BEST O’ LUCK
BY ALEXANDER McCLINTOCK, D. C. M.
“The Distinguished Conduct Medal has been awarded to Sergeant Alexander
McClintock of the Canadian Overseas Forces for conspicuous gallantry
in action. He displayed great courage and determination during a raid
against the enemy’s trenches. Later he rescued several wounded men at
great personal risk.”
_Extract from official communication
from the Canadian War Office to the
British Consul General in New York._
BEST O’ LUCK
HOW A FIGHTING KENTUCKIAN
WON THE THANKS OF BRITAIN’S KING
BY
ALEXANDER McCLINTOCK, D. C. M.
Late Sergeant, 87th Battalion, Canadian Grenadier Guards
Now member of U. S. A. Reserve Corps
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1917,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO MY MOTHER
MAUDE JOHNSON McCLINTOCK
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I TRAINING FOR THE WAR 11
II THE BOMBING RAID 43
III “OVER THE TOP AND GIVE ’EM HELL” 75
IV SHIFTED TO THE SOMME 101
V WOUNDED IN ACTION 121
VI A VISIT FROM THE KING 151
BEST O’ LUCK
CHAPTER I
TRAINING FOR THE WAR
I don’t lay claim to being much of a writer, and up ’till now I never
felt the call to write anything about my experiences with the Canadian
troops in Belgium and France, because I realized that a great many
other men had seen quite as much as I, and could beat me telling about
it. Of course, I believed that my experience was worth relating, and
I thought that the matter published in the newspapers by professional
writers sort of missed the essentials and lacked the spirit of the
“ditches” in a good many ways despite its excellent literary style, but
I didn’t see any reason why it was up to me to make an effort as a war
historian, until now.
Now, there is a reason, as I look at it.
I believe I can show the two or three millions of my fellow countrymen
who will be “out there” before this war is over what they are going
to be up against, and what they ought to prepare for, personally and
individually.
That is as far as I am going to go in the way of excuse, explanation,
or comment. The rest of my story is a simple relation of facts and
occurrences in the order in which they came to my notice and happened
to me. It may start off a little slowly and jerkily, just as we
did--not knowing what was coming to us. I’d like to add that it got
quite hot enough to suit me later--several times. Therefore, as my
effort is going to be to carry you right along with me in this account
of my experiences, don’t be impatient if nothing very important seems
to happen at first. I felt a little ennui myself at the beginning. But
that was certainly one thing that didn’t annoy me later.
In the latter part of October, 1915, I decided that the United States
ought to be fighting along with England and France on account of
the way Belgium had been treated, if for no other reason. As there
seemed to be a considerable division of opinion on this point among
the people at home, I came to the conclusion that any man who was
free, white, and twenty-one and felt as I did, ought to go over and
get into it single-handed on the side where his convictions led him,
if there wasn’t some particular reason why he couldn’t. Therefore, I
said good-by to my parents and friends in Lexington, and started for
New York with the idea of sailing for France, and joining the Foreign
Legion of the French Army.
A couple of nights after I got to New York I fell into conversation in
the Knickerbocker bar with a chap who was in the reinforcement company
of Princess Pat’s regiment of the Canadian forces. After my talk with
him, I decided to go up to Canada and look things over. I arrived
at the Windsor Hotel, in Montreal, at eight o’clock in the morning,
a couple of days later, and at ten o’clock the same morning I was
sworn in as a private in the Canadian Grenadier Guards, Eighty-seventh
Overseas Battalion, Lieut.-Col. F. S. Meighen, Commanding.
They were just getting under way making soldiers out of the troops I
enlisted with, and discipline was quite lax. They at once gave me a
week’s leave to come down to New York, and settle up some personal
affairs, and I overstayed it five days. All that my company commander
said to me when I got back was that I seemed to have picked up Canadian
habits very quickly. At a review one day in our training camp, I heard
a Major say:
“Boys, for God’s sake don’t call me Harry or spit in the ranks. Here
comes the General!”
We found out eventually that there was a reason for the slackness of
discipline. The trouble was that men would enlist to get $1.10 a day
without working for it, and would desert as soon as any one made it
unpleasant for them. Our officers knew what they were about. Conditions
changed instantly we went on ship-board. Discipline tightened up on us
like a tie-rope on a colt.
We trained in a sort of casual, easy way in Canada from November 4th
to the following April. We had a good deal of trouble keeping our
battalion up to strength, and I was sent out several times with other
“non-coms” on a recruiting detail.
Aside from desertions, there were reasons why we couldn’t keep our
quota. The weeding out of the physically unfit brought surprising and
extensive results. Men who appeared at first amply able to stand “the
game” were unable to keep up when the screw was turned. Then, also,
our regiment stuck to a high physical standard. Every man must be five
feet ten, or over. Many of our candidates failed on the perpendicular
requirement only. However, we were not confined to the ordinary rule
in Canada, that recruits must come from the home military district of
the battalion. We were permitted to recruit throughout the Dominion,
and thus we gathered quite a cosmopolitan crowd. The only other unit
given this privilege of Dominion-wide recruiting was the P. P. C. L.
I. (Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry), the first regiment
to go overseas from Canada, composed largely of veterans of the South
African and other colonial wars. We felt a certain emulation about this
veteran business and voiced it in our recruiting appeals. We assured
our prospective “rookies” that we were just as first-class as any of
them. On most of our recruiting trips we took a certain corporal with
us who had seen service in France with a Montreal regiment and had
been invalided home. He was our star speaker. He would mount a box or
other improvised stand and describe in his simple, soldierly way the
splendid achievements of the comrades who had gone over ahead of us,
and the opportunities for glory and distinction awaiting any brave
man who joined with us. When he described his experiences there was a
note of compelling eloquence and patriotic fervor in his remarks which
sometimes aroused the greatest enthusiasm. Often he was cheered as
a hero and carried on men’s shoulders from the stand, while recruits
came forward in flocks and women weepingly bade them go on and do their
duty. I learned, afterwards that this corporal had been a cook, had
never been within twenty miles of the frontline, and had been invalided
home for varicocele veins. He served us well; but there was a man
who was misplaced, in vocation and geography. He should have been in
politics in Kentucky.
While we were in the training camp at St. Johns, I made the
acquaintance of a young Canadian who became my “pal.” He was Campbell
Macfarlane, nephew of George Macfarlane, the actor who is so well known
on the American musical stage. He was a sergeant. When I first knew
him, he was one of the most delightful and amusing young fellows you
could imagine.
The war changed him entirely, He became extremely quiet and seemed to
be borne down with the sense of the terrible things which he saw. He
never lost the good-fellowship which was inherent in him, and was
always ready to do anything to oblige one, but he formed the habit of
sitting alone and silent, for hours at a time, just thinking. It seemed
as if he had a premonition about himself, though he never showed fear
and never spoke of the dangers we were going into, as the other fellows
did. He was killed in the Somme action in which I was wounded.
I’m not much on metaphysics and it is difficult for me to express the
thought I would convey here. I can just say, as I would if I were
talking to a pal, that I have often wondered what the intangible mental
or moral quality is that makes men think and act so differently to
one another when confronted by the imminent prospect of sudden death.
Is it a question of will power--of imagination, or the lack of it--of
something that you can call merely physical courage--or what? Take the
case of Macfarlane: In action he was as brave as they make them, but,
as I have said before, the prospect of sudden death and the presence of
death and suffering around him changed him utterly. From a cheerful,
happy lad he was transformed into an old man, silent, gloomy and
absent-minded except for momentary flashes of his old spirit which
became less and less frequent as the time for his own end drew nearer.
There was another chap with us from a little town in Northern Ontario.
While in Canada and England he was utterly worthless; always in trouble
for being absent without leave, drunk, late on parade, or something
else. I think he must, at one time or another, have been charged with
every offense possible under the K. R. & O. (King’s Regulations and
Orders). On route marches he was constantly “falling out.” I told him,
one day when I was in command of a platoon, that he ought to join the
Royal Flying Corps. Then he would only have to fall out once. He said
that he considered this a very good joke and asked me if I could think
of anything funny in connection with being absent without leave--which
he was, that night. In France, this chap was worth ten ordinary men.
He was always cheerful, always willing and prompt in obeying orders,
ready to tackle unhesitatingly the most unpleasant or the most risky
duty, and the hotter it was the better he liked it. He came out
laughing and unscathed from a dozen tight places where it didn’t seem
possible for him to escape. To use a much-worn phrase, he seemed to
bear a charmed life. I’ll wager my last cent that he never gets an
“R. I. P.”--which they put on the cross above a soldier’s grave, and
which the Tommies call “Rise If Possible.” Then there was a certain
sergeant who was the best instructor in physical training and bayonet
fighting in our brigade and who was as fine and dashing a soldier in
physique and carriage as you ever could see. When he got under fire
he simply went to pieces. On our first bombing raid he turned and ran
back into our own barbed wire, and when he was caught there acted like
a madman. He was given another chance but flunked worse than ever. I
don’t think he was a plain coward. There was merely something wrong
with his nervous system. He just didn’t have the “viscera.” Now he is
back of the lines, instructing, and will never be sent to the trenches
again. We had an officer, also, who was a man of the greatest courage,
so far as sticking where he belonged and keeping his men going ahead
might be concerned, but every time he heard a big shell coming over
he was seized with a violent fit of vomiting. I don’t know what makes
men brave or cowardly in action, and I wouldn’t undertake to say which
quality a man might show until I saw him in action, but I do know this:
If a man isn’t frightened when he goes under fire, it’s because he
lacks intelligence. He simply must be frightened if he has the ordinary
human attributes. But if he has what we call physical courage he goes
on with the rest of them. Then if he has extraordinary courage he may
go on where the rest of them won’t go. I should say that the greatest
fear the ordinary man has in going into action is the fear that he will
show that he is afraid--not to his officers, or to the Germans, or to
the folks back home, but to his mates; to the men with whom he has
laughed and scoffed at danger.
It’s the elbow-to-elbow influence that carries men up to face machine
guns and gas. A heroic battalion may be made up of units of potential
cowards.
At the time when Macfarlane was given his stripes, I also was made
a sergeant on account of the fact that I had been at school in the
Virginia Military Institute. That is, I was an acting sergeant. It
was explained to me that my appointment would have to be confirmed in
England, and then reconfirmed after three months’ service in France.
Under the regulations of the Canadian forces, a non-commissioned
officer, after final confirmation in his grade, can be reduced to
the ranks only by a general court-martial, though he can escape a
court-martial, when confronted with charges, by reverting to the ranks
at his own request.
Forty-two hundred of us sailed for England on the _Empress of
Britain_, sister ship to the _Empress of Ireland_, which was sunk in
the St. Lawrence River. The steamer was, of course, very crowded and
uncomfortable, and the eight-day trip across was most unpleasant. We
had tripe to eat until we were sick of the sight of it. A sergeant
reported one morning, “eight men and twenty-two breakfasts, absent.”
There were two other troop ships in our convoy, the _Baltic_ and the
_Metagama_. A British cruiser escorted us until we were four hundred
miles off the coast of Ireland; then each ship picked up a destroyer
which had come out to meet her. At that time, a notice was posted in
the purser’s office informing us that we were in the war zone, and that
the ship would not stop for anything, even for a man overboard. That
day a soldier fell off the _Metagama_ with seven hundred dollars in his
pocket, and the ship never even hesitated. They left him where he had
no chance in the world to spend his money.
Through my training in the V. M. I., I was able to read semaphore
signals, and I caught the message from the destroyer which escorted us.
It read:
“Each ship for herself now. Make a break!”
We beat the other steamers of our convoy eight hours in getting to the
dock in Liverpool, and, according to what seemed to be the regular
system of our operations at that time, we were the last to disembark.
The majority of our fellows had never been in England before, and they
looked on our travels at that time as a fine lark. Everybody cheered
and laughed when they dusted off one of those little toy trains and
brought it up to take us away in it. After we were aboard of it, we
proceeded at the dizzy rate of about four miles an hour, and our
regular company humorist--no company is complete without one--suggested
that they were afraid, if they went any faster, they might run off of
the island before they could stop. We were taken to Bramshott camp, in
Hampshire, twelve miles from the Aldershott School of Command. The next
day we were given “King’s leave”--eight days with free transportation
anywhere in the British Isles. It is the invariable custom to give this
sort of leave to all colonial troops immediately upon their arrival in
England. However, in our case, Ireland was barred. Just at that time,
Ireland was no place for a newly arrived Canadian looking for sport.
Our men followed the ordinary rule of soldiers on leave. About
seventy-five per cent. of them wired in for extensions and more money.
About seventy-four per cent. received peremptorily unfavorable replies.
The excuses and explanations which came in kept our officers interested
and amused for some days. One man--who got leave--sent in a telegram
which is now framed and hung on the wall of a certain battalion
orderley’s room. He telegraphed:
“No one dead. No one ill. Got plenty of money. Just having a good time.
Please grant extension.”
After our leave, they really began to make soldiers of us. We thought
our training in Canada had amounted to something. We found out that we
might as well have been playing croquet. We learned more the first week
of our actual training in England than we did from November to April in
Canada. I make this statement without fear that any officer or man of
the Canadian forces alive to-day will disagree with me, and I submit it
for the thoughtful consideration of the gentlemen who believe that our
own armies can be prepared for service here at home.
The sort of thing that the President is up against at Washington is
fairly exemplified in what the press despatches mention as “objections
on technical grounds” of the “younger officers of the war college,”
to the recommendations which General Pershing has made as to the
reorganization of the units of our army for service in Europe.
The extent of the reorganization which must be made in pursuance of
General Pershing’s recommendations is not apparent to most people.
Even our best informed militia officers do not know how fundamentally
different the organization of European armies is to that which has
existed in our own army since the days when it was established to suit
conditions of the Civil War. But the officers of our regular army
realize what the reorganization would mean and some of them rise to
oppose it for fear it may jeopardize their seniority or promotion or
importance. But they’ll have to come to it. The Unites States army can
not operate successfully in France unless its units are convenient and
similar multiples to those in the French and British armies. It would
lead to endless confusion and difficulty if we kept the regiment as our
field unit while our allies have the battalion as their field unit.
There are but unimportant differences in the unit organization of the
French, British and Canadian forces. The British plan of organization
is an examplar of all, and it is what we must have in our army. There
is no such thing in the British army as an established regimental
strength. A battalion numbers 1,500 men, but there is no limit to
the number of battalions which a regiment may have. The battalion
is the field unit. There are regiments in the British army which
have seven battalions in the field. Each battalion is commanded by
a lieutenant-colonel. All full colonels either do staff duty or act
as brigaders. There are five companies of 250 men each in every
battalion. That is, there are four regular companies of 250 men each,
and a headquarters company of approximately that strength. Each company
is commanded by a major, with a captain as second in command, and four
lieutenants as platoon commanders. There are no second lieutenants in
the Canadian forces, though there are in the British and French. The
senior major of the battalion commands the headquarters company, which
includes the transport, quartermaster’s staff, paymaster’s department
(a paymaster and four clerks), and the headquarters staff (a captain
adjutant and his non-commissioned staff). Each battalion has, in
addition to its full company strength, the following “sections” of
from 30 to 75 men each, and each commanded by a lieutenant: bombers,
scouts and snipers, machine gunners and signallers. There is also a
section of stretcher-bearers, under the direct command of the battalion
surgeon, who ranks as a major. In the United States army a battalion is
commanded by a major. It consists merely of four companies of 112 men
each, with a captain and two lieutenants to each company.
As I have said, a British or French battalion has four ordinary
companies of 250 men each and the headquarters company of special
forces approximating that number of men. Instead of one major it
has six, including the surgeon. It has seven captains, including
the paymaster, the adjutant and the quartermaster. It has twenty
lieutenants, including the commanders of special “sections.” You
can imagine what confusion would be likely to occur in substituting
a United States force for a French or English force, with these
differences of organization existing.
In this war, every man has got to be a specialist. He’s got to
know one thing better than anybody else except those who have had
intensive instruction in the same branch. And besides that, he’s got
to have effective general knowledge of all the specialties in which
his fellow soldiers have been particularly trained. I can illustrate
this. Immediately upon our return from first leave in England, we
were divided into sections for training in eight specialties. They
were: Bombing, sniping, scouting, machine-gun fighting, signalling,
trench mortar operation, bayonet fighting, and stretcher-bearing.
I was selected for special training in bombing, probably because I
was supposed, as an American and a baseball player, to be expert in
throwing. With the other men picked for training in the same specialty,
I was sent to Aldershott, and there, for three weeks, twelve hours a
day, I threw bombs, studied bombs, read about bombs, took bombs to
pieces and put them together again, and did practically everything else
that you would do with a bomb, except eat it.
Then I was ordered back along with the other men who had gained this
intimate acquaintance with the bomb family, and we were put to work
teaching the entire battalion all that we had learned. When we were not
teaching, we were under instruction ourselves by the men who had taken
special training in other branches. Also, at certain periods of the
day, we had physical training and rifle practice. Up to the time of our
arrival in England, intensive training had been merely a fine phrase
with us. During our stay there, it was a definite and overpowering
fact. Day and night we trained and day and night it rained. At nine
o’clock, we would fall into our bunks in huts which held from a half
to a whole platoon--from thirty to sixty men--and drop into exhausted
sleep, only to turn out at 5 A.M. to give a sudden imitation of what we
would do to the Germans if they sneaked up on us before breakfast in
six inches of mud. Toward the last, when we thought we had been driven
to the limit, they told us that we were to have a period of real,
intensive training to harden us for actual fighting. They sent us four
imperial drill sergeants from the British Grenadier Guards, the senior
foot regiment of the British army, and the one with which we were
affiliated.
It would be quite unavailing for me to attempt to describe these drill
sergeants. The British drill sergeant is an institution which can
be understood only through personal and close contact. If he thinks
a major-general is wrong, he’ll tell him so on the spot in the most
emphatic way, but without ever violating a single sacred tradition
of the service. The sergeants, who took us in charge to put the real
polish on our training, had all seen from twenty to twenty-five years
of service. They had all been through the battles of Mons and the
Marne, and they had all been wounded. They were perfect examples of a
type. One of them ordered all of our commissioned officers, from the
colonel down, to turn out for rifle drill one day, and put them through
the manual of arms while the soldiers of the battalion stood around,
looking on.
“Gentlemen,” said he, in the midst of the drill, “when I see you handle
your rifles I feel like falling on my knees and thanking God that we’ve
got a navy.”
On June 2d, after the third battle of Ypres, while Macfarlane and I
were sitting wearily on our bunks during an odd hour in the afternoon
when nobody had thought of anything for us to do, a soldier came
in with a message from headquarters which put a sudden stop to the
discussion we were having about the possibility of getting leave to
go up to London. The message was that the First, Second and Third
divisions of the Canadians had lost forty per cent. of their men in the
third fight at Ypres and that three hundred volunteers were wanted from
each of our battalions to fill up the gaps.
“Forty per cent.,” said Macfarlane, getting up quickly. “My God, think
of it! Well, I’m off to tell ’em I’ll go.”
I told him I was with him, and we started for headquarters, expecting
to be received with applause and pointed out as heroic examples. We
couldn’t even get up to give in our names. The whole battalion had gone
ahead of us. They heard about it first. That was the spirit of the
Canadians. It was about this time that a story went ’round concerning
an English colonel who had been called upon to furnish volunteers from
his outfit to replace casualties. He backed his regiment up against a
barrack wall and said:
“Now, all who don’t want to volunteer, step three paces to the rear.”
In our battalion, sergeants and even officers offered to go as
privates. Our volunteers went at once, and we were re-enforced up to
strength by drafts from the Fifth Canadian division, which was then
forming in England.
In July, when we were being kept on the rifle ranges most of the
time, all leave was stopped, and we were ordered to hold ourselves in
readiness to go overseas. In the latter part of the month, we started.
We sailed from Southampton to Havre on a big transport, escorted all
the way by destroyers. As we landed, we got our first sight of the
harvest of war. A big hospital on the quay was filled with wounded men.
We had twenty-four hours in what they called a “rest camp.” We slept
on cobble stones in shacks which were so utterly comfortless that it
would be an insult to a Kentucky thoroughbred to call them stables.
Then we were on the way to the Belgian town of Poperinghe, which is one
hundred and fifty miles from Havre and was, at that time, the rail head
of the Ypres salient. We made the trip in box cars which were marked
in French: “Eight horses or forty men,” and we had to draw straws to
decide who should lie down.
We got into Poperinghe at 7 A.M., and the scouts had led us into the
front trenches at two the next morning. Our position was to the left
of St. Eloi and was known as “The Island,” because it had no support
on either side. On the left, were the Yser Canal and the bluff which
forms its bank. On the right were three hundred yards of battered-down
trenches which had been rebuilt twice and blown in again each time by
the German guns. For some reason, which I never quite understood, the
Germans were able to drop what seemed a tolerably large proportion of
the output of the Krupp works on this particular spot whenever they
wanted to. Our high command had concluded that it was untenable,
and so we, on one side of it, and the British on the other, had to
just keep it scouted and protect our separate flanks. Another name
they had for that position was the “Bird Cage.” That was because the
first fellows who moved into it made themselves nice and comfy and put
up wire nettings to prevent any one from tossing bombs in on them.
Thus, when the Germans stirred up the spot with an accurate shower
of “whiz-bangs” and “coal-boxes,” the same being thirteen-pounders
and six-inch shells, that wire netting presented a spectacle of utter
inadequacy which hasn’t been equalled in this war.
They called the position which we were assigned to defend “The
Graveyard of Canada.” That was because of the fearful losses of the
Canadians here in the second battle of Ypres, from April 21, to June 1,
1915, when the first gas attack in the world’s history was launched by
the Germans, and, although the French, on the left, and the British, on
the right, fell back, the Canadians stayed where they were put.
Right here I can mention something which will give you an idea why
descriptions of this war don’t describe it. During the first gas
attack, the Canadians, choking to death and falling over each other
in a fight against a new and unheard-of terror in warfare, found a
way--the Lord only knows who first discovered it and how he happened to
do it--to stay through a gas cloud and come out alive. It isn’t pretty
to think of, and it’s like many other things in this war which you
can’t even tell of in print, because simple description would violate
the nice ethics about reading matter for the public eye, which have
grown up in long years of peace and traditional decency. But this thing
which you can’t describe meant just the difference between life and
death to many of the Canadians, that first day of the gas. Official
orders: now, tell every soldier what he is to do with his handkerchief
or a piece of his shirt if he is caught in a gas attack without his
mask.
The nearest I can come, in print, to telling you what a soldier
is ordered to do in this emergency is to remind you that ammonia
fumes oppose chlorine gas as a neutralizing agent, and that certain
emanations of the body throw off ammonia fumes.
Now that I’ve told you how we got from the Knickerbocker bar and other
places to a situation which was just one hundred and fifty yards from
the entrenched front of the German army in Belgium, I might as well add
a couple of details about things which straightway put the fear of God
in our hearts. At daybreak, one of our Fourteenth platoon men, standing
on the firing step, pushed back his trench helmet and remarked that
he thought it was about time for coffee. He didn’t get any. A German
sharpshooter, firing the first time that day, got him under the rim
of his helmet, and his career with the Canadian forces was over right
there. And then, as the dawn broke, we made out a big painted sign
raised above the German front trench. It read:
WELCOME,
EIGHTY-SEVENTH CANADIANS
We were a new battalion, we had been less than seventy-two hours on the
continent of Europe and the Germans were not supposed to know anything
that was going on behind our lines!
We learned, afterward, that concealed telephones in the houses of the
Belgian burgomasters of the villages of Dinkiebusch and Renninghelst,
near our position, gave communication with the German headquarters
opposite us. One of the duties of a detail of our men, soon after that,
was to stand these two burgomasters up against a wall and shoot them.