Ypres is the graveyard of the old Sixty-fifth. We were carried to
within six miles of the place in London buses, twenty-five men in a
bus. Ypres was forty miles away. We met there the Canadian Scottish
Third Brigade of 5,000 men. From the end of the bus line we tramped six
miles and encamped outside the village of St. Julien, one mile away.
Two battalions were in reserve at St. Jean and two were in the front
line, mine being one of the two at the front.
It was at Ypres that we first met the gallant French troops. My company
was on the left of the English line, so that we acted as interpreters
between the French and the English. A roadway ten yards wide separated
the two lines and a tunnel ran from the English to the French lines.
We found the trenches here to be forty yards from the German line and
in bad condition. Firing was continuous, by day and by night. The
communication trenches were in bad shape, too, and the Germans, who
were on a height, raked us terribly with their machine-guns. I looked
through my periscope and saw between 400 and 500 unburied German dead
lying between the lines. I counted 25 dead Frenchmen among them. Three
months before, I was told, the Germans had tried to carry the line and
neither side had given the other a chance to bury its dead.
Our French neighbors were Zouaves, between 19 and 30 years of age, and
the gayest soldiers I have ever fought beside. They sang gay ditties
and called us French Canadians "Frères." We spent our nights in
throwing grenades at the Boches and our days in the slow monotony of
every-day trench life.
I rose at noon, the day after our arrival, and took the time to shave,
a rare event. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon, at one mile from us, we
saw yellow smoke rising from the ground. This smoke was the deadly gas
being thrown upon the French and upon the Scotch regiment that had
taken our places while we were resting, for, of course, we were resting
when I shaved. We formed at once in light marching order and went to
help the Scotch.
We entered the reserve trench, and at midnight the first-line trench.
The Scotch had lost half of their effectives and were returning with
the French, the blood streaming from their mouths and noses, and their
faces all yellow-green. The French had lost nearly all their regiment.
The Germans within five minutes had occupied our first and second lines.
In half an hour the Boches began a great bombardment. At 7 o'clock they
tried to take our line, repeating their attacks all the night, but we
rolled them back. They came even to within ten yards of us, a flood of
human waves. But our machine-guns, our "coffee grinders," as we called
them, mowed them down like hay, and we lost not many men.
Our artillery had plenty of ammunition. Our light guns were placed at
400 yards from the front line and the heavy artillery at one and a half
miles, and some pieces as far as four miles away. The famous French
Africans, called Senegalese, were fighting here with us. The Boches set
fire to the City of Ypres in the night, and I watched its sullen glare
against the sky. The civilian populace went running by, in dreadful
condition. That night, of my friends, died Vaillant, Poitras, and Bond,
all of Montreal, and two others. Poirer and Lefebre of Montreal and O.
Wiseman, also my friends, had been killed during the day. Yet I lived!
Ypres was a famous battle, one of the greatest of the war, I think,
till this terrible onslaught at Verdun. Our division (Canadian)
reached from Ypres (Belgium) to Poelcappelle Road. At 2 P.M., before
the gas overtook me, I was sent out between the lines with another
man to examine the wire entanglements. We heard a sound as of some
one handling pipes, but discovered nothing more. Then the Boches sent
up their flares (skyrockets whose bursting bombs turned night into
daylight) and we lay on the ground motionless. In the darkness which
followed, we crept back over the heaps of dead toward our line. When I
had almost reached the trench, another great flare burst right over us,
and I had to lie still for several moments until the welcome darkness
gave me an opportunity to drop into the trench again.
Men were dying from the gas, their eyes popping, their faces green, and
crying: "Water! Water! I'm choking! Air! Air! Air!" It is a frightful
thing to hear your friends crying like that. I saw one die right before
my eyes, rolling upon the ground as if mad, tearing at his chest. His
fingers were crooked after his death, his body full of blue spots and
his mouth white. Another poor wretch fell two or three feet from me,
dying from the gas. He was sucking water from a dirty handkerchief.