In the lesser wars of the past the Victoria Cross was more frequently
awarded for demonstrations of valour in connection with the rescuing of
wounded under fire than for courageous acts designed and carried out
with more material and purely military advantages in view. To risk one's
life, perhaps to lose it, in a successful or vain attempt to save the
life of a disabled comrade was--granting favourable circumstances and
conditions--to be recommended for that crowning award. When we consider
the nature of those lesser wars we appreciate the admirable spirit in
which those recommendations were made. Those were days of small armies,
long marches and short battles. The fate of the Empire, say even of the
world's freedom, never hung upon the turn of any one engagement. A
soldier was something more romantic then than a unit of man-power.
The length, the unrelieved ferocity and the stupendous proportions of
this war, have somewhat altered the spirit in which recommendations for
awards are made. The deed of valour must show material rather than
sentimental results; the duty that inspires the deed must show a
military rather than a humane intention. The spirit of our heroes is
the same to-day as it was yesterday, whether the courageous act results
in the holding of a position, the killing of a score of Germans, or the
saving of one comrade's life. Only the spirit of official appreciation
has changed; but this new spirit is logical.
F. W. Hall was recommended for his Cross in the old spirit.
The deed of valour for which Company-Sergeant-Major Hall, of the 8th
Canadian Infantry Battalion, was awarded the Victoria Cross was
performed on the morning of the day following the great achievement and
death of Lance-Corporal Fisher. Hall, too, lost his life in the very act
of self-sacrifice by which he won immortality.
During the night of April 23rd the 8th Battalion, of our 2nd Infantry
Brigade, relieved the 15th Battalion, of the 3rd Brigade, in a section
of our front line. In moving up to our fire-trench the relieving troops
had to cross a high bank which was fully exposed to the rifle and
machine-gun fire of the enemy in the positions opposite. This bank lay
about fifteen yards in rear of our forward position at this point. Its
crest was continuously swept by bullets while the relief was taking
place and the incoming battalion suffered a number of casualties. In the
darkness and the confusion of taking over a new trench under such
adverse conditions, the exact extent of the casualties was not
immediately known; but Sergeant-Major Hall missed a member of his
company on two separate occasions and on two separate occasions left the
trench and went back to the top of the bank, under cover of the dark,
returning each time with a wounded man.
At nine o'clock in the morning of the 24th, the attention of the
occupants of the trench was attracted to the top of the bank by groans
of suffering. Hall immediately suggested a rescue, in spite of the fact
that it was now high daylight, and Corporal Payne and Private Rogerson
as promptly volunteered to accompany him. The three went over the
parados, with their backs to the enemy, and instantly drew a heavy fire.
Before they could reach the sufferer, who lay somewhere just beyond
their view on the top of the bank, both Payne and Rogerson were wounded.
They crawled and scrambled back to the shelter of the trench, with
Hall's assistance. There the Sergeant-Major rested for a few minutes,
before attempting the rescue again. He refused to be accompanied the
second time, knowing that as soon as he left the trench he would become
the target for the excellent shooting that had already put Payne and
Rogerson out of action. It was his duty as a non-commissioned officer to
avoid making the same mistake twice. He had already permitted the
risking of three lives in the attempt to save one life and had suffered
two casualties; but doubtless he felt free to risk his own life again in
the same adventure as he had already successfully accomplished two
rescues over the same ground. He may be forgiven, I think, for not
pausing to reflect that his own life was of more value to the cause than
the life of the sufferer lying out behind the trench.
The fire from the hostile positions in front and on the flanks of this
point in our line was now hot and accurate. It was deliberate, aimed
fire, discharged in broad daylight over adjusted sights at an expected
target. Hall knew all this; but he crawled out of the trench. He moved
slowly, squirming along very close to the ground. The bullets whispered
past him and over him, cut the earth around him, pinged and thudded upon
the face of the bank before him. Very low shots, ricocheting off the top
of the parados in his rear, whined and hummed in erratic flight. He
reached and crawled up the slope of the bank without being hit. He
quickly located and joined the wounded man, guided straight by the
weakening groans of suffering. He lay flat and squirmed himself beneath
the other's helpless body. Thus he got the sufferer on his back, in
position to be moved; but in the act of raising his head slightly to
glance over the way by which he must regain the shelter of the trench,
he received a bullet in the brain. Other bullets immediately put an end
to the sufferings of the man on his back.
Hall had been born in Belfast, Ireland, but Winnipeg was his Canadian
home.
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