FOURTEEN DAYS' FIGHTING
[Illustration: Lewis Gun in Action in Front-Line Trench.]
By this time there was no doubt of the enemy's superiority in
artillery, and to make matters worse, the craters were changing hands
daily or even hourly. We never knew, for sure, whether our troops or
those of the enemy held any certain crater, except the ones on each
end, numbers one and six (we held them throughout the entire two
months of fighting), but numbers two, three, four and five were
debatable ground for several weeks. On two occasions I made the
complete circuit of all the craters at night, going through the
Canadian trench and coming back via what had been our original front
line. On one of these trips I was accompanied by Captain Congreve,
afterward Major Congreve, V. C., (now dead) who was the only staff
officer I saw in that sector during all the time we were in the line.
Sometimes we met individual German sentries and quick, quiet and
accurate work was necessary to avoid detection and probable capture. I
found that a French bayonet, the rapier shape, was a very satisfactory
weapon at such times. Trench knives have been invented since and may
be an improvement. After leaving me that night Captain Congreve came
upon a party of eighty-two Germans, commanded by an officer, who had
been cut off in one of the craters for several days, without food or
ammunition, and captured them all, single-handed. For this feat he
received the Distinguished Service Order and promotion to Major.
Later, on the Somme, he continued his brilliant work and won the award
of the Victoria Cross, but was killed at Mametz Wood before receiving
the decoration, which was given to his widow. He was only twenty-five
at the time of his death but had proved himself one of the most
enterprising officers in the British army.
What had been left of the village of St. Eloi when the fight commenced
was rapidly disappearing under the hail of shells. Where our original
front line had been there remained but few detached fragments of
parapet. For perhaps six hundred yards we were holding on with
scattered and isolated groups. At one place, on our immediate left,
was a hole in the line at least two hundred yards wide. Time after
time the Canadians attacked and retook the craters, only to be
literally blown out of them by the ensuing hurricane of shells.
The task of getting out the wounded was heart-breaking. Our own
stretcher-bearers worked night and day, but they had suffered many
casualties and were unequal to the task. The Border Regiment and the
Durham Light Infantry, who occupied our old trenches and were not
under heavy fire, sent volunteer carrying parties to assist in the
work, so that all were taken out with a minimum of delay. It was
impossible to remove the dead and they were buried in shell-holes,
where they fell. During the succeeding days many were disinterred by
other shells.
Then, the matter of maintaining communication with our supports and
the headquarters in the rear was of the utmost importance and our
signalers waged a continuous fight, against heavy odds, to keep the
wires connected up. It would not be fair to others to specify any
particular branch as being better. All who serve in the front line at
a time like this are equally entitled to credit. At times, when it is
necessary to go out and search for breaks and repair them, the work of
the signalers is "extra hazardous," just as is that of the
stretcher-bearers when obliged to expose themselves to succor the
wounded, or the machine gunner when it is necessary to mount his gun
on top of the parapet, within plain sight of the enemy, or the
riflemen, bombers and scouts in advancing to the attack. There can be
no fair distinction--they all, taken as a unit, are in a class
separated by a wide gulf from those back in supporting or reserve or
artillery positions, who, in turn, are separated from the transport
and ambulance drivers, who, while occasionally under shell fire, are
in the zone of comparative safety, where "people" still live and farm
and run stores and estaminets. I would not have you think that I am
minimizing the value of the services of these men. Their work is of
vital importance to the success of the fighting forces and _must_ be
done; and I can truly say that in all my experience I have never known
them to fail in the performance of their duties.
In this war, as in most others, it is the infantryman who stands the
brunt of the fighting. True, he is disguised under many other names,
such as rifleman, bomber, automatic rifleman, rifle-grenadier, scout,
signaler, sniper, runner or machine gunner but, when you get right
down to the bottom of the whole business, he is the fellow who travels
on his two feet and actually "goes over and gets 'em." Trenches can be
battered to pieces by artillery but they can not be actually "taken"
and held by any one but the plodding, patient, long-suffering
"doughboy" or "web-foot" as he is called by the men of the other
branches.
At one time, during this period, Sergeant H. Norton-Taylor and four
men from our section, held one of the craters for five days, against
numerous attacks, and even captured prisoners. They had no food, water
or ammunition other than that which they could get from the bodies of
dead soldiers in the immediate vicinity. We sent many detachments to
relieve them but were unable to locate their position and it was only
by accident that they were discovered and relieved by a scouting party
of the Nineteenth Battalion which was over on our left. But for this,
they might be there now, as they were not the quitting kind.
Norton-Taylor was commissioned and commanded the section at
Courcellette, where he was killed, September 15, 1916. He came of a
long line of distinguished British officers, his father having been a
Colonel in the Royal Field Artillery. A brother and a brother-in-law
were in the service, one of them losing both feet by a shell. A sister
was working in the hospitals in France and another in England. He was
a true friend and a gallant officer--every inch a gentleman.
On the night of April tenth we were relieved by the Twentieth
Battalion and went out for a rest. I had not laid down to sleep for
fourteen days, snatching what rest I could, for fifteen or twenty
minutes at a time, leaning against a parapet or propped up in the
corner of a traverse. We were only able to get as far as Voormezeele,
where we stopped in the ruins of the convent school, and dropping on
the stone floor slept like the dead for twenty-four hours. The place
was being shelled all this time but none knew or cared. The next night
we made our way to where the battalion was in billets, near
Renninghelst, where I immediately "flopped" for a straight forty-eight
hours' continuous sleep. After that a bath, a shave and general
clean-up, supplemented by a good hot "feed," made me as good as new.
During that two weeks up in front we had had no warm food, nothing but
"bully and biscuits" and, occasionally, a can of "Maconochie," a
ration of prepared meat and vegetables, which is excellent when served
hot but not very palatable when eaten cold.
We now had the longest rest we had enjoyed since coming over, as we
did not go back to the front line until April twentieth. Our Sixth
and Fifth Brigades had been in during the time we were out and both
had suffered severely in the many counter-attacks, but held on, like
true British bull-dogs, to what had been our original front line. The
craters were lost as it was impossible for any troops to hold them
under the devastating fire of the German guns. Nearly every battalion
of the Second Canadian Division had retaken one or more of them but,
as it only resulted in additional loss of life, it was decided by the
higher command to give it up and endeavor to reestablish our front
along its original line.
We went in via Voormezeele, a town of several thousand inhabitants
before the war, now a pile of ruins. From here a _pavé_ road ran
directly to St. Eloi and there had been two good communication
trenches leading up to the front line. We soon discovered however that
several things had happened during our absence. On the road to St.
Eloi and about five hundred yards behind our front line, had been a
Belgian farm called Bus House. (A London omnibus was lying, smashed,
in front of it.) This place was now but a pile of brick and timbers.
To the left, another group of farm buildings, called Shelley Farm, was
in about the same condition, and where St. Eloi had been was nothing
but a barren waste. Not a sign of a house or any part of a house was
visible; not a brick remained and even the roads, the fine stone-paved
roads, had been obliterated. Where had been hedges or trees there was
nothing but a desolate expanse of mud which, from a distance, appeared
to be a smooth level plain. For a good six hundred yards back of our
front line there was not a shrub or bush or tree nor any landmark of
any kind. Every inch of this ground had been churned over and over
again by shells. Literally, it was not possible to set foot on a spot
which had not been upturned. The whole area was simply a continuation
of shell craters, joined and interlocked without a break. Where our
communication and support trenches had been it was just the same. No
man could have gone over that ground and said: "Here was a house," or
"There was a field," or "That was once a road," because house, turnip
field and road looked exactly alike. The great granite blocks of the
road had been pulverized to dust, and the bricks of the houses had
shared a like fate. Even the contour of the ground was changed--ditches,
depressions and ridges having been hammered to a uniform elevation.
And every hole was full of water. To traverse this desert one must
wade and flounder through liquid mud waist deep and sometimes deeper.
Yet it had to be done. We had nine positions up there at each of which
a handful of men must be relieved daily; or rather nightly, as it was,
obviously, impossible to move about over that open expanse in
daylight. Every yard of it was under scrutiny from the German lines
and, even at night, owing to the lavish use of star-shells by the
enemy, it was a long and slow journey as it was necessary to stop and
remain absolutely quiet when a light came near.
The hardest thing about the whole business was to find the men who
were to be relieved. There was no path nor road nor landmark of any
kind. During the time we were in, it rained continuously and at no
time was a star visible. The positions where they were stationed were
exactly like the rest of the surrounding country--merely enlarged
shell-holes with, perhaps, a fragment of a sand-bag parapet. No lights
could be shown, they did not even dare use "Very lights," as our
"star-lights" are known. They were not in any regular formation but at
irregular intervals along what had been a very crooked line.
Fortunately, we had a "natural born" guide on our first trip in and we
found them all. After that we managed to "carry on" but not without
many slips. It was nothing unusual for a relief party suddenly to find
themselves in the German lines and have to work their way out as best
they could. If caught out after dawn one had to lie low in a
shell-hole all day, probably under heavy artillery fire, until
darkness came and made it possible to return unseen. This trouble was
not confined to our side and it was by no means an uncommon occurrence
for parties of the enemy to get lost in the same way. Sometimes
these adventures resulted in rather sharp bombing engagements. One
night a whole platoon of about forty Germans went through a gap in our
line and bumped into a strong supporting party of ours at Shelley Farm
where they were all captured. They had been looking for one of the
craters whose garrison they were to relieve. Individual prisoners were
taken nearly every night.
[Illustration: Canadian Machine Gunners Digging Themselves Into
Shell-Holes]
Under the prevailing conditions, it was impossible to take machine
guns up, so we depended entirely upon Lewis guns. Fortunately no
determined attack was made on us during this time as it is extremely
doubtful if we could have held them there. We would, of course, have
stopped them a few hundred yards back, at our support line, and I must
confess that I had at times a sneaking desire to see them come over
and get into that mud so we could move back to comparatively
comfortable quarters.
As we no longer had any trenches, we abandoned the old letter method
of designation and simply numbered the various positions. On the
first morning in, the gun and crew at No. 14 were blown up by a shell.
This was an unlucky position as the same thing had happened there to a
crew from the Twentieth Battalion. We then moved that position some
fifty yards to one side and had no further trouble.
We alternated with other battalions of the division, going in and out,
holding that line and gradually improving it, until, on the twenty-second
day of May, while we were back in billets, I was "warned for leave" (a
week in England), and little Bouchard, my particular protégé and
warmest friend, was to go along.
You people who have stayed at home can never realize what "leave"
means to a soldier after eight months in the trenches and I, for one,
will not attempt the impossible by trying to describe the sensation.
We packed our kits and hiked to Poperinghe, where, after sitting up
all night, we took train at four o'clock A.M., arriving at Boulogne
about noon and were in "Blighty" by four in the afternoon.
"Oh, ain't it a grand and glorious feeling!"