Albatross were evidently so intent on their task of observing the landscape beneath them and keeping well ahead of our blossoming shrapnel that they failed to observe the approach of the British 'plane as soon as they should have for their own good. They were heading west when they saw their danger, and instantly the Albatross swerved round and sped towards home. But the British flier had the heels of the German and the advantage of the position. It circled and dipped, and down through the clear air aloft came the rippling "tap-tap-tap" of the aerial machine-guns. Again and again the enemy's frantic efforts to escape were frustrated by the skill and daring of the British pilot and the hedging fire of the British guns. Suddenly the gun of the German 'plane jammed and ceased; the pilot was hit and wounded; the Albatross commenced a rapid descent, in which it was followed by the British 'plane to within a thousand feet of the ground. Then, under heavy shell-fire from German batteries, the victorious machine rose and flew away undamaged, and the unfortunate Albatross struck the earth between the front and support trenches of the 14th (Montreal) Battalion and turned turtle. The German pilot was dead; the observer, slightly wounded, crawled to our support trenches and surrendered. The German batteries kept up a hot fire of high explosives and shrapnel on the machine with the object of smashing it beyond hope of repair before the Canadians could salvage it. They made several direct hits, but our men sapped out to the wreck and managed to bring most of it in, piece by piece. Among the articles brought in was the machine-gun that had jammed in the heat of the fight. This was found to be a Colt gun. Closer examination proved it to be one of the original guns of our 14th Battalion—to whose lines it had just made such a dramatic return! The gun had been abandoned during one of the desperate and confused fights of the Second Battle of Ypres half a year before.
Sept. and Oct., 1915.
In these months of September and October great efforts were expended on improving the line. Work in the front positions was done by the occupying battalions, and the troops in reserve came up night after night to assist their labours and to create new secondary positions and drive through fresh communication trenches. Even the training of new units was occasionally and rightly sacrificed to the performance of this essential task. The weather was, on the whole, favourable for these operations, with the exception of three days of rain early in September and a wet week late in October. The 1st Division, long on the ground and fortified by the experience of what good trenches mean for comfort and safety, was pre-eminent in these exertions, as would be proved by the trench-map with its continuous increase, month after month, in the black and zigzag lines of new work. Each tiny scrawl on the surface of such a map represents the labours of hundreds of men, extended over many nights. Second and third lines grew apace, so that a sudden attack of the enemy would still leave trenches to be held and would reduce the German bite to mere nibbles at the forward trench. The communication trenches are driven true and straight from well in the rear, and up these the ration parties toil in safety night after night under their burdens of food, water, ammunition, and R.E. material to feed the front line. These parties know well enough the difference between well-made lines and bad ones. Stooping under the heavy weights as they struggle on through the dark, they will bless in army fashion a smooth and dry surface underfoot and a sound high parapet which protects them from the casual German shells which are searching for them, or the intermittent whistle of the long-range bullet humming on its errand in the dusk. Messengers or stretcher-bearers with their burdens can move backwards or forwards even by day along the well-built hollow, and all those who pass are protected both from the arrow that flieth by night and the terror which walketh in the noonday. Very different is the story of a badly-kept line. It finds carrying parties struggling in, hours late, exhausted by wading through mud and water, and delayed by continually climbing out and walking outside the trench to avoid impassable sections. Here an unlucky shell or a casual bullet may take its toll. The men struggle back with difficulty, arriving hardly before the dawn, and with their period of supposed rest and recuperation turned into the most arduous of labours. It is not too much to say that the efficiency of a regiment or division can be tested by a comparison between the state in which it takes over and that in which it leaves its trenches.
The creation of secondary positions is as important as that of communication trenches, and on this task the Canadian Corps worked unsparingly throughout the autumn.
The disposition of a brigade is two, or on occasion three, battalions in the front line and one or two in support or reserve trenches. But in most cases even the leading regiments will not have their whole strength in the firing trench. One or two companies lie close up in support or reserve to reinforce any threatened point. The nearness of these supports is a very present help in time of trouble, and gives confidence to officers and men, who would be nervous if they knew that no assistance was nearer than a mile away in distance and an hour in time. But these lines must be dug under cover of dark, so the men toiled with the spade through the nights of autumn and blessed the dawn which put a term to their labours. Their record is written on the scarred earth from St. Eloi down to Ploegsteert. Let us hope that the corps which took their place in March was duly grateful for the blessing of a well-constructed line.
Nov., 1915.
With the end of October and the beginning November, however, trouble began. The mists of early autumn had enabled some of the back-line digging to be done by day, without undue attention from the German gunners, but with the rain of the end of the first-named months the efforts of weeks began to dissolve in hours. As a sudden thunderstorm fills all the ditches to the brink, so two days' rain in the horrible clay of Flanders turns every trench into a miniature mill-race. Traverses, parapets, and parados, which in the summer sun had assumed the solidity of Egyptian monuments, collapsed like melting jelly as the torrents tore under the foundations. Men struggled waist-high in water to repair the damage, only to hear the heavy splash of falling earth and sandbags as the rain broke away the trenches as a cheese-scoop cuts out cheese. Many of the communications became impassable, and parties had to walk outside them even in broad daylight and in plain view of the enemy's observers. The situation of the Germans, at any rate, was no better, and our gunners had their revenge on them when they also were compelled to walk in the open. The last fortnight of November was, however, fortunately drier, and the Canadian Corps were able by increased exertions to make their trenches safe and habitable for the winter. The weak places in the trenches were revetted with chicken-wire, and strutted wooden paths two or three feet high, like the crossings of a swollen stream, were placed in the worst parts of the communication trenches, so that even if men's feet were in water, they had a firm foothold beneath them instead of a deadly morass. In this work they were assisted by the 11th (British) Labour Battalion, which was attached on November 1st to the Canadian Corps. A scientific system of drainage was devised and carried out.[[1]]
One can cast one's eye southwards from Voormezeele and St. Eloi through Vierstraat to Kemmel, and from Kemmel and Petit Bois to Wulverghem, Neuve Eglise to Hutte and Ploegsteert, and everywhere line upon line of Canadian trenches score the ground like a succession of gigantic furrows. Far beyond the line extends till it strikes the grey seas of the Channel on the north and the snow-clad Alps on the south. The labour of these vast field-works would have built the Canadian Pacific, and one may wonder how long these gashes in the earth will survive the passions and ideals of the men who created them. For some years after the war soldiers will be able to move freely over the ground where once the bravest man dared scarcely show his head, and say, "Here we charged and here we stood our ground"; or, "It was there the captain fell." Then the kindly work of Nature will crumble the well-built trenches and cover them with grass, and the industry of man will drive the plough once more over the stricken fields of history, and Ypres and St. Eloi will become as Valmy or Gravelotte. None the less, certain great earthworks or craters will remain, and, like the hoof-prints "stamped deep into the flint," will serve to remind the Canada of the future that a line on the soil of Flanders is for the nation holy ground. These upheavals of the raw earth, covered in time by the grass and turf of centuries, may survive almost as long as the great emplacements of the Bronze Age which, after four thousand years, still guard the loop of the Thames by Dorchester, command the valley under White Horse Hill, and ring with a double forty-foot ditch the immemorial Temple of Avebury.
[[1]] On November 27th, 1915, the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, led by Lieut.-Col. Buller, rejoined the Canadian Corps after a long separation.
CHAPTER III
TRENCH RAIDS
The manner of raiding in "No Man's Land"—Winter in grim earnest—The use of the grenade—Changes in methods of warfare—The musket and the field gun—Adaptability of Canadians—Rehearsal of each assault—Good work of the Headquarters Staff—General Lipsett—A bold decision—A gap in the wire entanglements—A desperate venture—A welcome storm—Canadians in the German trenches—The exploit of Captain Costigan—A hot twenty minutes—German prisoners—Bridges placed across the Douve—Lively times in Ploegsteert—Good work of the Seventh Battalion—A series of failures and a stirring success—A "crack shot"—"Missing"—Its significance—-The German line pierced—Careful work of the General Officer Commanding—At work in the enemy's wire—Into the jaws of death—Canadians disguised—The Huns caught napping—Captain McIntyre's report—A timely shot.
Nov., 1915.
The winter had now set in in grim earnest, as the rains and mists of November bore witness. The nights were longer, and with them stretched out hour after hour the possibility of activity denied to the infantry of either side in the long summer days. For great actions or extended movements the sodden soil afforded no scope. The sharp edges of conflict are stationary—sunk in the muddy trenches and nailed down to machine-gun emplacements. But while the fronts of the great war machine are thus held, they are never still. The wear and tear of conflict go on day and night, week after week, month after month. Behind the infantry in their earthy strongholds the great guns of the artillery hide, long-sighted and tireless. Some 30,000 shells a month pour out from their unseen lips—nearly double the number given in exchange by the Germans. But, after all, gunnery is, in the main, an affair of daylight; the dark has given birth to the adventure of the midnight escalade. "One form of midnight activity," says Sir Douglas Haig, in his report of events from December 19th to May 19th, 1916, "deserves special mention, namely, the raids or cutting-out parties which are made at least twice or three times a week against the enemy's line. They consist of a brief attack with some special object on a section of the opposing trenches, usually carried out at night by a small body of men. The character of these operations—the preparation of a road through our own and the enemy's wire, the crossing of the open ground unseen, the penetration of the enemy's trenches, the hand-to-hand fighting in the darkness and the uncertainty as to the strength of the opposing force—give peculiar scope to the gallantry, dash, and quickness of decision of the troops engaged, and much skill and daring are frequently displayed." The Commander-in-Chief adds that the initiative has, on the whole, been with the British, and that statement would certainly be true of the Canadian section of the line. The objects of such expeditions might roughly be described as threefold:—To gain prisoners and information; to lower your opponents' moral—a form of terrorism; and to kill as many Germans as possible before beating a retreat. Two features of the attempts of this character undertaken by the Canadian Corps will at once arrest attention; the immense pains taken to rehearse the actual performance beforehand and the lavish and successful use of bombs as a weapon of offence.
The grenade, indeed, seemed to have passed into history with the fortress warfare of which it was the product. It has always required for its effective use an enemy tethered to his ground and impervious from his cover to rifle fire. In open fighting the rifle must always have the mastery of any hand-thrown weapon because of its superior range. Now the importance of fortifications or fixed defences has always depended on the nature of the weapons employed by man. The original dyke, moat, or vallum, from the Stone Age to the Fall of Rome and the rise of the Middle Ages, gave the defender the advantage both of cover against arrow or javelin, and of the psychological moment for the counter-attack, sword or spear in hand, as the advancing force floundered in confusion against a sudden obstacle. It was used as the Duke of Wellington used the ridge of Busaco and many other crests of the Peninsula to inflict the maximum loss on the assailant, and to keep reserves well in hand for a counter-stroke, the power and place of which could not be foreseen by the enemy. It possessed, of course, the disadvantage of all field works of a non-continuous nature: it might be outflanked and surrounded. It was to guard against this danger that Imperial Rome in the second century constructed a permanent line of works, wherever Nature failed in her protection, from the mouths of the Rhine to the mouths of the Danube, and from Carlisle to Newcastle, and thus produced the only parallel to the gigantic trenches which bestride Europe to-day. The defence of such a system implied, of course, a great Central Power; and as that Power sank into impotence, the fortress keep of stone, impervious to anything but treachery or starvation, arose in its place to protect the local potentate against his neighbour. But these great structures again vanished into smoke before the blasting force of gunpowder. Earthworks were the next answer of the defence to the new attack, but these in their turn failed because no country had the population, the wealth, or the will to keep an adequate garrison on the whole of a threatened frontier, while an army superior in the field could outflank the defender or compel him to give battle in the open. The musket and the field gun became, therefore, the supreme arbiters of war, and sieges a mere incident in their struggles. Napoleon simply carried the process to its logical conclusion. But the advance of science brought new developments in its train. First, it gave weapons so terrible that men could hardly live against them in the open field, and the advantage was to the prepared defence. This in itself would have mattered little, for Metz would have fallen in 1870 by starvation though it had been as strong in guns as the Russian fortress of Port Arthur. But science also gave populations great enough to hold with a continuous garrison, as did the Roman Empire, the whole line of national frontiers. With this the inherent weakness of the field work, its liability to outflanking, vanishes; and we come back once more to fortress warfare, and with it to the grenade. In all sieges the grenade is there, from the seventeenth century to Badajos, Sevastopol, and Port Arthur. The opposing trenches are impervious to rifle fire, but not to the lobbing of high explosives thrown in a curve from anything up to forty yards. Neither side was quite prepared for this development, and the original jam-tin bomb with a protruding fuse lit by a match was indeed a sorry device begot of native ingenuity and urgent need, and was soon improved upon. The 1st Canadian Division showed their adaptability by taking very readily to the new weapon. The Guards acted as their instructors, and the Canadian Corps set the pace at once by being the only troops that attached to each brigade a bombing-school of its own.
The result of this earnest preparation was seen in the success of the bombing assaults in the encounters of the winter of 1915-16. Perhaps more admirable, because more rare, was the careful rehearsal of each assault given to the units behind the lines. The photographs taken by the aeroplanes and the results of dangerous personal reconnaissances were used in this service, until an accurate model of the enemy's trenches could be dug and each man could go through the precise task he would have to perform at the actual moment of crisis. Rarely were these ground plans found to be wrong. But the Staff which could conceive and carry out such a laborious undertaking deserves to be given the kind of praise which history has bestowed on the Headquarters Staff of the great Von Moltke. They had grasped the true principle underlying all success in war. You must practise and practise the expected together and disseminate all available knowledge through all ranks, so that when the unexpected comes, as it must in battle, every man knows the situation and the probable conduct of his neighbours, and can act on his own initiative without throwing the whole plan into irremediable confusion.
The doctrine, at any rate, was justified by its results. Early in November the Officer Commanding the 2nd Infantry Brigade (Brigadier-General Lipsett) decided that conditions on his front were ripe for the proving of his belief that strong parties of determined troops, properly equipped and led and operating on carefully-planned lines, could enter the German trenches and inflict casualties out of all proportion to their own losses, make prisoners, and get away. These objects were fully realised. At this time "No Man's Land" on the whole Canadian front was well in our control, and so completely so in the area through which the River Douve meanders from the German position before Douve Farm to a point at which it cuts our trenches just north of Red Lodge, that German patrols seldom ventured beyond their wire entanglements. The Scouts from the 5th Battalion, commanded by Lieut.-Col. G. S. Tuxford, reported a gap in the wire before the point of their intended attack twenty yards in width and leading to the hostile parapet. The scouts of the 7th, however, found that a screen of trees protected the defences before the point selected by their battalion for entry into the German trench. The Commanding Officer of the 7th (Lieut.-Col. V. W. Odlum) then decided that such wire-cutting as was required for his share in the raid should be done by hand.
The night closed in chilly with a promise of rain. The moon was frequently obscured by clouds. Lieut. W. D. Holmes, Sergeants Merston and Ashby (7th Battalion), and Corporals Odlum and Babcock crept out and were busy with the enemy's wire by nine o'clock. They worked on this job until midnight, lying flat when the moon was clear, and cutting fast when it was clouded. As the task was one which caused both muscular and nervous fatigue, hot cocoa was carried out to the wire-cutters at intervals during those three hours. During that time two lanes were cut completely through the German entanglements. They ran diagonally so as not to be observed from the German parapet, and converged on the point of attack. Satisfied with his work in the wire, Lieut. Holmes then took up his bridging party and spanned the River Douve in three places. One bridge was laid at a point within sixteen yards of the German parapet. Sergeant Ashby and Lance-Corporal Weir were conspicuous in this enterprise.
The raiders from both battalions were to enter the German trench at 2.30 a.m., but the attacks were entirely separate as to their striking points and their control.
The 5th Battalion party, under Lieuts. J. E. Purslow and K. L. T. Campbell, was checked directly beneath the German parapet by an obstacle which had been overlooked by their reconnoitring party. That obstacle was a trench or ditch about 12 feet wide and 6 feet deep, full of water from the overflow of the Douve. In the water, rising from the bottom of the ditch to within a couple of feet of the muddy surface, were coils and tangles and strands of barbed wire. Five men of the party fell into this ditch and were with difficulty rescued. The officers made several attempts to negotiate it, only to learn that it could not be crossed either by swimming or wading. As further investigations failed to disclose a passage across the wired and flooded ditch, the party bombed across it into the heavily-manned trench. This grenade fire, delivered at a considerable distance from the 7th Battalion's point of attack, doubtless served well in misleading the enemy as to the extent and exact location of the threat against his front. Also, it must have caused him numerous casualties.
Their supply of grenades exhausted, the 5th Battalion party returned to their own line.
In the meantime, the British Columbians (7th Battalion) had left our front-line trench by way of a gap in our parapet in front of Irish Farm. Led by scouts along the Douve, they crossed the bridges, passed the lanes through the enemy wire, and scaled the hostile parapet, and commenced operations.
Capt. C. T. Costigan, grenade instructor for the brigade, led one party of thirteen men, and Lieut. McIllree led another. These parties were composed of bayonet-men, grenadiers, grenade-carriers, wire-men, and shovel-men. Every man wore a black mask, and none carried any badge or mark of identification. Each bayonet-man had a small electric lamp fastened to his bayonet in such a way that he could flash it without shifting his grip on the rifle.
Lieut. A. H. Wrightson followed with the rifle party and telephone. His command consisted of five riflemen, a telephonist, a linesman, and two stretcher-bearers.
Before the raiders reached the German wire a sudden heavy downpour of rain commenced. Under the black screen and splashing patter of the storm our men went over the enemy parapet. Capt. Costigan and Lieut. McIllree dropped into the trench together—on top of a German sentry crouched beneath a sheet of corrugated iron, seeking shelter from the rain. McIllree shot the sentry, seized another German, disarmed him and threw him down, then clubbed yet another of the enemy with the German rifle. He was then overtaken by his men, and they all moved down the trench to the right, bombing, bayoneting, and shooting as they went. In the meantime, Capt. Costigan—a medium-sized officer of the most charming manners—had dispatched three of the enemy with his revolver and bombed his way along the trench to the left for a distance of three bays before being joined by his party.
The trench was heavily garrisoned, and (as we afterwards learned from the prisoners) the men had been warned by their officers to expect an attack, but all the forewarning had not forearmed them sufficiently for their salvation.
For twenty minutes the Canadians toiled terribly in the outraged stronghold of the enemy, by the light of star-shells from the German support trenches, under a tumult of fire from artillery and machine-guns in both lines and the crashing of their own bombs. The dug-outs were full. While our raiders made prisoners of the occupants of some dug-outs by dragging them bodily forth, and dead men of others by simply throwing grenades in at the narrow doorways, our artillery made a barrage in the rear of the invaded trench and our machine-guns searched with their fire all the roads by which German reinforcements would be likely to move. Lieut. Wrightson, with his rifle party, remained at the point of entry into the German trench during the bombing. He communicated the progress of the affair by telephone to the Commanding Officer of the 7th Battalion, and the officer in charge of operations (Capt. L. J. Thomas) guarded against a German counter-attack from the rear and passed prisoners over the parapet to our scouts. The scouts took the prisoners as they came over the parapet to our bridge-covering parties; these in turn passed them back to a strong party which supported one of our listening posts, and from the listening post they were handed back to and through the gap in our front line.
When the allotted time of twenty minutes was up, Lieut. Wrightson gave the signal for the bombing parties to get out and come back.
As soon as our men were clear of the enemy's parapet our artillery dropped its fire from the German communicating roads and rear positions to the bombed trench, in the hope of catching the reinforcements which the enemy was sure to have got up by this time at all costs to repulse the invasion. It is probable that our gunners' hope was realised.
The return of the raiders across "No Man's Land" was safely accomplished. Captors and captives retired immediately from our front-line trench by the rising and waning illumination of star-shells shooting up hysterically from the enemy's bewildered positions. They moved back to safety under a brisk fire of a variety of weapons.
But this condition of being "under fire" is nothing to write about so long as one happens to be far enough under it.
Lieuts. Holmes and Wrightson, with their scouts and riflemen, did not come in until they had withdrawn all our bridges from the Douve.
The artillery and machine-guns put the finishing touches on the offensive operation. At about four in the morning every British and Canadian gun cut loose again and drubbed the German positions for twenty minutes. Machine-guns spat from every grey bush behind Irish Farm. The woods about Red Lodge and all the hedges on the Ploegsteert Road were red and alive with flashes of field-guns and howitzers. From Romarin way several big naval guns joined in the game.
Thus the enterprise at La Petite Douve was accomplished without a hitch. A handful of men of the 7th Canadian Battalion had gone into the German trench, killed at least fifty of the enemy, and brought away twelve prisoners. They had knocked parapets, dug-outs, and machine-gun emplacements about. The artillery had knocked things about, too, in their part of the enterprise, and who knows the extent of the casualties caused by our high explosives, our shrapnel, and the fire of our machine-guns?
The moral of the enemy had been shaken and his nerves unstrung. Fame and decorations had been won, and fresh glory for Canadian arms; a new branch of the science of trench warfare had been demonstrated and proved; and against all this one Canadian soldier had given his life and another a little of his blood.
The next episode begins with a series of failures and ends with a striking success. A large tree felled across the Messines-Armentières road by artillery fire, at a point within one hundred and twenty yards of our front line, had been gradually built into a formidable barricade by the enemy. Several attempts by our artillery to demolish this strong point failed, owing to an obstructive screen of large trees along the roadside. This barricade grew in strength daily. Strong wire entanglements were put across its face and across the ditches on its flanks, which ran parallel to the road from our position to the front line of the enemy. The garrison moved in and out by way of the roadside ditches.
Several gallant attacks were made on this position before it was finally taken and demolished. In an unsuccessful attack led by Lieuts. N. W. F. Rant and A. V. Evans, of the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles, Lieut. Rant was wounded by the explosion of a German grenade.
Dec. 8th, 1915.
A week later, on the night of December 8th, after a careful reconnaissance by daylight, Lieut. John Galt, Jr., of Lord Strathcona's Horse, and fourteen grenadiers and riflemen of his regiment, assaulted the barricade. The enemy held the position in force, and his fire was too heavy for the Strathconas. Our party was driven in, and Lieut. Galt and two of his men were left wounded on the ground. Of the twelve who got back to our lines, eight were wounded.
Dec. 14th, 1915.
On the night of December 14th-15th, the 5th Battalion and the 3rd Battery Canadian Field Artillery took the barricade in hand. Preliminary work was done by our artillery on the 12th, 13th, and 14th. During the bombardment of the position on the 13th, twenty Germans broke from the cover of the barricade and made a dash across the open for their own lines. Sergeant McGlashan, of the 5th Battalion, a crack shot and an opportunist, dropped five of the enemy before they could reach their parapet.
The 5th Battalion had constructed an emplacement for a field gun in our front line where our trench cuts the Messines-Armentières road. From a flank of the emplacement they sapped out towards the barricade.
Dec. 15th, 1915.
Early on the morning of the 15th an 18-pounder from the 3rd Battery Canadian Field Artillery was brought down the road by an armoured car to within a couple of hundred yards of the prepared emplacement. From that point it was man-handled into position in our trench by Capt. G. V. Taylor and his gun crew. Attacking parties from the 5th, commanded by Lieuts. K. T. Campbell and K. A. Mahaffy, and supports under Lieut. E. H. Latter, took up position to right and left of the gun and just outside the parapet.
It was now four o'clock in the morning. On the minute our artillery opened against the German trenches with shrapnel and high explosive, and Capt. Taylor's gun cut loose at the barricade, point blank at 120 yards, firing five rounds a minute for five minutes. Then our guns in the rear lifted their fire from the enemy's front line to his reserve trenches, and the attacking parties of grenadiers and riflemen advanced to the site of the barricade. Four dead and two living Germans were found in the ruins of wire and sandbags. The living were captured and sent back to our trench. Live wires were discovered in the bottom of a ditch on a flank and immediately in rear of the position. These were cut in a hurry, in the belief that one or more of them connected mine locations near at hand with the hostile trench. Our men then mined the ruined barrier and retired to one of our saps. The German artillery and machine-guns now became active, and retaliated heavily against the wrecked barricade and our front line and winter trenches.
During the examination of the prisoners it was learned that three wounded Canadians—one of them an officer—had been passed back through Messines a few days before. It was suggested more in a reliance upon hope than upon fact that those men may have been Lieut. Galt and the survivors from the attack of December 18th, when Lieut. Galt and two men were left behind. All we know is that his name appeared in the list of "Missing"—a word which means a greater tragedy than any other in the casualty list. The dead have died in their glory, and of them we know the best and the worst; the wounded we expect and hope to see again; but the missing remain for months nothing but a supreme and torturing anxiety.[[1]]
Jan. 30th, 1916.
On the night of January 30th-31st, 1916, two battalions of the 6th Canadian Infantry Brigade (Brigadier-General Ketchen), supported by artillery, machine-guns, and trench mortars, succeeded in an important attack against the unsuspecting enemy on their brigade front. The objects of this operation were the same as those of the 7th Battalion's offensive in November, to obtain prisoners and information, to cause casualties, apprehension, and material damage. This enterprise exceeded that of our 2nd Brigade in that it pierced the German line at two widely separated points.
In their conception and plans of attack the General Officer Commanding the 6th Brigade and his Staff gave the same careful attention to details as had their comrades of the 2nd Brigade two months before.
The 28th (North-West) Battalion's objective was a point on the northern side, and that of the 29th (Vancouver) Battalion a point on the southern face of the Spanbroekmolen salient. Here, a little to the south-east of Kemmel and about the centre of the Canadian line, the German line runs sharply in to a western thrust over some 1,900 yards, and the attacks were like the jaws of pincers gripping the base of the protuberance at that distance from each other. The two objectives were about eleven hundred yards apart. The wire in front of these selected points was cut solely by hand, as one of the chief features of this attack was to dispense with the customary artillery preparation and so take the enemy by complete surprise.
The operation, as has been stated, consisted of two widely separated and individual attacks, delivered simultaneously, both maintained in the hostile trenches for the same number of minutes and simultaneously withdrawn. Scout-Sergeant Turner and Corporal Conlin, of the 28th Battalion, worked in the enemy's wire from 10 p.m. to 1.45 in the morning, and stayed there until joined by the attacking party, with whom they entered the German trench at about twenty minutes to three. The enemy's entanglements had been strongly reinforced during the previous day, under cover of a heavy fog; but Turner and Conlin stuck to their difficult and dangerous task and completed it without an error.
The raiders of both battalions advanced from their positions of readiness in "No Man's Land" at half-past two sharp. The 28th Battalion party, thirty strong, commanded by Capts. D. E. MacIntyre and K. C. Taylor, lost a few minutes in negotiating the trunk of a fallen tree, and were still strung out in the German wire when sounds of exploding grenades and an increased flaring of star-shells told them that their comrades of the 29th were already in violent touch with the enemy. There was no time to lose. Lives hang on fractions of seconds in such work as this. The two captains and the two tireless wire-cutters were still in the lead. Together they crawled up the sloping face of the big German parapet, and each threw a grenade into the crowded trench. Four explosions followed. Sentries shouted and fired their rifles. Capt. MacIntyre accounted for one of the sentries with the second shot of his automatic. Then the four leaders jumped down into the 10-foot-deep trench, into the midst of confusion and rage and fear. The other raiders followed them with a rush.
Here were thirty Canadians with blackened faces[[2]] and armed with sudden death in a trench full of Germans. Many of the Germans were "standing to," many had but then scrambled from their dug-outs, their blankets still about them, and their feet still unbooted. Make the picture for yourself, with the help of these extracts from Capt. Macintyre's report:—
"The trench seemed full of men running both ways.... Almost at once Corporal Conlin fell at my feet shot through the head. Behind Conlin was a Hun. I shot him through the stomach. The noise was frightful, and I could not tell where it was coming from. The flares made it nearly as light as day. I was knocked down by something once, but don't know what it was.
"After six minutes I blew the horn, and all the men heard it and the squads retired to the point of entry. Capt. Taylor held the right and Sergeant Cameron the left. I asked them if all their squads were out, and they said 'Yes.' Then I told them to 'beat it,' and we all jumped."
The casualties suffered by this party were two men killed and two officers and eight men wounded. Capt. Taylor, though wounded in the leg while in the very act of invading the trench, did terrible execution. It is claimed for him that he killed fourteen of the enemy, shooting some and bayoneting others. He was wounded in eight places, but returned to our lines unaided when the affair was over.
The majority of our casualties were caused by a machine-gun which enfiladed the invaded trench. This gun was fortunately put out of action by a bomb from our trench-mortars just before the retirement commenced. The 28th Battalion party brought out no prisoners, but inflicted thirty-nine casualties by actual count.
While the North-Westerners were thus engaged at Peckham, the raiders of the 29th Battalion were as busily employed in their chosen place of trench at Spanbroekmolen. The officers in charge of the Vancouver Battalion's assault were Lieuts. G. I. Gwynn, N. E. O'Brien, and L. A. Wilmot. Lieut. Wilmot and his men cut the wire, then acted as guides to the others, and accompanied them into the trench. The leading men of the right and left parties went over the parapet together, using the loophole of a machine-gun emplacement as a step. Sergeant Dungan bayoneted the first two sentries encountered by the left party. Lieut. O'Brien entered a dug-out and captured one of its inmates. A machine-gun opened fire on the raiders, but the gunner was promptly shot by Lieuts. Wilmot and O'Brien and the gun and the dug-out of the crew were bombed. Other dug-outs were also bombed. The right party, on the other flank of the central machine-gun emplacement, did equally fine execution. The work of Lieut. Gwynn was conspicuous.
Things had gone very well with the raiders thus far, when Lieut. Wilmot was wounded by a grenade. In spite of his injury he kept his head clear and a grip on the situation. Seeing that a number of prisoners had been taken and that the alarm of the enemy had become general, he ordered a retirement, and then signalled to our artillery to open fire. The return to our lines was accomplished without accident.
The 29th Battalion killed at least twenty of the enemy, did considerable damage to dug-outs and machine-guns, and brought back three prisoners. Lieut. Wilmot, Sergeant Kirkland, and two men were wounded.
These two successful raids illustrate not inaptly the various phases through which advance patrol work has gone. The first stage, as soon as trench warfare set in, was the casual encounters of hostile parties in the dark. The second was the organised trench raid by night, in which the Canadians led the way. The last stage was reached in midsummer, before the Canadians fought on the Somme, when the 19th Ontario Battalion made a most successful daylight rush into the enemy trenches, led by Lieuts. B. O. Hooper and S. S. Burnham. They disposed of forty or fifty of the enemy, and after remaining in the enemy's lines for five minutes returned with very valuable information as to the enemy's dispositions. And these, as I have said, are instances, chosen almost at a venture, to show in what manner and under what conditions we go raiding in "No Man's Land."
[[1]] Lieut. John Galt was taken prisoner, but died of his wounds very soon afterwards. He was buried by the enemy, and the words "Here lies a British Officer" inscribed on his tomb.
[[2]] The one thing most likely to be seen by the flare-lights sent up by the enemy is the face of an opponent. Those advancing in "No Man's Land," therefore, blacken their faces to avoid being seen.
CHAPTER IV
FORMATION OF THE THIRD DIVISION
Coming events cast no shadows before—General Seely's command redistributed—The Seventh Brigade in the trenches—Heavy bombardment at Messines—Fortified positions of the Huns battered—Good work of the Artillery—Three privates distinguish themselves—Death of a daring explorer in "No Man's Land"—Visit of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales and the Colonial Secretary—Canadians co-operate with British—A terrific bombardment—The Huns establish themselves in British trenches—Canadian guns aid the British—"Tobin's Tigers"—The Tenth Battalion in a serious encounter—A fierce medley in the dark—An unfortunate day—Two Generals wounded—A survey of the strategic position—-The force of massed artillery—A new era—Mr. Lloyd George's work—Iron lips produce conclusive arguments—A successful ruse—Ingenious device of Captain Costigan—A swollen river aids the Canadians—A hero indeed—An exchange of front—The value of salients questioned—The problem of transferring a sector—The Battle of St. Eloi a joint affair—Description of the ground—The process of exchange described—Adequate reasons for changes—A critical moment—Second Canadian Division supports the British—Six huge craters created by exploding mines—Activity of Northumberlands and Royal Fusiliers—Timely assistance of Canadians acknowledged—The "Canadians' Trench"—The enemy cleared out of debatable land—Good fighting of the enemy at St. Eloi—Trenches filled with the dead of both combatants—The Sixth Canadian Brigade to the relief.
Dec., 1915.
The main event of the New Year was the formation of the 3rd Division. Authority to create this force had been received in the last week of December, and at the same time the 7th and 8th Brigades had come into being. The 7th Brigade, which was commanded by Brigadier-General MacDonell (who handed over the command of Lord Strathcona's Horse, R.C., to Lieut.-Col. C. M. Nelles, C.M.G.) consisted of the Princess Patricia's Light Infantry (Lieut.-Col. C. H. Buller), the Royal Canadian Regiment (Lieut.-Col. C. H. Hill, D.S.O.), the 42nd Royal Highlanders of Canada (Lieut.-Col. G. S. Cantlie), and the 49th (Edmonton) Canadian Battalion (Lieut.-Col. W. A. Griesbach), all of which had been acting for some time as corps troops. The 8th Brigade was made up of the six Canadian Mounted Rifle regiments, which had up till now been part of Seely's force. They were made into four battalions of infantry, known as the 1st (Lieut.-Col. A. E. Shaw), 2nd (Lieut.-Col. C. L. Bott), 4th (Lieut.-Col. S. F. Smith), and 5th (Lieut.-Col. G. H. Baker) Canadian Mounted Rifles, and placed under the command of Brigadier-General Williams. Early in January the 3rd Division was constituted out of these two brigades, and Major-General Mercer was appointed to the command. Coming events cast no shadows before, and there was no fore-knowledge of the ill-luck which was to attend one of the distinguished officers, and the death in action which awaited the other. All seemed fair for the prospects of the 3rd Division, which was within a few months to pass through the most terrible ordeal that the Canadians had yet sustained. The creation of this new force scattered Brigadier-General Seely's command.[[1]] The Canadian Mounted Rifles, as we have seen, were incorporated in the 3rd Division, while the Cavalry Brigade was removed altogether from the Corps Command. The 2nd King Edward's Horse was dispatched on January 14th to General Headquarters, and the remaining units, the Royal Canadian Dragoons, Strathcona's Horse, and the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, were attached on January 26th to the 1st Indian Cavalry Division at Friville.[[2]]
General Seely commanded a Brigade holding the front trench line since May of 1915, and it was unfortunate that the fact of his commanding a Cavalry Brigade compelled him to abandon the advanced command on the redistribution of the cavalry units. In the opinion of the Higher Command and of all Canadian officers who came in contact with him, he exhibited conspicuous intelligence, coolness, and courage in a degree which qualified him for high command and a distinguished military career.
Jan 7th, 1916.
By the end of the first week in January the 7th Brigade was able to begin its share of trench duties, and took over from the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division. Their first turn of duty as a Brigade was a long one, lasting for full three weeks. The month was, on the whole, a quiet one until the trench raid of January 30th/31st, described in the previous chapter. The weather turned from wet to fine and cold, and the most persistent reminders of winter were the occasional fogs, which settled down like white blankets on the flats and enabled parties to move about with impunity in the day-time.
The artillery bombardment on both sides formed the main feature of the month. Although the corps was not able to keep up the great superiority over the Germans in the number of shells fired in November and December, very heavy bombardment of the trenches in front of Messines took place. The enemy, perhaps in reply, shelled the front trenches somewhat severely. On the whole, however, their bombardments were characterised by the usual features—a wide dispersement of shells over a large area, Dranoutre being heavily bombarded during the early part of the month. This kind of attack is annoying rather than serious. The policy of the Canadian gunners was very different. It was to concentrate on objects of real importance. Organised bombardments of sections of the enemy's front were carried out by the artillery, and the combination of the heavy batteries and field guns was most effective. German mounds and fortified positions near the front lines were battered in, and all machine-gun emplacements were carefully registered in case of sudden emergencies. It is the custom of the enemy to occupy farm buildings as redoubts, and two direct hits were obtained by the gunners at La Douve Farm on January 7th. Germans were seen scattering as the result of these shots, and were instantly pursued by shrapnel. It is necessary to lay some stress on the work of the artillery, which is liable to suffer neglect; only the infantry can know the relief of hearing the guns roaring over their heads.
Jan. 16th and 17th, 1916.
Throughout the month of January considerable liveliness in patrol work was kept up, and if encounters between parties were infrequent, this fact was due to Teutonic caution. Some encounters, however, did take place, and there was fighting on the 16th and 17th on the front of the 3rd Infantry Brigade.
Jan. 22nd and 23rd, 1916.
On the night of the 22nd and 23rd the 8th Battalion (Winnipeg Rifles) made a careful reconnaissance of their front—a task in which Privates Bole, Gunn, and Matkin, scouts of the regiment, particularly distinguished themselves in a short, severe encounter with the enemy. Here again the lack of automatic pistols and sufficient ammunition proved a handicap in the struggle.
The incidents in which good work was done are almost too numerous to mention, but a particular interest attaches to the death of Lieut. Owen, of the 7th British Columbia Regiment, well known as a daring explorer in "No Man's Land." Lieut. Owen and three of his men encountered some fifteen Germans in the sudden and nerve-breaking way which characterises a patrol battle. A fierce fight with revolvers and bombs ensued, and four Germans at least were seen to fall; then the bombs ran out, and a retreat became imperative. The officer ordered the men to retire, saying, "I am coming right after you," and remained, covering the retreat by revolver fire. He never returned, and when his party went back to seek him they found him lying in the wet ground with a bullet through his head.
The end of the month, which passed in comparative quiet until the assault of the night of the 30th, described in the previous chapter, was chiefly marked by the arrival of two distinguished visitors.
Jan. 28th, 1916.
On January 28th H.R.H. the Prince of Wales spent a day with the Canadian Corps, surveying the whole field from the eminences behind the lines and passing down a portion of the front trenches. He met and conversed with the various Brigadiers and a few of the Regimental Commanders. On the 30th, Mr. Bonar Law, Secretary of State for the Colonies, whose interest in the corps is well known, arrived, and addressed the 31st (Alberta) Battalion.
Map—Ypres-Armentières area
Feb., 1916.
In February began that period of close co-operation with the V British Corps which was destined to last for nearly seven weeks owing to the persistent fighting at the Bluff and about the Mound of St. Eloi. So long is the range of modern artillery that the guns of neighbouring corps and divisions can be of the greatest assistance to the actual combatants by firing slantwise into the enemy positions around the field of action, while an infantry demonstration may hold up his reserves. Feb. 13th, 1916. About three o'clock in the afternoon of February 13th a terrific bombardment was directed against the British trenches north of the Bluff, a high artificial mound covered with trees immediately north of the Ypres-Comines Canal; a series of mines was exploded in the neighbourhood of Hill 60 and in the direction of Hooge and of Sanctuary Wood. As the dusk fell several assaults were delivered along the line defended subsequently by the Canadians on the day of June 2nd. The majority of these assaults were repelled, but the Germans broke through the Bluff north of the canal, and succeeded in establishing themselves in the British front trenches, where they stayed until they were expelled on March 2nd. This action was the beginning of many woes to both combatants. The moment the trouble started the V (British) Corps called up the Canadians and asked for the help of their guns. This was readily accorded, and throughout the evening of the 13th and the day of the 14th a combined Anglo-Canadian shoot was directed with success on the German positions in front of the Bluff. Feb. 16th, 1916. Further relief to the British was afforded by an extension of our line on the night of February 16th, 700 yards to the north, as to set free the Northumberland Fusiliers. This task was given to the 6th Brigade, and brought it into the trenches which flanked the line on the right of the St. Eloi position, and from which the final relief of the Northumberlands was made in the battle of the first week of April. The 29th (Vancouver, "Tobin's Tigers"), supported by the 28th (North-West), took over this additional task.
Patrol fighting went on steadily all this time. Early in the month of February a particularly exciting action was fought between a large party of the 10th (Western Canada) Battalion and an equally numerous party of Germans. It had been decided to creep up, cut the German barbed wire, and bomb their front-line trenches. Lieut. Kent and Sergeant Milne, of the 10th, with two privates, succeeded in cutting the wire, and were joined by a column of fifty men. While waiting immediately in front of the German trench for the best opportunity of bombing the enemy positions, a patrol of thirty or forty Germans stumbled across them from the flank. A fierce medley in the dark followed, the Germans attacking with bombs and revolvers, and our men with grenades, bayonets, and knobkerries.[[3]] The enemy machine-guns took the alarm and fired blindly into the scrimmage. Eventually the German patrol was dispersed with heavy casualties, and the 10th returned with five prisoners.
Feb. 23rd, 1916.
The 17th was an unfortunate day for the Canadian Corps. Brigadier-Generals MacDonell and Leckie were both hit by stray bullets and seriously wounded during their tour of the trenches.[[4]] On the 23rd, the 9th Brigade of the 3rd Division was formed. It consisted of the 43rd Canadian Battalion, under Lieut.-Col. R. McD. Thomson; 52nd, under Lieut.-Col. A. W. Hay; 58th, under Lieut.-Col. H. A. Genet; and 60th, under Lieut.-Col. F. A. de L. Gascoigne, and was placed under the command of Brigadier-General F. W. Hill, D.S.O. The 3rd Division had now its three brigades; and with a sharp brush between the 42nd (Royal Highlanders of Canada) Battalion and some over-adventurous Germans, the month came to a close.
The Canadian Corps was now approaching the second crisis in the history of its various divisions; this was to lead them through three months of continuous fighting steadily northwards across the blood-stained fields of St. Eloi and Hooge until they almost reached the scene of the Second Battle of Ypres. To grasp the inner meaning of these movements and the consequences to which they led, it is essential to take a wider survey of the strategic position which the Allied Commanders had to face on the Western front. Two great bodies of the German reserves were known to be in existence, the first opposite Verdun, the second in the region of the northern British line. Whether this last concentration was a defensive measure against a possible British advance, or portended a third German assault on the Ypres salient, could not in the month of March be known for certain. One fact at least was clear. The persistent and violent offensive against Verdun which marked that month made it incumbent on the British armies to come to the assistance of the French. This was done in two ways. A fourth army was assembled out of the growing hosts in France, and the Arras sector of the line given into its charge—a step which released a French army for the heroic contest before Verdun—while a series of attacks was delivered from the original British line, any of which might have been the beginning of an assault on a larger scale. The actions of the Bluff, of the Mound of St. Eloi, and of Vimy, were designed to show the enemy that in the northern line we were "ware and waking," and to pin the enemy reserves to the ground. Nor, it may be added, were the Germans slow to take up the challenge.
Mar. 2nd, 1916.
Indeed, the whole series of actions with which the remainder of this volume is concerned began with the German assault on February 12th on the Bluff, when the troops of the V British Corps, who held the line on the left of the Canadians, were driven from the position on the Bluff and the front-line trenches to the north. Preparations had been made for the recapture of the lost positions, and the advance took place on March 2nd. The Divisional Artillery of the 1st and 2nd Canadian Divisions[[5]] co-operated that day with the gunners of the V British Corps in a terrific bombardment of the ground to be taken. As a result of this fire a large section of the German front-line trenches and communication trenches north of the canal was reduced to ruins, and the successful assault of the British on the morning of March 2nd met with little resistance. The lost ground was regained and consolidated. This action was one of the first to demonstrate the increased blasting force of massed artillery, which became the standard weapon of offence on either side during the battles of the next five months. The continued piling up of munitions and guns during the preceding twelve months had begun to modify profoundly the tactics of the Western front, and it would be alike an error and an injustice to judge the performance of the infantry in the spring of 1916 by the standards of the previous year. The old British idea of a solid and immovable front line held almost entirely by the fire of a rifleman to a yard of trench, was beginning to give way in the stress of circumstances and the example of the French.
A line more lightly held by the aid of machine-guns and wire entanglements, and a greater disposition to yield or gain ground, were the signs of a new era. But chiefly the enemy's guns were our teachers, for their iron lips pronounced very conclusive arguments.
However, if the main work of the Canadians in the attack on the Bluff lay with the Canadian gunners, the infantry were by no means idle. They assisted the V Corps by a demonstration on their front, and by massing three battalions of the 4th Infantry Brigade behind their left flank to come to the aid of the British in the event of a counter-attack. All arms contributed to the frontal demonstration. In the early morning of March 2nd smoke-bombs were loosed from the trenches as though in prelude to an attack, and a great blare of musketry and machine-gun fire roared up and down the line. The Germans sprang to arms and hurried supports up their communication trenches into their lightly-held front line. It was for this that our field guns had been waiting, and with continued bursts of fire they ranged the denser masses opposite as they came crowding into the trenches. The retaliation of the German artillery was singularly ineffective, probably because their attention was now wholly occupied with the line further north. This operation produced one striking incident of ingenuity in warfare. At one point in the corps position the stream of the Douve, flowing rapidly with the winter rains, ran through our trenches and disappeared into the German line. This fact suggested to Capt. Costigan, D.S.O., of the 10th Battalion, a new method of alarming the Hun.
This enterprising officer suggested that a raft loaded with high explosive might be floated down the current and exploded in the enemy's lines.
The stream was, however, narrow, and, as anyone who has thrown sticks into a river will remember, the tendency of a floating object is to get stuck on some obstacle or corner on the way down. Capt. Costigan therefore proposed to accompany the raft himself until it was within certain reach of the objective. He and Corporal Witney came out of the trenches and carried the raft to the river. After floating down some distance, he found the stream continually obstructed by low overhanging boughs, and to avoid any chance of failure he continued to pilot his dangerous convoy to within thirty yards of where the German barbed wire, stretched across the channel, barred any further progress. Here he waited in the water until the light of a flare gave the signal for the general demonstration. The fuse was then lit and the load shot fair at the enemy's obstruction from a distance of thirty yards. The explosion was a very fine one, and so perturbed the gentle soul of the enemy that he fired off several concealed machine-guns, the existence of which the 10th Battalion had long suspected but the location of which they had never known. Writing in cold blood, it is easy to represent such a feat of arms as ordinary, but when one considers what the action really entailed, the exploit was heroic even as we count heroism to-day. It was something which an ordinary man could not have done and could not reasonably have been expected to do. The long stumble in the dark with sudden death in one's hands, the plunge into the icy stream, the physical struggle with the sweeping boughs and jutting bends, the swift drift down towards the enemy, and the calm waiting in the cold, dark water for the given signal, serve to show that the most romantic deeds of the hero of fiction can be matched and mastered in the battlefields of to-day.
That the whole demonstration was a success is witnessed by the following telegram from the V Corps:—
"SINCERE THANKS FOR YOUR MOST VALUABLE CO-OPERATION. SHOULD ENEMY RENEW COUNTER-ATTACK TO-MORROW AT DAWN OR LATER, HOPE YOU WILL AGAIN HELP US."
Mar., 1916.
Early in March orders were issued by the 2nd Army Commander for the exchange of fronts between the V and the Canadian Corps. The sector held by the V Corps runs from the Ypres-Roulers Railway just north of Hooge down south as far as St. Eloi. It constituted the southern half of the Ypres salient, and was by common consent about the worst portion of the whole British line. In the autumn of 1914 during the first battle of Ypres, it had been heroically defended by the Guards Brigade, the Household Cavalry, and the 7th Division, seldom mustering more than 5,000 men at any given time, against the successive attacks of two German Army Corps and of the Prussian Guard lasting for a month.
The V Corps had now held it for little short of a year, and had during that period incurred heavy losses. Nor is this to be wondered at when one considers the number of general and minor actions which had taken place in the area since the great attack on Hill 60 in April, 1915. The trenches round Hooge had continually changed hands. Fierce divisional actions had been fought there on June 16th, July 30th, and August 8th, 1915; while later in the autumn an unsuccessful British assault had been launched against the Bellewarde Lake line. Of minor actions there had been no end, while the great bulge of the salient rendered every trench in it liable to that most deadly of dangers, a direct lateral fire from heavy guns placed to the south or to the north. Salients are valuable as examples of the British soldier's willingness to die rather than to live. They make a great many widows and orphans and splendid material for patriotic speeches. For the rest, their utility may be questioned—and has been.
Mar., 1916.
The transfer of a sector from one Army Corps to another is one of those operations which the layman thinks of as done by a single sweeping stroke of the Commander-in-Chief's pen. In reality, it is a slow and intricate process—nothing less than the gradual interchange of all the population of two countrysides and all the means of feeding and clothing them—a wave of immigration and emigration affecting more than 120,000 people, and this has to be carried out with the minimum of disturbance, since the inhabitants of the two areas must be ready to man the trenches and fight a battle at any stage in the process of change.
The Staffs are in the position of two householders who are exchanging residences and moving their families under the immediate threat of a burglary at either or both houses. If it is done on too large a scale, there will be confusion, but, on the other hand, every day that the move is protracted, there will be mixed Staffs and units in the same battle line and sector—a state of affairs not conducive to the efficient management of a sudden crisis. Far behind the front line trenches the ramifications of the services extend; for though a brigade may be holding a frontage of a couple of thousand yards, its section runs back through miles of land crowded with reserves, with light and heavy artillery, with transport services, hospitals and depots, and all the paraphernalia of modern war. The trench line is like a tooth, the depth of the roots of which is only discovered when one tries to pull it out. To the Staffs, at any rate, the period of movement is one of strain and anxiety, and the total changes were not completed under a period of three weeks, during which time both corps were engaged in heavy and continuous fighting.
The battle of St. Eloi was indeed a joint or rather a successive affair carried on by units of two Corps, the Canadians and the V (British).
Mar. 17th-April 8th, 1916.
The moves began as early as March 17th, when the heavy divisional artillery, supporting the 3rd Canadian Division, were taken north, and were completed by the night of April 8th. The Corps Command of the two sections was not handed over till April 4th. A glance at the map will show the problem which confronted the Corps Commanders. The V Corps held exactly the southern curve of the Ypres salient from almost due east of the town.
The left of its 24th Division rested on Bellewarde Beek, and its line continued along the rise through Sanctuary Wood to a high point south-east of the extremity of Zillebeke Lake, known as Mount Sorrel. We shall have occasion later to study this ground with more particularity, for the force which holds it holds Ypres in the hollow of its hand. Here the salient headed back violently, running almost due east and west, took a southerly turn again, crossed the railway to Comines, passed Hill 60 of glorious and tragic memory, and struck the Ypres-Comines Canal by the Bluff. This was the sector of the 50th British Division—south again was the 3rd British Division holding what was destined to be the field of St. Eloi from the canal to Bois Quarante.
At the village of St. Eloi there was another of these violent turns of the line which leave the opposing forces facing each other due north and south. The total length of this corps sector was about six miles, but the curves of the trenches and the ground would make the actual number of yards to be held considerably greater. It was, roughly, broken up into three sections of two miles each belonging to a single division. With Bois Quarante the salient of Ypres came to an end. The Canadian Corps line to the south reaching to Ploegsteert has already been described. It was devoid in the main of salients and had become increasingly peaceful since the fierce fighting in the streets of Comines and Wytschaete in the autumn of 1914.
It was held, when the 3rd Canadian Division was formed finally in the middle of February, by three divisions on a frontage of six brigades. The 3rd Division had no line of its own, but sent its brigades up indifferently to relieve those of the other two divisions. It was therefore selected as the first of the infantry formations for transference to the new Canadian front.
A moment's consideration will make it clear that to exchange two bodies of men in the front line would mean an open gap in the defence during the period of the full relief. As in the game of "Fox and Geese," though the metaphor is perhaps not very complimentary to the enemy or ourselves, a single hole in the ranks lets the fox through. The change can therefore only be made in two ways. It can be begun by moving the reserve troops of the two corps into each other's positions and pushing them up into the front line in succession until the process is complete, or by a swifter and more direct method of marching the reserve division of one corps to relieve a front line division of the other, this division in turn becoming a temporary reserve for its neighbouring corps. In accordance with the former plan, the 3rd Canadian Division was taken up in the third week of March and took over from the 24th Division in the Hooge-Zillebeke sector, while the 24th Division came back to the rest area of the Canadian Corps, whence they in turn displaced a front line Canadian Division. The process once set on foot by the initial move becomes more or less automatic. But it is necessarily slow. It would be in the last degree inadvisable and dangerous to substitute larger bodies of troops in a single night and place each on ground with which it is thoroughly unfamiliar. Even the ordinary visits of officers to their new trenches a day or so in advance would be no protection against confusion in the dark on ground unknown to a whole brigade or division—and this lesson was written in letters of blood in the first week of April over the stricken field of St. Eloi. The 3rd Division move was therefore made by degrees. It began on March 18th with two battalions of the 8th Brigade to the V Corps camp behind the lines, while two British battalions took their place in Canadian reserve. The next day the exchange of the remainder of the Brigade was effected, while in the course of the night the two original Canadian battalions took over their share of the British trenches. On the day of the 20th the entire 7th Canadian Brigade marched from its own reserve area into that of the V Corps near Poperinghe, and went into the firing line the following night. The 9th Brigade followed them on the 23rd, and became the supporting brigade of the whole division. The relief of the north section of the line was now complete, and the divisions changed on the night of the 21st. In the meantime as each British unit was pulled out it came swiftly and surely into the place of the Canadians. The change can be put most simply in a mathematical form. If A represents the British in the trenches, B the British in reserve, C the Canadians in the trenches, and D the Canadians in reserve—B and D change places. That is the first move. On the following day or night approximately D relieves A, and B relieves C in the trenches. That is the second move. There remains only the substitution between the two units C and A and the full relief has been accomplished, and each party stands complete within its new area. The process in a corps will be slow, since the unit of exchange will be only two battalions out of thirty-six, or at most of a brigade.
Mar. 23rd-25th, 1916.
Thus the 24th British Division as soon as the 3rd Canadians had got into place, began to relieve the 1st Canadian Division. On the night of the 23rd two of their battalions took the lines of the two battalions of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade in the trenches, and the change was finished by the night of the 25th. Next came the turn of the 1st Canadian Brigade, which was out by March 28th-29th.
Mar. 28th-29th, 1916.
On that night the 50th British Division began to move to the rear as the leading columns of the 1st Canadian Division came up to take its place. The process was continued until the 2nd Canadian Division in its turn stood in the trenches of the 3rd British Division. The length of time and the order of the moves are best indicated by the days in which the various high commands took over their new responsibilities. The 3rd Canadian Division took over from the 24th British Division, as has already been mentioned, on March 21st. The 24th British Division from the 1st Canadian Division on March 30th, giving ten days for the double change. The 1st Canadian Divisional Staff assumed responsibility for the area of the 50th Division on the night of April 3rd, four days later. The 50th relieved the 2nd Canadian Division on the same night, while the 2nd Canadian Division did not relieve the 3rd British till the fatal night of April 4th-5th. Reading the map from north to south, we find the 9th and 7th Brigades holding the front of the 3rd Canadian Division; the 3rd and 1st Brigades in the same order as that of the 1st Division, while the 6th Brigade covered the whole frontage of the 2nd Division opposite St. Eloi. The Corps Commanders changed their functions on April 4th, and by the 7th-8th the V Corps were safely ensconced in the Canadian area.
But in describing this move in its completeness we have run ahead of history. While the columns of weary men were tramping through the dust of the day, the delicious cool of the evening, and the chilliness of the night march, and the great batteries were being slowly removed from position to position, an event had occurred which added greatly to the difficulty. If the transfer of a corps can be done in peace so much the better for all concerned. In this case a fierce conflict was raging on the front of the 3rd British Division before the 2nd Canadian Division had taken over from them. After the fighting at the Bluff in February and March, it had been determined that the V Corps should assault the enemy's position at St. Eloi, and this attack had no doubt originally been intended to be the business of the corps concerned. Mar. 27th, 1916. For other reasons, which it is not necessary to relate here, the Canadians were brought up half-way through the intended action, which began on March 27th. The strategic reasons for a move on the British front in answer to Verdun have been indicated; the tactical reasons for a change in the personnel of the line were strong.
None the less, the obvious disadvantage of changing the higher command in the middle of an action would have been overwhelming but for one single reason. The mineshaft and the mines, the explosion of which would hurl the charge, were by the end of March ready for use. Every hour's delay meant a risk of their discovery and a counter-explosion by the enemy, when the labours of weeks would have been lost for ever. In these difficult and conflicting circumstances it was decided by the higher authorities to send the 3rd British Division to the attack opposite St. Eloi, and to bring the Canadian 2nd Division up to their support and relief as soon as the first stage of the fighting was over.
On the night of March 27th the mines were exploded, with cataclysmic effect, and six huge craters full of dead or wounded Germans took the place of the enemy's front trenches. The Northumberlands and the Royal Fusiliers of a British Division were over the parapet in a moment and dashed on the shattered enemy position. A heavy barrage of artillery fire was kept up by the various divisional artillery brigades to prevent the counter-attack; in this the Canadians took their share, as the Commander of the V Corps telegraphed in the following message:—
"The handling of the trench mortars reflected the greatest credit on the officers and men concerned."
In the meantime, the 4th Canadian Brigade had been giving most valuable assistance in linking up the right of the attacking regiments with the old line. They had driven a communication trench during the four days of doubtful fighting through from the trenches on the right of the St. Eloi position to the new line—and it was christened forthwith "The Canadian Trench." Further demonstrations were made by our infantry up and down their front and were duly and generously acknowledged as before by our brothers-in-arms of the V Corps. "Thank you very much for all the most valuable help you are giving. Your assistance has contributed very largely to the success which we have achieved." But the attack of the Northumberlands, though it had attained its immediate objective, had not been uniformly successful. It had begun to encounter all those difficulties which were to confront the 6th Canadian Brigade. The centre attack went right through the crumbled débris of the craters, and a position was established some two hundred yards south of them and four hundred yards in advance of the old British line. The 3rd Division fought throughout with the greatest gallantry and resolution. On the right, the efforts of the 4th Canadian Brigade succeeded finally in establishing touch, but the left remained in the air, and Crater 5, the easternmost of the big craters, was still in the enemy's hands. April 2nd, 1916. Finally, after four days' fighting, it was necessary to make what was practically a renewed assault on April 2nd and clear the enemy out of the debatable area. This was done with the utmost gallantry by the 3rd British Division and a new line well beyond the craters finally established. But this last effort absolutely exhausted the energy of the troops concerned. They had fought like heroes, but there are limits to human endurance, and it was imperative to bring up the Canadians to their support. A considerable number of German prisoners passed through the lines of the Canadian troops in support, and the reports speak of them as fine upstanding men in the main, but too young from our military point of view. The Divisional Command was able to extract from them much valuable information as to the distribution of the German regiments. There can be no doubt that the enemy infantry fought well at St. Eloi, and with a nerve and initiative that they have seldom displayed. They may have been new troops, but they were not old men driven on by their officers to certain death in massed formation, and they were all the more formidable for that.
It was now necessary to move the 2nd Division into action. The 6th Brigade led, and the 27th and 31st Battalions were its spearhead, with the 28th and 29th in support and reserve. The Northumberlands had been in the new line for about forty-eight hours, but they had been unable to place it in a good condition for defence. Their trenches were the remains of German second or third line defences choked with the dead and wounded of both combatants; their communications were only to left and right; firing trenches or platforms there were practically none; the earth was a sodden pulp and the skies full of falling shells; the schemes for the reconstruction of the lines put forward by their divisional command, wise as they were, had not been carried out owing to extreme weariness and the want of material; the position of the enemy was unknown, and doubt and darkness enveloped the whole situation. It was under this cloud of danger and uncertainty that the 6th Canadian Brigade advanced to the relief.
[[1]] This had consisted of the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, Lord Strathcona's Horse, 2nd King Edward's Horse, Royal Canadian Dragoons, and 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th Canadian Mounted Rifles. The Fort Garry Horse did not come out until February 24th, 1916. Brig.-General Seely had commanded his Brigade with marked ability, and its dispersal was much regretted by the troops.
[[2]] The 3rd Divisional Train, under Lieut.-Colonel C. H. Lougheed, and the Machine-Gun Companies accompanied the Division to France in January, 1916. The Divisional Signal Company was formed from units in the field in December, 1915, and placed under the command of Major T. E. Powers. The Supply Column was also formed in the field. The 9th and 10th Field Ambulances, under Lieut.-Colonels C. A. Peters and A. W. Tanner respectively, went to France on April 3rd, 1916 and the 8th Field Ambulance, under Lieut.-Colonel S. W. Hewetson, followed a month later. The 3rd Divisional Engineers, with Lieut.-Colonel T. V. Anderson in command, arrived at the Front early in April.
[[3]] These were made locally in the trenches, and consisted of about two feet of hedge-stick, covered at the top with nails bound round with wire.
[[4]] General Leckie was assisted back to safety by Major E. McCuaig, of the 13th Battalion. This officer, while temporarily in command of the Battalion, subsequently repulsed a very severe German attack on the line north of St. Eloi on April 19th, 1915. The 13th were very heavily bombarded, and lost 10 officers and 225 men, but held their ground.
[[5]] The remaining three Brigades of the 2nd Division—the 5th (Lieut.-Colonel G. A. Carruthers), the 6th (Lieut.-Colonel W. B. M. King), and the 7th (Lieut.-Colonel J. S. Stewart) Canadian Field Artillery—had crossed to France in January. The 4th Brigade C.F.A. had been out since September, 1915.
CHAPTER V
ST. ELOI
Canadians in a serious engagement—The old German line—The new British line—The effect of the eruption—Trenches little better than drains—The Second Division in "No Man's Land"—The situation described by General Turner—A gap in our line—The call for additional guns—Welcome relief—The importance of rear exits—Evacuation of the wounded—Our weak spot discovered—Prompt and intelligent action by General Turner—Steadfast endurance—The bravery of Privates Smith and Bowden—Conspicuous gallantry of Captain Meredith—Miscalculation—The enemy dashes through the zone of our artillery—Desperate situation of the Canadians—Communication by telephone intermittent—Confusion in the trenches—Under bombardment for sixty hours—The enemy's artillery preparation begins—Pandemonium inevitable—Clogged rifles and machine-guns—A brave struggle for existence—A moment of doubt—The enemy gains the craters—An unfortunate mistake—Unorganised retirement—Precipitate action—A case for help—Dilemma of the Higher Command—Trench mortars put out of action—Full story of the retirement cut short by death—A hand-to-hand encounter—Failure less welcome than success—Reasons for retirement only appreciated by those experienced in trench warfare—The Fates unpropitious—The error of the craters—Success denied though well deserved.
April 3rd, 1916.
On the night of April 3rd began the most serious engagement in which Canadian troops had been involved since the Second Battle of Ypres. The 2nd Division was ordered to occupy the ground won by the 3rd British Division in the two successive actions on March 27th and April 2nd. To understand the protracted battle which ensued it is necessary to have a clear grasp of the ground over which it was fought. The opposing lines opposite St. Eloi ran almost due east and west, instead of the north and south frontage which marked the usual direction of Allied and German trenches. The old German line had been a salient north pushed out towards St. Eloi and receding from it right and left. The new line captured by the 3rd British Division was a salient thrust due south into the German position and receding again slightly on its right and abruptly on its left, to meet the old British line. In other words, the old British line had been the arc of a bow turned north and the new line became the arc of a bow pushed south. The distance between these bows never exceeded 500 yards, and both of them were less than 1,000 yards in length from end to end, with a direct frontage of 600 yards. In the middle, running as the string of both concave bows and separated by 200 or 250 yards from either old or new line, was the original German line blown to atoms in most places and represented throughout the centre part of its length by a series of four huge minecraters. These crowned the mound of St. Eloi, a rise in the ground which dominated the surrounding country.
To hold the craters and the mound was to look down into your enemies' trenches. The explosion of the great mine had leapt to heaven in a colossal shower of yellow smoke and débris; it could be seen from miles away and shook the earth like the sudden outburst of a volcano. The effects of the eruption on a narrow space of 600 yards were tremendous. Trenches on both sides collapsed like packs of cards under the shock; old landmarks were blotted out, and right in the centre of the arc of the bow stretched a line of huge tumbled débris. In front lay the new trenches captured by the 3rd British Division on April 2nd. Behind lay the remains of the old line, while the crater stood as an almost impassable bar between troops holding the one and troops holding the other. To get to the new front trench, you had to enter it from the left or the right, and a line to which supports cannot be brought up from the rear is always in grave danger. So much for the general position; its particular features have yet to be considered.
We have learned from a study of the French reports at Verdun what can be effected by concentrated artillery fire on a selected area. The frontage at St. Eloi was that of 600 to 1,000 yards, and against it was directed for over three weeks a colossal concentration of German fire, answered shell for shell by our own artillery. Under the combined efforts of the artillery of both sides and the result of the mine explosions, the whole face of the country was altered. The "high hills were laid low and the valleys were exalted" until an officer of the 3rd British Division who had stayed behind to assist the newcomers, twice confessed himself utterly unable to recognise the ground destroyed by man as bearing any resemblance to the ground he had known designed by Nature.
In this change will be found the explanation of much that followed. But there was to be added another cause, the inclemency of the weather. In this battered soil was nothing but mud. Every shellhole was a pond, every step might lead one up to the waist in the sticky element, and earthworks fell in from the flood as much as from the shell-fire of the enemy. It is then under a doubtful star that we must conceive of the whole action being fought. The trenches in the first firing line were little better than scattered drains—behind was the crater barrier—underfoot were the mud and the water, and above the unceasing whine of the shells. The air was heavy with a damp mist, even by day, and by night all objects were magnified and uncertain till a shell-hole appeared a crater, an advance of fifty yards like one of 500 yards, and an hour grew into years! The battle was fought in "No Man's Land"—a débris of shattered trees, sudden pool-holes, and upraised earth, "where no man comes, nor hath come since the making of the world."
Map—St. Eloi area
Into this area the 2nd Division came on the night of 3rd April. The 6th Brigade, under Brigadier-General Ketchen, took over the immediate front, while the 5th and 4th Brigades were in reserve. The post of honour was given to the 27th (Winnipeg) Battalion, commanded by Lieut.-Col. Snider, on the right of the line and to the 31st. (Alberta) Battalion, under Lieut.-Col. Bell, on the left. The 29th (Vancouver) Battalion, under Lieut.-Col. Tobin, was in support of the 27th, while the 28th (North-West) under Lieut.-Col. Embury, occupied a position behind the craters and in the centre, with its left supporting the 31st. It is on the first two regiments that attention must be concentrated for the moment, for they had to occupy the southern thrust of the line and to file into their new positions from the old line on either flank.