The Canadians who were in the Ypres salient in January, 1916, and for
a long time afterward, had a grim way of fighting. The enemy never
knew what they might do next. When they were most quiet they were
most dangerous. They used cunning as well as courage, and went out
on red-Indian adventures over No Man's Land for fierce and scientific
slaughter.
I remember one of their early raids in the salient, when a big party of
them--all volunteers--went out one night with intent to get through the
barbed wire outside a strong German position, to do a lot of killing
there. They had trained for the job and thought out every detail of this
hunting expedition. They blacked their faces so that they would not show
white in the enemy's flares. They fastened flash-lamps to their bayonets
so that they might see their victims. They wore rubber gloves to save
their hands from being torn on the barbs of the wire.
Stealthily they crawled over No Man's Land, crouching in shell-holes
every time a rocket rose and made a glimmer of light. They took their
time at the wire, muffling the snap of it by bits of cloth. Reliefs
crawled up with more gloves, and even with tins of hot cocoa. Then
through the gap into the German trenches, and there were screams of
German soldiers, terror-shaken by the flash of light in their eyes,
and black faces above them, and bayonets already red with blood. It
was butcher's work, quick and skilful, like red-Indian scalping. Thirty
Germans were killed before the Canadians went back, with only two
casualties... The Germans were horrified by this sudden slaughter. They
dared not come out on patrol work. Canadian scouts crawled down to them
and insulted them, ingeniously, vilely, but could get no answer. Later
they trained their machine--guns on German working-parties and swept
crossroads on which supplies came up, and the Canadian sniper, in one
shell-hole or another, lay for hours in sulky patience, and at last got
his man... They had to pay for all this, at Maple Copse, in June of '15,
as I shall tell. But it was a vendetta which did not end until the
war ended, and the Canadians fought the Germans with a long, enduring,
terrible, skilful patience which at last brought them to Mons on the day
before armistice.
I saw a good deal of the Canadians from first to last, and on many
days of battle saw the tough, hard fighting spirit of these men. Their
generals believed in common sense applied to war, and not in high
mysteries and secret rites which cannot be known outside the circle of
initiation. I was impressed by General Currie, whom I met for the first
time in that winter of 1915-16, and wrote at the time that I saw in him
“a leader of men who in open warfare might win great victories by doing
the common-sense thing rapidly and decisively, to the surprise of an
enemy working by elaborate science. He would, I think, astound them
by the simplicity of his smashing stroke.” Those words of mine
were fulfilled--on the day when the Canadians helped to break the
Drocourt-Queant line, and when they captured Cambrai, with English
troops on their right, who shared their success. General Currie, who
became the Canadian Corps Commander, did not spare his men. He led them
forward whatever the cost, but there was something great and terrible in
his simplicity and sureness of judgment, and this real--estate agent
(as he was before he took to soldiering) was undoubtedly a man of
strong ability, free from those trammels of red tape and tradition which
swathed round so many of our own leaders.
He cut clean to the heart of things, ruthlessly, like a surgeon, and as
I watched that man, immense in bulk, with a heavy, thoughtful face and
stern eyes that softened a little when he smiled, I thought of him as
Oliver Cromwell. He was severe as a disciplinarian, and not beloved by
many men. But his staff-officers, who stood in awe of him, knew that
he demanded truth and honesty, and that his brain moved quickly to sure
decisions and saw big problems broadly and with understanding. He had
good men with him--mostly amateurs--but with hard business heads and the
same hatred of red tape and niggling ways which belonged to their chief.
So the Canadian Corps became a powerful engine on our side when it
had learned many lessons in blood and tragedy. They organized their
publicity side in the same masterful way, and were determined that what
Canada did the world should know--and damn all censorship. They bought
up English artists, photographers, and writing--men to record their
exploits. With Lord Beaverbrook in England they engineered Canadian
propaganda with immense energy, and Canada believed her men made up the
British army and did all the fighting. I do not blame them, and only
wish that the English soldier should have been given his share of the
honors that belonged to him--the lion's share.