YPRES
I remained in this spot with the guns until March, when the costly
victory of Neuve Chapelle was fought. My battery was playing on their
northern flank. The objective of the British Tommies was the city, which
they took, but at a terrible toll; 6,000 Indian troops, mostly Ghurkas,
were slain. The fearful mortality exacted from these troops was due to
their impetuosity; they do not know fear; it was impossible to hold
them; they rushed out before their time and some of them suffered from
the fire of our own guns. It was in this fight that our own famous and
gallant regiment, the "Princess Pats," was decimated, sustaining a loss
of over 700 men. This magnificent body of fellows went into the war
1,150 strong and at the last roll call but 22 of the original men
answered. The price paid was too much for what was accomplished.
We were then ordered to billets and stayed there until April 20th, when
we were ordered to Ypres, arriving there April 21. My battery was
stationed at St. Julien, one and a half miles northwest of the city.
Here I was detailed as observer, my duty being to get into the
front-line trench and from the most advantageous nook that I could find,
try to discover whatever I could about the movement of the enemy,
communicate my knowledge to the telephonist who would in turn send it to
headquarters.
Late in the afternoon I reported to the telephonist that a big fire was
in progress somewhere on our left, as an immense smoke cloud was rising
there and coming toward us. As shells had burst his wire, rendering it
useless, he started out to deliver the message by word of mouth, running
on top of the parapet as he started. That was the last I ever saw of
him; he did not come back; Fritz was coming and ahead of him rolled the
sinister-looking cloud on our left. Then happened the strangest thing!
The line trembled from one end to the other, as the Algerian troops
immediately on our left, jumped out of their trenches, falling as they
ran. The whole thing seemed absolutely incomprehensible--until I got a
whiff of the gas. They ran like men possessed, gasping, choking, blinded
and dropping with suffocation. They could hardly be blamed. It was a
new device in warfare and thoroughly illustrative of the Prussian idea
of playing the game.
When the great yellow clouds came rolling toward us, orders were roared
to wet our handkerchiefs and stuff them in our mouths, and half choked
and blinded we held for a day and a half. The buttons on our uniforms
were tinged yellow and green from the gas, so virulent was the poison.
Cooks and everybody else had been ordered into the line, as the giving
way of the Algerians necessitated our lengthening out so as to take over
their ground. Scotty of Mons fame was in the trench bay a few yards away
from me, and when the cloud had passed by I saw him rolling on the
ground, apparently blinded, tears streaming from his eyes. I helped him
to his feet and when he got his voice back his courage returned and,
yelling, "Let the barbarians come," he seized his rifle, rushed to the
parapet and fired point blank every cartridge in his rifle in the
direction of Fritz.
At the end of the second day another wave of hell's atmosphere came
across, more deadly than any of the others, followed by a smothering
fire from the German batteries, and the Germans broke in upon us on
our right and left. Yard by yard we retreated, fighting as we went, and
they occupied some of our front trenches--for a time.
[Illustration: A Chlorine Gas Attack from the Trenches]
That night Scotty and I received orders to report to a French dressing
station for treatment. I half-dragged and half-walked him to the doctor;
I had a feeling that he ought to have been able to make the trip without
my help as I was certain he wasn't suffering any more than I was. After
we left the doctor and got outside the dressing station, Scotty swayed
from side to side, groaning like a man who had lost his last hope on
earth, and the doctor told him to get away as quickly as he could as he
was playing the devil with the nerves of the men who were lying around
there half-dead from the poison fumes. He staggered over and sat down
beside me on the side of the road, still wringing his hands. I
remonstrated with him and told him that bad as it was it could not be
anything like Mons, and to my amazement he stopped his moaning all at
once and said with a twinkle in his eye, "Let's beat it to the dugout;
the doc won't see us." We took the chance and started. On the way Fritz
shot up the road and with a spring like an india-rubber man, Scotty
jumped behind a tree. We finally reached our destination and Scotty
proceeded to get something to eat. He lit a fire while I brought the
water. The cookhouse here was in the house of a farmer who had vacated,
and as the smoke coming from the chimney got thicker every moment, I was
apprehensive lest Fritz would see it and send over a shell message, but
Scotty pooh-poohed the idea.
Dinner was almost ready when--Kr-kr-kr-p! Kr-kr-kr-p! Bang! and a shell
shot clean through the joint. The concussion threw me to the floor,
covering me with lime and plaster-of-paris from the walls and ceiling. I
got up and looked around for the cook. The hero of Mons had been knocked
down, with the stove on top of him, and he was lying in the corner
praying like a good fellow. "Oh, Lord! look down in pity and save me!
Thou knowest, Lord, I am unworthy o' thy mercy, but please control the
shells o' those barbarians and send them in anither direction, and Thine
shall be a' the glory." Then he saw me standing there and he yelled, "Do
you think there'll be any more?" "No, that was merely a stray shell.
Let's get this grub, I'm starving." "Stray shell be damned," said he,
"they've seen the smoke and they'll be putting more over."
No sooner said than Kr-kr-kr-p! Kr-kr-kr-p! Kr-kr-kr-p! and three or
four more shells banged about the place, one of them blowing the pump
from outside through the shack past Scotty, out through the other wall,
and Scotty, ducking and dodging like a man trying to buck the line in a
football game, shot through the door and vanished in the night.
The pan of bacon he had been cooking was still intact except that it had
a coating of plaster-of-paris from the walls and ceiling of the room,
and I proceeded to put it under my belt as fast as my jaws would work,
and then made for my dugout. I was just settling down to a quiet smoke
when I heard the Major calling for Scotty at the top of his voice.
Getting no response, he called for me and I hastened to his quarters.
"Grant, go down and see if that Scotch cook has fallen in the soup; find
out if cookhouse is ready." "Yes, sir." I said nothing about what had
happened and returned to the cookhouse to find six Algerians devouring
the officers' rations in such fashion as to make one think of the man in
the side show who was advertised in letters twenty feet deep as the
original snake-eater of South America; there wasn't enough left for a
one-man meal. I reported to the O.C. that there were no signs of Scotty
but that the cookhouse had been hit by a shell.
"Go and see if he is at the dressing station." I went back to the
station. For nearly a mile the wounded and gassed men were lying on each
side of the road waiting for conveyances to remove them. I spoke to a
Tommy who had met with a peculiar accident; he had two plates in his
mouth and the concussion of a shell explosion in his immediate vicinity
had broken the plates into four pieces, leaving him practically
toothless.
Strongly suspecting by that time that if Scotty were anywhere on earth
he was at the rear in the wagon line, I waited around the station just
long enough to lend plausibility to my search before reporting to the
O.C. The Major was in a towering rage over our losses, and, damning the
cook, he dismissed me. The officers that night had to look to another
cookhouse for their evening meal.
Next morning I was sent for by the Major and dispatched to the wagon
lines on an errand;--at that time I was fulfilling the duties of a
runner for our unit;--he also told me to have a lookout for the cook
while there and make some inquiries about him. I saluted and left. The
first place I went to in the wagon lines was the cookhouse and as I got
there I thought I noticed the swish of someone quickly disappearing
round the corner and the cockney-cook there informed me that Scotty had
spent the previous evening with them and had only left a minute ago.
"'E's no slouch, that cook of yours," he said, "'e's a fighter, 'e is."
"That so?"
"You're right, 'e is. Wy, where 'e was stationed, when the Germans
rushed 'em in the trench, 'e 'eld 'em back, killin' two of 'em
single-handed until the others had retreated. 'E ought to get the
D.C.M., 'e ought; that's what hi say. By Gawd! when it comes to the real
thing, give me the Scotch! An' honly last night 'e was in his cookhouse
with some blighter by the name of Grant when the shells came along, and
this fellow must have 'ad a streak of yellow for he promised to 'elp
Scotty with the meal, but bolted like a bullet at the first shell."
"How did he come to be down here?" I asked.
"Wy, he got relieved."
"Where is he now?"
"Hover in the dugout."
I learned that the hero of Mons had regaled them with accounts of his
feats of valor in the trenches, very similar to the tales he had
recounted to us at Salisbury Plain of his achievements in the Great
Retreat, and the cook had given him a meal befitting a hero of his
caliber, which Scotty had devoured with the relish and avidity of four
heroes, while the others had shown him the due and necessary deference
becoming a man of action.
For the benefit of the cook I informed him that Scotty was a damned
liar; that it was I who had been with him; that he ran like a
white-livered cur under fire from his cookhouse and didn't stop until he
had reached the wagon lines; that he was there without being relieved
and that he would shortly have another tale to tell.
I hastened to the dugout he had indicated as Scotty's retreat and found
him in the innermost corner, pretending to be asleep; he didn't answer
until I called him three or four times.
"Scotty, the O.C. wants to know why you left the cookhouse without guard
permitting some Algerians to eat up his bacon and stuff, and, further,
why you ran away under fire. You are in for hell as sure as there is
heather in your hair." His countenance took on a greenish hue and he
mumbled something about being shell-shocked and refused to come. I
persuaded him, however, to come over to the Quartermaster of the wagon
line, and that officer asked him what he was doing there.
"Weel,--I was wounded and couldna' fight anither stroke; I was jeest
tired oot wi' killin' Boches and hadna' the strength to stand anither
minute; I jeest had to get away."
"Well, you've had a damned good rest now and you can get back to the
O.C. and tell him what you have told me and he will see that you get a
fitting decoration." This latter was spoken very grimly, and I could see
the great fighter's face fall. "You will see to it, Grant," said the
Q.M. "that Henderson doesn't hide his heroism from the O.C.; that he
gives it to him in detail, just as he has to me." "Yes, sir," and I left
with my prisoner.
We hurried along as night was falling and the German flares were
commencing to fly. On the way back we met two Algerian troopers and in
the gleam of a star shell and the fading twilight they looked more like
two escaped denizens of the chamber of horrors than anything I could
well imagine. Indeed, their appearance was so ghastly under the weird
light of the flares and the fading day, that I involuntarily shivered,
hardened though I was by that time to grim sights. Each of them carried
on his shoulder the hind-quarter of a cow that had been killed by a
shell at a nearby farm, and the dripping blood from the beast had
slopped all over their uniforms; under each arm was tucked a ham they
had "swiped" from the farmhouse and each had a young suckling pig
running ahead, squealing and grunting, tied by a string on the hind leg
and held by the left hand, while in the right hand each man carried a
sharply pointed stick to prod the pig when it veered from a straight
line, which was about every other step or so.
Just as we got immediately opposite the looters a burst of shell fire
from the German guns, followed by a hail of shrapnel, blazed all about
us, and the hero-cook jumped like a bullfrog, bumping plumb into one of
the Algerians, and he and the cook and the pig tumbled over and over,
the pig squealing like mad, the Algerian rolling out deep-throated oaths
in his native tongue, and Scotty cursing as only a redheaded gabby
Scotchman can, all amid an ear-splitting din of shrieking shells and
flare-gleams completing a _mise en scène_ as striking as anything ever
created by a master artist of stagecraft.
When Scotty extricated himself from the tangle his face and clothes were
smeared from the blood of the dripping beast, so that he could indeed
have passed for the blood-stained hero he had proclaimed himself in the
cookhouse, and in spite of his plight Scotty grinned as I suggested the
thought to him and the twinkle returned to his eye, and his spirits took
a decidedly upward turn until we reached the Major's quarters.
The Major was still cursing mad over the loss of the trenches in the gas
attack and I felt the moment he spoke that Scotty's fate looked black.
"Where have you been, Henderson?"
"I was in the cookhouse, sir, when a shell struck it, smashing
everything in sight, and I lost complete control o' my nerves and
started for the wagon lines wi'out knowing what I was doing or where I
was going, and didna' come to mysel' until Grant ran across me in the
dugout."
"That won't go, Henderson. Orderly room at ten-thirty in the morning.
It's the first case of cowardice in this unit and I'll take damned good
care that it will be the last. Grant, escort the prisoner back to the
wagon lines."
I could not help feeling sorry for the poor devil because, coward though
he was, his was one of those personalities that carried with it a sort
of likeableness, somewhat after the fashion of our time-honored
Falstaff, and his funk under fire made him liable to the extreme
penalty,--a firing squad. His teeth chattered like the keys of a
typewriter as he asked me, "What do you think will come o' it, Grant? Do
you think he really means it?"
I hadn't the heart to tell him what I really thought and strove to jolly
him by saying that the Major would feel in a better humor in the
morning, "and besides," said I, "when we take back those trenches
tomorrow, he will get over his flurry."
I turned my prisoner over to the guard of the wagon lines, first
informing the Quartermaster, and when he asked me what the trouble was,
I had to tell him of the variance of the prisoner's story told him and
that he told the Major, and that the Major directed that he be up for
orderly room in the morning. Without any further ceremony Scotty was
jammed in the clink.
It was now almost daybreak of the morning of the third day following our
first gas attack and, almost ready to drop with fatigue, I went over to
the wagon lines, gathered some straw and bags together under an
ammunition wagon, and was in a dead sleep in less time than it takes to
tell it.
At ten-thirty I reported to the orderly room to attend Scotty's trial.
The Major was in his appointed place and in due course the guard marched
in with the prisoner. His ammunition pouches and cap had been removed
and he stood to attention as well as the contour of his legs and the
thickness of his yellow streak permitted. Still I could not help
remembering what he had done at Mons; there was no doubt about that
because I had seen his scar and I knew that the ranks of the Seaforth
Highlanders had never held a coward; and I mentally concluded that he
must really have been suffering from shell shock or he would never have
left his post as he did, and I sincerely hoped that he would in some way
get through. The evidence was short and conclusive and the verdict was
curt and decisive:--"held in close confinement for general field court
martial at Steenwercke, May 12." And Scotty was led out looking as if he
hadn't a friend in the world; there was very little sympathy for him
from anyone.
The same evidence was repeated at the field court martial trial, but the
twinkle in Scotty's eye must have reached the heart of the commanding
officer for he was ordered deported to England, pending dishonorable
discharge. There he was sent to the military camp at Shorncliffe, put
under open arrest and utilized around the camp in a number of ways for
over a year.
That afternoon Colonel Morrison sent for me. "Grant, run to Colonel
Curry and find out how strong the Forty-eighth Highlanders and the Third
Brigade are, and how soon he can get the men together for attack."
"Yes, sir," and I started. I was running along the top of the canal bank
in broad daylight and in the open, expecting every second that one of
the missiles from the shower that was pattering the ground everywhere
would get me. In that race through that bullet-swept zone I felt a
common bond of kinship with the Irish soldier who was running as fast as
his legs could carry him from the Battle of the Wilderness in the
American Civil War and General Sherman, noticing him, turned his horse
in the direction of the fleeing soldier and halted him up.
"Here, you soldier, what are you running away for?"
"Because, Gineral--because I can't fly."
How I longed for wings! The Colonel later recommended me for a
commission and many times since have I wondered how he would feel about
that recommendation if he ever learned the real state of my feelings at
that moment. He did me the honor of requesting Colonel Morrison to
permit me to enter his unit and Colonel Morrison did me the additional
honor of refusing to let me go. I had gotten a somewhat painful scalp
wound on the way over, and I made my way to the French dressing station
in a half-unconscious condition. The French doctor nearly completed
matters by spilling the iodine in my eye and nearly blinding me. Some
dope was then administered that brought me to my full senses shortly
after.
When I was getting fixed up at the dressing station--I had a hard time
as the wounded men were swarming everywhere--I saw two women in the
station carrying baskets and speaking to the soldiers. They seemed to be
peasant women, but spoke very good English. They left after some little
time and wended their way up the road; but something in their appearance
directed attention to them and they were watched! After they had gone a
little bit up the road one of them was seen to open her basket and let a
pigeon go. They were at once arrested, handed over to the French police
and taken to Ypres.
The work of the gendarmerie was unexcelled; they were everywhere they
were needed; had it not been for their lightning-like acumen and prompt
service, the Lord only knows what would have become of us poor
Britishers in that country, as we were practically at the mercy of the
spies, not knowing who was who.
The two women were taken to Ypres and were treated to their deserved
fate--shot. But the pigeon did its work. Within an hour after their
arrest the hospital was shelled; it was packed with patients and in one
of the wards one of those flying ministers of death exploded, leaving
not a single living man.