SHIFTED TO THE SOMME
A few days after the bombing raid, which ended so disastrously for us,
our battalion was relieved from duty on the front line, and the tip
we got was that we were to go down to the big show then taking place
on the Somme. Our relief was a division of Australians. You see, the
sector which we had held in Belgium was a sort of preparatory school
for the regular fighting over in France.
It wasn’t long before we got into what you might call the Big League
contest but, in the meanwhile, we had a little rest from battling
Fritz and the opportunity to observe some things which seem to me to
be worth telling about. Those of you who are exclusively fond of the
stirring detail of war, such as shooting and being shot at and bombing
and bayoneting, need only skip a little of this. We had an entirely
satisfactory amount of smoke and excitement later.
As soon as our relief battalion had got in, we moved back to
Renninghelst for a couple of days rest. We were a pretty contented and
jovial lot--our platoon, especially. We were all glad to get away from
the strain of holding a front trench, and there were other advantages.
For instance, the alterations of our muster roll due to casualties, had
not come through battalion headquarters and, therefore, we had, in our
platoon, sixty-three rum rations, night and morning, and only sixteen
men. There was a Canadian Scot in our crowd who said that the word
which described the situation was “g-r-r-r-a-nd!”
There was a good deal of jealousy at that time between the Canadians
and the Australians. Each had the same force in the field--four
divisions. Either force was bigger than any other army composed
exclusively of volunteers ever before assembled. While I belong to the
Canadian army and believe the Canadian overseas forces the finest
troops ever led to war, I must say that I have never seen a body of men
so magnificent in average physique as the Australians. And some of them
were even above the high average. The man that punched me in the eye
in an “estaminet” in Poperinghe made up entirely in his own person for
the absence of Les Darcy from the Australian ranks. I don’t know just
how the fight started between the Australians and us, in Poperinghe,
but I know that it took three regiments of Imperial troops to stop it.
The most convincing story I heard of the origin of the battle was told
me by one of our men who said he was there when it began. He said one
of the Australians had carelessly remarked that the British generals
had decided it was time to get through with the side-show in Belgium
and this was the reason why they had sent in regular troops like the
Australians to relieve the Canadians.
Then some sensitive Canadian wished the Australians luck and hoped
they’d finish it up as well as they had the affair in the Dardanelles.
After that, our two days’ rest was made up principally of beating it
out of “estaminets” when strategic requirements suggested a new base,
or beating it into “estaminets” where it looked as if we could act as
efficient re-inforcements. The fight never stopped for forty-eight
hours, and the only places it didn’t extend to were the church and
the hospitals. I’ll bet, to this day, that the Belgians who run the
“estaminets” in Poperinghe will duck behind the bars if you just
mention Canada and Australia in the same breath.
But I’m bound to say that it was good, clean fighting. Nobody fired
a shot, nobody pulled a bayonet, and nobody got the wrong idea about
anything. The Australian heavy-weight champion who landed on me went
right out in the street and saluted one of our lieutenants. We had just
one satisfying reflection after the fight was over. The Australian
battalion that relieved us fell heir to the counter attack which the
Germans sent across to even up on our bombing raid.
We began our march to the Somme by a hike to St. Ohmer, one of the
early British headquarters in Europe. Then we stopped for a week about
twenty miles from Calais, where we underwent a course of intensified
training for open fighting. The infantry tactics, in which we were
drilled, were very similar to those of the United States army--those
which, in fact, were originated by the United States troops in the
days of Indian fighting. We covered most of the ground around Calais
on our stomachs in open order. While it may seem impertinent for me, a
mere non-com., to express an opinion about the larger affairs of the
campaign, I think I may be excused for saying that the war didn’t at
all take the course which was expected and hoped for after the fight on
the Somme. Undoubtedly, the Allies expected to break through the German
line. That is well known now. While we were being trained near Calais
for open warfare, a very large force of cavalry was being assembled and
prepared for the same purpose. It was never used.
That was last August, and the Allies haven’t broken through yet.
Eventually I believe they will break through, but, in my opinion, men
who are waiting now to learn if they are to be drawn for service in
our new American army will be veterans in Europe before the big break
comes, which will wreck the Prussian hope of success in this war. And
if we of the U. S. A. don’t throw in the weight to beat the Prussians
now, they will not be beaten, and, in that case, the day will not be
very far distant when we will have to beat them to save our homes and
our nation. War is a dreadful and inglorious and ill-smelling and cruel
thing. But if we hold back now, we will be in the logical position of a
man hesitating to go to grips with a savage, shrieking, spewing maniac
who has all but whipped his proper keepers, and is going after the
on-looker next.
We got drafts of recruits before we went on to the Somme, and some
of our wounded men were sent back to England, where we had left our
“Safety-first Battalion.” That was really the Fifty-first battalion, of
the Fourth Division of the Canadian forces, composed of the physically
rejected, men recovering from wounds, and men injured in training. The
Tommies, however, called it the “Safety-first,” or “Major Gilday’s
Light Infantry.” Major Gilday was our battalion surgeon. He was
immensely popular, and he achieved a great name for himself. He made
one realize what a great personal force a doctor can be and what an
unnecessary and overwrought elaboration there is in the civil practice
of medicine.
Under Major Gilday’s administration, no man in our battalion was sick
if he could walk, and, if he couldn’t walk, there was a reasonable
suspicion that he was drunk. The Major simplified the practice of
medicine to an exact science involving just two forms of treatment
and two remedies--“Number Nines” and whale oil. Number Nines were
pale, oval pills, which, if they had been eggs, would have run about
eight to an omelette. They had an internal effect which could only be
defined as dynamic. After our men had become acquainted with them
through personal experience they stopped calling them “Number Nines”
and called them “whiz-bangs.” There were only two possibilities of
error under Major Gilday’s system of simplified medicine. One was
to take a whiz-bang for trench feet, and the other to use whale oil
externally for some form of digestional hesitancy. And, in either
case, no permanent harm could result, while the error was as simple of
correction as the command “about face.”
There was a story among our fellows that an ambulance had to be called
for Major Gilday, in London, one day, on account of shock following a
remark made to him by a bobby. The Major asked the policeman how he
could get to the Cavoy Hotel. The bobby, with the proper bus line in
mind, replied: “Take a number nine, sir.”
Two weeks and a half after we left Belgium we arrived at Albert, having
marched all the way. The sight which met our eyes as we rounded the
rock-quarry hill, outside of Albert, was wonderful beyond description.
I remember how tremendously it impressed my pal, Macfarlane. He sat
by the roadside and looked ’round over the landscape as if he were
fascinated.
“Boy,” said he, “we’re at the big show at last.”
Poor fellow, it was not only the big show, but the last performance for
him. Within sight of the spot where he sat, wondering, he later fell
in action and died. The scene, which so impressed him, gave us all a
feeling of awe. Great shells from a thousand guns were streaking and
criss-crossing the sky. Without glasses I counted thirty-nine of our
observation balloons. Away off in the distance I saw one German captive
balloon. The other air-craft were uncountable. They were everywhere,
apparently in hundreds. There could have been no more wonderful
panoramic picture of war in its new aspect.
Our battalion was in and out of the town of Albert several days waiting
for orders. The battle of Courcelette was then in progress, and the
First, Second and Third Canadian divisions were holding front positions
at terrible cost. In the first part of October, 1916, we “went in”
opposite the famous Regina trench. The battle-ground was just miles
and miles of debris and shell-holes. Before we went to our position,
the officers and non-coms. were taken in by scouts to get the lay of
the land. These trips were called “Cook’s Tours.” On one of them I
went through the town of Poziers twice and didn’t know it. It had a
population of 12,000 before the war. On the spot where it had stood not
even a whole brick was left, it seemed. Its demolition was complete.
That was an example of the condition of the whole country over which
our forces had blasted their way for ten miles, since the previous
July. There were not even landmarks left.
The town of Albert will always remain in my memory, and, especially,
I shall always have the mental picture of the cathedral, with the
statue of the Virgin Mary with the Babe in her arms, apparently about
to topple from the roof. German shells had carried away so much of the
base of the statue that it inclined at an angle of 45 degrees. The
Germans--for some reason which only they can explain--expended much
ammunition in trying to complete the destruction of the cathedral, but
they did not succeed and they’ll never do it now. The superstitious
French say that when the statue falls the war will end. I have a due
regard for sacred things, but if the omen were to be depended upon I
should not regret to see the fall occur.
An unfortunate and tragic mishap occurred just outside of Albert when
the Somme offensive started on July 1. The signal for the first advance
was to be the touching off of a big mine. Some fifteen minutes before
the mine exploded the Germans set off one of their own. Two regiments
mistook this for the signal and started over. They ran simultaneously
into their own barrage and a German fire, and were simply cut to pieces
in as little time, almost, as it takes to say it.
The Germans are methodical to such an extent that at times this usually
excellent quality acts to defeat their own ends. An illustration of
this was presented during the bombardment of Albert. Every evening at
about six o’clock they would drop thirty high-explosive shells into
the town. When we heard the first one coming we would dive for the
cellars. Everyone would remain counting the explosions until the number
had reached thirty. Then everyone would come up from the cellars and
go about his business. There were never thirty-one shells and never
twenty-nine shells. The number was always exactly thirty, and then the
high-explosive bombardment was over. Knowing this, none of us ever got
hurt. Their methodical “evening hate” was wasted, except for the damage
it did to buildings in the town.
On the night when we went in to occupy the positions we were to hold,
our scouts, leading us through the flat desert of destruction, got
completely turned ’round, and took us back through a trench composed
of shell-holes, connected up, until we ran into a battalion of another
brigade. The place was dreadful beyond words. The stench of the dead
was sickening. In many places arms and legs of dead men stuck out of
the trench walls.
We made a fresh start, after our blunder, moving in single file and
keeping in touch each with the man ahead of him. We stumbled along in
the darkness through this awful labyrinth until we ran into some of
our own scouts at 2 A.M., and found that we were half-way across “No
Man’s Land,” several hundred yards beyond our front line and likely to
be utterly wiped out in twenty seconds should the Germans sight us. At
last we reached the proper position, and fifteen minutes after we got
there a whiz-bang buried me completely. They had to dig me out. A few
minutes later another high-explosive shell fell in a trench section
where three of our men were stationed. All we could find after it
exploded were one arm and one leg which we buried. The trenches were
without trench mats, and the mud was from six inches to three feet deep
all through them. There were no dug-outs; only miserable “funk holes,”
dug where it was possible to dig them without uncovering dead men.
We remained in this position four days, from the 17th to the 21st of
October, 1916.
There were reasons, of course, for the difference between conditions in
Belgium and on the Somme. On the Somme, we were constantly preparing
for a new advance, and we were only temporarily established on ground
which we had but recently taken, after long drumming with big guns.
The trenches were merely shell-holes connected by ditches. Our old
and ubiquitous and useful friend, the sand bag, was not present in
any capacity, and, therefore, we had no parapets or dug-outs. The
communication trenches were all blown in and everything had to come
to us overland, with the result that we never were quite sure when we
should get ammunition, rations, or relief forces. The most awful thing
was that the soil all about us was filled with freshly-buried men. If
we undertook to cut a trench or enlarge a funk hole, our spades struck
into human flesh, and the explosion of a big shell along our line sent
decomposed and dismembered and sickening mementoes of an earlier fight
showering amongst us. We lived in the muck and stench of “glorious”
war; those of us who lived.
Here and there, along this line, were the abandoned dug-outs of the
Germans, and we made what use of them we could, but that was little.
I had orders one day to locate a dug-out and prepare it for use as
battalion headquarters. When I led a squad in to clean it up the odor
was so overpowering that we had to wear our gas masks. On entering,
with our flashlights, we first saw two dead nurses, one standing with
her arm ’round a post, just as she had stood when gas or concussion
killed her. Seated at a table in the middle of the place was the body
of an old general of the German medical corps, his head fallen between
his hands. The task of cleaning up was too dreadful for us. We just
tossed in four or five fumite bombs and beat it out of there. A few
hours later we went into the seared and empty cavern, made the roof
safe with new timbers, and notified battalion headquarters that the
place could be occupied.
During this time I witnessed a scene which--with some others--I shall
never forget. An old chaplain of the Canadian forces came to our
trench section seeking the grave of his son, which had been marked for
him on a rude map by an officer who had seen the young man’s burial.
We managed to find the spot, and, at the old chaplain’s request, we
exhumed the body. Some of us suggested to him that he give us the
identification marks and retire out of range of the shells which were
bursting all around us. We argued that it was unwise for him to remain
unnecessarily in danger, but what we really intended was that he should
be saved the horror of seeing the pitiful thing which our spades were
about to uncover.
“I shall remain,” was all he said. “He was my boy.”
It proved that we had found the right body. One of our men tried to
clear the features with his handkerchief, but ended by spreading the
handkerchief over the face. The old chaplain stood beside the body and
removed his trench helmet, baring his gray locks to the drizzle of rain
that was falling. Then, while we stood by with bowed heads, his voice
rose amid the noise of bursting shells, repeating the burial service of
the Church of England. I have never been so impressed by anything in my
life as by that scene.
The dead man was a young captain. He had been married to a lady of
Baltimore, just before the outbreak of the war.
The philosophy of the British Tommies, and the Canadians and the
Australians on the Somme was a remarkable reflection of their fine
courage through all that hell. They go about their work, paying no
attention to the flying death about them.
“If Fritz has a shell with your name and number on it,” said a British
Tommy to me one day, “you’re going to get it whether you’re in the
front line or seven miles back. If he hasn’t, you’re all right.”
Fine fighters, all. And the Scotch kilties, lovingly called by the
Germans, “the women from hell,” have the respect of all armies. We
saw little of the Poilus, except a few on leave. All the men were
self-sacrificing to one another in that big melting pot from which so
few ever emerge whole. The only things it is legitimate to steal in
the code of the trenches are rum and “fags” (cigarettes). Every other
possession is as safe as if it were under a Yale lock.