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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the
+1st Canadian brigade, by Frederic C. Curry
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade
+
+Author: Frederic C. Curry
+
+Release Date: June 5, 2009 [EBook #29045]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ST. LAWRENCE TO THE YSER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Graeme Mackreth and The Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FROM THE ST. LAWRENCE TO THE YSER
+
+_Frontispiece._
+
+[Illustration: LIEUTS. KLOTZ, STRATHY AND CURRY AT AMESBURY.]
+
+
+
+
+FROM THE ST. LAWRENCE
+TO THE YSER
+
+WITH THE 1st CANADIAN BRIGADE
+
+BY
+
+FREDERIC C. CURRY
+
+LATE CAPTAIN 2ND EASTERN ONTARIO REGIMENT
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
+
+McCLELLAND, GOODCHILD & STEWART,
+
+PUBLISHERS ... TORONTO.
+
+
+
+
+_Printed in Great Britain._
+
+
+
+
+To
+
+LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR SAM HUGHES,
+
+K.C.B., M.P., MINISTER OF MILITIA,
+
+TO WHOSE EFFORTS
+
+THE EFFICIENCY OF THE CANADIAN CONTINGENTS
+
+IS LARGELY DUE.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In presenting this little work to the public the writer wishes to thank
+those of his fellow-officers and others who brought to his notice
+incidents that did not come under his personal observation.
+
+Valuable assistance has been gained from the official accounts of Sir
+Max Aitken, and from the historical writings of Mr. John Buchan with
+regard to the parts played by other brigades and divisions with which we
+were co-operating.
+
+In spite of these attempts to broaden its outlook, the book stands in
+the main a personal account of the actions of the 1st Brigade, Canadian
+Infantry.
+
+As such, however, the writer hopes it will be accepted, and not as a
+detailed history of the events chronicled, though every attempt has been
+made to check the accuracy of the facts stated.
+
+One fictitious character has been introduced, that of Begbie Lyte, in
+order to make the tale impersonal.
+
+In all other cases the true names of persons mentioned, or initials,
+have been used.
+
+To Dr. Shipley, Master of Christ's College, Cambridge, the writer owes
+much for his kindly criticisms and encouragement in this work.
+
+F.C. CURRY.
+
+_October, 1916._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAP.                              PAGE
+
+I. ANTE-BELLUM                      1
+
+II. PETEWAWA                       11
+
+III. MOBILISATION                  24
+
+IV. VAL CARTIER                    31
+
+V. THE CONVOY                      37
+
+VI. IN ENGLAND                     44
+
+VII. INTERIM                       49
+
+VIII. YPRES, 1915                  54
+
+IX. WITH THE DRAFT                 63
+
+X. THE BREAKING IN                 72
+
+XI. RESERVE BILLETS                80
+
+XII. BAILLEUL                      88
+
+XIII. THE TREK SOUTH               95
+
+XIV. FESTUBERT, 1915              103
+
+XV. CARPE DIEM                    110
+
+XVI. GIVENCHY, 1915               117
+
+XVII. NORTHWARD AGAIN             126
+
+XVIII. NIGHTS OF GLADNESS!        132
+
+XIX. IN FRONT OF MESSINES         140
+
+XX. MINE WARFARE                  145
+
+XXI. MYTHS, FAIRIES, ETC.         152
+
+XXII. THE WINTER MONTHS           160
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+LIEUTS. KLOTZ, STRATHY AND CURRY AT AMESBURY         _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                     _Facing page_
+
+SAILING DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE, NEAR BIC                  38
+
+CHURCH PARADE                                            40
+
+EASTERN ONTARIO REGIMENT, NEAR STONEHENGE                44
+
+MANOEUVRES ON SALISBURY PLAIN                            48
+
+FIELD KITCHEN IN RESERVE BILLETS                         82
+
+AMATEUR THEATRICALS BACK OF THE LINE                    100
+
+THE DISTILLERY AT GIVENCHY                              118
+
+OUR SUPPORT TRENCHES AT GIVENCHY                        120
+
+AFTER GIVENCHY                                          122
+
+ENTRANCE TO PLUGSTREET WOOD                             130
+
+OUR TRENCHES, PLUGSTREET WOOD                           134
+
+OUR TRENCHES AT PLUGSTREET                              136
+
+THE START OF THE SMOKE CLOUDS                           142
+
+THE CACTUS TREEN                                        157
+
+AFTER A FEW SHELLS AND A WEEK'S RAIN                    160
+
+
+
+
+FROM THE ST. LAWRENCE TO THE YSER
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ANTE-BELLUM
+
+
+Before the war the Canadian Militia consisted of about 75,000 of all
+ranks and all grades of efficiency. To a neutral eye it must have
+appeared to be in a highly disorganised condition, for battalions and
+corps had sprung up here and there throughout the country with no
+proportion existing between them and the other arms of the service. And
+yet within a short two months after the outbreak of hostilities a
+complete division, armed and equipped, landed in England, and in a bare
+six months were in the field holding their own line of trenches.
+
+To appreciate the difficulties, however, that attended this
+transformation we must look back to those happy days prior to August,
+1914, and witness the Canadian Militia in its own home.
+
+This consisted of the "Drill-hall," or "Armouries," a long, low building
+equipped more or less with barred windows and castellated turrets at one
+or more corners. This building is one of the sights of the city, and is
+pointed out by the cabby or taxi-driver to the English gentlemen and
+other tourists who come out with the laudable intention of writing
+books.
+
+If the castellated towers are missing, and the building is constructed
+on strictly utilitarian lines, one is safe in referring to it as the
+"Drill-hall"; but if a couple of old cannon, vintage 1800, guard its
+portals, and barred windows and frowning turrets add to its martial
+splendour, then you have an "Armouries." By observing this simple rule
+one can discriminate between the two as easily as telling a church from
+a cathedral.
+
+The existence of such a building is largely due to the efforts of the
+local member of Parliament, and the style of architecture varies
+directly with the square of his popularity with the party in power. Thus
+a flourishing full-strength battalion may be housed in a dingy, drab
+wooden structure, and in the next town a very ornate and modern
+building may be tenanted by a corps that is only struggling for
+existence, or perhaps not even struggling. It is well, however, to
+refrain from too much criticism of these buildings, pretentious and
+hideous as they may be, for in them are taught the ideals and principles
+which so many of our youth have died to uphold in the rain-sodden fields
+of Flanders.
+
+Considering the shortness of what is locally known as the "drill
+season," the results obtained are good. General French, in his report of
+a few years ago, described our horses as "half-broken and our men but
+little more," but that is only to be expected in a country where a man
+is considered to be wasting his time if he devotes even the little that
+he can ill afford to the military profession.
+
+However, even if the half-broken men and horses do kick over the traces
+once in a while, they eventually "get there," and that, after all, is
+the Canadian doctrine.
+
+For the purposes of training the Militia is divided into two
+classes--the "city" and the "rural" corps. There is also the permanent
+force, our Canadian regulars, who exist as a school for "the Militia,"
+as they refer to the non-professional army.
+
+The city corps consist chiefly of infantry, heavy artillery, and
+engineer corps, the last being generally in university towns and either
+affiliated with or being actually the cadet corps of the college. One
+might think the cadet corps would be affiliated with the Militia, but
+this is a case where the boy is father to the man.
+
+City corps do fourteen nominal days' training a year in the drill-hall,
+and, of late years, a voluntary camp of five days. For each of these
+days two night drills of two hours each count as a day; the militiaman
+receives the sum of four shillings, with a slight increase according to
+his musketry ability.
+
+The drill season commences in the middle of March, and from then on till
+Inspection Day--a boiling hot day in June--the voice of the
+drill-sergeant is heard in the land. This individual is obtained on
+indent from the permanent force; but more of him anon.
+
+For two nights a week, then, at the season when a young man's fancies
+are supposed to turn lightly to other things, the would-be Wellington
+dons a suit of rifle green, or scarlet, or even the heathen kilt,
+according to his taste, and, disguising it with a civilian great coat
+(regulation coats being issued to 50 per cent. of the establishment),
+slinks more or less bashfully down the back way to the drill-hall. There
+he will learn to shift a rifle (weight nine pounds five and a few odd
+ounces) from one position to another in response to quite unintelligible
+commands that echo most absurdly from the roof. He will also learn to
+move around the floor in something like the formations laid down in the
+little red manual, practising especially those for whom our prayers are
+desired, the favourites of the General Officer Commanding his district.
+
+For, though regulations wax and wane, the G.O.C. changeth not; neither
+does he bow down and worship the little tin gods the Army Council set
+up. But instead, as one by one the formations he used to know are culled
+from the manual, he watches the new formations with a passive eye and
+reserves his choleric criticisms for the old reliables' "Echelon to the
+right" and that maximum of military perfection the "March Past."
+
+In rural corps, however, the season consists of fourteen actual days
+spent in the broiling sun in camp. Lucky indeed is the company commander
+who can bring a full company every year to camp, for many who come one
+year come not again, and such are the conditions that no man sayeth him
+nay lest recruiting be stopped altogether in that district. One sighs
+for the press gang of Merrie England and subscribes for such incendiary
+journals as those of the various National Service Leagues, for one has a
+limited area to secure the recruits from, and must recruit at least 60
+per cent. each year at a season when farm labour is at a premium.
+
+Having secured your recruits, you must assemble them at some central
+point where you have a large quantity of arms and equipment stored,
+generally at your own expense--though "Sam" Hughes is remedying
+this--and issue these, stave off complaints that the fit is not exactly
+up to West End standards, and, if you are an old "stager," give them an
+hour or two of drill while enthusiasm is at its maximum.
+
+Then on the required date you marshal your little force at the railway
+station, shepherd them into the cars, and detrain them a few hours
+later, under even more trying circumstances, a few miles from camp.
+Then, with a mixture of patience, perspiration, and profanity, you
+finally march into your line of tents. Here you are met with great glee
+by the colonel and the adjutant, who inquire blithely as to how many men
+you have; this may seem useless, but as the men are strung out for at
+least half a mile along the route it is reassuring to learn how many
+there should be in the little procession.
+
+We will take it that the colonel is pleased with your reply, in which
+case he will tell you that his white horse has arrived, so if you will
+drop around ... prohibition rules in our training camps, but a good O.C.
+has always something under the mat.
+
+What follows in the remaining days of the fortnight must be endured to
+be appreciated. At the end of that time the shepherding begins again,
+and for the next month the company commander scours his district, this
+time locating uniforms which in defiance of his last orders, and
+prayers, have not been turned in. Very often the man has gone West and
+the uniform as well. So remote are the chances of seeing either again
+that the expression "Gone West" has almost the same meaning as the
+modern soldier's "Nah pooh!"
+
+During the winter months classes of instruction are held in all the
+training centres, the instructors being the non-commissioned officers
+of the permanent Militia. The amount of good done depends largely on the
+ability and personal effort of the commanders of the local corps. During
+these months such officers as can spare the time or have not already
+done so become, by various long and tedious processes, involving much
+correspondence, attached to the various barracks for instruction.
+
+This arrangement is a very popular one for all concerned, providing as
+it does--
+
+1. Frequent leave for junior officers of the permanent force;
+
+2. An opportunity to drill men who know, by years of experience, what
+movements one wishes to perform, and who will (D.V.) perform them with
+machinelike precision despite wrong commands;
+
+3. A pleasant change in the ordinary drill for the above-mentioned men
+owing to the aforesaid wrong commands.
+
+In the evenings lectures are given by senior officers who are not young,
+married, or talented in other ways. These lectures comprise the hundred
+and one things an officer is expected to know, from "Military Law" to
+"Protection when at Rest." This last subject will require revision after
+the present campaign, it being the writer's opinion that soldiers never
+rest--not when there is a foot of Allied soil unturned by a shovel, at
+any rate.
+
+Eventually one passes an examination of sorts and becomes a qualified
+officer of Militia. The questions set are not hard--they would doubtless
+raise a smile if handed to a first year Sandhurst man--but they present
+real difficulties to officers whose opportunities are limited and whose
+spare time is largely taken up in the hard and thankless task of
+recruiting.
+
+Officers of the permanent force are, in the main, graduates of the Royal
+Military College, Kingston, an institution second to none in the Empire.
+Field officers of Militia can also take a training course at the
+college, but the numbers who can avail themselves of this opportunity
+are limited.
+
+Our staffs are assisted by very able officers loaned from the Imperial
+Army in exchange for officers of the same rank attached to Imperial
+battalions.
+
+But the bulk of the instructional work is done, and exceedingly well
+done too, by the staff-sergeant--the Sergeant What's-'is-Name of
+Kipling's song.
+
+He is very carefully selected and trained, and becomes in time a walking
+encyclopædia of military affairs. He must be a marvel of tact and
+diplomacy as well, for not only will he meet the officer who knows
+nothing and appreciates that fact, but also that other type--not
+uncommon in civil life as well--the man who knows nothing yet thinks he
+knows all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+PETEWAWA
+
+
+Petewawa is the training ground of the Canadian Field Artillery and the
+Permanent Force. Until very recently it was strictly reserved for them,
+and was regarded, by those who had not been there, as a sort of seventh
+heaven for soldiers. Later, when the city corps were taken there for
+five days one June--or was it July?--we changed our minds and decided
+that, geographically speaking, it was part of one of Dante's seven
+circles. At present it is the internment camp for enemy aliens, and if
+they endure it for the duration of the war the Kaiser should present
+them, one and all, with iron crosses.
+
+Fifty square miles of sandy hills, covered here and there with second
+growth scrub, it is an ideal ground for the purpose. The temperature
+rises to 98° Fahrenheit most of the days in summer. What it is like in
+winter the writer does not know--probably 40° below zero, as our
+climate does nothing by halves.
+
+The name, curiously enough, means "a sound (or music) as of water
+falling in the distance." Anyone who has toiled through its sands in a
+July sun can appreciate the subtle humour of the red man who named it.
+Other attractions are sand fleas, mosquitoes, and black flies, so that
+after passing through a fortnight in Petewawa one is versed in all
+modern methods of warfare, including the subterranean and the aerial.
+
+Here the artillery do all their training--heavy and fortress artillery
+excepted. The latter, however, send quotas each year, though performing
+their actual drill in their armouries. There are other artillery camps,
+but none of the importance of Petewawa, for it is essentially an active
+service camp. Jackets are strapped to the limbers, shirt sleeves rolled
+to the elbows, and straw hats, locally known as "cow-breakfasts," take
+the place of the more military cap. The gunner reverts to his original
+state and becomes a farmer again. And he is none the less a good gunner
+for so doing. Men who can understand the mechanism of a modern combined
+reaper and binder have no trouble learning the recoil apparatus of an
+eighteen-pounder gun, and for drivers one cannot find a better man than
+the farmer, for the man enlisting as such brings his own team with him
+and naturally will not neglect them.
+
+So one sees the batteries drawn up behind cover, firing slowly and
+deliberately as they do now on a "quiet" day along the Western front.
+
+A sharp report, a glint of flame and of the gun recoiling between the
+two men sitting on either side of the trail, and another shell is
+whirring on its way to the target. Almost before the recoil is finished
+the breech is opened and another round thrust in, and the breech closes
+with a clitch-clatch of its own. A few seconds later corrections come
+over the telephone and another shell goes speeding overhead.
+
+With the infantry, however, Petewawa is a different matter. To them it
+means manoeuvres; and every soldier knows what manoeuvres mean.
+There is a popular idea that these tactical exercises are enjoyed by the
+officers. Perhaps they are, if perchance one is on the staff, a dizzy
+height the writer has not yet attained.
+
+Let us follow the fortunes of a typical Militia battalion during the
+several days covered by this mysterious term "manoeuvres."
+
+The General Idea has been received the night before and duly discussed
+at the "pow-wow" or conference that always follows the reception of this
+document. Much time and whisky has been consumed, and the sum of the
+evening's discussion is that the General Idea is exactly the same as
+last year's, with the exception that the Blue Force is fighting the Grey
+Force this year. "Last year we had the Red Army to contend with, and the
+fact that they no longer oppose us is due to the annihilation they
+suffered"--so says the colonel. "The invasion is coming from the
+north--presumably the Esquimaux are up in arms against us."
+
+Dawn brings with it reveille and brigade orders. This is a magnificent
+bluff on the part of the brigade staff to give the impression that they
+have sat up all night devising new and wondrous schemes for departing
+from the beaten path of military science. This is quite unnecessary, as
+sufficient departures will occur naturally in the course of the day, and
+nothing on earth will convince the infantry officer that the staff ever
+work.
+
+The colonel, however, reads the orders to the little group around him.
+First there is the General Idea, laboriously copied from orders of the
+night before. Then comes the "Special Idea." This, too, bears a
+time-worn similarity to its predecessors, but passes without special
+comment. The next heading is "Dispositions": "The advanced guard will
+consist of one troop of the Missinabee Horse and one company of the
+Umpteenth Battalion." "Thank God for that!" murmurs the colonel,
+realising that the one company of his battalion will be spared the
+arduous duty of trying to replace cavalry, and that the other three will
+be in the first of the fray and consequently the first out of ammunition
+and free from the danger always incidental to the use of blank
+ammunition at close ranges. Moreover, advanced guards have always been
+his hobby, so he proceeds to issue his orders--verbally of course,
+though he will write them out later for the sake of curious generals who
+make collections of such things. While he is waiting for the cavalry to
+report he engages in very earnest conversation with Begbie Lyte, the
+signalling officer. Lyte is the serious-faced young man standing arguing
+with his little knot of flag-waggers. He has just realised that one
+mistake has already been made in the campaign, for, in the enthusiasm
+of youth, he brought bicycles to Petewawa. He realises, too, that next
+year he will either bring no bicycles or no men, for the latter having
+pushed their machines through three miles of sand from the detraining
+platform are already expressing their opinion, with true Canadian
+freedom, as to their usefulness.
+
+This difficulty is tactfully overcome by leaving the cycles in the
+tents, and the "plot," as he calls the instructions he has just
+received, is unfolded to them.
+
+Meanwhile the cavalry come up, and the officer-in-charge, knowing
+somebody who knows Lyte, spends a few seconds in the exchange of
+pleasantries. His name being Horace Smith, it has been quite
+conveniently shortened to "Horsey." Smith is one of those geniuses who
+knows everybody whom anyone knows; consequently he is always able to
+borrow money. Presently he trots off with his troop, and we know we
+shall see no more of him until nightfall. In our turn we move off as
+well, and the main body, already commencing to munch the haversack
+lunches they are carrying, cherish similar opinions as to our fate.
+
+Eventually the whole column is moving down the dusty road and presently
+turns northward, following some wheel tracks that eventually merge into
+the sand. Then for a long time nothing happens. The cavalry have long
+since disappeared; the vanguard of one company shows up occasionally on
+a hill top ahead of us and proves that we are at least moving in the
+same general direction.
+
+At one time two men detached themselves from the rest of the vanguard
+and proceeded to divest themselves calmly of their accoutrements. Then
+followed the feverish wagging of a flag in a manner that suggested news
+of greatest importance. The colonel becomes impatient as he waits for
+the message to come through, and suggests mildly that there seems to be
+a falling off from the standard rate.
+
+Lyte, however, is equal to the occasion, and calls to the reading
+signallers "Tell the fool to semaphore!" "He carn't," gasps the sergeant
+in a horrified whisper; "He's young, an' he don't know nothink but
+Morse." Lyte groans. This young lad was pressed into service a few days
+previously, on the strength of his boy scout record, to fill a gap
+caused by another youth who had suddenly felt the call of the wild and
+gone river boating.
+
+Eventually the message is received and the flags on the hill top
+disappear as the signallers hasten to catch up with their party. It is
+the type of message embraced under the heading "Negative Information"
+and stated to be of importance. "Scouts report no enemy in sight as yet,
+10.15 a.m.--J. HORACE SMITH (Lieut.)."
+
+There is a feeling that we have been deceived, and we trudge on, kicking
+up angry little swirls of dust. Sympathy is already beginning to be
+expressed for the children of Israel in their wanderings. The music of
+water falling in the distance would be music indeed, for most of the
+water bottles are by now empty, and great beads of sweat are standing
+out on the men's foreheads as a result. Men will not learn that drinking
+large quantities of water when marching only increases their discomfort.
+
+However, other things soon occur to divert our minds; one or two false
+alarms that the enemy has been sighted are satisfactorily straightened
+out, with more flag-wagging, and finally the plop-plop of blank
+cartridge is heard in the distance.
+
+The advance guard now extends in long skirmishing lines with a view to
+brushing aside any slight resistance offered by the enemy. Presently we
+come on the horses of our mounted brethren in little groups of four in
+rear of a hill, and as we climb the hill itself we see the backs of
+Smith's gallant troopers as they fire from behind bushes that would
+certainly prove their death warrants on active service. The enemy are
+hidden in the edge of a large and straggly wood that only two days
+before was the scene of a roaring bush fire. Occasionally a man can be
+seen moving against the background of the charred trunks, but they, too,
+are making the best of what cover there is. Smith, leaving us to clear
+the wood, withdraws his men and reports to the colonel, and then moves
+around to a flank, hoping to cut off the party inside the wood.
+
+Meanwhile the main guard have reinforced the first thin lines of
+skirmishers, and the enemy are already falling back through the wood. We
+follow at a more leisurely pace, as the whole place is a mass of charred
+tree trunks, burnt underbush and ashes. A voice from the rear bids us
+"Lie down" in no uncertain tones, so, reflecting that after all the
+Government knows best, we do so, and from then on the khaki begins to
+blend with its surroundings in a way that the inventor of this variety
+of cloth never dreamed of.
+
+The wood turns out to be pear-shaped, and we, having by chance struck
+the small end of the pear, emerge considerably before the other
+battalions, who, having come up on our right, are biting into the
+largest part of the pear. Sounds of heavy conflict arise, and having
+still some five rounds each of blank we re-enter the wood and the
+combat. From then on, as Lyte expressed it afterwards, "Things began to
+occur just as they happened, like all great battles, the strategy being
+worked out later."
+
+Twice we engage friendly battalions until stopped by an irate umpire,
+and once we surround and capture three sections of the enemy's horses.
+These are found in a little _coulée_ running off a dried stream bed.
+Altogether it is a glorious affair, and is just settling down to the
+stage when personal combat begins when a bugle blares out the "Cease
+fire." This is followed by the "assembly," and we straggle to the edge
+of the wood to find most of our battalion there. The brigade is again
+formed up and we sit down for lunch. The cavalry, our enemies of the
+morning, trot back to camp, where a hot meal awaits them, and we know we
+shall not see them again. As we have our blankets following we wonder
+what is in the wind. We soon learn, however--the rest of the day is to
+be spent in a route march to Chalk River, a stream about ten miles
+further north, and bivouac will be made there. Blankets are to be worn
+"en banderole."
+
+The whole brigade busies itself in drawing the blankets from the waggons
+and rolling them into long cylinders, which with a spare boot-lace are
+made into an exaggerated sort of horse-collar. The luckless owner then
+thrusts a head and one arm through the roll and he is ready to move on.
+A hotter method of carrying a blanket could scarcely be devised, but it
+is much preferable to the antique leather equipment that hangs year in
+and year out on the armoury walls.
+
+Presently the column moves off along the dusty road, a mere trail
+winding through the brush, which, pleasant and green at first, soon is
+as drab and sordid as the weltering men along the road. Now and again a
+halt is ordered, and we throw ourselves on the roadside while another
+battalion passes through to take its turn at the head of the column.
+Some artillery waggons pass at the trot, raising clouds of dust and
+profanity along the line, and then the piping of a whistle starts the
+whole column moving again.
+
+Chalk River is eventually reached and the bivouac formed; then the
+joyful shout of "Tea up" is heard. Several buglers at the same time play
+the "Men's Mess Call" with variations, and for a while contentment
+reigns.
+
+The officers stroll around to the Y.M.C.A. tent and write postcards
+home, telling blithely how they are enjoying the lovely weather--not a
+cloud in the sky! They mention nothing of the blistered necks and
+sunburned noses from which the skin is already peeling. Begbie Lyte,
+with a shameless disregard for the truth, buys a postcard of a typical
+bunch of troops passing up that very same road, and selecting a figure
+well concealed by dust, marks an X over it, and inscribing "This is me"
+on the reverse side addresses it to the colonel's daughter.
+
+The cool of the evening soon drives the noisy bathers from the river,
+and the camp settles down around the inevitable camp fires until the
+warning notes of "Last Post" and "Lights Out" sound.
+
+The moon comes out and shines on long rows of blanketted forms and
+stacked rifles, and the only sound is the uneasy stir of the horses and
+tossing of an occasional man where the sand flea is already at work.
+
+Such is a typical day at Petewawa.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+MOBILISATION
+
+
+It required the outbreak of the war to bring home the inevitable
+weakness of such a system, and when the Canadian Parliament announced
+the intention of sending a contingent of thirty thousand men, even the
+most enthusiastic shrugged their shoulders and said "Impossible."
+
+But the feat not only was accomplished, but nearly trebled in the
+accomplishment, and if there is one man who can claim to have arisen as
+a Moses from among the people and achieved this miracle it is
+Major-General Sir Sam Hughes, at that time known generally as Sam
+Hughes, the Minister of Militia.
+
+Sam Hughes did not arise in a single hour--neither was Rome built in a
+day. He had been rising for several years, and it had taken the combined
+efforts of both the Liberal and the Conservative parties to hold him
+down.
+
+Looking backward one cannot help thinking what a pity it was he had not
+been given a free hand. He supported the Ross rifle, and raised it from
+the status of a political weapon to that of a military one, and whatever
+opponents to this weapon may claim they must remember that it was the
+weapon that held the line at Ypres in those last few days of April,
+1915, and had it not been available the Canadian Division would have
+probably been in England patiently drilling with dummy rifles, and the
+glory of having saved the situation would have fallen upon other troops.
+
+However, the actual declaration of war drew people's attention to the
+Militia, and they demanded action.
+
+Some commanding officers made stirring speeches by platform or Press,
+offering the services of their battalions as complete units--an
+impossibility to accomplish owing to the terms of enlistment; others
+with more modesty sent in their applications, without any flourish of
+trumpets, for service in any capacity.
+
+But along the border, wherever there were canals, bridges, and other
+public works that might easily be damaged by fanatic sympathisers from
+the United States, volunteers were called for to supply the necessary
+guards.
+
+Subsequent events justified these precautions, but for some time the men
+on duty were the object of much attention from the small boy and that
+type of young man who still roams the streets and declares that the
+Allies are a long time winning the war!
+
+Spy fever was rampant, and such experts as Begbie Lyte were constantly
+in demand to investigate lights that flickered in any manner that a
+vivid imagination might possibly take for signalling.
+
+At other points practical jokes were played, such as driving a calf at
+night in the direction of the sentry. The soldier receiving no answer to
+his challenge would fire in the direction of the noise, and a loud laugh
+would greet him. Once or twice, however, the sentry waited for the laugh
+and fired in that direction, so that this variety of joke soon lost its
+popularity.
+
+Once, however, mobilisation had been ordered the militiamen were
+replaced by men who had volunteered for active service. The armouries
+began to hum with activity. In the West it was hard to find
+accommodation for the men who came from isolated homesteads and lonely
+ranches, some even from the Arctic Circle, to enlist. The West still
+continues to supply the bulk of our recruits, due largely to the fact
+that the majority are, if not British born, at least the sons of British
+fathers, and consequently felt the call more personally than the sons of
+families four or five generations in the country. Quebec, from which
+province one would expect the most owing to the ties of race and
+language with our Allies, has been frankly disappointing, although
+certain exclusively French-Canadian battalions have done, and are
+continuing to do, as good work as any on the Western front.
+
+A week or two dragged on before the actual order to depart for the big
+concentration camps came, and various conjectures were made as to their
+location. Petewawa was suggested as one, but given up as too isolated.
+Niagara, Barriefield, Three Rivers, and other "annual" sites were other
+favourites, but each had some objection, for no concentration such as
+thirty thousand men had been held in the history of Canada.
+
+Eventually, however, we learned that one large camp was to be formed at
+Val Cartier. Except that Val Cartier was in Quebec, no one knew
+anything of this little hamlet.
+
+Orders came thick and fast ordering this equipment to be worn and that
+to be left behind. Some days rifles were to be taken and greatcoats left
+in stores, and next day the rifles were to be left and greatcoats were
+to be taken. The result was that some of the telegrams went astray, and
+commanding officers at the last minute ordered what equipment they
+thought most suitable to be worn.
+
+The Umpteenth Battalion took down the leather harness that had adorned
+its armoury walls for many a year and spent an anxious day fitting it
+together, Begbie Lyte and the other officers who had volunteered for the
+front flitting from one group of contestants to another.
+
+At last every man had a working knowledge of the fifty odd buckles and a
+hazy idea as to where the straps were supposed to cross his chest and
+where not. The colonel looked with pride on this difficulty overcome and
+said, "Thank Heaven! we will probably get a more modern outfit as soon
+as we strike camp." Alas! We buckled and unbuckled those straps and
+rolled and unrolled our greatcoats for half a year before the new kit
+was handed out.
+
+This was only one of the many steps that led up to that final day when,
+with the band playing such cheerful airs as "The Girl I left behind me"
+and "Will ye no come back again," the active service volunteers of the
+Umpteenth Battalion left their native town.
+
+The way to the station is but dimly remembered as a haze of faces,
+spasmodic attempts at cheering, and the waving of many handkerchiefs.
+Much handshaking and the sudden thrusting of presents into arms already
+full prefaced the actual pulling out of the train.
+
+The officers gathered on the back of the last car and watched the white
+faces of the crowd dwindle to pin points, and then a curve hid town and
+people alike from view.
+
+It was less lonely inside the car, where were officers of another
+battalion whose men were in the fore part of the train. The elder men
+talked in low, serious tones as befitted those who knew something of
+what lay before them.
+
+To Lyte and the younger subalterns it seemed as though they were on the
+threshold of life's Great Adventure, as indeed they were.
+
+But they were not facing a war of chivalrous deeds such as they
+imagined.
+
+Alas for our ideals! war now appears in its true light, as the game of
+commerce played on a larger scale with human lives as pawns in the place
+of dollars and cents!
+
+And as for chivalry, how can it live in the midst of machine-guns,
+asphyxiating gases, and liquid flames?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+VAL CARTIER
+
+
+A more picturesque site for a camp than Val Cartier could hardly be
+imagined, situated as it was among the foothills of the Laurentian
+mountains along the banks of the Jacques Cartier River.
+
+A gentle slope, dry sandy soil, and plenty of water made it ideal from a
+sanitary standpoint, and with the ample manoeuvre grounds available,
+the shower sprays, and running water piped throughout the camp, Val
+Cartier was the peer of any camp the Canadians have yet seen.
+
+But when we tumbled out of the train in the early morning there was
+nothing to show the existence of a military camp except one lonely
+bell-tent guarding the railway platform and a pair of wheel-tracks
+disappearing in the clumps of second-growth cedars.
+
+Following these tracks we came upon an opening on either side of the
+road in which men laboured at clearing away the underbrush. The vivid
+colours of the jerseys in which they were clad told the world that those
+on the one side were students from McGill, while those on the other clad
+in blue and white represented 'Varsity (Toronto). Further along the red,
+yellow, and blue of Queen's University showed where their University
+Field Company was at work. The same spirit of competition that existed
+on the football field now kept the three units working at top speed.
+
+A patch of land that one day was covered with cedars would next day be
+bare of all but stumps, the brushwood blazing merrily in huge fires.
+Next day the stumps in turn would be gone and by evening the new area
+would be covered with tents.
+
+Already some hundreds of tents had been erected on each side of what was
+to be the main street of the camp. A ditching machine pantingly laboured
+on one side of the road and dug as much in a day as fifty men. In the
+ditch already made on the other side pipes had been laid and running
+water was available.
+
+Showers had been erected for each company, and, most welcome of all, the
+advance party greeted us with a flourish of dirty aprons and ladles and
+the joyful cry of "skillet."
+
+During the afternoon greatcoats were received, and very necessary they
+were, for when we rose next morning ice had formed in our pails, and the
+trees on the mountain side were beginning to turn red.
+
+Long before we left the mountain sides were a wild revel of colour,
+reds, yellows, and browns predominating, where the frost had touched the
+leaves. Particularly brilliant were the shot-scarred trees that stood on
+the slopes forming the stop-butts of the rifle-ranges.
+
+These ranges are worthy of special mention, comprising as they did
+targets for fifteen hundred men.
+
+The method of construction was simplicity itself. A deep ditch had been
+dug and the earth thrown up like an ordinary trench to protect the
+marker. Strong posts had been erected about six feet apart to carry the
+targets, which took the form of squares of pulpboard mounted on a lever
+pivoted to the upright. The weight of the target held it behind the
+butt, and it was brought into view by pulling a short piece of rope
+attached to the free end of the lever.
+
+Crude as this arrangement was, it served the purpose admirably, and
+daily we trudged out toward the mountain, around the foot of which this
+trench wound much as the German line does around the foot of Messines
+Hill, and fired ragged volleys into the re-echoing hill sides.
+
+In only two ways could the training have been improved, and neither of
+these two was practicable under the circumstances. Better checking of
+the target registers and fire control would have necessitated officers
+trained better in musketry, and such officers were not available, and
+had the latest pattern ammunition in clips been obtainable instead of
+the old square-toed bullet wrapped in paper packages, more practice in
+rapid fire--the English Army's Mad Minute--could have been had.
+
+But Sam Hughes had to work with the material at hand, and from an army
+of men who had, in the majority, never fired a service rifle in their
+lives, he formed an army that he described as being "the finest shooting
+army in the world."
+
+Drill was not by any means neglected, and there were few idle hours in
+camp, even moonlight nights being eagerly seized upon by battalion
+commanders for extra work.
+
+Daily fresh drafts from battalions arrived and were formed into new
+composite battalions, and daily the proportion of men in old civilian
+clothing grew less.
+
+Two reviews were held, after one of which the Honourable Sam had many
+things to say to the officers. He told them that every officer, no
+matter what political gender, would have an equal chance in the great
+struggle for a place on the contingent, for instead of the one thousand
+officers asked for some fifteen hundred officers were actually in camp.
+
+Sam spake yet other homilies to the officers, and his address, delivered
+from a mound on which he and his staff were drawn up, was irreverently
+referred to around camp as the "Sermon on the Mount." A story is also
+told that one of his aides suggested that all could not hear him.
+"That's all right," he is credited with replying; "they can all see me!"
+
+However, his words had a beneficial effect on all who heard them, and
+when two weeks later another review was held and His Royal Highness the
+Duke of Connaught inspected the contingent it was announced that the
+First Canadian Division was ready to proceed over seas.
+
+Begbie Lyte and other signalling officers were summoned over to
+headquarters one day and received mysterious instructions from an
+officer in naval uniform.
+
+Two days later, on the 22nd of September, the ---- Battalion embarked on
+a troopship, and after a wild evening's pleasure at the Chateau
+Frontenac the writer, Begbie Lyte, and some others sought the narrow
+confines of the ship. The rhythmic throb of the propeller woke them some
+hours later as the ship moved out to anchor in mid stream.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE CONVOY
+
+
+For two days we lay at anchor opposite the Citadel of Quebec and
+bemoaned the fate that separated us from the twinkling lights of the
+Chateau Frontenac and the Dufferin Terrace. Then one evening the throb
+of the propeller drew the crowd from the saloons to the decks and we
+watched the lights fade away in the night. From the forts long fingers
+of light followed us down stream, and blinking lights here and there
+sent us farewell greetings. Up on the bridge we could hear the clatter
+of the signal lamps, and the sooty odour of petroleum smoke hung in the
+calm air around us. Begbie Lyte was on the job and became an important
+unit in our little company. Through him alone would we get news of the
+outside world for some weeks to come.
+
+Nearing Father Point, below Quebec, where normally the pilot is dropped
+or taken on when one is leaving or proceeding to Canada, the ship's
+officers pointed out a small twinkling light that marked the grave of
+the ill-fated _Empress of Ireland_. We had seen the collier _Storstadt_
+that sent her to her doom while at anchor off the Citadel, and were much
+impressed.
+
+As night wore on the groups on the deck became smaller until the ship's
+officers alone remained, and with darkened port-holes we slipped on
+through the night. A distinct freshness in the wind spoke of a change
+around us. We were nearing salt water. Next day we anchored in Gaspé
+Basin. Already some six or eight ships lay there.
+
+There we lay for some days watching the jellyfish and the gulls while
+one by one our number was increased to thirty-two.
+
+At this point a diversion occurred in the form of the last visit by the
+Minister of Militia in a noisy tugboat. More important than the printed
+copies of his farewell speech that were handed us was the news that now
+was our last chance to mail letters. In childish simplicity we handed
+down our mail, thinking the "hame folk" would receive these in a few
+short days. The sacks were collected and taken to one of the other ships
+and journeyed across the Atlantic with us. So our departure was kept
+secret from all but a few, for, with a shrewd knowledge of the
+"habitant" mind, Captain Gee, the gallant commander of "E" Company, tied
+up a few letters in a handkerchief, weighted it with sundry pieces of
+silver, and dropped the package into a fishing boat that had come
+alongside with a load of fresh meat. The very amount enclosed spoke of
+secrecy, and the "habitant" sailor used all due precautions in
+forwarding the missives.
+
+[Illustration: SAILING DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE, NEAR BIC.]
+
+By Sunday noon the ground swell had driven some of the officers to deck
+chairs, while the others marshalled the troops on the rear deck for
+Divine service. Service over, we watched the celebrated Perce Rock
+fading in the distance and knew that Canada now lay far behind us. A day
+later and Newfoundland too lay in the distance, and the magic circle of
+the horizon closed around us.
+
+Interest now began to be taken in things nautical. The sextant, compass,
+and log were the cause of much discussion, and the usual bets were made
+on the daily run, the stakes being held by the chaplain.
+
+Three days out and the ship's library was taken by assault, and the
+sevenpenny novels that formed it disappeared into the cabins. In vain
+an officer was appointed librarian with powers to search and to seize,
+but conditions were not bettered.
+
+Lectures, physical drill, and other mild duties relieved a little of the
+monotony, for the journey was a slow one, a condition made necessary by
+the horse transports, one of which rolled in line ahead of us.
+Occasionally a stir would be noticed on her decks and a horse that had
+succumbed to _mal-de-mer_ would be unceremoniously dumped overboard.
+Such occasions were marked by a fusillade of pistol shots from each ship
+as the carcase drifted past, for, contrary to traditions, most of us
+carried revolvers for the first time in our lives and were anxious to
+display our prowess.
+
+Nearly a fortnight was thus passed gazing in singular apathy at the most
+remarkable demonstration of the command of the seas that military
+history of any age affords.
+
+In three long lines, roughly a mile apart, the transports formed an
+armada such as Philip of Spain never dreamed of.
+
+But about two days out from England a black column of smoke was seen to
+port, and presently the contour of a heavy battleship could be
+determined bearing down on us. There was wild excitement till the
+Cross of St. George could be distinguished at her masthead. It was the
+ill-fated _Queen Mary_, our latest and finest battle-cruiser. At an
+almost incredible speed she overtook us and passed up our lines with her
+crew manning the decks and her band playing "The Maple Leaf."
+
+[Illustration: CHURCH PARADE.]
+
+From then on we always could see the smoke of heavier battleships in the
+offing, and knew we were getting close to somewhere.
+
+We passed the Scilly Islands about 4 o'clock in the morning, but as
+cards had continued till late the preceding night few but the ship's
+officers saw the pin-point of light marking the westward sentinel of the
+Old World.
+
+Then on October 14th fishing smacks again appeared and the grey coast of
+Cornwall hove in sight, and by noon we could distinguish buildings along
+the cliffs.
+
+Passing the Eddystone our course was altered and all hopes of landing at
+Southampton vanished. Captain H----r was much excited. After nineteen
+years he was returning to his native town--Plymouth. To a running fire
+of his explanations we passed up the Sound to the Hamoaze. A tugboat,
+looking ridiculously small against the gigantic liner ahead, now took
+us in tow, and the throbbing of the ship's screw stopped. The cessation
+of this pulse added a sombre touch to our voices; we were nearing the
+end of the voyage, and in another day would know the ship no more.
+
+Thus we glided slowly past the old wooden cruisers now used as training
+ships, and from their crowded riggings came shrill treble cheers. To the
+piping of the young cadets' voices was added the screaming of sirens and
+the tooting of many whistles. Halyards on all sides of us broke out into
+brilliant bunting and semaphores wagged with a madness that even Lyte
+could not translate.
+
+The clarion notes of the mess bugle called us from the decks to other
+duties, and there between the soup and the fish we heard the hoarse
+rattle of the anchor chain as we found our moorings.
+
+Captain H----r, seizing the opportunity, rose, and in the capacity of an
+old Plymothian gave us greeting.
+
+Such was our welcome to England.
+
+In the morning we looked out and saw rows and rows of chimney pots,
+impressive in their similarity.
+
+Then later we read an editorial in _The Times_ describing us as
+pioneers and backwoodsmen. This provoked much comment, but the writer
+for one was not greatly distressed, for he had been born within sound of
+the shrill of a sawmill, and the perfume of cedar is still sweeter to
+his nostrils than the costly unguents of Araby.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+IN ENGLAND
+
+
+Our stay in England was marred by the heaviest rainfall of many years,
+and Salisbury Plain, where we were quartered all winter, had the
+reputation of being the muddiest spot in the world until we struck
+Flanders; and even now there are patriots who maintain that the "Plain"
+holds the championship.
+
+But these were not our first impressions of the Downs. It is hard yet to
+reconcile the mud in which we lived for months with the velvety swards
+that first greeted our eyes.
+
+We had detrained at Amesbury, bleary eyed and sleepless after a tedious
+night trip from Plymouth. This had followed a seemingly interminable
+march through Plymouth, during which our progress had been seriously
+delayed by women who broke into the ranks and kissed and wept over our
+dear boys. Officers escaped with mere handshakes, but still found the
+ordeal rather trying.
+
+[Illustration: EASTERN ONTARIO REGIMENT, NEAR STONEHENGE.]
+
+However, a few minutes of standing around the platform munching
+sandwiches while the necessary mistakes were made and corrected wakened
+us thoroughly, and then to the crunch of our own footsteps we swung
+smartly down the village street.
+
+Here we found we were in a new world, a world we had read of in books.
+The thatched cottages, the neatly-clipped hedges, the churchyard with
+its headstones and tumbling wall, all seemed to fit in with what we
+expected. When we passed a public-house with its wooden sign emblazoned
+with "The Three Feathers," or some such emblem, the picture was
+complete--it was the England of Jeffery Farnol!
+
+Later we swung across the ample Downs, passing on our way Stonehenge.
+After having said "I don't know" to a few hundred questions from the men
+nearest you, it was a relief to be able to answer a few for a change.
+What memory failed to supply imagination furnished; but this is every
+guide's privilege. A momentary halt here--to give the men a
+rest--afforded a chance for cameras to click, and then we left the road
+and marched across the grassy Downs to the Bustard Inn. Here the rows of
+tents that were to be our homes for the next few months had already
+been pitched.
+
+Other brigades went to Lark Hill, to Pond Farm, to Sling Plantation, and
+to West Down, North and West Down, South ... one could lose a whole army
+in this vast training ground.
+
+Gone was the long main street of Val Cartier camp with its cinema shows
+and booths of tempting merchandise. Gone, too, was the little river with
+its gravelly shores for bathing.
+
+But we were one step nearer our goal, and that was the one thought that
+consoled us during those trying winter months that followed.
+
+From then on we saw little but our own brigade--the 1st Brigade--and the
+Princess Patricia's Light Infantry--who were also at Bustard Camp.
+
+The latter held themselves rather aloof from the Canadian Division,
+counting themselves as superior troops--as indeed they were, being
+mostly veterans of one or two campaigns--and as they were not brigaded
+with us we saw little of them.
+
+Early in November the King, accompanied by Lords Roberts and Kitchener,
+reviewed the Division. His Majesty took special interest in the
+Patricias, so we were not surprised when in the early days of December
+the "Pats" left the Plain to join the 27th Division. Of their subsequent
+doings another book might be written, for no regular battalion of the
+British Army has proved itself steadier on the field than this
+magnificent corps--the gift to the Empire of a very gallant gentleman
+who has since succumbed to wounds received while serving with it in the
+field.[1]
+
+Christmas brought with it leave and relaxation from the monotony of
+drilling, but with the New Year we started brigade and divisional
+manoeuvres, and we knew our stay on the Plain was drawing to a close.
+
+We were again reviewed--in a drizzling rain this time--by the King on
+February 4th, 1915, and on the following day--just six months after the
+declaration of war--the First Canadian Division, complete in every
+detail (horse, foot, and guns) entrained for France.
+
+So secret had the departure been kept that people in the neighbouring
+town of Salisbury knew nothing of the review or the entraining of the
+troops till they were well on the high seas.
+
+[Footnote 1: Major Hamilton Gault, referred to above, did not die of
+wounds as first reported, but suffered the loss of a leg by amputation.]
+
+After a very rough passage from Avonmouth the Division landed at St.
+Nazaire in the Bay of Biscay, the last transport arriving some time in
+the second week of February.
+
+From there they were taken in box cars to that mysterious region known
+as "the front," travelling forty men or eight horses to a car, a state
+of affairs that one man complained "showed undue regard for horses."
+
+But five whole battalions and a number of surplus officers who had
+managed to get over to England supernumerary to their battalions were
+left behind on the Plain as a base depot.
+
+Amongst the latter were the writer and Begbie Lyte, and when they
+rejoined a month or two later their battalion had been cut to pieces and
+some twenty-five of the officers with whom they had trained were
+casualties.
+
+It is hard to imagine anything sadder than rejoining a battalion after
+fighting such as that unless it is the saying of good-bye.
+
+[Illustration: MANOEUVRES ON SALISBURY PLAIN.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+INTERIM
+
+
+For a time there was little news from the Canadians at the front, for
+they were not immediately placed in the trenches. Trench warfare was
+then still a novelty; its exact principles had not been developed, and
+all the training done on the Plain had been the ordinary open style of
+fighting--quite useless against the strongly entrenched positions the
+Germans had taken up.
+
+So while lying in reserve behind the lines the First Division dug and
+manned trenches and practised themselves in the new warfare. Selected
+officers from each company spent days in the front line with other
+battalions and returned to their men bristling with information.
+
+A little later selected platoons and companies took their turn in the
+front line, and before the end of February the Canadian Division was
+holding its own sector of the British line.
+
+Casualties began to drift back to the Canadian base, which had now
+become centred at Shorncliffe, and letters began to arrive with details
+of the new methods of fighting. There was other news, too, of a more
+cheerful sort that showed brighter glimpses of life that occurred when
+enjoying brief rests from the firing line.
+
+"Don't sympathise with us too much," wrote one officer; "we would sooner
+be here than on the Plain. Last night we gave an oyster and champagne
+supper at ---- to three Ottawa ladies who are running a soup and coffee
+waggon for our battalion. We had a great time. D---- Dang and the Cat
+(another subaltern) were in fine fettle."
+
+But more serious work was in view.
+
+On March 10th the British commenced an offensive at Neuve Chapelle
+which, had it proved successful, would have involved the Canadians in
+the projected advance upon the Aubers Ridge, which formed the key to
+Lille.
+
+But Neuve Chapelle, although a victory in one sense of the word, was a
+very costly lesson, but a lesson that showed that our artillery must be
+enormously increased if any further effort to break through the German
+line was to be made.
+
+For, having taken their objective, the British troops found not only a
+second but a third line of trenches protected by entanglements of a most
+formidable nature, and so situated as to render the ground recently won
+at such heavy cost almost untenable. To carry these lines would require
+another bombardment more intense even than that which had preceded the
+attack. Our line had advanced one mile and there it stayed.
+
+So ended the first attempt on our part to renew the offensive after the
+stagnation of a winter of trench warfare. For years we had been taught
+that an army that relinquishes the offensive acknowledges itself as
+beaten. It now began to look as though military science had undergone a
+complete revolution and that trench warfare and the policy of attrition
+were to be the normal methods of the future.
+
+But Neuve Chapelle showed something else--it showed that the indomitable
+spirit of our men had not been quenched by the misery and suffering of
+the winter months and that the British bayonet was as much to be feared
+as ever.
+
+"We were kept pretty busy," wrote a friend, "doing rapid fire, and lost
+quite a few from shell fire. But our artillery had the time of their
+lives, and fired pretty steadily the whole three days of the show."
+
+Later he wrote that they were moving northward--probably to Hill 60--and
+we could expect there would be something doing shortly.
+
+It was not to Hill 60 that the Canadian Division went, but further
+northward in the Ypres salient to the left of the 27th Division, where
+the "Princess Pats" were winning immortality at St. Eloi.
+
+So the days wore on, the surplus officers chafing at the monotony of
+drill on a barrack square, relieved as it was by "Thés Dansants" at the
+Metropole and promenades along the Leas at Folkestone.
+
+Then one day a medical officer dropped a sure tip. He had been warned to
+prepare beds for a thousand casualties--the Canadians were in something
+big at last!
+
+Just how big it was we realised a week later when the newspapers broke
+forth into flamboyant headlines, "CANADIANS SAVED SITUATION," "FOUR GUNS
+RECAPTURED," and other startling sentences that danced before the eyes.
+
+Lyte and the writer were returning from some light festivities, when
+the hoarse cry "All about the Canadians" arrested their attention.
+Papers were hurriedly bought, and the brief vague lines of the official
+_communiqué_ eagerly scanned. "By Jove!" was Lyte's exclamation; "but
+isn't that great!" The writer, however, hardly heard him; he was
+thinking of the many good friends who had taken part and the price they
+had to pay, and his answer was the monosyllabic "Huh!" of the aborigine.
+
+That evening we packed our kits.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+YPRES, 1915
+
+
+The Second Battle for Ypres, as the fighting at Langemarck and St.
+Julien is officially designated, was largely a regimental and company
+officers' battle. This does not, however, reflect adversely on the
+brigade and other staffs, who did all that was humanly possible with the
+information that was at hand. Even at this date there are questions
+about the action that cannot be cleared up until it will be permissible
+to reproduce the whole of the war diaries of the various units that took
+part.
+
+On the 2nd and 3rd Canadian Brigades fell the brunt of the fighting in
+which the Canadians took part, as the 1st Brigade was in rest billets in
+reserve.
+
+But, without detracting from their work, it must be admitted that the
+account by the official "Eye Witness" does not give the 1st Brigade the
+credit it deserves. This, however, is inevitable. In a modern battle
+one sees nothing but what happens in the immediate vicinity of the
+observer, and we must therefore depend largely on the accounts furnished
+by others of what occurred in other parts of the field.
+
+It will do no harm, however, to quote from the description by an
+officer, since killed, of the action of one of the battalions of this
+brigade, which from respect for the censor must remain nameless.
+
+It would, however, serve no purpose to conceal the true names of those
+officers and men whom he thought fit to mention, for the majority of
+them have also laid down their lives in the field.
+
+"During the latter part of the evening of April 22nd French and Algerian
+troops in large numbers began retreating through _Vlamertinghe_ in the
+utmost confusion, throwing away their arms and crying 'Asphyxie!
+Asphyxie!!' Empty limbers and gun teams without their guns dashed down
+the road, already thick with refugees and fugitive soldiers. Captain
+Culling therefore ordered the company to stand to arms and be ready to
+move off as soon as orders were received.
+
+"Orders came about 9 p.m., and we moved off to the battalion rendezvous
+at the junction of the _Brielen_ road, where we found the rest of the
+battalion formed up. From here we continued north easterly up the
+_Brielen_ road, across the canal toward _St. Julien_.
+
+"A short distance past the canal the battalion deployed from the road,
+No. 3 Company being on our (No. 2 Company's) left and continued to
+advance.
+
+"Moving forward in this formation was very difficult owing to the thick
+darkness and the ground being so cut up by hedges, but Captain Culling
+got in touch with the battalion on our left, which turned out to be the
+_Canadian Scottish_ under Lieutenant-Colonel Leckie, at about the
+farmhouse that afterwards became our dressing station. The advance
+continued slightly more to the north, and a few minutes later the
+company lay deployed about fifty yards in rear of a trench (A B)
+occupied by the 10th Canadian Battalion. They were enfiladed from a
+German trench to their right rear (C) and an adjoining farmhouse (M G).
+
+"Wounded men, including their commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel
+Boyle, lay everywhere about the trench and parados, but they were too
+weak to attack this short piece of trench, although it was rendering
+their position quite untenable.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"One of our platoons successfully attacked this trench, while another
+under Mr. Doxsee attacked the neighbouring house and succeeded in
+driving the enemy from it with a loss of only two men killed and another
+wounded.
+
+"Steps were then taken to improve the position by reversing the parapet
+of the captured trench (C) and extending the original trench to the
+right. The house (M G), too, was prepared for defence, and thus the
+night was passed and no man slept.
+
+"At dawn of the 23rd the enemy commenced shelling the house and trench,
+but the losses inflicted were slight owing to the two parallel hedges,
+which made both ranging and observing difficult. They then commenced an
+attack on the house supported by machine-gun fire, which proved a far
+more serious affair, as in the house itself we lost two men killed and
+some wounded, while in the trench we lost two valuable men,
+Platoon-Sergeant Abelarde and Lance-Corporal McGurk. The former had
+crawled out along the hedge to a dangerous and commanding knoll, and
+from there put eighteen of the enemy out of action before a sniper's
+bullet found him. The dead lay exposed where they fell, and could
+readily be counted from the house.
+
+"About 9 o'clock, while Captain Culling was organising a counter-attack
+on a small portion of the German trench (D E), two companies of the
+Toronto Battalion under a major arrived as reinforcements, and took
+cover behind our parados as there was no room in the trench. Captain
+Culling asked that they take on the attack, and Mr. Doxsee volunteered
+to lead it. The response was feeble, and the attack petered out to
+nothing, Bugler Hunt and a man of the _Toronto_ Battalion being killed
+by the side of Doxsee, who, finding himself alone, returned to the
+trench unharmed.
+
+"The _Toronto_ men now tried a flanking movement on our immediate right,
+but lost eight men and had to abandon the attempt. However, coupled with
+our fire from the second story of the house, the effect was sufficient
+to cause the enemy to retire from this point, and the remainder of the
+day passed quietly, though the enemy's artillery continued to shell our
+position and a machine-gun played on the house at every sign of
+movement. By evening we had some seventeen casualties, a remarkedly
+small number considering the shelling.
+
+"As soon as darkness set in, under cover of a few skirmishers, two
+platoons continued our original trench (A B) along a line (B B 1) about
+fifteen feet in rear of the forward hedge surrounding the house and
+linked this trench to the position in our right rear with a
+communication trench, the majority of this work being done with the
+small entrenching tool.
+
+"This enabled us to get the whole company under cover, and with a
+machine-gun of the _10th Battalion_ in the house we felt fairly secure.
+Captain Hooper held a house immediately in front of our lines called
+_Hooper House_, and our original trench was held by a mixture of our own
+men and the Canadian Scottish under Mr. Hugill.
+
+"Dawn on Saturday found our positions unaltered, but about 7 o'clock
+orders came from Lieutenant-Colonel Rodgers, our second in command, to
+take over all of the original trench and relieve the _Scottish_.
+
+"Simultaneously Mr. Doxsee called for reinforcements to repel a direct
+frontal attack on our forward trench and machine-gun house.
+
+"Reinforcements hurried up along the new communication trench, but were
+anticipated by Mr. Scott and a score or so of men, who dashed across the
+open and repelled the attack, Mr. Doxsee being unfortunately killed at
+this point.
+
+"Captain Richardson now took over _machine-gun house_, and his company
+(No. 2) relieved us along our original trench. The two Toronto companies
+had entrenched to our right, forming a narrow and very dangerous salient
+(C F).
+
+"All day this house was the target of the enemy's artillery and
+machine-guns, the latter sweeping the building so effectively that the
+garrison was forced to lie flat on the floors.
+
+"Six attacks were made by their infantry and repulsed before they could
+get closer than two hundred yards, in spite of the fact that our only
+machine-gun jammed incessantly owing to the rapidity of its firing.
+About 2 p.m. one of our own guns came up, and from then on both guns
+remained in action.
+
+"About this time troops in French uniforms were seen moving down a road
+on our right toward _St. Julien_. At first no notice was taken of them,
+but presently it became apparent that these were Germans, who had
+adopted this ruse to get behind our flank.
+
+"Fire was immediately opened on them with what rifles could be spared
+from our front line, and one machine-gun was hastily posted in a barn
+(G), from which it did excellent work.
+
+"At 3.30 orders were received to retire in the direction of battalion
+headquarters. (These orders had originally been sent out at 2 o'clock,
+and when Lieutenant-Colonel Watson received no response he sent them
+again and again until he finally saw the last company passing the
+shattered house that had served alike as dressing station and battalion
+headquarters, and not till then did he leave the field himself.)
+
+"The retirement took place across open ground swept by both shrapnel and
+machine-guns, and the men just seemed to melt away.
+
+"Men straggled in for hours, and when the battalion finally assembled at
+brigade headquarters at _St. Jean_ the company had lost one hundred and
+thirty-nine of all ranks, of which four were officers."
+
+It was a black situation. No one knew how other parts of the field had
+fared or how much ground had been lost. British troops were being rushed
+up to relieve the 2nd and 3rd Brigades, who in some incredible manner
+still held on in spite of two attacks with the gas. But they had paid a
+terrible price. Of the former brigade there were scarcely a thousand men
+and of the latter not many more.
+
+If this, then, is the account of what one battalion--nay, what one or
+two companies--accomplished, what must be the stories, as yet untold, of
+those other battalions of the First Canadian Division that filled the
+gap that led to Calais?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+WITH THE DRAFT
+
+
+On returning to our barracks we found notices that "the following
+officers will hold themselves in readiness to proceed to their
+respective units with the next draft." Eagerly we scanned the list to
+make sure our names had not been omitted, and then transferred ourselves
+from the crowd that gathered in the ante-room to those who waited their
+turn outside the telephone cabinet. Letters and telegrams were being
+feverishly written in all parts of the building, and a hurly-burly of
+voices in the mess-room proclaimed the general opinion that we had been
+pretty badly cut up. A tailor's agent had somehow made his way into that
+sanctuary, and voices were demanding "Who can lend me a blank cheque?"
+in a wild endeavour to get him out again.
+
+Telegrams were also arriving, one or two from the front. A subaltern
+spread the sheet of flimsy in his hand to find his cousin had been
+killed in action. There was a sudden hush in the turmoil as he turned
+and walked slowly to the window; men at such times are mute and trust to
+the simple pressure of the hand to tell that sympathy which the tongue
+cannot frame.
+
+A colonel whose hair had grown grey in the service passed from one group
+to another, giving a word of advice here and receiving a word of
+sympathy there, for his age had debarred any further activities in the
+field. "But I have one son over there now," he proudly told you, "and my
+other is coming with the next contingent!"
+
+The orderly room clerk entered and pinned up the daily orders. These
+were at once surrounded, and would have perished in the _mêlée_ had the
+colonel not taken the situation in hand and read them out in his
+sternest parade voice with appropriate comments of his own.
+
+"All officers and men warned for draft will parade to the ranges at 5
+o'clock tomorrow morning--that will teach you to sit up all night
+playing cards!
+
+"Markers and other details--that includes you, Lyte--will be at the
+butts and all targets ready for firing at a quarter before the hour,
+&c., &c.
+
+"Light marching order will be worn by all ranks, including one hundred
+and fifty rounds per man. Haversack rations to be carried.
+
+"Officers' valises--maximum weight thirty-five pounds--to be rolled
+ready for transport by 2 p.m., &c., &c."
+
+This last caused an immediate thinning of the crowd, and till late that
+night we struggled over our kits, rolling and unrolling them to try and
+bring their weight down to something like the regulation amount.
+
+At 4 o'clock next morning we fell in to march to the ranges, Lyte and
+his ill-fated companions having left half an hour before, and from then
+on till the afternoon we toiled in the hot sun. Returning about 3 that
+afternoon, we found the draft ordered to be ready to proceed at 6
+o'clock, barely time for the men to get their tea; and tea in the Army
+is a meagre meal at the best of times.
+
+Then after some hours waiting on the barrack square the draft moved off
+down the Cheriton road and through the streets of Folkestone to where
+the transports lay awaiting us.
+
+Here the British Navy took hold of us again, and there were no further
+delays. The men were led below decks and packed as close as they could
+stand to one another, the officers having the privilege of being able to
+sit on their valises, which were piled unceremoniously on the deck.
+
+Then when all were accounted for the mooring ropes were cast off, and
+with no more ceremony than the tinkle of the ship's telegraph we slid
+out of the harbour under cover of the scudding clouds.
+
+But we were not alone. A long, lithe shape, strangely suggestive of a
+greyhound, crept out of the darkness around us and came up alongside,
+and a brief conversation, ending in "All right, full speed," was held.
+
+The telegraph tinkled again and our ship bounded forward, leaving a long
+trail of phosphorescent foam in her wake.
+
+The sighing of the rigging in the wind, the slap-slap of the Channel
+breakers at our sides, and the lashing "hish" of the spray across the
+decks blended with, but did not break, our thoughts.
+
+And the dark shapes of the destroyers and the other transports
+momentarily revealed by gaps in the scudding clouds, the gleaming wake
+of the ship, and the faint white of the life-belts, that showed dimly
+where little groups of two or three stood or sat together, made a
+fitting scene for such an orchestral accompaniment.
+
+Thus we reached France.
+
+There followed a long march through the darkened streets of Boulogne to
+a camp on the Plains of St. Martin, not far from the tall column that
+marks where Napoleon gathered his great army and waited for the time
+that never came, when he would be master of that little strip of water
+we had just crossed.
+
+A drizzling rain had started, and the men had now been nearly eight
+hours without food and practically a whole day without a proper meal. We
+were able to draw bully beef and biscuit at once from the stores, but
+the situation was really saved by the ladies at the Y.M.C.A. tent, who
+supplied hot cocoa and cake to all who cared to apply. A nominal charge
+of one penny was made to those who wished to pay, but no man was refused
+because of his inability to find this sum, small as it was.
+
+Only a small thing, you may think, but it is only the smallest part of
+what this wonderful organisation is doing for the soldier at the front.
+
+And a smile and a cup of coffee at 5 o'clock in the morning "look pretty
+good to me," as one recipient expressed it.
+
+We were held in camp all the following day and then, carrying two days'
+rations, we entrained for the north. For a while we made vain attempts
+to find our destination from the French railway staff, but concluded
+they either did not understand our variation of their beautiful language
+or were sullen brutes knowing nothing.
+
+As we continued northward the throbbing of distant gunfire became
+plainer, and a strange flickering could be seen in the morning sky. This
+strange light, caused by the flash of the guns and the flares or
+illuminating fuzees shot up by the infantry, resembled nothing so much
+as our own Aurora Borealis, and we were not surprised to find, a little
+later, that our men had already nicknamed them the "Northern Lights."
+
+Dawn brought us to a halt by some little town where the engine-driver
+proceeded leisurely to fill his boiler. We availed ourselves of the
+chance to exercise our French on some Algerian troops who were lying
+wounded all over the platform. A rough tent had been made with waggon
+tarpaulins, and under this lay the worst cases--ghastly wrecks of men
+with blood-soaked bandages and blood-encrusted clothing, face muscles
+twitching convulsively as masses of flies settled on them. One French
+medical orderly with a strip of silver on his sleeves and an assistant
+seemed to be the whole staff of the place.
+
+One tall chap with a handsome beard showed us how a bullet had torn
+through his cap and grazed his head, while a rude sling and a crutch
+spoke of a more serious injury of which he said nothing. His white teeth
+and smiling face turned to a horrible scowl as he continued talking, and
+thinking we were over-exciting him, we moved away. Had we only known, he
+was trying to describe to us the terrible effect of the asphyxiating gas
+on his comrades who were less educated than he!
+
+A few miles further on we detrained at Poperinghe and were soon marching
+along a beautiful avenue of poplars--now perhaps the most famous highway
+in Flanders, the Vlamertinghe road.
+
+Refugees passed us with all their worldly effects piled on a waggon, the
+women and little children clattering along behind in their wooden
+sabots. It seemed so unnecessary. The guns that had been pounding away
+all night were now strangely silent, and the fields on either side
+seemed peaceful enough. There was even a farmer plowing stoically in
+one.
+
+A little further on we saw a horse that had been hurriedly cut out from
+a gun or waggon team. It needed but one glance to tell us that shrapnel
+had done its deadly work there, and we wondered vaguely what had become
+of its rider, for the saddlery and harness were still on it.
+
+On entering Vlamertinghe we saw signs of shelling on most of the
+buildings, particularly around the church and the square, the steeple of
+the former forming, of course, the aiming mark for the German guns.
+Here, too, the body of a woman lay half in and half out of a doorway.
+The place seemed absolutely deserted. An aeroplane droned overhead, but
+whether our own or the enemy's we could not ascertain. However, we took
+no chances and marched on, hugging the shelter of the walls on either
+side of the street.
+
+In this formation we were met by the gaunt figure of old Joey ----, our
+quarter-master. He fell in beside Major V---- and guided us to our
+transport lines, a farm a little on the Ypres side of the town. Here we
+lay for half an hour munching biscuits and bully beef and watching an
+anti-aircraft gun shelling the aeroplane we had noticed before, which
+was now low enough to distinguish the sinister black crosses painted on
+its wings.
+
+This was the reason for the extraordinary silence on the part of the
+guns, so skilfully hidden all around us.
+
+The "Archibalds," as the anti-aircraft guns are popularly known, seemed
+to be making extraordinarily bad practice as the fleecy puffs of
+shrapnel burst all around the plane without apparent effect, and the
+machine, having spotted something, dropped a signal that burst into
+brilliant sparkles and turned for the enemy lines.
+
+At this moment Joey returned from the outhouse concealing the
+telephonists with instructions that we were to proceed to the field,
+where the battalion was dug in at once.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE BREAKING IN
+
+"We take the old road we have taken for years;
+For you cannot cut corners in war, it appears."
+
+
+The truth of this old maxim was impressed on us by the roundabout route
+we took to reach the field only a few hundred yards away where the
+remainder of the battalion lay.
+
+Actually about two companies strong, they looked a mere handful as they
+lay huddled close to the hedges in the shallowest of shelter pits
+scratched in the soil with the field entrenching tool.
+
+The draft was immediately ordered to "dig in," as the plane we had been
+watching a few minutes before had dropped its signal directly over this
+position.
+
+We lost no time in digging more of these shallow pits, that reminded one
+rather gruesomely of graves, and had barely scraped them deep enough to
+roll into before a hail of small high-explosive shell fell all around
+us.
+
+For half an hour the whoop and crash of falling and bursting shells kept
+us alternately ducking our heads and raising them again to see "where
+that one went," for curiosity is many times a stronger impulse than
+fear.
+
+Curious things happened. A tree was cut in half by a shell, and the
+plumed top, falling clear of the stump, planted itself like a dart in
+the ground a few feet away.
+
+A pack horse suddenly bolted across the open field with a slight cut on
+one flank, and half a dozen men made wild grasp at its bridle before one
+succeeded in recapturing the brute. And here and there groups of men
+finding their corner of the field a bit too "hot" for comfort would just
+as suddenly bolt across to another part and start feverishly digging in
+anew.
+
+The shelling ended with as little warning as it had begun. There came a
+pause, and we thought naturally, "Well, thank God that's over!"--and
+said so. "Just a minute," said my companion; "there are the Three
+Sisters to come yet!"
+
+Before one could say "Here they are!" the rush of much larger
+projectiles was heard, and in quick succession three heavy shells
+crashed into the foot of the field, throwing up black columns of smoke.
+"Those are coal-boxes," continued my tutor; "they used to have four guns
+in that battery, but they are only using three now."
+
+The chuckle with which he added this last showed that he, at any rate,
+had no doubt as to the fate of the fourth gun.
+
+This was evidently the end of the shelling, the enemy having,
+theoretically, made the field untenable. The actual casualties were,
+however, very slight, and the field entrenching tool, until now regarded
+as a toy, became a valued possession. We were already beginning to learn
+that the British infantry equipment is the finest in the world.
+
+The shelling over, the draft was divided up amongst the remnants of the
+four companies, and Lyte and the writer had the good fortune to be
+placed with the same one.
+
+Our company commander had been a lieutenant till a few days before, and
+was now a temporary captain. His senior subaltern was wearing a "British
+warm," the skirt of which had been riddled by machine-gun bullets, and a
+sergeant was to come out in orders that evening as an officer to take
+the remaining platoon.
+
+A machine-gun duel in mid-air between one of our planes and an enemy
+machine that was eventually driven off and the dropping of some large
+shells into Ypres were the only other events of the day. Most of us
+slept, as there was work for us to do that night, until the joyful sound
+of "Tea up!" and the smell of hot "Maconachie" rations told us that
+supper was ready.
+
+At 7 o'clock the battalion fell in to move up to the front line and dig
+some trenches. Hardly were we formed up when another violent shelling
+started, and we hurried back to the cover of our funk-holes.
+
+Again the shelling was singularly ineffective, due, probably, to the
+fact that the enemy was using high explosive and not shrapnel. One shell
+by an unfortunate chance caught an artillery limber full of ammunition
+on the roadway, and it blew up with a sickening roar. The double report
+of this explosion evidently satisfied the German gunners, for a few
+minutes later the bombardment ceased and we again fell in.
+
+The greatest secrecy was observed, and nobody but the guides knew our
+destination, and we followed them in silence up the shell-pitted road
+and across the pontoon bridge that spanned the Yser Canal. Various dark
+forms hobbled past, their baggy trousers showing them to be Algerians. A
+French outpost challenged us, and a party of Ghurkas passed us leading
+pack horses with the bodies of their fallen officers lashed across the
+saddles. The Ghurkas never leave an officer's body on the field, so the
+sergeant in rear of the platoon ahead informed us.
+
+On either side of the road was a ruined trench, and even in the weird
+half-light of the flares we could see what a shambles they had become.
+The road was well called "Suicide Alley!"
+
+Then suddenly we left the road and took to the open fields on the left,
+passing a trench occupied by some Imperial troops--it was our own first
+line trench. Then we knew what our work was to be; we were to dig an
+advance trench to link up with the French on our left and the English on
+our right. The advance continued up a gentle slope across which--nearly
+a thousand yards of bare bullet-swept field--the Ghurkas had a day or so
+previously tried to charge. The bodies still lay there in rows just as
+they had fallen under the bursts of fire that mowed them down--pitiful
+huddled figures in the grass staring ahead into the great void. Few of
+the faces showed signs of suffering--such is the mercy of the rifle
+bullet; and so great was the resemblance to sleep that later, when we
+came to retire, the writer and others shook the bodies mistaking them
+for our own men.
+
+In the midst of this ghastly scene, lit up by fitful glances of
+moonlight as clouds scudded over the sky, two companies moved forward, a
+long line of shadowy forms, to act as a covering party while the
+remaining half-battalion dug the new trench.
+
+As we moved forward and lay down we could hear the thudding of the picks
+as they were driven into the ground, and from somewhere in the darkness
+ahead the plick-plock of the sniper began. Captain H----, our new
+company commander, passed down the line to warn us to count our men and
+see that all bayonets were fixed and magazines loaded.
+
+The sniping increased, and a farmhouse ahead of us that had been
+smouldering for some time burst into flame. Two colts that were
+evidently confined near the blaze started to whinny and neigh, and a man
+who had been hit began to curse vilely.
+
+From somewhere in rear a battery of French "seventy-fives" opened up
+with their ear-splitting reports, and we could see the outlines of the
+ruined farm ahead of us silhouetted against the crimson flashes of their
+bursting shrapnel. But of the enemy there was no sign--nothing but the
+arching trail of the flares that shot up and the steady plick-plock of
+the snipers. It was most trying.
+
+It was nearly 2 o'clock before the trench was completed and we wakened
+our shivering men to retire, for so exhausted were they that, despite
+the cold and danger, many had dozed there on the body-strewn field with
+one hand firmly grasping the rifle.
+
+By this time traces of dawn began to show themselves in the eastern sky,
+and the moon seemed to flood the whole country with light.
+
+Platoon by platoon in Indian file we drew off the field, carefully
+checking the count of our men as they passed until all were accounted
+for. Then the march back to billets began. And such a march! Worn out by
+the week's hard fighting, the older men staggered all over the road, all
+but dropping out from sheer exhaustion. Nor were the new men in better
+condition. Unaccustomed as yet to the weight of their packs, shaken by
+shell fire, and in some cases still weak from the sickness of the rough
+Channel passage, it was only sheer pride and the cruel taunts of the
+older men that kept them in the ranks. And thus we straggled on past the
+French outposts and over the Yser again, and on, on past the field we
+had lain in all day, on through Brielen to Vlamertinghe, back to
+billets. But the draft was broken in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+RESERVE BILLETS
+
+
+It was only the prospect of several days of comparative rest that held
+us together at all as we floundered over the slippery cobble stones into
+Vlamertinghe. At the cross-roads that formed the battalion rendezvous in
+case of alarm, we got into some kind of military formation, for we spied
+the gaunt figure of the colonel there sitting his horse like a centaur.
+A grim man he was, who never spared his horses, himself or his men, and
+his only comment as we hobbled past was, "Dress up those fours!"--and
+tired as we were, the fours dressed up. When, however, Captain H----,
+who had gone to the rear of the company to chase up stragglers, came by,
+his greeting was a little more personal. "All well, H----?" he asked,
+and our gallant skipper answered, "All present, sir." It showed rather
+plainly the difference in feeling that existed for some time between
+those who had been through the Second Battle of Ypres and those who had
+not--a difference that it took much hard fighting to outweigh.
+
+At last the company ahead turned down a side street, and we marched into
+our billet alone. It was a deserted warehouse with plenty of straw and
+quite comfortable, and, having got our men safely stowed away, the
+officers walked across the road to an empty house that formed our
+billets.
+
+On the way H---- pointed out the coffee waggon of which mention has been
+made. A sad-looking wreck it was, too, as a result of a stray shell. The
+ladies who had been in charge of it had been swooped down upon and
+gathered in by an irate provost-marshal some days before the shelling,
+and were, I am told, sent back to England for venturing so near the
+front line. The loss to the battalion was, however, immeasurable, as the
+ladies had been most devoted, and no matter at what hour the troops came
+in there was always a cup of coffee or soup awaiting them, and a
+smile--a smile that means so much to men whose hearts are lonely. Truly
+Raemaekers struck a key-note when, in his address in London, he asked
+England to "keep on smiling."
+
+Arriving at the house, we found coffee ready and breakfast in the
+process of preparation. Bacon, an omelette, toast and marmalade (plum
+jam being out of season), it was a feast for the gods, any minor
+deficiencies being overcome by the keenness of our appetites. Then,
+having satisfied the inner man, we climbed the crooked little stairs to
+the bedrooms, where we found our bedding rolls stretched out on some
+mattresses the owners had left in their haste, and in three minutes we
+were asleep. Never did any bed seem more welcome.
+
+We did not stay long in this billet, however, as we shifted the
+following day to a farm on the Brielen road. It was well we did so, for
+the enemy bombarded the town again and dropped one shell in our old
+billet a few hours after we left.
+
+The farm we moved into is worthy of a little description, as it was
+typical of any farm in Flanders. The three buildings that constituted
+the house, barn, and cowbyre were arranged in a hollow square around a
+brick courtyard, the centre of which was graced by a large pile of
+manure in an advanced stage of decomposition. Outside the square of
+buildings was a moat full of green slime and mosquito larvæ. Here the
+men washed, and here, too, our buckets were filled each morning for the
+"lick and a promise" that served as a substitute for a bath.
+
+[Illustration: FIELD KITCHEN IN RESERVE BILLETS.]
+
+Yet in spite of its unsanitary surroundings the house itself was
+beautifully clean inside, and no one could be healthier than the two
+buxom girls who formed part of the family that lived within. An exact
+census of the family was never obtained, as they poured out from nooks
+and crannies into the living-room occupied by us as sleeping quarters,
+generally at such awkward moments as when we were dressing or
+undressing. This was a matter of constant annoyance to Lyte, as the
+people persisted in announcing themselves with a "Bon jour, monsieur,"
+no matter what state of nudity they had caught you in.
+
+We shared this room with an artillery officer, a young Irishman named
+Lee, who had a battery hidden somewhere near. We saw little of him,
+however, as we were generally falling in to move off when he came in for
+the evening, and when we returned after a night dug in in rear of some
+other troops, he was leaving to go up to his guns.
+
+On some occasions we returned so late that the family were already up
+and at work, and instead of unrolling our valises we popped right into
+their beds. This was the subject of much joking of the simple peasant
+sort on the part of the young ladies, and consequent blushing on the
+part of poor Lyte. We all accused him of being their favourite, as he
+had nicknamed them "Ox-eye" and "Freckleface," names much more
+descriptive than the Marie and Jeanne their parents had chosen, and,
+having taken "Ox-eye" into our confidence, told her that poor Lyte was
+"_très timide_." That was all she required, and from then on she
+directed all her charms toward him.
+
+The next morning, his servant being as usual somewhere else, he ventured
+to ask for a little shaving water, in French of the first-steps variety.
+"Oh, monsieur speaks French," she answered, quite ignoring the mess-tin
+he held out. "Why did you not tell me?"--this last with an accusing
+glance at A----, the senior subaltern. Lyte began to deny all knowledge
+of the language, and she suddenly swung into English. "Nevair mind, I
+speak bloody good English," and then amidst our whoops of applause she
+demanded "It ees good? What!"
+
+Lee came in one morning in a great state of excitement, his rich brogue
+being augmented with the news he brought. It seemed that on going up to
+his guns that morning he had found the farm there, till then occupied by
+a Belgian family, vacated and the white half-door--so familiar in all
+peasant countries where they keep pigs--placed lozenge-wise on the red
+roof. A hasty search revealed a partly burnt map and other papers of a
+military nature, and a German plane was already buzzing aloft. He had
+hurriedly withdrawn his guns; but siege guns take time to move, and
+before they could get away the shells were upon them and one gun crew
+had been practically wiped out. He was much excited, as became a man who
+had seen his first death.
+
+We, too, had passed a very strenuous night. The Germans had commenced
+another attack on our line, using the gas again. We were wondering how
+much good the little respirators we were carrying would be, and the
+answer came soon enough.
+
+As we moved forward we met men falling back gasping, coughing and
+sobbing, and the stink of their clothing was of hell's own reek, a choky
+mixture of chlorine and sulphur. "It's not war, mate; it's bloody
+murder!" was all one man gasped as he threw himself coughing on the
+ground, where he died before we moved on. It was not a pretty sight, and
+more than one rifle-butt was grasped the tighter and more than one oath
+sworn to get at the fiends who had let loose this vile poison, against
+which the only protection we had was a little pad of gauze to fasten
+over the mouth and nose after soaking in water from our water-bottles.
+These had been supplied by the thousand as soon as the authorities made
+known their wants by the women and children of England, and, feeble
+though this protection was, these simple little pads saved many lives
+that week.
+
+But it was not our fate to meet the enemy again while in the salient.
+After continuing our march about another quarter-mile we lined a
+roadside and commenced digging another trench.
+
+Here we lay and shivered all night, the men crouching in the trench,
+every fourth man alert and watching, the officers lying on the ground
+behind in shell holes or walking up and down swinging their arms and
+trying to keep warm. It was only one night of many.
+
+The Germans continued to discharge gas against our line until May 15th,
+when they retook Hill 60. The bitter struggle of the past three weeks
+had begun as a mere counter-attack to our capture of this small but
+important mound.
+
+By this time, however, the Canadians had been withdrawn, and we left the
+salient with few regrets. But somewhere on the German side of our trench
+line there are thousands of graves of our fellow-countrymen, and when
+the time comes for the balancing of accounts we shall expect these to
+weigh heavy in the scales.
+
+Our brigade was the first to be relieved, marching out on the night of
+May 3rd, wondering vaguely where we were going, and also, perhaps, what
+would become of our friends "Ox-eye" and "Freckleface," with their
+stolid faces, their ample bosoms, and their square hips.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+BAILLEUL
+
+
+Our next stop was Bailleul, a town of some fifteen thousand inhabitants
+just over the Franco-Belgian frontier. Possibly it was never known
+before the war, but it is now, for sooner or later everyone goes to
+Bailleul: it was, until the taking over of the line below Arras, the
+Mecca of the British Army.
+
+But it was fifteen weary miles from Brielen, fifteen miles that we
+stumbled over in a drizzling rain on slippery cobblestones before
+turning up through an archway off the main street to our billets. Good
+billets they were, too--a loft with ample straw for one platoon, a
+school-house for the other three, and houses on another street for the
+officers.
+
+In spite of the early hour, about 3 o'clock, Madame was up and around
+and soon made us fresh coffee and the inevitable omelette; then we
+clattered up the steep little stairs to bed. F----, the sergeant who had
+been promoted, joined us here and proved a jolly good sort. We went out
+to hunt up new billets the next day. He, being a Quebecker, acted as
+interpreter, as our room was too small and stuffy for two, and,
+moreover, looked into the operating-room of a hospital opposite.
+
+We were fortunate in finding another billet quite close--an important
+point, as we were to mess together--and then took a stroll around the
+town.
+
+Bailleul is, like most French provincial towns, arranged like a star,
+the Grande Place and Hôtel de Ville forming the centre. We found our way
+to the cathedral, where a white-haired old _curé_ showed us around,
+pointing out the door leading to the great square tower and the axe
+marks left by the German soldiers who burst it open. They had used the
+tower as an observing post during the week their cavalry had held the
+town the preceding October. The old man had been held as hostage by
+them, together with the mayor and some other notables, but when asked if
+he had been badly treated he was very non-committal. "Qu'est-ce que vous
+voulez?" he answered. "C'est, la guerre!" That is the doctrine of
+humility taught France in 1870. "C'est la guerre!" It is used to
+explain anything from the shooting of civilians to the high cost of
+hand-made lace!
+
+In a jeweller's on the Grande Place we obtained a little fuller
+information as to the Germans' actions. They had robbed Madame of all
+her rings, deliberately broken up all her watch glasses--there was not
+one to be obtained in the town--and smashed with their sword hilts the
+glass of her show-cases. And across the square they had confiscated all
+the champagne in a _café_, and when no more was forthcoming they piled
+the tables on the _pavé_ and burnt them; also she had heard----; but
+here F----'s patience had worn out, and as he said "Hearsay evidence is
+not admitted," so we said "Bonjour" and returned to billets.
+
+Fortunately we did so, as we found we were slated to take a bathing
+parade at 1 o'clock and would barely have time to lunch. However, we
+caught the parade in time and marched the men to an old factory labelled
+"Divisional Baths." Here each man was supplied with a hot tub, soap and
+a clean towel, and was issued on stepping out from his tub with
+freshly-washed underwear, turning his soiled clothes in. This was a
+splendid system, and when later the clothes were not only washed but
+sterilised it ensured the men freedom for a short time at least from
+vermin.
+
+It took some time running the whole company through in batches of forty,
+so we had a brief look around that part of the town. We also found that
+at the asylum officers could get a real bath--full length that one could
+stretch out in--at any time, but as it was late when our last man was
+ready to march off, we simply returned to billets.
+
+We found the streets full of ambulances, most of them being gas cases
+from around Hill 60, and, in spite of the respirators, most of them
+pretty bad cases.
+
+Being somewhat of a chemist, I managed to see some of these cases a few
+days later. The hospital was so crowded that many cases were lying on
+stretchers in the garden that lies at the back of all these hideous
+perpendicular French houses, shielded from the weather by an awning
+only. But the worst cases were upstairs in a long hall--some eighteen of
+them, none of which had any hope. Reeking with chlorine, their faces a
+livid purple or an even ghastlier green, they lay there on the
+stretchers, each with a little bowl beside him, coughing his life away.
+And gradually the body would become weaker, the poor tortured lungs
+fail to clear themselves of the secretion that poured from their
+outraged tissue, and the fluid would accumulate slowly--oh, so
+slowly!--and the agonised victim died, not with the merciful swiftness
+of a bullet, but by gradual drowning.
+
+This was the death that the Germans--ashamed of their own
+brutality--afterwards described as painless and merciful!
+
+They may find justification for their crimes in Belgium, they may even
+smooth over the sinking of the _Lusitania_, but it must always be
+remembered that they, and they alone, are responsible for introducing
+into warfare this most ghastly and hideous death. It is said that German
+scientists spent years in perfecting this horror, practising its powers
+on plant life in the desert parts of Australia.
+
+And the neutral nations--what of them? Are they not after all
+"accessories after the fact" and equally guilty? For, having sworn in
+solemn convention at the Hague to abstain from the use of asphyxiating
+gases, they entered no definite protest, though public opinion ran high
+on the subject.
+
+Silence gives consent, and the poisoning of your enemy by chemical gases
+has now become the proper and chivalrous thing to do, and warfare has
+an added horror.
+
+But the Allied chemists were at work devising means of lessening and
+preventing this danger, and already success was crowning their efforts;
+a new pattern respirator was devised and being issued, and a solution
+for dipping it in was already available. Dr. G----, of Queen's
+University, then serving as a subaltern in No. 2 Company, had been
+experimenting in private and devised a solution which varied only in the
+proportion of one of its elements from that adopted by the British Army,
+so we were probably the first brigade in the B.E.F. to receive this
+protection. Bottles of this fluid were carried by that long-suffering
+man the platoon sergeant, and parades held showing the men how to adjust
+and use the respirators.
+
+Later we received flannel hoods, with mica windows, that had been dipped
+in the same solution, and these gave place in turn to the present gas
+helmet--a fearsome-looking affair, which, however, gives almost complete
+protection.
+
+Our stay in Bailleul was enlivened by the arrival of a draft and the
+posting up of a schedule of training. The draft, needless to say, was
+the more welcome of the two. With the draft--who were magnificently-built
+men from the Middle West--we received a major who took command of the
+company, Captain H---- dropping back as second in command. We thought
+this was rather hard lines, but H---- made no complaint, though he felt
+it rather keenly, but finding our new man had the South African ribbon,
+we were a bit mollified.
+
+Here, too, we held a memorial service for our fallen comrades, a
+powerful address being delivered by Major the Rev. William Beatty, one
+of the brigade chaplains. The troops, both old and new, were addressed,
+too, by Major-General Alderson, the divisional commander, who spoke of
+what the old men had done that the new men might understand what was
+expected of them, and stated that from now on he would count on us all
+as old troops.
+
+Then we marched away feeling we were now a definite part of the old
+regiment, and a few days later started our trek southward.
+
+We had entered another epoch!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE TREK SOUTH
+
+
+Until we left Bailleul the Canadian Division had been a part of the 2nd
+Army under Sir Herbert Plumer. We were now to go to the other end of the
+British line and become part of the 1st Army, then commanded by the
+present Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig.
+
+The news of this change was greeted with little enthusiasm by the old
+soldiers in our midst, but old soldiers are invariably pessimists, and
+imagine that every inspection is the prelude to more "dirty work at the
+cross-roads" and that every change made in their dispositions is for the
+worst.
+
+Still, we were all sorry to leave Bailleul, with its bright little
+shops, and to say good-bye to the _curé_ and our other friends there.
+
+We fell in at night in the Grande Place--the little square that has
+probably seen more British troops come and go than any other town in
+northern France--and waited there for the battalion to form up. It was
+a beautiful summer night, the square tower of the cathedral and the
+Moorish spire of the Hôtel de Ville forming perfect silhouettes against
+the starlit sky.
+
+We were not kept waiting long; the shrill of a whistle from somewhere in
+the darkness put an end to all talking, and we hastily slung our packs
+on our shoulders again and started on our long tramp south to La Bassée.
+
+For a while our route lay through country that some of us had traversed
+before, and Merville, Vieux Berquin, and other places were hailed with
+delight. There is a certain charm in returning to places that one has
+never expected to see again. Much speculation began as to whether we
+were going back to our old trenches at Bois Grenier and Fleurbaix or
+not, but all hopes of this happening were dashed to pieces when, after
+passing through Neuf Berquin, we turned sharply to the right.
+
+After this disappointment our packs began to weigh more heavily; the
+mouth organs and vocalists were less persistent in their efforts and
+gradually stopped in disgust, and only an accordion, wielded by a husky
+Scotchman at the rear of the company, strove to cheer us up. It was
+probably "Lochaber no more" or some other dirge he was playing, as he
+always showed unnatural fondness for the weird and the sad--probably due
+to the difficulty of fingering lively airs while on the march.
+
+Passing through Merville, A----, who was marching beside me, regained
+his spirits sufficiently to point out a shop where a pretty girl sold
+champagne, and then relapsed into silence again.
+
+A little further along the road we saw the adjutant riding alongside the
+major, and we knew we were nearing our billets. We turned up a side-road
+through Calonne, and the companies again broke off in different
+directions to the various farms to which they had been allotted.
+
+We were again fortunate in getting very good accommodation--good airy
+barns, a mill-pond for washing, and a well of no-worse-than-the-ordinary
+water. But imagine our surprise to find chalked on the gate of the
+largest and best farm a sign:--
+
+"SMALL POX.
+BY ORDER."
+
+Here we were in a fix, as the men would not enter the place till we
+hunted up that long-suffering individual the interpreter. Then we found
+the placard to be only a ruse on the part of the unsophisticated
+peasantry to avoid having troops billeted there.
+
+Having been found out and beaten at this game, Madame produced a sheet
+of paper she called a "reclamation," for some straw she claimed had been
+stolen by the preceding troops, and while she and the interpreter
+harangued over this we stowed our men away and sought our own billets a
+little distance up the lane.
+
+At Calonne we received newspapers telling of the starting of the French
+offensive in the Artois district and prophesying an attack on our part
+to co-operate with them. We got out our maps and saw we were quite close
+to Neuve Chapelle, and as the Aubers Ridge--the great natural barrier to
+Lille--formed the obvious point to attack, we were not greatly surprised
+when a day or two after arriving at this peaceful little village we
+again took the route--this time toward Neuve Chapelle. We had heard the
+guns drumming along the Aubers Ridge all the day before during church
+parade service (May 9th), and were, on the whole, rather disappointed
+when after a few miles' march we turned off the road into a farm near
+"le Cornet Malo" and lay there in the mud all day. Some of the Lahore
+Division passed us on their way into the affair, the Indian gunners
+sitting on their limbers like statues.
+
+It was rather a wretched day we spent in this farm. A heavy rain had
+turned the orchard in which we lay into a "bit of a bog," and all the
+straw we could buy or steal from the inhabitants could not keep us out
+of the mud. Here, too, we found the first instance of friction between
+the troops and the civilian populace, and the old lady made no bones
+about telling us how unwelcome we were. She opened hostilities by taking
+the rod from the pump so that we could not fill our watercart, and the
+troops retaliated by stealing bundles of unthreshed wheat. This was
+speedily put a stop to (and paid for) by the officers, and, for a while,
+peace reigned supreme while a thriving trade was done in coffee at two
+sous a cup and beer at three sous a glass.
+
+Then some of the officers, seeing a lot of freshly-baked bread in a room
+just off the kitchen, offered to buy some. To our surprise the old woman
+started to wave a knife around dangerously and screamed: "You take my
+wheat, you take my water, and now you won't even leave me my bread! I
+would rather the Germans had come; they at least pay for what they
+take!"
+
+As we had just paid her for the straw we thought this was going a little
+too far, and F----, who had a fine taste for sarcasm, waved his
+coffee-cup eloquently in the direction of the two slatternly girls that
+were peddling the coffee to the soldiers through the window, and said
+"What? With all these beautiful daughters," and then continued with a
+graphic description of the horrors in Belgium.
+
+This quieted the old lady down, but we were not sorry to leave there and
+shift to billets further up the road that night. It was the only
+instance we encountered of our being unwelcome in France, and the billet
+we occupied that night, although one of the filthiest houses we came
+across, was marked by a much more cordial spirit.
+
+We were fortunate to get into this farm, as two of the companies had to
+bivouac, there being only accommodation for the staff and two companies
+in the area. The matter was decided by lottery, the major being lucky
+enough to draw a long straw.
+
+[Illustration: AMATEUR THEATRICALS BACK OF THE LINE]
+
+It was rather a squeeze getting the company stowed away that night, but
+we managed somehow, and then turned into the kitchen. Here we were
+entertained with a graphic description by an old hag of how she had been
+wounded. It seemed that in some of the preliminary fighting she had run
+across a field between our troops and the Germans and received three
+bullets. She was quite cheerful about it and showed us two wounds, and
+when A---- casually asked about the third she collapsed in a chair and
+went into spasms of laughter. All the rest of the evening she would
+point her finger at him and start again to tee-hee. A---- was much
+annoyed.
+
+We stayed in that vicinity another day, as it was not certain whether we
+would be thrown into support in the attacks on the Aubers Ridge at
+Fromelles or the Bois de Biez, but it was eventually decided that the
+artillery preparation had been inadequate, and the following night we
+continued our march southward.
+
+Near Locon we passed some of the Indian Cavalry, gigantic-looking men
+with their turbanned heads. They surveyed us gravely as we passed, one
+or two flashing brilliant smiles in response to some friendly greeting.
+Then shortly afterwards we crossed the canal, and without further
+incident reached the outskirts of Bethune, where we went into bivouac in
+an open field, being favoured, most fortunately, with fine weather.
+
+Our long trek had ended.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+FESTUBERT, 1915
+
+
+While the 4th Army Corps were trying to gain a footing on the northern
+end of the Aubers Ridge near Fromelles the 1st Army was making an
+equally desperate attempt to the south in front of Festubert, a village
+already in our hands.
+
+But here, as at Neuve Chapelle, we found that the enemy front line, once
+penetrated, brought us in front of a series of strong points bristling
+with machine-guns, with dug-outs of almost incredible strength, some of
+them twenty and thirty feet under ground and safe against anything but
+the heaviest of field-guns, weapons that we were lamentably short of.
+
+We could batter their front line to bits, for, like our own, it was
+situated on lower ground, and consisted of breastwork parapets owing to
+the water-soaked state of the whole plain; but their infantry would
+retire to these deep dug-outs, only emerging when their sentries warned
+them of the lifting of our fire to permit the attack.
+
+We could, and did, drive the enemy from his front line, and once there
+we held on, but that was as far as we could go, for each of these strong
+points presented a new and entirely different problem to attack, and
+required a separate bombardment.
+
+Our offensive had started on May 9th and reached its height about the
+16th, by which time we had won ground to an average depth of six hundred
+yards on a front of four miles.
+
+At daybreak on the 16th the 7th Division attacked in the direction of
+the Rue D'Ouvert and Canteleux, and by 7 o'clock had entrenched
+themselves in a line running roughly north and south, half-way between
+their original trenches and La Quinque Rue. The remainder of the day and
+the following night were spent in consolidating this position and trying
+to drive the enemy from some short trenches and posts that prevented
+this division from linking up with the 2nd Division on its left. This
+was accomplished by noon of the 17th, and by nightfall further ground
+had been gained to the right. Slight advances were also made on the
+18th, but bad weather had greatly hindered the operation of our
+artillery.
+
+On the 19th, the 2nd and 7th Divisions, having suffered very severely,
+were withdrawn, the latter being relieved by the Canadians.
+
+Part of the 3rd Canadian Brigade had already become involved and had
+taken part in an attack on La Quinque Rue, where they succeeded in
+advancing the line some five hundred yards and linking up this ground
+with the Wiltshires on their right and the Coldstreams on their left.
+
+Further advance was held up by one of the enemy's strong points known as
+the "Orchard." This position was naturally strengthened by a deep ditch
+full of water on three sides, besides hedges and wire entanglements.
+
+During the afternoon of the 19th the Orchard was heavily bombarded by
+our guns, the shelling continuing till 7.45 p.m., when the Canadian
+Scottish advanced to the assault, supported by the 13th Royal
+Highlanders of Canada. Simultaneously the 48th Toronto Highlanders
+attacked some hundred yards to the right of the Orchard.
+
+These attacks were made in broad daylight, and, despite the torrent of
+fire with which the enemy opposed them, the objectives were quickly
+gained, though the casualties were most severe, and by night the new
+line was consolidated.
+
+Meanwhile the 2nd Brigade, which had been occupying trenches to the
+right of the Orchard, had attempted to take a position known as the
+"Bexhill Redoubt," but with less success, as the preliminary bombardment
+had been quite ineffectual.
+
+Another bombardment of the position was made, and, supported by the
+Grenade Company of the 1st Brigade, a portion of the enemy's line to the
+right of the Bexhill Redoubt was gained and barricades erected and this
+portion held, in spite of a shelling that continued without ceasing the
+whole of the 22nd. The enemy attempted a counter-attack during the
+afternoon, but were repelled by our machine-gun and artillery fire.
+During the night the troops holding this line were relieved by
+Strathcona's and King Edward's Horse, then, of course, serving as
+infantry.
+
+On the night of May 23rd the Bexhill Redoubt was taken by the 5th and
+7th Battalions of the 2nd Brigade, reinforced by a squadron of the
+Strathcona's Horse. The captured positions were held all day, despite
+the enemy's bombardment--the heaviest shelling this brigade had yet
+experienced--and when they were relieved that night by the Royal
+Canadian Dragoons and the Eastern Ontario Battalion the brigade had lost
+55 officers and 980 men.
+
+The 1st Brigade, during these operations, had been occupying a portion
+of the line and suffering severely from shell fire. The writer's
+battalion, the Eastern Ontario, had relieved a battalion of the Black
+Watch on the night of the 19th near Indian Village. The Highlanders
+seemed glad to be leaving; one or two expressed their opinion that it
+was a "hell of a hole," a statement no one contradicted, as the place
+was vile with mud and stank from unburied corpses.
+
+Between our line and the Western Ontario men, who held the old German
+trench ahead of us, lay hundreds of bodies that had been there since the
+last winter, for this narrow strip--not much more than a hundred yards
+in width--had been "No Man's Land." Attempts made by day and night to
+bury some of these bodies had to be given up, as the enemy swept the
+parapets of both trenches, on the least sign of movement, with
+"whizz-bangs." The Western Ontario Battalion suffered horribly, a
+constant stream of stretchers coming through our lines, starting with
+daybreak. These small shells were fired from light field-guns that had
+been brought up to the trenches, and were in consequence so close that
+the shell arrived and burst almost simultaneously with the report of the
+gun. Shells fired at the ordinary ranges announce their coming by a
+prolonged whirr, allowing a certain amount of time to get under cover
+before the burst comes.
+
+We held this line till the night of the 24th, when we went forward to
+relieve the 3rd Brigade and consolidate the ground won by them. Each man
+carried two days' rations, a shovel, an extra bandolier of cartridges,
+and twelve sandbags, in addition to his ordinary fighting equipment.
+
+Most of the companies had some kind of trench to start work on, but at
+our end there was nothing but a line marked out by the engineers.
+Listening posts and covering parties were sent out, and by morning we
+were occupying a ditch about three feet deep with a fairly good parapet
+in front. No fires were permitted, as we were hidden by grass from the
+enemy and the trench was not yet in shape to stand any bombardment.
+
+The next night we were fortunate in obtaining more sandbags and some
+timber from a German trench we had passed on the way up. Some mail and
+parcels of food came up, and we managed to clear out our wounded. Most
+welcome was ammunition for the flare pistols the officers carried. We
+had come into the trench with six rounds for each pistol and had been
+carefully saving them in case the enemy attacked.
+
+Our parapet was now high enough to be easily visible to the enemy, and
+we received considerable attention from his snipers and artillery the
+following day. No serious damage was done, however, and we were relieved
+the following night by a Territorial battalion of Highlanders.
+
+On the 26th General French, having attained for the moment the immediate
+object in view, ordered a curtailment of the bombardment and a
+consolidation of all positions won, and the Battle of Festubert came to
+an end.
+
+By the 31st of the month the whole Canadian Division had been withdrawn
+and lay in reserve billets around the outskirts of Bethune.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+CARPE DIEM
+
+
+"Home again!" said Begbie Lyte as he watched his servant unrolling his
+valise in the little field we had left a fortnight before, and the rest
+of us laughed, for he voiced the thoughts of all.
+
+It required a bit of an optimist to see a home in that apparently
+comfortless situation, but men just relieved from the firing line are
+not over-critical, and the prospect of a night under the stars, but away
+from the crash of shell and the "phit" of striking bullets, was pleasant
+enough to satisfy the most chronic grouser.
+
+We had, of course, only reached this billet about dawn, so without
+wasting any time over such niceties as washing we bundled our clothes
+into a sort of pillow in the head of our "Wolseleys" and drew from the
+depths of that wondrous combination of a valise and bed that luxury of
+luxuries on active service, a pair of pyjamas, and were soon dozing
+comfortably in dreamland.
+
+Our men, lacking such comforts as Wolseley valises and pyjamas, merely
+denuded themselves of their equipment, and, with perhaps a preliminary
+search for "trench pets," slept in their greatcoats under shelters
+rigged up with waterproof sheets. They had no blankets, for it was
+summer, and blankets and rum issue are alike "Nah pooh" on the 1st of
+June. We had in fact turned in our blankets before starting southward
+from Bailleul.
+
+Here and there bivouac fires had been lighted, and round them small
+groups sat and talked over our recent losses. In another day they would
+mention them no more, though they would never forget them.
+
+Presently even these fell asleep, and when, a few hours later, the moon
+showed herself between the clouds she looked down on a still and silent
+camp, the only signs of life being the dying embers of the fires and the
+dark forms of the sentries moving slowly up and down the field.
+
+Custom permitted us to sleep on till noon the next day, and then
+everybody had a grand clean up. A shower-bath was extemporised by the
+simple process of standing over a ditch naked and unashamed while a
+patient _batman_, with the aid of what is called, in official language,
+"one pail, collapsible canvas," poured water over until, breathless but
+refreshed, the victim shouted to stop. Later on sundry private soldiers
+whom one had known in civil life would approach and ask for the loan of
+the pail. Such is democracy in the "Colonials."
+
+Bath being over, the razor was vigorously applied and a week's growth
+scraped painfully from sunburnt chins, on which talcum powder was
+afterwards daubed in copious quantities till we smelt to heaven like a
+Gaiety chorus!
+
+Then breakfast! Its fragrance had been tantalising our noses during all
+this gay preliminary, for dirty as we may get--and yet sit down to eat
+in the trenches--it was an unwritten law that no man who was not shaved,
+shorn, and washed after the manner of the Romans should sit down to mess
+when in reserve. Lyte one day in a burst of enthusiasm, while treasurer
+of the mess, decreed that the servants should also wash before starting
+to cook, but after one trial, dinner being thereby delayed a couple of
+hours, the mess rebelled and the cooks were allowed to revert to their
+former state of barbarism.
+
+Breakfast over, there came the censoring of mail, so that it could be
+sent to battalion headquarters before 2 o'clock. This is supposed by
+some to furnish an endless amount of amusement to the officers, and
+often facetious remarks are introduced by the writer to this end, but to
+most of us censoring is a beastly bore, and one views with dismay the
+enormous pile of letters that your platoon sergeant dumps down on your
+bed each day at noon with the laconic announcement of "Mail, sir!"
+
+One runs across people of many sorts while reading through this heap.
+The first and commonest is the married man who sticks strictly to
+private affairs and perhaps says to to his wife: "You remember Jimmy
+D----who used to work at So-and-so's. He was killed by a shell, but you
+can tell his wife he didn't suffer none, as he died quick." Not a word
+you will notice of his own escape or of anything that would tend to
+aggravate the sorrow of the stricken family. Of the same affair he would
+probably write to a chum: "You know poor old Jimmy D----. He was all
+blew to hell by a whizz-bang. A chunk of it just missed my napper by an
+inch. I come near going West that time, believe me!"
+
+Then there is another type whose endless exaggerations make one wish to
+scribble the word "liar" at the end of each paragraph, but which you
+pass, after scratching out the numbers of our slain and some of the
+grosser statements.
+
+Once in a while you may come across a guileless sort of man who, after
+extolling the virtues of his platoon commander, proceeds to tell his
+friend Bob: "No, I haven't been made a corporal yet, but our section has
+none now and I am the oldest soldier left." One feels great curiosity as
+to the state of this paragon's conduct sheet.
+
+However, these are mere details. The great joy of being in reserve
+billets is the ability to go, after parades, of course, into the nearest
+town and spend the 125 francs that the paymaster exchanges once a month
+for a Bank of Montreal cheque. The private soldier, receiving a meagre
+30 francs a month, has to content himself with simpler joys than
+champagne (vintage 1914) and hand-made lace. Instead he partakes of
+French beer at three sous a glass, and his friends overseas receive
+hand-embroidered postcards of brilliant but patriotic designs worked by
+the crippled children of Paris.
+
+The greater part of the soldiers' money, however, is spent on
+food--dainties such as oatmeal, sardines, canned fruit, and so
+forth--and little shops close to the firing line welcome the
+twice-monthly visit of the paymaster.
+
+Bethune, the town outside of which we were at this time billeted, was
+quite the gayest place we had visited since leaving Poperinghe.
+
+"Business as usual" was its motto, in spite of the almost daily shelling
+it received by light guns, said to have been mounted on an armoured
+train.
+
+This bombardment took place, as a rule, between 6 and 7 o'clock each
+evening, but the damage done was very slight, only one soldier being
+reported killed during our stay. There were civilians killed at various
+times, but from a military point of view the shelling was absolutely
+useless.
+
+If, perchance, one was taking tea with Marie, or anyone else for that
+matter, and the shelling started, it was quite the thing to seek the
+shelter of the cellar and stay there "_en famille_" until the
+bombardment was over, when you would emerge, Mademoiselle perhaps
+pushing a loosened hairpin back in place, and continue to enjoy your
+tea.
+
+It was not everyone's fortune to have this happen, however.
+
+The bank took a more serious view of the affair, and, having sandbagged
+the cellar windows, posted notices stating that, in the event of
+shelling, customers could continue business in the cellar. And this was
+in a nation that we have always looked upon as effeminate and excitable!
+
+Under these pleasant circumstances, plus a little setting-up drill and
+"physical jerks," we passed a very pleasant fortnight before going into
+the trenches again--this time at Givenchy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+GIVENCHY, 1915
+
+
+It was now the turn of the 1st Brigade to emulate the gallant deeds of
+the 2nd and 3rd Brigades at Ypres and Festubert, and right gallantly
+they did so.
+
+Givenchy, while receiving but slight mention in Sir John French's
+dispatches, was perhaps only a minor affair; but the fact that, owing
+largely to a shortage of bombs, we were unable to hold the ground we had
+gained does not in any way detract from the gallantry of the attack.
+Comparisons with Hulluch or Loos cannot be made, as we had nothing like
+the support of either infantry or guns that were available on those
+later occasions.
+
+The Canadians relieved the Guards in the Givenchy trenches during the
+second week in June. Our brigade was still in reserve around Bethune
+when they passed us; the Prince of Wales, a slim, tired-looking boy in
+khaki, marched by with his regiment. It wasn't often we had any of the
+Royal Family march past us; generally the boot was on the other leg!
+
+We entered the trenches at night and, as usual, in a drizzling rain.
+Except for the fact that it was miserable weather, that we had followed
+the La Bassée Canal in, and that he had a jumping toothache, the writer
+has no vivid impressions of that night.
+
+We lay in some trenches just in front of the ruined distillery, dug in a
+commanding mound that had been thrown up in building the canal, and
+stayed there till next night, when we moved forward again, two companies
+going into the front line and two, one of them the writer's, occupying a
+support trench.
+
+Here we learned what work was, every bit of food, bombs, and ammunition
+required for the front line being carried up these narrow twisted
+communication trenches by the support companies, for the proximity of
+our line to the enemy would not permit of taking a single man from the
+front line. It was the one time we cursed the heavy mailbags that
+arrived with unceasing regularity every night.
+
+The right of our trenches here rested on the canal, and could go no
+further forward owing to a small marsh that lay in front. But about
+the centre of the position the line swooped forward into a small and
+dangerous salient known as the "Duck's Bill."
+
+[Illustration: THE DISTILLERY AT GIVENCHY.]
+
+It was opposite here we proposed to attack, the actual objective being
+the high ground between points H2 and H3 on the map. If we and the 7th
+Division on our left could gain this high ground it would straighten out
+this dangerous salient and give us a footing on the Aubers Ridge.
+
+Great preparation was made for this attack. A mine that had been under
+construction for months was to be sprung, and we were to give the Hun a
+bombardment such as he had never had before.
+
+Two field-guns were brought up on the night of the 14th and placed in
+_épaulements_ that had been dug in rear of the front-line trench to
+receive them. They were to be kept masked till the last moment before
+the attack, when they would cut wire and silence machine-guns along the
+front over which we were to attack.
+
+The Central Ontario Battalion was to make the attack, supported by the
+Toronto Battalion, while the Eastern and Western Battalions were to man
+the captured trench, consolidate it, and provide for any
+counter-attacks. On the left, the East Yorks and another battalion of
+that brigade were to co-operate.
+
+Meanwhile the mine was being hastily completed, and by noon on the 15th
+it was ready for firing, the explosive being carried up by Lyte and his
+satellites from near the distillery. They had had rather a bad time of
+it crossing the Pont Fixe, a wrecked bridge that was under observation
+from the German position.
+
+The Huns, seeing the first load of these white boxes being carried over
+the bridge, laid a gun on it and when the second party came across
+opened fire on them, wounding several men close to F----, the Quebecker,
+who as junior sub. was bringing up the rear. He, however, kept the men
+from dropping the explosive, and the party reached the mine shaft
+without any further casualties.
+
+Our three days' bombardment, which had started on the night of the 13th,
+now died down slightly, and the Germans, having had ample time to bring
+up their reinforcements, waited for the attack.
+
+At 3 o'clock our two companies in the front line drew off to the right
+and the men of the Central Ontarios took their places, while the
+communication trenches leading up were choked with the Toronto men who
+were to form their supports. Our artillery now tuned up again and caught
+the Germans by surprise. They, in turn, shelled us heavily, causing many
+casualties owing to the crowding of the trench.
+
+[Illustration: OUR SUPPORT TRENCHES AT GIVENCHY.]
+
+A---- and the scout-corporal went up the trench and were caught by a
+shell and the corporal was killed, A---- being fortunate in escaping,
+though very severely wounded.
+
+Another shell lit fairly on a bomb depôt about this time and destroyed
+one of our reserves of these weapons, and a third shell killed
+Lieutenant-Colonel Beecher, the second in command of the attacking
+battalion.
+
+The two guns in the front line had been unmasked and were cutting wire
+with desperate rapidity, though their crews were practically wiped out a
+few moments later, and in the midst of this turmoil the mine went up.
+
+It was quite the largest mine that had been exploded along the front,
+and the tremor of the earth could only be compared to an earthquake.
+
+So eager was the engineer officer to reach the German trench, that,
+finding he was striking water underground, he loaded in something like
+a ton and a half of explosive to make certain. Thus he achieved the
+double result of winning the Military Cross for his skill and blowing up
+a portion of our front line, from which fortunately our men had been
+withdrawn.
+
+But a number of our own men were killed and wounded, and, what was far
+worse, another reserve depôt of bombs was buried under the _débris_ of
+the explosion.
+
+In the meantime, masked by the fountain of earth thrown up by the mine,
+the attack had been launched and was already in the first German line,
+the bombers were beginning to work along the trench to the right and
+left, and the little flags that marked their progress could be seen
+moving slowly to the left to link up with the East Yorks.
+
+But the East Yorks had been unable to advance owing to the wire not
+having all been cut and the machine-gun fire that enfiladed them from
+their flanks.
+
+Meanwhile the Canadians had gained the third German line, but already
+the shortage of bombs was beginning to be felt, and they were forced
+back to the second line, where they established blocks in the trench
+and were able to hang on until the following day, when the German
+counter-attack forced them to fall back to our own front line.
+
+[Illustration: AFTER GIVENCHY.
+
+Left to right: Capt. Birdsall, Winnipeg Brown, Ponton, Capt. Richardson,
+Gutty.]
+
+The brigade had lost heavily. Of twenty-three officers of the Central
+Ontario Battalion who went over the parapet only three returned
+uninjured, the remainder being either killed, wounded, or missing!
+
+Nor had the Yorks fared much better.
+
+During the second day of the affair the writer was moving up a narrow
+communication trench with a platoon carrying ammunition to the front
+line when he encountered a party of about the same strength coming down
+the trench in defiance of a notice board marked "In only." After asking
+in vain for the officer in charge of the party he was told "For God's
+sake, sir, we aren't any party. We're all that's left of two companies!"
+There was nothing left to be said!
+
+Once again it had been proved that attacks by daylight, unless supported
+by masses of supports, are bound to fail.
+
+The 2nd Canadian Brigade relieved us, marching in by one side of the
+canal while we marched out along the other. We called across our best
+wishes to them as we passed. We had, it is true, been heavily pounded,
+but we were far from being depressed, though we might well have been.
+
+Instead, as we passed an electric towing machine lying neglected along
+the towpath, a man in the ranks behind asked his mate what they were
+used for.
+
+"Don't you know?" was the reply as he glanced at the broad-tyred wheels;
+"why, they use them for rolling down the water in the canal after a
+storm!"
+
+It was in this mood we returned to billets.
+
+[Illustration: APPROXIMATE LINE AFTER FESTUBERT AND GIVENCHY, 1915.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+NORTHWARD AGAIN
+
+
+After Givenchy the Canadian Division rested for another week around the
+outskirts of Bethune before starting its long tramp back to the northern
+end of the line again.
+
+But it was far from being a week of idleness, and hard drilling was the
+order of the day. Great stress was laid on bomb-throwing, and, in spite
+of the heavy casualties the bombing sections had suffered, there was no
+dearth of volunteers for the "Suicide Club," as the bombers termed
+themselves. The men, as well as the officers, recognised the value of
+this weapon, old as the use of gunpowder itself, but now reinstated to
+greater importance than ever before.
+
+So we started northward, a very uneventful and tiring march, our first
+stop being at Neuf Berquin, where we rested a day.
+
+The march had been very fatiguing; it was the latter end of June, and
+"sunny France" had been living up to her reputation, and even the
+nights, in which we marched for the sake of coolness and concealment,
+were most oppressive. And it was in weather like that that the famous
+"First Seven Divisions" fought and marched twenty-five or thirty miles,
+dug in and fought again, only to have again to retire!
+
+And we were only averaging fifteen miles a march!
+
+Our next halt was at Noote-Broome, a mere hamlet, where we held church
+service and then marched straight into the trenches.
+
+This was a new area for us. We had grown so accustomed to shifting from
+one part of the line to another that we had already nicknamed ourselves
+the "Canadian Foot Cavalry."
+
+However, we were fated to rest in that vicinity for several months,
+though our brigade shifted from one position to another along that line
+all summer.
+
+We first relieved a battalion of the Middlesex on June 28th opposite a
+poisonous little spot known as "la Petite Douve." Here a small stream,
+dignified by the name of the Douve River, wandered lazily across the
+flat at the foot of the Messines Ridge and coiled like a natural moat
+in front of the Petite Douve Farm.
+
+This, like all farms in Flanders, was a square of strongly-built brick
+buildings. In it the enemy had established concrete machine-gun
+positions and converted the place into a veritable fort. It projected in
+a salient from their average line and enfiladed the main road running
+from our position to Messines.
+
+The Middlesex, on our relieving them, had told us a weird tale of the
+number of rounds of rifle ammunition they expended in a single night. We
+discounted this by the usual 50 per cent., but our major had an extra
+supply brought up in case of emergencies.
+
+An evening or two later we found the reason for the Middlesex's heavy
+expenditure of cartridges, for the enemy, on a three-mile front,
+suddenly opened up rapid fire, keeping up this fusillade for nearly half
+an hour.
+
+This occurred at odd intervals for some time while we occupied that
+front, and was known as "the Germans (or the Fritzes) getting their wind
+up." The Middlesex had been trying to beat down this fire with their own
+rifle fire; we contented ourselves with sitting tight and, by careful
+patrolling, watching for the first signs of an attack. On such a night
+as this poor F---- was out on patrol when the rapid fire opened up, and
+we nearly struck him off the company strength. Much to our surprise he
+and his patrol came in later, quite unhurt, having discovered, and taken
+shelter in, an advanced German trench near some willows.
+
+Later it became quite the thing to take a few men out with you and bomb
+this trench.
+
+We only did two "tours" in this particular piece of trench, as the next
+time we came in that company frontage had been allotted to the battalion
+on our left and we moved just around the corner, the Petite Douve Farm
+being almost hidden from our view by trees but continuing to annoy us
+with its machine-guns.
+
+It was here that we celebrated "Dominion Day" (July 1st), a Canadian
+ensign that had arrived a few days before in a parcel from "home" waving
+gaily behind our lines.
+
+It was here, too, that Captain Frank Tidy, of the Toronto Battalion,
+astonished the brigade by making a sortie from the trench in daytime and
+bringing in two prisoners whom he had observed moving in the tall wheat
+that here and there shut off our view of the German line.
+
+Much courage is required to make a sortie of this sort, and one is not
+surprised that a third German had to be shot before the other two
+surrendered to Captain Tidy and his two comrades.
+
+No information of importance was gained from these prisoners except that
+the enemy had sent them out to ascertain who the new troops occupying
+our line were.
+
+Summer was now well advanced, and it was doubtful if a further "push"
+would be attempted that season, and we gradually settled down to the
+routine of trench warfare.
+
+During the middle of July we did one tour in the trenches in front of
+Wulverghem, relieving a battalion of Northumberland Fusiliers. We only
+stayed there a few days, but were greatly bothered with rifle-grenades,
+so, finding that our grenades fell short of the German line, the major
+and a small party took the grenade-gun out in the long grass until they
+were able to reach the enemy and thus secured a temporary peace.
+
+The East Yorks then relieved us, and when next we entered the trenches
+it was a little to the right of our old position and in front of the
+celebrated Ploegsteert Wood.
+
+Here the right battalions of the brigade had rather a strenuous time,
+as some mines had been exploded and there was still a struggle going on
+around the craters.
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO PLUGSTREET WOOD.]
+
+But on the left, abutting our old position near the Douve Farm, we had
+rather an easy time of it, there being little shelling and the trenches
+nearly two hundred yards apart.
+
+In fact our greatest activity was at night and at dawn, conditions at
+the latter time being well expressed in an anonymous sonnet we found
+pinned up in a dug-out entitled "Stand To":--
+
+   "Early every morning,
+   As the stars begin to tire,
+   Without the slightest warning,
+   Our maxim opens fire;
+   A German gunner answers back,
+   And one by one the rifles crack,
+   All down the line you can hear the rattle,
+   And then begins our morning battle;
+   And as the dawn creeps in the sky
+   A couple of shells go whistling by.
+   The bullets are flying in every direction
+   Just as the larks begin to carol,
+   And all because the machine-gun section
+   Wanted to warm their hands on the barrel."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+NIGHTS OF GLADNESS!
+
+
+Our nights around Ploegsteert fully made up for the peacefulness of the
+days, and "No Man's Land" between the two lines of trenches became the
+scene of many exciting adventures.
+
+This was particularly true of the area directly in front of us, as a
+large beanfield extended from the German line nearly to ours. It was a
+dull night indeed that our listening post did not either bomb, or get
+bombed by, an enemy patrol. Casualties, though, were fewer than one
+would expect from such combats, as bombs are very local in their action,
+and it was not easy to locate the enemy's position exactly by ear as he
+rustled his way through the beans.
+
+Behind the lines there was less romantic work; for General Joffre, in an
+odd moment, had sent a circular letter to the various divisions calling
+attention to a new form of trench for protection against shell fire,
+and we dug these trenches till there was hardly a foot of Allied soil
+unturned. Later, during the rains, we drained our living trench into
+them on the principle that the uncomfortable sensation experienced
+during a heavy shelling would act as a distraction to the inconvenience
+of standing in several feet of water.
+
+While we were in these trenches the enemy fired the dry yellow grass in
+"No Man's Land" a few nights after their capture of our line at
+Sanctuary Wood, near Hooge, with the flame projectors or
+"flammenwerfers." A hurried "stand-to" was ordered, as we thought a
+similar attack was about to be made.
+
+But the fire died down and we saw no signs of the enemy coming over. It
+was, however, an anxious night, and great interest was taken in widening
+our wire entanglements as more and more details of the Hooge affair
+trickled down to us. How we longed for a supply of the iron stakers that
+our patrols brought in time after time from the German wire! We got
+them, too--later.
+
+Later the Germans could not have burned down our wire, even had they
+tried, as a week of heavy rains came on, and, on such trifles do the
+fates of nations hang, these had a most serious effect on the "Autumn
+Push"--it was already September--as our offensive around Hulluch and
+Loos was called.
+
+We were in reserve during the first two days of the attack, and received
+with clock-like regularity the _communiqués_ telling of our successful
+advances.
+
+Our gunners were co-operating by the process known as "engaging the
+enemy's artillery," but we did not doubt that the Toronto Battalion,
+then occupying our trenches, were having rather a warm time of it, as
+the Hun, instead of being a sportsman and shelling our batteries, used
+to retaliate on our trenches.
+
+We set off the following day for the trenches. It had started to rain
+about 4 o'clock, so that by 7, when we reached the head of Mud Lane, we
+had no reason to doubt the origin of this homely name.
+
+In pleasing contrast to our growlings and grumblings as we took their
+places, the Toronto men filed out prophesying all sorts of cheerful
+things in store for us. All we could see ahead of us was plenty of work,
+for the shelling they had received had smashed down our bulwarks and
+annihilated the officers' kitchen--rather an elaborate structure, of
+which we were justly fond--and they, in the sure and certain knowledge
+of a relief, had only cleared away enough of the _débris_ to make the
+trench passable.
+
+[Illustration: OUR TRENCHES, PLUGSTREET WOOD.]
+
+Meanwhile our listening posts, soothed with a wee drappie o' rum, went
+over the parapet laden down with waterproof sheets fully determined to
+make the best of a bad job, our sentries were posted, and the welcome
+order to "Stand down" came along the trench. Those of us not otherwise
+occupied turned into our dug-outs and were soon asleep. After a certain
+stage one becomes unconscious to even a revolver-butt prodding one in
+the ribs.
+
+It seemed only a few minutes before the sergeant thrust his head into my
+dug-out with a "Midnight, sir!" I groped around for my pocket lamp and
+looked at my watch--some way you always hope the sergeant is wrong, but
+he never is--and tumbled out to relieve poor Lyte, who had spent a
+miserable four hours.
+
+A rift in the clouds showed our friends of the midnight watch--the Great
+Bear and Cassiopeia--twinkling merrily as though it had never rained for
+a fortnight.
+
+I sloshed my way down to the far end of the trench. Pools of water lay
+ankle deep here and there along its length. Already one or two men, who
+had just come off sentry, had started to drain these into little
+catch-pools. From here it was baled by means of the ever-useful
+Maconachie tin into an equally useful biscuit tin, which was afterwards
+dumped on the enemy's side of the parapet.
+
+In other places the men had turned in and were already asleep, so they
+were promptly stirred up and told to "Get busy," and, for the night, the
+blosh of the baling tin took the place of the smack of a shovel on a
+freshly-placed sandbag.
+
+At frequent intervals it was necessary to crawl out and visit the
+listening posts, who lay in the rank grass just beyond our own wire.
+
+On returning, not only were one's feet wet, but knees and elbows as
+well. Then it was up and down the trench again for another hour or so.
+
+A fine drizzle set in and the stars again disappeared, the drizzle
+turning to a steady shower.
+
+I retired to company headquarters, only emerging when necessary to visit
+the sentries and listening posts again. There, by the aid of a
+sputtering candle, I sought diversion in the shape of a sevenpenny novel
+that some kindly soul had forgotten in his haste to be relieved.
+
+[Illustration: OUR TRENCHES AT PLUGSTREET.]
+
+Just as I reached the stage where I could sort the various characters
+into their ultimate _rôles_ of hero, villain, and heroine the sergeant
+again intruded with the news that one of the listening posts reported an
+enemy patrol approaching. A few flares were fired up, but revealed
+nothing except a white glare of grass field, the bean patch, and the
+inky black of a few willows with our listening posts huddled at their
+bases. These men were, of course, invisible to the enemy, as the flare
+had fallen between their line and the willows. A flare must fall behind
+the object aimed at to reveal anything with accuracy.
+
+Even a couple of parachute lights fired from "Little Archibald," as we
+called the special gun used for these larger flares, revealed nothing,
+so I gave up in disgust, woke the only two men who had not been
+disturbed all night, tied a couple of sandbags around each knee, and
+once again disappeared over the parapet.
+
+An hour later, on returning, the signaller warned me it was time for
+the "situation" report. I scrawled out the usual formula, "Situation
+unchanged; enemy quiet; wind northerly," and handed him the form.
+
+It was ten minutes late, and though the adjutant would not read it till
+morning I knew I was in for a wigging. Wet and disgusted I turned to my
+dug-out.
+
+A few minutes later traces of dawn showed themselves in the east. The
+rain ceased and a fine mist took its place. The men stumbled out to
+their rifles in response to the order "Stand to," and I made a final
+promenade of the trench, dragging out a man here and there who was
+tardy.
+
+Then I stirred up the officer of the day and handed over my duties.
+
+The mist cleared away, showing the German line, grim and formidable as
+ever!
+
+Another day had dawned.
+
+It was on such a dawn as this that poor Jack L----, my platoon-sergeant,
+was killed. The fog had lifted a little, revealing an enemy patrol to
+our listening post.
+
+He, taking the nearest two men with him, went out in search of them, and
+a flare falling near the little party showed them up to the enemy
+snipers. He alone was hit.
+
+We buried him in the battalion cemetery the next day, the colonel
+reading the service over his body, and we thought as we lowered him into
+his grave what a very good friend he had been.
+
+It was not very many days later that we changed from this brigade area
+to another, leaving Ploegsteert with its memories, sad and otherwise,
+behind us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+IN FRONT OF MESSINES
+
+
+The Second Canadian Division arrived in France during our stay in
+Ploegsteert, and after a short rest took over a sector on the right of
+St. Eloi and in front of Messines.
+
+Here it was that we relieved them about a fortnight later--our third
+move while in front of this grim hill, the scene of such hard fighting
+in October of the year before.
+
+The line at this point swung forward in a small salient to within fifty
+yards of the enemy--the only footing we now held on this famous
+ridge--and to the Toronto and Eastern Ontario Battalions fell the honour
+of guarding this point all winter.
+
+Here, too, we were to learn something of grenade and mine warfare such
+as the other two battalions of our brigade had been waging all summer
+near Ploegsteert.
+
+And the little graveyard in rear of the line was to receive the bodies
+of many of our comrades and hold them in common sanctity with those of
+other gallant men, British and French, Highlanders and Turcos, who had
+perished on the slopes of Messines.
+
+For a week we systematically registered our guns on new points in the
+enemy's second and third lines--the usual preliminary to an
+offensive--and bombarded them severely.
+
+This was done to prevent the enemy from moving any of his guns from this
+area to the southern end of the line, where, now that the weather was
+again favourable, the British were to make another thrust.
+
+For this purpose, too, we were to make a "little demonstration" on our
+front, using smoke bombs to make the enemy believe we were going to use
+gas, and, to our great satisfaction, it was announced that in those
+areas where the real offensive was being made the Germans would be
+treated to a dose of their own poison. Too long we had waited and
+allowed the enemy to use this fearful weapon against us, thinking the
+neutral nations might intervene; but their interest in the cause of
+humanity was largely a financial one, and we determined to adopt a
+broader view, perhaps, of what justifiable weapons are, and make use of
+the advances of science. France was already using the gas, but Britain
+hesitated at setting her hall-mark on such a usage, necessary as it had
+become.
+
+The day, October 13th, was ideal for observation, beautifully clear,
+with a gentle breeze from our trench towards the enemy's. Nothing finer
+could be desired for our operations to the south.
+
+About 2 o'clock our guns, along the whole British front, started to cut
+wire as though preparing for an attack.
+
+The Germans in return sprinkled our lines vigorously with shrapnel, the
+fleecy white puffs of their shells showing up like clouds on the clear
+blue sky.
+
+From our trench on the hill top we could see the long line of trenches,
+hidden here and there by trees, stretching southwards to Armentières,
+the tall chimneys of which were clearly discernible.
+
+Anxiously we glanced from this view to our watches while the hands crept
+slowly around to the appointed moment. In the distance there suddenly
+appeared faint lines of whitish smoke among the trees; and we lit our
+smoke bombs and hurled them over the parapet. There was a moment's
+pause, and then they burst into clouds of yellow smoke, hiding the
+German trench from view.
+
+[Illustration: THE START OF THE SMOKE CLOUDS. The Little Demonstration,
+October 13th, 1915.]
+
+The tone of their bombardment changed immediately, and crashing salvoes
+of high explosive fell around us.
+
+Our guns paused for a moment, and the crisp rattle of musketry, the
+droning of myriads of bees, and the bursts of machine-gun fire were
+heard alone as they ran through whole belts of cartridges; then all
+minor sounds were again drowned out by the clashes of our shells as they
+burst all along the German front line.
+
+Gradually the smoke cleared away as the bombs burnt themselves out and
+showed that no attack was being attempted. The bombardment slackened,
+though the Germans continued to shell us heavily till almost dusk, but
+with little further effect except that they rendered the evacuation of
+our wounded more dangerous.
+
+Our casualties had, however, been slight, but it was simply marvellous
+luck, for our parapets were ruined heaps and the trenches filled with
+_débris_.
+
+We gazed sadly around, knowing it meant many nights of hard work to
+restore these, and mentally decided to join the artillery in the next
+war, as they alone had enjoyed the afternoon's work.
+
+The German guns had certainly been kept busy, and it was some
+consolation to read in their report of the affair that "an attack using
+gas on a thirty-mile front had been repulsed with heavy losses to the
+enemy."
+
+We had produced the desired effect.
+
+Below La Bassée the 46th Division had been equally successful and gained
+the Hohenzollern Redoubt, while on their right in the vicinity of Loos
+the 4th Corps were holding nearly twelve hundred yards of German
+front-line trench.
+
+It had been a good day's work, but summer was now over and good weather
+could not be depended on, so no further offensive was made, though
+fighting of the most stubborn and desperate sort took place around the
+newly-gained ground, which was, however, successfully consolidated.
+
+During the remainder of the month, except for the exploding of a mine
+and aerial activity, there was little that occurred on the Canadian
+front.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+MINE WARFARE
+
+
+Among the other things we took over from the outgoing battalion when we
+first moved into this position was the care and continuance of a mine,
+and this mine was to form our chief worry as long as we held that line.
+
+At first we were inclined to regard the mining officers--of which we had
+two--as a sort of nuisance like engineers, trench mortar men, and some
+others, who were always demanding men for carrying and working parties.
+But we were not long in finding that they were, like ourselves,
+necessary evils, and they became welcome guests at our little mess when
+in the trench.
+
+Whenever the trenches approach as close as they did at this point mine
+warfare becomes inevitable, and it is a game at which it is best to be
+first.
+
+To defend a position against this method of attack one commences a
+counter-mine at a depth sufficient to take the gallery or tunnel
+underneath the enemy's one, which, once it is located, is blown in
+before they manage to get under the defenders' trench. The tunnel or
+gallery is barely large enough for a man to crawl along on his hands and
+knees, and must be boarded foot by foot as it progresses to prevent it
+from collapsing.
+
+In this cramped position the sapper wields his pick, a peculiar affair
+not unlike a harpoon, and scrapes the loosened earth back with a short
+grubber to another man who removes the earth in sandbags.
+
+Progress under such circumstances must be slow, but it is made slower by
+the necessity of running galleries at right angles to the main tunnel
+from time to time in an effort to locate the enemy.
+
+Here men are posted, while all work is for a time stopped, to listen for
+the first sounds of the enemy's sappers--the thud-thud of the picks or
+the "cough" of the man whose lungs seek this relief in the stuffy air of
+the cramped tunnel.
+
+If the enemy is not found, progress is continued forward from both ends
+of the cross-gallery and the game goes merrily on.
+
+About this stage the mining officer will, if you happen to be holding
+the trench under which he is grovelling, wax eloquent over a crumpled
+sheet of tracing linen that he presents to your view as a diagram of the
+workings. It looks like nothing so much as a drawing of the kith and kin
+of an old and prolific family; but you dare not tell him that, or he
+will be your enemy for life.
+
+Instead you should say, "Ahem!" and "Oh, yes; how clever!"--then he will
+ask you for only ten instead of twelve men on the night's working party.
+
+But once the enemy is located you begin to regard him more seriously,
+for on his skill depends the life of every man in the trench above, and
+a false change in direction may mean missing the enemy's tunnel
+altogether.
+
+Sometimes, but not often, the mining is so quietly done that the first
+sign of the enemy is the sudden collapse of the wall of earth between
+the two galleries, leaving the rival workers face to face!
+
+At other times, and this is a normal occurrence, the enemy are heard to
+one side or the other, and a small charge of powder is laid and his
+gallery is blown in, crushing his workers to death, or perhaps merely
+burying them to perish miserably by suffocation.
+
+To prevent this occurring men are kept in the ends of all the passages
+listening for the tap-tap of the picks that spells danger!
+
+If the picks are heard for a while and then stop, there are anxious
+moments, for it may mean that the enemy has located our workers and
+decided to blow first and wreck our galleries, or it may mean the
+explosive is already in place and ready for firing, or perhaps only a
+change in the direction of the enemy's tunnel.
+
+The situation is not a pleasant one for either the men in the trench
+above or the sappers in the galleries below, and on the mining officer's
+decision much depends.
+
+It was while we were breakfasting one morning that the corporal in
+charge of the underground sentries reported that the enemy could be
+heard working in No.--gallery.
+
+This was the third time since taking over the mine that tapping had been
+reported, and both the preceding times had proved to be the result of
+overstrained imaginations. Captain H----, our skipper, had on both
+occasions descended to the bowels of the earth and listened patiently
+for half an hour, emerging again disgusted with things in general.
+
+This time he motioned to the writer to accompany the corporal, and
+together we made our way to the mine, shedding our jackets and belts at
+the head of the shaft, and taking only our electric pocket lamps we
+crawled along the muddy galleries to No.--.
+
+The noise had stopped, the listener whispered to us when we touched him
+gently on the leg, so we lay there all three listening for it to start
+again, the tick-ticking of our wrist-watches and the pulsing of our
+hearts sounding loud to our strained ears.
+
+Three--five--seven minutes passed by without a sound, and then suddenly
+there came a slight thud.
+
+The man in front of me stiffened slightly like a well-trained setter and
+the corporal behind me pinched my leg in the height of his exultation.
+
+The thud-thud continued (there was no mistaking it now), then a
+pause--and a voice, distinctly guttural, was heard, and a sound, easily
+distinguishable from the muffled reports of the rifles some thirty feet
+overhead--the scraping of a shovel on the wooden floor of a gallery not
+more than eight feet away!
+
+Passing the sentry a revolver and torch, we blew out his candle and
+crept away as noiselessly as we had come.
+
+On reaching the head of the shaft we met the mining officer, who crawled
+down and returned to confirm our judgment.
+
+Then followed some mysterious telephoning to the "higher authority"
+while a charge was hastily laid, and permission was at last secured to
+"blow" the mine.
+
+No time was lost, and in half an hour all was ready, the mining officer
+returning from his final inspection with the news that the enemy was
+still digging blissfully away.
+
+Remembering the mine at Givenchy, we cleared the trench in the danger
+zone and had this party "stand by to repel boarders" and, if necessary,
+man the crater.
+
+At 2.30 the mine was fired.
+
+A fountain of earth roared upwards from "No Man's Land," and, armed to
+the teeth with bombs, we rushed forward, losing a couple of men on the
+way who had been struck by the falling _débris_, and manned our trench
+while machine-guns raked the enemy's parapets.
+
+However, he showed no inclination to man the crater--a yawning pit some
+forty feet in width half-way over to his trench--and contented himself
+with throwing a few bombs into it and covering it with machine-gun
+fire. In spite of which Begbie Lyte, having now risen to the dizzy
+height of senior subaltern in the company, took out a small party and
+filled it with barbed wire.
+
+The affair was only briefly mentioned in the _communiqués_: "On the 22nd
+a mine was exploded under a German gallery on our front. An enemy mining
+party is believed to have been blown up."
+
+The mining officer was greatly pleased, however, as only some few yards
+of his own gallery had suffered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+MYTHS, FAIRIES, ETC.
+
+
+In every position you take over there are a certain number of myths
+which when you go out you carefully repeat to the incoming battalion;
+and the tale seldom loses in the telling. These are handed down to
+posterity in naming new field-works; hence the frequency of "Suicide
+Alley," "Sniper's Cross-roads," "Dead Man's Corner," &c, &c.
+
+Some of these myths are worth repeating--all are worth noting, for they
+are in most cases founded on possibilities.
+
+The most popular myth or fairy on the Messines front was undoubtedly the
+"Mad Major." This individual was supposed to be an artillery officer who
+spotted for his own battery--which incidentally always did the most
+marvellous shooting--from an aeroplane, in which he performed the most
+daring feats while dodging the "Archibalds" or anti-aircraft shells.
+
+Whether there was any truth in this myth we never found out, but we did
+see an enemy aeroplane forced down behind our lines by Robert Lorraine,
+the actor aviator, on October 26th, after a very daring fight.
+
+A large enemy aeroplane of the "Albatross" type had been making a
+reconnaissance somewhere northward in the Ypres salient with unusual
+boldness when Lorraine sighted the machine and gave chase. Instead of
+turning directly back to his own lines the German flew along the line of
+our trench at such a tempting range that machine-guns all along our line
+started to cough and spit in the air in an effort to wing him.
+
+Meanwhile our own aeroplane was getting within range, and a pretty duel
+in mid-air commenced, the two machines circling and swooping like a pair
+of immense white gulls, while the "tut-tut" of their machine-guns was
+the only sound as both Germans and British watched this unique battle.
+
+Suddenly the German machine showed signs of distress, pitched suddenly
+forward, and started a long glide for the German trenches, our aeroplane
+still pursuing and forcing the enemy even lower.
+
+But the German had followed our trench line too far down, for at this
+point our trenches ran forward nearly a quarter of a mile where a
+French cavalry brigade in a dismounted action the year before had made a
+last effort to retake Messines.
+
+And now, when it became apparent their machine could not regain the
+German lines, their gunners began to shell their own plane, containing
+as it did two of their own men, in an effort to destroy the machine.
+
+But, though they fired over a hundred shells into the little wood behind
+which the aeroplane landed, they were unable to prevent the men of our
+Royal Montreal Regiment, who occupied the trenches at this point, from
+capturing the observer and his papers, the pilot having been killed in
+mid-air at the time the machine made its fatal plunge.
+
+Then occurred one of the strangest of coincidences, vouched for by the
+official Canadian Eye-witness, when, on examining the wrecked aeroplane,
+the Royal Montrealers found the machine-gun with which it had been armed
+to be one formerly the property of this same regiment, but lost during
+the fighting around St. Julien just six months before while loaned to
+another battalion.
+
+The "Mad Major" may have been only a myth, but Lorraine certainly was
+not, and for this exploit both he and his pilot subsequently received
+the Military Cross.
+
+But there were a lot of tales that had their origin in a desire to suit
+the "Cook's tourists." These individuals were officers sent over from
+the Canadian Training Base for short periods of one or two weeks to
+receive practical instruction in trench warfare. Incidentally they
+brought with them some wondrous ideas about the proper methods of doing
+things, gathered from some official publications known as "Notes from
+the Front," and were greatly surprised to find we were not in touch with
+this "trade" journal.
+
+Like the "Daily Summary of Events," known to us as "Comic Cuts" or the
+"Daily Liar," these little handbooks are written by wise men wearing red
+tabs and living miles away from the front, where the continuity of their
+thoughts is only interrupted by the tea hour, and not by the "Jack
+Johnson" shells. Here they design "wire meat safes," patent refuse
+burners, mud scrapers, and other weird contrivances that can be
+fashioned from biscuit tins, ruined houses and other _débris_, and issue
+these sheets for the guidance of the poor, long-suffering infantry. Once
+in a while they turn their attention to steel helmets, grenades, &c.,
+so that their existence is almost justified.
+
+The "Cook's tourist," however, is not a dangerous creature, taken in
+small quantities, and is a very handy man to send out on working parties
+when the company is supposed to be resting in reserve. So he is not
+without his uses.
+
+For those who found the ordinary trench routine dull we had, however,
+several stock entertainments that never failed to satisfy.
+
+The first and mildest was to take the victim through the "Catacombs," as
+we called the galleries and connecting passages of our mine. This had
+the advantage of rendering his cuffs and decorations less conspicuous
+and giving him in five minutes all the war-worn appearance of a veteran.
+
+If, however, he still craved excitement, he would be allowed to put out
+some more wire in front of the parapet--always a delicate operation
+where the lines are close. Many were satisfied by this means.
+
+The third degree was always administered by Captain H---- himself. It
+was in the form of a little sortie from the trench to a stumpy willow in
+"No-Man's-Land," a willow that bore a striking resemblance to some
+giant cacti and was called by us the "Cactus Treen."
+
+[Illustration: THE CACTUS TREEN.]
+
+From this point it was possible to bomb the German trench, and a little
+excursion of this sort generally satiated the visitor's curiosity.
+Incidentally, it kept the Hun from coming out and bombing us. He did,
+however, treat us liberally to rifle grenades, and our casualties from
+these beastly contrivances were large.
+
+On one morning we were most unfortunate, a grenade killing our bombing
+sergeant and two men, and we started to retaliate with every variety of
+grenade we had. At this moment the trench mortar officer came up the
+trench and volunteered to assist us. He had a new gun throwing
+thirty-pound bombs and was keen on displaying his skill; what was more
+important, he had twenty bombs available, and he started to fire these
+off with an alacrity that, under the circumstances, was most pleasing.
+
+But we had reckoned without our host. Before half a dozen rounds had
+been fired an eight-inch gun back of Messines Hill started searching for
+the trench mortar man and his gun, and twenty-five high explosive
+shells plunged around us and shook our trench out of existence. It was
+very fascinating to watch these shells coming. From the point, high in
+the air, when they started to drop on their target they could be clearly
+seen, first as a black ball, then gradually lengthening out till they
+plunged into the ground and flung up dense fountains of earth and
+fragments.
+
+The nearest burst was within ten feet of the trench mortar position, and
+the officer withdrew his party, a sadder and a wiser man.
+
+From the rifle grenades, too, we lost both of our mining officers, one,
+Lieutenant Alfred Evans, dying of wounds, the other being very severely
+wounded. So two merry souls who had shared the vicissitudes of our
+messing passed from our ken, and we could only wait our own fate and
+say, like the French, "C'est la guerre!"
+
+[Illustration: APPROXIMATE GERMAN LINE IN FRONT OF MESSINES DURING
+WINTER OF 1915-1916.
+
+(Successive positions held by 1st Brigade shown 1, 2, 3.)]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE WINTER MONTHS
+
+
+November brought with it a week of steady rain, and we knew the winter
+months were at hand. In less than two weeks our trenches, once the pride
+of the division, were a series of collapsed heaps where the sandbag
+walls had been undermined by the seepage of water.
+
+But we suffered nothing like the discomforts endured by the British
+troops during the previous winter. Rubber boots reaching to the thigh
+were issued, sparingly at first, but gradually until every man had a
+pair, and whale oil and spare socks were available in large quantities
+to aid in the fight against trench-foot. Nothing, however, could prevent
+the mud, which lay a foot deep along the gangways of the trench. Pumps
+were issued, but the mud was too thick to pump; our only hope lay in
+drainage, and by the time proper drains were constructed the mud was too
+thick to run, even though we were on a hill top.
+
+[Illustration: AFTER A FEW SHELLS AND A WEEK'S RAIN.]
+
+So we pumped and drained and built new sandbag walls all winter, and as
+fast as one portion of our line was renewed another portion would
+collapse, or, more disheartening still, be shelled to bits by the big
+"minenwerfer."
+
+This was a German gun brought up to this front to counteract our trench
+mortar. Throwing a shell about six inches in diameter of high explosive,
+it could in three bursts do more damage than a whole company could
+repair in a night. And regularly twice a week three shells were dropped
+along Delta Road, a communication trench forming the third side of the
+little salient.
+
+The effect of the "minenwerfer" was very local, however, owing to the
+thinness of the shell wall, but such men as it killed were not a pretty
+sight. Fortunately, too, the shells could be seen both by day and night,
+and rose to such a height before dropping that men could scamper for
+shelter from the threatened spot. But no dug-out could withstand its
+explosion, and a series of craters, eight or ten feet in depth and
+twelve feet in diameter, marked the "minenwerfer's" work.
+
+Every battery that covered our area had, by the time winter was over,
+reported they had silenced "Minnie," but when we left that area months
+later she was still doing business at the old stand.
+
+To relieve the monotony of this sort of thing the Canadian Corps
+organised a series of night raids on the German trenches.
+
+The first, and most brilliant, of these was conducted by the 5th and 7th
+Battalions of the 2nd Brigade on a barricade or forward trench that had
+been constructed by the enemy near our old position opposite the Petite
+Douve Farm.
+
+This raid was made on a villainous night blacker than Egypt during the
+plagues and raining as only Flanders can.
+
+With faces blackened with charcoal, the raiding parties crept out to the
+enemy wire and cut it strand by strand, a process lasting several hours.
+During this time the cooks of one of the battalions carried out
+pannikins of hot tea to the men who were lying in the mud hacking at the
+wire.
+
+Finally the path was reported clear except at one point where a deep
+ditch full of water could not be crossed, and at the appointed moment
+the raiding parties swooped in on the enemy trench.
+
+Secure, as they thought, on such a vile night, the enemy were
+completely surprised, but put up a stubborn resistance. An officer and
+about thirty men were secured as prisoners, and where resistance was
+more determined the enemy was driven from his trench with bombs. Then on
+a given signal the raiders returned to their own trenches, bringing
+helmets, saw-tooth bayonets, and Mauser rifles as souvenirs of their
+midnight call.
+
+By this time the alarm had spread through the German lines, and his
+artillery, in response to red signals shot up by men very lately
+deceased, began to pound their own trench, thus catching their own
+bombing parties, who, now the trench was only occupied by dead and
+wounded, had regained the barricade.
+
+But we had another surprise awaiting them. A field-gun had been
+man-handled up to our front line and at point-blank range proceeded to
+blow the barricade to bits. This was done and the gun successfully
+withdrawn by a car from a motor-machine-gun battery, in spite of the
+fact that the first car sent for this purpose had to be hauled from the
+ditch into which it had skidded.
+
+So thorough had been the preparations, and so well organised the raid,
+that an account of it was published in the orders of the French Army as
+an example of efficient preparation.
+
+The prisoners taken in the Petite Douve affair had boasted of the
+preparations they were making for a gas attack on a scale hitherto
+unknown, and on the Sunday before Christmas the enemy made another
+attempt to gain the Ypres salient by this means.
+
+Early in the morning of the 20th the smell of gas was evident even down
+as far as our position a few miles south of the salient, and our guns
+began a desultory bombardment of the enemy lines. Thinking we were as
+deficient in artillery as in the previous April, the enemy infantry
+advanced in mass formation about 9 o'clock. Then our artillery did open
+fire. About noon another attack was made, and also failed without a yard
+of our line being lost.
+
+There were no further attempts!
+
+On Christmas Eve we were relieved by the Toronto Battalion and marched
+out to rest billets in divisional reserve.
+
+It was a weird march out. Not a rifle was fired nor a single flare shot
+up from either trench as the two battalions interchanged.
+
+We wondered if on the morrow there would be the handshaking and
+hymn-singing that had characterised the first Christmas of the war; a
+routine order had been published forbidding such demonstrations of good
+feeling, but it was hardly necessary--flame projectors and asphyxiating
+gas had attended to that!
+
+Everything was very peaceful in the little hamlet when we arrived,
+however. It was a clear, starlit night, a little snow in the fields, and
+the dark silhouettes of the houses and church loomed up against the
+clear sky. The little church was in darkness--no midnight mass was being
+sung this year--and we slipped into our various billets in silence, very
+tired and not a little homesick.
+
+Christmas Day the men were marched into Bailleul, where a big dinner was
+given them by the officers of the battalion. In the evening another
+dinner was held for the officers themselves. There were the usual toasts
+and speeches, and before the party broke up Captain George T. Richardson
+asked for a few minutes' silent prayer for those who would not be
+present at our next dinner. It was a wonderful tribute to his sincerity
+that this was granted, for the evening was well advanced, and soldiers,
+as a rule, dislike having their religion tampered with by anyone but
+chaplains and other authorised personages.
+
+Poor George! he was the first of us to go but a few weeks later!
+
+We relieved the Toronto Battalion on the 29th, giving them a chance to
+celebrate the New Year in a similar fashion.
+
+Then the second week in February we attempted a raid similar to those
+made on our right and left by other battalions. The most obvious point
+was selected for the attack, and, by an unfortunate chance, a night when
+the moon was nearly full.
+
+As a result we were unable to get the wire cut, and the proposed raid
+was cancelled, the enemy having men dug in amongst their wire watching
+it.
+
+For some reason or other Captain Richardson, who was in charge of the
+affair, again went over the parapet, possibly to see that all were
+safely in, and was discovered a little later fatally wounded in amongst
+our own wire. He passed away a few hours later in the little dressing
+station at the Support Farm.
+
+So died a man who never gave a command he would not himself have
+executed willingly, and whose character and ideals were such that all
+who knew him envied him.
+
+And on his grave his brother officers placed a wreath with these simple
+words: "He played the Game."
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+
+Our later experiences are too recent for publication to-day; here, then,
+this brief story of the Canadians must make an end.
+
+
+THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS, LTD., LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with
+the 1st Canadian brigade, by Frederic C. Curry
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