During the terrible days from April 22nd till April 25th, 1915, the
Canadian troops had their mettle tested to a supreme degree. In those
four days the second battle of Ypres was fought and the German drive
held up where its authors had thought it irresistible. Even the deluge
of gas--the first used in the war--gained them less benefit than they
expected. That battle of Ypres was decidedly a Canadian victory.
Captain F. A. C. Scrimger, of the Canadian Army Medical Corps, was
attached at the time to the 14th (Royal Montreal) Battalion. On April
22nd he was in charge of an advanced dressing station situated in an old
farm building near the battered city of Ypres. The house was surrounded
by a moat over which there was only one road; and that afternoon, during
the heavy fighting, the German artillery found the lonely house and
began to shell it.
For three days and nights Scrimger worked among the wounded, heedless of
the pandemonium of the battle, in a situation which was perilous in the
extreme. The Germans, in their forward rush, brought the farm within
rifle range, but still Scrimger and his staff went about their work.
On the afternoon of the 25th the German artillery sent over incendiary
shells, and one of these, landing on the farm, set the place alight. The
staff were at last forced to move.
The single road was almost impassable owing to a heavy German shrapnel
barrage, but the wounded were nevertheless taken back to places of
comparative safety. Some of the staff, and some of the less badly
wounded patients, swam the moat. They were all removed except one badly
injured officer; for him swimming was out of the question.
Scrimger took upon himself the task of saving this patient, but, as he
was preparing to move, several direct hits were made on the house by the
German artillery. Shrapnel burst through the rafters. Scrimger bent over
his patient, protecting him with his body as the splinters fell around
them, and finally, during a lull, carried him out of the blazing house
on his back.
But in the open there was not even the protection of the shaky walls of
the farm, and Scrimger had not gone far with his burden when he saw that
the officer was too severely wounded to bear this kind of journeying.
There was no shelter in sight, nothing but the shrapnel-swept wastes and
the torn, shuddering earth.
Laying his patient down, Scrimger remained beside him, shielding him
again with his own body, till help arrived later in the day.
[Illustration]