THE BOMBING RAID
When we took our position in the front line trenches in Belgium, we
relieved the Twenty-sixth Canadian Battalion. The Twenty-sixth belonged
to the Second division, and had seen real service during the battle
of Hooge and in what is now termed the third battle of Ypres, which
occurred in June, 1916. The organization was made up almost exclusively
of French Canadians from Quebec, and it was as fine a fighting force as
we had shown the Fritzes, despite the fact that men of their race, as
developments have proved, are not strongly loyal to Canada and Britain.
Individually, the men of this French Canadian battalion were splendid
soldiers and the organization could be criticized on one score only. In
the heat of action it could not be kept in control. On one occasion
when it went in, in broad daylight, to relieve another battalion, the
men didn’t stop at the fire trench. They went right on “over the top,”
without orders, and, as a result, were badly cut up. Time and again
the men of this battalion crossed “No Man’s Land” at night, without
orders and without even asking consent, just to have a scrimmage with
“the beloved enemy.” Once, when ordered to take two lines of trenches,
they did so in the most soldierly fashion, but, seeing red, kept on
going as if their orders were to continue to Berlin. On this occasion
they charged right into their barrage fire and lost scores of their
men, struck down by British shells. It has been said often of all the
Canadians that they go the limit, without hesitation. There was a
time when the “Bing Boys”--the Canadians were so called because this
title of a London musical comedy was suggested by the fact that their
commander was General Byng--were ordered to take no prisoners, this
order being issued after two of their men were found crucified. A
Canadian private, having penetrated a German trench with an attacking
party, encountered a German who threw up his hands and said: “Mercy,
Kamerade. I have a wife and five children at home.”
“You’re mistaken,” replied the Canadian. “You have a widow and five
orphans at home.”
And, very shortly, he had.
Scouts from the Twenty-sixth battalion had come back to the villages of
Dinkiebusch and Renninghelst to tell us how glad they were to see us
and to show us the way in. As we proceeded overland, before reaching
the communication trenches at the front, these scouts paid us the
hospitable attentions due strangers. That is, one of them leading a
platoon would say:
“Next two hundred yards in machine gun range. Keep quiet, don’t run,
and be ready to drop quick if you are warned.”
There was one scout to each platoon, and we followed him, single file,
most of the time along roads or well-worn paths, but sometimes through
thickets and ragged fields. Every now and then the scout would yell
at us to drop, and down we’d go on our stomachs while, away off in the
distance we could hear the “put-put” of machine guns--the first sound
of hostile firing that had ever reached our ears.
“It’s all right,” said the scout. “They haven’t seen us or got track of
us. They’re just firing on suspicion.”
Nevertheless, when our various platoons had all got into the front
reserve trenches, at about two hours after midnight, we learned that
the first blood of our battalion had been spilled. Two men had been
wounded, though neither fatally. Our own stretcher-bearers took our
wounded back to the field hospital at Dinkiebusch. The men of the
Twenty-sixth battalion spent the rest of the night instructing us and
then left us to hold the position. We were as nervous as a lot of
cats, and it seemed to me that the Germans must certainly know that
they could come over and walk right through us, but, outside of a few
casualties from sniping, such as the one that befell the Fourteenth
platoon man, which I have told about, nothing very alarming happened
the first day and night, and by that time we had got steady on our
job. We held the position for twenty-six days, which was the longest
period that any Canadian or British organization had ever remained in a
front-line trench.
In none of the stories I’ve read, have I ever seen trench fighting, as
it was then carried on in Belgium, adequately described. You see, you
can’t get much of an idea about a thing like that, making a quick tour
of the trenches under official direction and escort, as the newspaper
and magazine writers do. I couldn’t undertake to tell anything worth
while about the big issues of the war, but I can describe how soldiers
have to learn to fight in the trenches--and I think a good many of our
young fellows have that to learn, now. “Over there,” they don’t talk of
peace or even of to-morrow. They just sit back and take it.
We always held the fire trench as lightly as possible, because it is a
demonstrated fact that the front ditch cannot be successfully defended
in a determined attack. The thing to do is to be ready to jump onto the
enemy as soon as he has got into your front trench and is fighting on
ground that you know and he doesn’t and knock so many kinds of tar out
of him that he’ll have to pull his freight for a spot that isn’t so
warm. That system worked first rate for us.
During the day, we had only a very few men in the fire trench. If an
attack is coming in daylight, there’s always plenty of time to get
ready for it. At night, we kept prepared for trouble all the time. We
had a night sentry on each firing step and a man sitting at his feet to
watch him and know if he was secretly sniped. Then we had a sentry in
each “bay” of the trench to take messages.
Orders didn’t permit the man on the firing step or the man watching him
to leave post on any excuse whatever, during their two-hour “spell” of
duty. Hanging on a string, at the elbow of each sentry on the fire-step
was a siren whistle or an empty shell case and bit of iron with which
to hammer on it. This--siren or improvised gong--was for the purpose
of spreading the alarm in case of a gas attack. Also we had sentries
in “listening posts,” at various points from twenty to fifty yards out
in “No Man’s Land.” These men blackened their faces before they went
“over the top,” and then lay in shell holes or natural hollows. There
were always two of them, a bayonet man and a bomber. From the listening
post a wire ran back to the fire trench to be used in signaling. In
the trench, a man sat with this wire wrapped around his hand. One pull
meant “All O. K.,” two pulls, “I’m coming in,” three pulls, “Enemy in
sight,” and four pulls, “Sound gas alarm.” The fire step in a trench
is a shelf on which soldiers stand so that they may aim their rifles
between the sand bags which form the parapet.
In addition to these men, we had patrols and scouts out in “No
Man’s Land” the greater part of the night, with orders to gain any
information possible which might be of value to battalion, brigade,
division or general headquarters. They reported on the conditions of
the Germans’ barbed wire, the location of machine guns and other little
things like that which might be of interest to some commanding officer,
twenty miles back. Also, they were ordered to make every effort to
capture any of the enemy’s scouts or patrols, so that we could get
information from them. One of the interesting moments in this work came
when a star shell caught you out in an open spot. If you moved you were
gone. I’ve seen men stand on one foot for the thirty seconds during
which a star shell will burn. Then, when scouts or patrols met in “No
Man’s Land” they always had to fight it out with bayonets. One single
shot would be the signal for artillery fire and would mean the almost
instant annihilation of the men on both sides of the fight. Under the
necessities of this war, many of our men have been killed by our own
shell fire.
At a little before daybreak came “stand-to,” when everybody got
buttoned up and ready for business, because, at that hour, most attacks
begin and also that was one of the two regular times for a dose of
“morning and evening hate,” otherwise a good lively fifteen minutes of
shell fire. We had some casualties every morning and evening, and the
stretcher-bearers used to get ready for them as a matter of course.
For fifteen minutes at dawn and dusk, the Germans used to send over
“whiz-bangs,” “coal-boxes” and “minniewurfers” (shells from trench
mortars) in such a generous way that it looked as if they liked to
shoot ’em off, whether they hit anything or not. You could always
hear the “heavy stuff” coming, and we paid little attention to it as
it was used in efforts to reach the batteries, back of our lines. The
poor old town of Dinkiebusch got the full benefit of it. When a shell
would shriek its way over, some one would say: “There goes the express
for Dinkiebusch,” and a couple of seconds later, when some prominent
landmark of Dinkiebusch would disintegrate to the accompaniment of a
loud detonation, some one else would remark:
“Train’s arrived!”
The scouts who inhabited “No Man’s Land” by night became snipers
by day. Different units had different systems of utilizing these
specialists. The British and the French usually left their scouts and
snipers in one locality so that they might come to know every hummock
and hollow and tree-stump of the limited landscape which absorbed
their unending attention. The Canadians, up to the time when I left
France, invariably took their scouts and snipers along when they moved
from one section of the line to another. This system was criticized as
having the disadvantage of compelling the men to learn new territory
while opposing enemy scouts familiar with every inch of the ground.
As to the contention on this point, I could not undertake to decide,
but it seemed to me that our system had, at least, the advantage of
keeping the men more alert and less likely to grow careless. Some of
our snipers acquired reputations for a high degree of skill and there
was always a fascination for me in watching them work. We always had
two snipers to each trench section. They would stand almost motionless
on the fire steps for hours at a time, searching every inch of the
German front trench and the surrounding territory with telescopes. They
always swathed their heads with sand bags, looking like huge, grotesque
turbans, as this made the finest kind of an “assimilation covering.” It
would take a most alert German to pick out a man’s head, so covered,
among all the tens of thousands of sand bags which lined our parapet.
The snipers always used special rifles with telescopic sights, and
they made most extraordinary shots. Some of them who had been huntsmen
in the Canadian big woods were marvellous marksmen. Frequently one of
them would continue for several days giving special attention to a
spot where a German had shown the top of his head for a moment. If the
German ever showed again, at that particular spot, he was usually done
for. A yell or some little commotion in the German trenches, following
the sniper’s quick shot would tell the story to us. Then the sniper
would receive general congratulations. There is a first warning to
every man going into the trenches. It is: “Fear God and keep your head
down.”
Our rations in the trenches were, on the whole, excellent. There were
no delicacies and the food was not over plentiful, but it was good. The
system appeared to have the purpose of keeping us like bulldogs before
a fight--with enough to live on but hungry all the time. Our food
consisted principally of bacon, beans, beef, bully-beef, hard tack, jam
and tea. Occasionally we had a few potatoes, and, when we were taken
back for a few days’ rest, we got a good many things which difficulty
of transport excluded from the front trenches. It was possible,
sometimes, to beg, borrow or even steal eggs and fresh bread and coffee.
All of our provisions came up to the front line in sand bags, a fact
easily recognizable when you tasted them. There is supposed to be
an intention to segregate the various foods, in transport, but it
must be admitted that they taste more or less of each other, and
that the characteristic sand-bag flavor distinguishes all of them
from mere, ordinary foods which have not made a venturesome journey.
As many of the sand bags have been originally used for containing
brown sugar, the flavor is more easily recognized than actually
unpleasant. When we got down to the Somme, the food supply was much
less satisfactory--principally because of transport difficulties. At
times, even in the rear, we could get fresh meat only twice a week, and
were compelled to live the rest of the time on bully-beef stew, which
resembles terrapin to the extent that it is a liquid with mysterious
lumps in it. In the front trenches, on the Somme, all we had were the
“iron rations” which we were able to carry in with us. These consisted
of bully-beef, hard tack, jam and tea. The supply of these foods which
each man carries is termed “emergency rations,” and the ordinary rule
is that the emergency ration must not be touched until the man has
been forty-eight hours without food, and then only by permission of an
officer.
One of the great discoveries of this war is that hard tack makes an
excellent fuel, burning like coke and giving off no smoke. We usually
saved enough hard tack to form a modest escort, stomachward, for our
jam, and used the rest to boil our tea. Until one has been in the
trenches he cannot realize what a useful article of diet jam is. It
is undoubtedly nutritious and one doesn’t tire of it, even though
there seem to be but two varieties now existing in any considerable
quantities--plum and apple. Once upon a time a hero of the “ditches”
discovered that his tin contained strawberry jam, but there was such a
rush when he announced it that he didn’t get any of it.
There was, of course, a very good reason for the shortness and
uncertainty of the food supply on the Somme. All communication with
the front line was practically overland, the communication trenches
having been blown in. Ration parties, bringing in food, frequently
suffered heavy casualties. Yet they kept tenaciously and courageously
doing their best for us. Occasionally they even brought up hot soup in
huge, improvised thermos bottles made from petrol tins wrapped in straw
and sand bags, but this was very rarely attempted, and not with much
success. You could sum up the food situation briefly. It was good--when
you got it.
It may be fitting, at this time, to pay a tribute to the soldier’s
most invaluable friend, the sand bag. The sand bag, like the rest of
us, did not start life in a military capacity, but since joining the
army it has fulfilled its duty nobly. Primarily, sand bags are used in
making a parapet for a trench or a roof for a dug-out, but there are a
hundred other uses to which they have been adapted, without hesitation
and possibly without sufficient gratitude for their ready adaptability.
Some of these uses may surprise you. Soldiers strain their tea through
them, wrap them around their legs for protection against cold and mud,
swab their rifles with them to keep them clean, use them for bed sacks,
kit bags and ration bags. The first thing a man does when he enters a
trench or reaches a new position which is to be held is to feel in his
belt, if he is a private, or to yell for some one else to feel in his
belt, if he is an officer, for a sand bag. Each soldier is supposed to
have five tucked beneath his belt whenever he starts to do anything
out of the ordinary. When you’ve got hold of the first one, in a new
position, under fire, you commence filling it as fast as the Germans
and your own ineptitude will permit, and the sooner that bag is filled
and placed, the more likely you are to continue in a state of health
and good spirits. Sand bags are never filled with sand, because there
is never any sand to put into them. Anything that you can put in with a
shovel will do.
About the only amusement we had during our long stay in the front
trenches in Belgium, was to sit with our backs against the rear wall
and shoot at the rats running along the parapet. Poor Macfarlane, with
a flash of the old humor which he had before the war, told a “rookie”
that the trench rats were so big that he saw one of them trying on his
great-coat. They used to run over our faces when we were sleeping in
our dug-outs, and I’ve seen them in ravenous swarms, burrowing into
the shallow graves of the dead. Many soldiers’ legs are scarred to the
knees with bites.
The one thing of which we constantly lived in fear was a gas attack. I
used to awaken in the middle of the night, in a cold sweat, dreaming
that I heard the clatter and whistle-blowing all along the line which
meant that the gas was coming. And, finally, I really did hear the
terrifying sound, just at a moment when it couldn’t have sounded worse.
I was in charge of the nightly ration detail, sent back about ten
miles to the point of nearest approach of the transport lorries, to
carry in rations, ammunition and sand bags to the front trenches. We
had a lot of trouble, returning with our loads. Passing a point which
was called “Shrapnel Corner” because the Germans had precise range on
it, we were caught in machine-gun fire and had to lie on our stomachs
for twenty minutes, during which we lost one man, wounded. I sent him
back and went on with my party only to run into another machine-gun
shower a half-mile further on. While we were lying down to escape this,
a concealed British battery of five-inch guns, about which we knew
nothing, opened up right over our heads. It shook us up and scared us
so that some of our party were now worse off than the man who had been
hit and carried to the rear. We finally got together and went on. When
we were about a mile behind the reserve trench, stumbling in the dark
through the last and most dangerous path overland, we heard a lone
siren whistle followed by a wave of metallic hammering and wild tooting
which seemed to spread over all of Belgium a mile ahead of us. All any
of us could say was:
“Gas!”
All you could see in the dark was a collection of white and frightened
faces. Every trembling finger seemed awkward as a thumb as we got
out our gas masks and helmets and put them on, following directions
as nearly as we could. I ordered the men to sit still and sent two
forward to notify me from headquarters when the gas alarm was over.
They lost their way and were not found for two days. We sat there for
an hour, and then I ventured to take my mask off. As nothing happened,
I ordered the men to do the same. When we got into the trenches with
our packs, we found that the gas alarm had been one of Fritz’s jokes.
The first sirens had been sounded in the German lines, and there hadn’t
been any gas.
Our men evened things up with the Germans, however, the next night.
Some of our scouts crawled clear up to the German barbed wire, ten
yards in front of the enemy fire trench, tied empty jam-tins to the
barricade and then, after attaching light telephone wires to the barbed
strands, crawled back to our trenches. When they started pulling the
telephone wires the empty tins made a clatter right under Fritz’s nose.
Immediately the Germans opened up with all their machine-gun and rifle
fire, began bombing the spot from which the noise came and sent up “S.
O. S.” signals for artillery fire along a mile of their line. They
fired a ten-thousand-dollar salute and lost a night’s sleep over the
noise made by the discarded containers of five shillings’ worth of jam.
It was a good tonic for the Tommies.
A few days after this, a very young officer passed me in a trench while
I was sitting on a fire-step, writing a letter. I noticed that he had
the red tabs of a staff officer on his uniform, but I paid no more
attention to him than that. No compliments such as salutes to officers
are paid in the trenches. After he had passed, one of the men asked me
if I didn’t know who he was. I said I didn’t.
“Why you d----d fool,” he said, “that’s the Prince of Wales.”
When the little prince came back, I stood to salute him. He returned
the salute with a grave smile and passed on. He was quite alone, and I
was told afterward, that he made these trips through the trenches just
to show the men that he did not consider himself better than any other
soldier. The heir of England was certainly taking nearly the same
chance of losing his inheritance that we were.
After we had been on the front line fifteen days, we received orders
to make a bombing raid. Sixty volunteers were asked for, and the whole
battalion offered. I was lucky--or unlucky--enough to be among the
sixty who were chosen. I want to tell you in detail about this bombing
raid, so that you can understand what a thing may really amount to
that gets only three lines, or perhaps nothing at all, in the official
dispatches. And, besides that, it may help some of the young men who
read this, to know something, a little later, about bombing.
The sixty of us chosen to execute the raid were taken twenty miles to
the rear for a week’s instruction practice. Having only a slight idea
of what we were going to try to do, we felt very jolly about the whole
enterprise, starting off. We were camped in an old barn, with several
special instruction officers in charge. We had oral instruction, the
first day, while sappers dug and built an exact duplicate of the
section of the German trenches which we were to raid. That is, it
was exact except for a few details. Certain “skeleton trenches,” in
the practice section, were dug simply to fool the German aviators. If
a photograph, taken back to German headquarters, had shown an exact
duplicate of a German trench section, suspicion might have been aroused
and our plans revealed. We were constantly warned about the skeleton
trenches and told to remember that they did not exist in the German
section where we were to operate. Meanwhile, our practice section was
changed a little, several times, because aerial photographs showed
that the Germans had been renovating and making some additions to the
trenches in which we were to have our frolic with them.
We had oral instruction, mostly, during the day, because we didn’t dare
let the German aviators see us practicing a bomb raid. All night long,
sometimes until two or three o’clock in the morning, we rehearsed that
raid, just as carefully as a company of star actors would rehearse a
play. At first there was a disposition to have sport out of it.
“Well,” some chap would say, rolling into the hay all tired out, “I got
killed six times to-night. S’pose it’ll be several times more to-morrow
night.”
One man insisted that he had discovered, in one of our aerial
photographs, a German burying money, and he carefully examined each new
picture so that he could be sure to find the dough and dig it up. The
grave and serious manner of our officers, however; the exhaustive care
with which we were drilled and, more than all, the approach of the time
when we were “to go over the top,” soon drove sport out of our minds,
and I can say for myself that the very thought of the undertaking, as
the fatal night drew near, sent shivers up and down my spine.
A bombing raid--something originated in warfare by the Canadians--is
not intended for the purpose of holding ground, but to gain
information, to do as much damage as possible, and to keep the enemy in
a state of nervousness. In this particular raid, the chief object was
to gain information. Our high command wanted to know what troops were
opposite us and what troops had been there. We were expected to get
this information from prisoners and from buttons and papers off of the
Germans we might kill. It was believed that troops were being relieved
from the big tent show, up at the Somme, and sent to our side show
in Belgium for rest. Also, it was suspected that artillery was being
withdrawn for the Somme. Especially, we were anxious to bring back
prisoners.
In civilized war, a prisoner can be compelled to tell only his name,
rank and religion. But this is not a civilized war, and there are
ways of making prisoners talk. One of the most effective ways--quite
humane--is to tie a prisoner fast, head and foot, and then tickle his
bare feet with a feather. More severe measures have frequently been
used--the water cure, for instance--but I’m bound to say that nearly
all the German prisoners I saw were quite loquacious and willing to
talk, and the accuracy of their information, when later confirmed
by raids, was surprising. The iron discipline, which turns them into
mere children in the presence of their officers seemed to make them
subservient and obedient to the officers who commanded us. In this way,
the system worked against the Fatherland. I mean, of course, in the
cases of privates. Captured German officers, especially Prussians, were
a nasty lot. We never tried to get information from them for we knew
they would lie, happily and intelligently.
At last came the night when we were to go “over the top,” across “No
Man’s Land,” and have a frolic with Fritz in his own bailiwick. I am
endeavoring to be as accurate and truthful as possible in these stories
of my soldiering, and I am therefore compelled to say that there
wasn’t a man in the sixty who didn’t show the strain in his pallor
and nervousness. Under orders, we discarded our trench helmets and
substituted knitted skull caps or mess tin covers. Then we blackened
our hands and faces with ashes from a camp fire. After this they
loaded us into motor trucks and took us up to “Shrapnel Corner,” from
which point we went in on foot. Just before we left, a staff officer
came along and gave us a little talk.
“This is the first time you men have been tested,” he said. “You’re
Canadians. I needn’t say anything more to you. They’re going to be
popping them off at a great rate while you’re on your way across.
Remember that you’d better not stand up straight because our shells
will be going over just six and a half feet from the ground--where it’s
level. If you stand up straight you’re likely to be hit in the head,
but don’t let that worry you because if you do get hit in the head you
won’t know it. So why in hell worry about it?” That was his farewell.
He jumped on his horse and rode off.
The point we were to attack had been selected long before by our
scouts. It was not, as you might suppose, the weakest point in
the German line. It was on the contrary, the strongest. It was
considered that the moral effect of cleaning up a weak point would be
comparatively small, whereas to break in at the strongest point would
be something really worth while. And, if we were to take chances, it
really wouldn’t pay to hesitate about degrees. The section we were
to raid had a frontage of one hundred and fifty yards and a depth of
two hundred yards. It had been explained to us that we were to be
supported by a “box barrage,” or curtain fire from our artillery, to
last exactly twenty-six minutes. That is, for twenty-six minutes from
the time when we started “over the top,” our artillery, several miles
back, would drop a “curtain” of shells all around the edges of that one
hundred and fifty yard by two hundred yard section. We were to have
fifteen minutes in which to do our work. Any man not out at the end of
the fifteen minutes would necessarily be caught in our own fire as our
artillery would then change from a “box” to pour a straight curtain
fire, covering all of the spot of our operations.
Our officers set their watches very carefully with those of the
artillery officers, before we went forward to the front trenches.
We reached the front at 11 P.M., and not until our arrival there
were we informed of the “zero hour”--the time when the attack was to
be made. The hour of twelve-ten had been selected. The waiting from
eleven o’clock until that time was simply an agony. Some of our men
sat stupid and inert. Others kept talking constantly about the most
inconsequential matters. One man undertook to tell a funny story. No
one listened to it, and the laugh at the end was emaciated and ghastly.
The inaction was driving us all into a state of funk. I could actually
feel my nerve oozing out at my finger tips, and, if we had had to wait
fifteen minutes longer, I shouldn’t have been able to climb out of the
trench.
About half an hour before we were to go over, every man had his eye up
the trench for we knew “the rummies” were coming that way. The rum gang
serves out a stiff shot of Jamaica just before an attack, and it would
be a real exhibition of temperance to see a man refuse. There were no
prohibitionists in our set. Whether or not we got our full ration
depended on whether the sergeant in charge was drunk or sober. After
the shot began to work, one man next to me pounded my leg and hollered
in my ear:
“I say. Why all this red tape? Let’s go over now.”
That noggin’ of rum is a life saver.
When the hour approached for us to start, the artillery fire was so
heavy that orders had to be shouted into ears, from man to man. The
bombardment was, of course, along a couple of miles of front, so that
the Germans would not know where to expect us. At twelve o’clock
exactly they began pulling down a section of the parapet so that we
wouldn’t have to climb over it, and we were off.