CHAPTER XII

"CANADA IN FLANDERS"

Conclusion--Canada will meet new necessities with fresh exertions--The

Military co-operation of all parts of the Empire to lead to closer

Political Union--Significance of the title "Canada in Flanders"--French

General's views--British Infantry have never had to protect their own

soil--Devotion of Australians and Canadians for an ideal--They felt the

Empire was in danger--Lack of foresight in England--Prevision of Mr.

Hughes, General Botha, and Sir Robert Borden--Recrimination in War-time

useless, but the feeling for closer union and more responsibility

growing overseas--Difficulty of organising this sentiment in a

constitutional form without imperilling the liberty of the

Dominions--Perils of refusing to do so--Controversy between Captain

Papineau and Mr. Bourassa--Risk of reaction after the War--"Admit us to

your Councils"--Reorganisation of Imperial resources the first

constructive task for the Statesmen of the Empire

APPENDIX

CHAPTER I

THE SECOND DIVISION

Canadians in the clash of World Powers--Effect of losses on Canadian

people--Tribute of the British--The Service in St. Paul's--"Pure

gold"--Eighteen hundred fresh troops cross the Channel--Prompt action

of the Minister of Militia--Call for men from the third contingent to

refill the ranks--Outstanding feature of the Second Battle of

Ypres--Colonel Henderson on volunteer armies--Adaptability of the

Canadians--Gallantry and intelligence _v._ lengthy training--The real

strength underlying great national movements--The superiority of

volunteer armies--The conduct of Canadian and Australian troops--The

landings at Gallipoli--Lone Pine Hill--Recruiting for the Second

Division--Unbounded patriotism of the Provinces--The Commanding

Officers--Mid-winter training--Sailing of the Second

Contingent--Major-General Steele--Training in England--Ready for any

emergency--Divisional Artillery--A satisfactory inspection--Visit of

the Prime Minister, the Colonial Secretary, and the Minister of

Militia--The great achievement of Sir Sam Hughes--Words of praise from

the Colonial Secretary--The New World ready to redeem the balance of

the Old--Our King, Our Country, Our Empire--Special message from the

King--Towards the firing line--A startling incident in the Channel--The

historic landing-place--The French Canadians in France--A dramatic

moment.

The repercussion of the battle of Ypres was immediately felt in Canada.

It was an event unique in the history of the Dominion. The numbers

engaged, the high proportion of casualties, the character of the enemy,

and the desperate nature of the fighting made the engagement the most

serious military action in which Canadians had ever borne a part, and

the effect upon home opinion was proportionate. The American attack of

1812, the Red River Expedition, the abortive Fenian raid, and even the

South African Campaign, were by comparison affairs of minor importance.

The Canadian regiment had indeed made a name for itself at Paardeberg,

and the 7,000 Canadians who volunteered for service in Africa had set a

high standard of soldierly virtue in more than one engagement; but as

the European conflict dwarfed the struggle of 1899-1902 for the Empire

as a whole, so the share taken by the Dominion in the war against the

Central Powers entirely overshadowed the effort she had made against

the Transvaal and Free State. Here at last in the clash of World

Powers a new nation had come into its own. Twenty thousand Canadian

troops, many with less than one year's service, had, almost unsupported

and wholly outflanked, held their own for days against the vastly

superior numbers of the most highly trained troops in Europe, who, in

addition to their usual weapons of warfare, had suddenly and

unexpectedly made use of a vile and inhuman method of attack. Of these

20,000 nearly one-third were casualties, and the list of six thousand

killed, wounded, and missing came as a shock to a public which had not

been hardened as Great Britain had been by the battles of Mons, the

Marne, and the Aisne to the colossal sacrifices involved in war. So

our land grieved her losses, and set herself to make them good.

From each one of our provinces came the same voice of mingled sorrow,

pride and invincible determination. The feeling found expression in

the memorial services for the dead held on April 31st in Montreal, in

five churches representing all religious denominations. The flags were

flown at half-mast and the troops turned out to attend the services.

"The achievements of our men," said the Bishop of Montreal, "have

brought Canada into a new and more honourable place in the Empire.

They endured privation, they suffered greatly, and now they have paid

life's greatest tribute with their lives."

[Sidenote: _May 2nd, 1915._]

Nor was Great Britain without her tribute. A memorial service was held

in St. Paul's on May 2nd, 1915, for the Canadians who fell at Ypres.

The officiating clergy were the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of

London, the Chaplain-General to the Forces, and the Dean of St. Paul's.

The ceremony took place not without propriety in the City Cathedral of

St. Paul's; for though Westminster Abbey is consecrated by long

tradition and the immortal tombs of great monarchs and statesmen of

times almost out of remembrance, yet the shrines of Saxon, Norman,

Angevin, and Tudor kings are a little remote from the dead of a far-off

country with which these recumbent figures were never concerned. But

St. Paul's possesses not only the monuments of the great soldiers and

sailors who laid the foundations of the Empire of to-day, but enshrines

that spirit of patriotic and constrained freedom which has made the

citizens of London both "the regular army of Liberty" and the firm

supporters of all those statesmen, from Chatham to Disraeli, who have

combined freedom with Empire. Here the volunteer army of Canada

committed to the Imperial cause would find that its dead might speak

without constraint to those of an older time. In this temple of a

magnificent sobriety was held the funeral service of the heroes of

Ypres. In the stiff and formal tombs of their age lay the mortal

remains of Wellington and Nelson, who, if there be remembrance among

the shades, might well have been present to pay tribute to men whom

even they would have been proud to command. But round the walls hung a

more significant witness to the fallen in the countless tablets which

still hold the memories of the soldiers and sailors, now long forgotten

by history, who in many a desperate battle by sea and land laid the

enduring foundations of a Canada which has proved itself not unworthy

of its origins. Among these records are those of the City merchants

whose purses and patriotism supplied the sinews of war to remind us

that the great material resources of the Dominion are not inferior to

the patriotism of its sons, and are no less a vital factor of national

victory. Here, then, were gathered the representatives of an Empire

united both by pride and sorrow. Over the vast assembly which thronged

the building on that dim summer evening the half-lights scarcely

illuminated the interior of the spacious dome. As those lights grew

and shot up into the gloom the massed bands opened with the "Dead

March," and a thrill ran through the multitude--one of those waves of

emotion which only great occasions can evoke. The Bishop of London was

the preacher, nor was his eloquence wanting to the occasion. "It was

on that tremendous day when French and British had been overpowered by

poisonous gas that the manhood of Canada shone out like pure gold. The

example of these men will never die, but will remain as a perpetual

inspiration to their successors." Those successors were already on

their way.

Within three days of the Ypres fight 1,800 reinforcements from the

Canadian Training Division crossed the Channel to bring new blood to

the decimated battalions in Flanders. The Commander-in-Chief in France

at once dispatched Lieut.-Col. Carrick, M.P., to ask for a further

supply of new Canadian formations. The Minister of Militia and

Defence, General Sir Sam Hughes, did not wait for any request to deal

with the instant need. He called for a draft of men from the 3rd

Contingent, still training in Canada, to go abroad and help refill the

ranks. The losses of the 1st Division were thus partially made good,

and it was able now to inscribe on its banners the proud name of the

Second Battle of Ypres.

To the military writer of the future the amazing feature of the Second

Battle of Ypres will always be the courage and discipline shown by the

Canadians, equal to the best to be found in the armies with which they

were associated. The greater proportion of the Anglo-French Armies

were composed of Regular soldiers in the broadest sense of the term,

and it has been held by most military historians as an axiom that no

amount of gallantry and intelligence can make up for a lack of

prolonged training and discipline.

Ordinary military writers put the case even more strongly. They

maintain in effect that the value of troops depends on the length of

service and on the character of their training, and on these things

alone. This point of view ignores the other factors which go to the

making of a soldier or a regiment--physique, natural boldness and

resource, intelligence, and high patriotic motives; and would claim

that a body composed of naturally inferior but technically better

trained troops could defeat an equal number of men possessing the

qualities I have mentioned, but deficient in discipline and experience.

I would submit that the Second Battle of Ypres does not accord with the

expert theory, but rather teaches the reverse.

The late Colonel Henderson, perhaps the best known of modern historians

of war, goes so far as to countenance the suggestion that had either

the North or the South in the American Civil War possessed at the start

a single army corps of Regulars, the struggle would have been decided

instantly in favour of its possessors instead of lasting over four

years and necessitating the calling to arms of the great majority of

the citizens of the United States! Colonel Henderson states the matter

more moderately in a passage I cannot forbear to quote at some length,

because it embodies the best which can be said for the professional

military point of view. Speaking of American Volunteer troops, Colonel

Henderson says:

"The Volunteers had proved themselves exceedingly liable to panic.

Their superior intelligence had not enabled them to master the

instincts of human nature; and although they had behaved well in camp

and on the march, in battle their discipline had fallen to pieces. _It

could hardly be otherwise_. Men without ingrained habits of obedience,

who have not been trained to subordinate their will to another's,

cannot be expected to render implicit obedience in moments of danger

and excitement; nor can they be expected, under such circumstances, to

follow officers in whom they can have but little confidence. The ideal

of battle is a combined effort, directed by a trained leader. Unless

troops are thoroughly well disciplined, such effort is impossible; the

leaders are ignored, and the spasmodic action of the individual is

substituted for the concentrated pressure of the mass.... The

Volunteers, although on many occasions they behaved with admirable

courage, continually broke loose from control under the fire of the

enemy. As individuals they fought well; as organised bodies, capable

of manoeuvring under fire and of combined effort, they proved to be

comparatively worthless." ("Stonewall Jackson," Vol. I., p. 49;

Longmans, 1913.)

Colonel Henderson quoted in support of his view the undisciplined

advance and disorganised retreat of the Federal levies at the battle of

Bull Run, and the utter failure of the brave French Territorials of the

Army of the Loire in 1870-71 to relieve Paris or to make any headway

against the Germans when once the French Regular armies had been

destroyed at Gravelotte, Metz, and Sedan.

Such views, by ignoring the real strength which underlies great

national movements and supports national armies, however ill-trained,

lead to that kind of miscalculation which lured Napoleon to his

destruction in Spain. They spring chiefly from a study of those

periods in history when small mercenary or highly-trained bodies of

troops existed side by side with a population whose civic organisation

and patriotic ardour were at a low ebb. Such conditions occurred at

certain periods of mediæval history, in the Italy of the Renaissance,

and during the end of the seventeenth and throughout the eighteenth

centuries. But even in those epochs we can notice the victories of the

ill-organised levies inspired by Joan of Arc over the highly-trained

British men-at-arms and archers, the successful resistance of Volunteer

troops in Holland to the veterans of Alva, and the contest waged by the

House of Orange with the levies of the United Provinces against the

flower of the French Army led by Condé and Turenne. And the system of

small, trained armies, and most of the lessons derived from it, were

utterly shattered by the armed development of the French Revolution.

The Prussian and Austrian Armies which crossed the French frontiers in

1793 were the last word in disciplined perfection. The Prussian Army

in particular was the exact model of the instrument which, fighting

against similar organisations, had made Frederick the Great. The

French Regular Army had vanished with the old régime. In its place was

nothing but a mass of ill-trained, ill-armed, ill-supplied National

Volunteers, whose only strength lay in a passionate determination to

drive the Invader from the soil which they had consecrated to Liberty.

The field of Valmy decided the issue in favour of the Volunteers, or,

more strictly, of the _levée en masse_, and it was not till the

humiliation of Jena and the slackening of French enthusiasm for the

Napoleonic cause had given Germany the National Movement which was

ebbing from France, that the military _rôles_ of the two countries

became reversed. The armies which finally drove Napoleon back across

Europe to abdication and Elba would have compared unfavourably in

technique with the old Prussian Regulars, but they were armed with an

enthusiasm for their cause which their predecessors had utterly lacked.

The lessons of history receive a startling reinforcement from the

conduct of the Australian and Canadian troops. Both were volunteer and

semi-trained troops in the strictest sense of the term--and what was

true of the rank and file was, with a few distinguished exceptions,

true of its officers and of its higher command. Both forces were

confronted, the one in Gallipoli and the other at Ypres, with

circumstances of unprecedented difficulty and danger. The landings in

the Peninsula and the fierce fighting at Lone Pine Hill were certainly

operations of an unusual character in war, and just of a kind, if

Colonel Henderson's view is correct, to bring out the unsteadiness and

unreliability of Volunteer troops, however brave. The same is true of

Ypres. Here we find an attack by a new, horrible, and terrifying

instrument of war, accompanied by a massed assault of the flower of the

Prussian Army; the left of the position becomes a huge gap with the

Canadian trenches in the air. Communication between units becomes more

and more difficult in the swaying _mêlée_ of the battle, and the senior

officers are falling fast; supports for many hours there are none. If

our semi-trained troops had broken under these combined stresses, who

could have blamed them?

But in the face of these almost unparalleled difficulties, the

Canadians showed the world an example of courage, steadiness, and

co-ordinated discipline which could not have been surpassed by that

Guards Brigade which stemmed the German tide in the first great

onslaught at Ypres. The truth would appear to be that although, when

other factors are equal between opposing forces, training and

discipline will win, yet there resides in intense patriotism, high

physical courage and endurance bred of pastimes which are akin to war,

and superior personality, a force which can only be equalled by the

last word in highly-trained infantry. Sudden and unexpected

emergencies, so far from breaking the nerves of great Volunteer armies,

as they do those of inferior trained troops, who are confused if the

drill book fails them, bring out the resources of an individuality not

yet crushed by tradition. The Volunteer adapts himself more quickly

than a machine-made soldier.

[Sidenote: _April, 1915._]

But it is time to turn to the fortune of the 2nd Division, part of

which was already crossing the Atlantic at the time of the Second

Battle of Ypres. The original offer of the Dominion Government had

been a full division of all arms numbering 20,000. But the patriotism

of the country outran the offer of the Government, and the actual

number of the first contingent was 33,000 men. Of these, five

battalions, the 6th, 9th, 11th, 12th, and 17th, had been left in

England when the 1st Division sailed for France to act as the nucleus

of a Drafting and Training Division. But even before the 1st Division

had left for England the Dominion Government was feeling its way

towards a further offer. The day after the great review of September

7th, 1914, at Valcartier, the Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Borden had cabled Sir

George Perley that there were 43,000 men under arms in Canada, and had

requested him to sound the Colonial Office as to the dispatch of a

second contingent. In the first week of October, 1914, the offer of

the 2nd Division of 20,000 men was made by the Dominion and accepted by

the Imperial Government, and recruiting for it was started at once.

The 2nd Division consisted of the usual three brigades of infantry, but

at the start each battalion was raised as a separate unit, for the

purposes of enlistment and training. In fact, in some cases, companies

of the same battalion were raised and partly trained in separate

localities.

[Sidenote: _Oct., 1914._]

The 4th Brigade was for a time under the command of Col. Denison.

Illness intervened, and the high hopes of an officer with a splendid

record were completely destroyed. The brigade then passed to the

command of Brigadier-General Lord Brooke. The battalions were

recruited from such well-known regiments as the Queen's Own (of

Toronto), Royal Grenadiers, 21st Essex Fusiliers, 24th Kent Regiment,

28th Perth Regiment, 29th Highland Light Infantry, 7th London

Fusiliers, 14th Prince of Wales' Own Rifles, 45th Victoria Regiment,

the Brockville Rifles and the Governor-General's Foot Guards.

Mobilisation commenced in October, 1914, and the 18th (Western Ontario

Battalion) was commanded by Lieut.-Col. Wigle, the 19th (Ontario

Battalion) by Lieut.-Col. MacLaren, the 20th (Northern and Central

Ontario Battalion) by Lieut.-Col. Allan, and the 21st (Eastern Ontario

Battalion) by Lieut.-Col. St. Pierre Hughes.

The 5th Brigade consisted of the 22nd (French Canadians), the 24th

(Victoria Rifles), the 25th (Nova Scotia), and 26th (New Brunswick)

Battalions. All these regiments began their mobilisation in the latter

part of October and the first week in November, 1914, but they

completed it for various reasons at very different dates. The brigade

was taken over by Brigadier-General Watson, formerly commanding the 2nd

Battalion of the 1st Division.

The 22nd Battalion, under Col. Gaudet, was recruited entirely from the

French Canadians, and nearly all its officers and men hailed from

Montreal or Quebec. Its point of concentration was St. John's. Some

two thousand recruits offered themselves, and of these 1,100 were

finally accepted or retained, the process of enlistment being completed

by November 27th.

The next battalion of the brigade, the 24th (Victoria Rifles),

Lieut.-Col. Gunn, was mobilised in Montreal on October 22nd, 1914, but

did not complete its mobilisation until May 8th, 1915. There appears

to have been a great rush of recruits, no fewer than four thousand

offering themselves. The method here was to accept 1,800 men and

continue to weed them out by a process of selection for several months

until the full complement of the regiment was obtained. A great

proportion of this battalion came from Montreal, and, like the 22nd,

had carried out most of its preliminary training in the middle of the

winter snows.

The 25th Battalion was recruited in Nova Scotia, including a contingent

from Cape Breton. Lieut.-Col. Le Cain was in command, and Halifax was

its main centre of mobilisation.

The 26th Battalion, commanded by Lieut.-Col. McAvity, was recruited in

New Brunswick and mobilised in the first three weeks of November at St.

John's.

The 6th Brigade, which when constituted was taken over by

Brigadier-General Ketchen, was mainly raised in the West.

The 27th Battalion (City of Winnipeg) was mobilised in Winnipeg and the

surrounding districts, and was almost entirely composed of local

recruits. Lieut.-Col. Snider was in command. The next battalion, 28th

(North-west), under Col. Embury, was more composite in its origin.

From Regina came 12 officers and 246 men; from Moose Jaw, 6 officers

and 246 men; from Saskatoon, 6 officers and 228 men; whilst smaller

detachments were raised at Fort William, Port Arthur, and Prince

Albert. It reached Winnipeg on November 1st, 1,025 strong; and it was

there able to take part in combined training with the 27th.

The 29th (Vancouver) Battalion was raised entirely in British Columbia

and was mobilised very rapidly in the last week of October, 1914.

Lieut.-Col. Tobin was in command.

The 31st (Alberta) Battalion, Lieut.-Col. Bell, was mobilised at

Calgary in November, and was recruited from that town and from

Edmonton, Medicine Hat, Lethbridge, and Red Deer.

The two regiments, which had joined the brigade in Winnipeg on March

1st, were somewhat handicapped in battalion training owing to the bad

weather. However, all ranks were kept hard at work at platoon and

company training, and route marching was freely indulged in. The 29th

and 31st, on the other hand, found the climates of Calgary and

Vancouver more fortunate, and were able to carry out battalion training

to a fairly large extent.[1]

The sailing of the second Canadian contingent was less spectacular than

that of the first.

The 1st Division had started from the mouth of the St. Lawrence as a

single whole under the escort of warships--the most formidable Armada

which had ever crossed the Atlantic. The 2nd Division left in single

ships and without the picturesque accompaniments of the first

embarkation.

The units had been raised separately and were transhipped separately to

their point of union and divisional concentration in England. The

voyage was accomplished in safety, and nothing except speculations on

possible submarine attacks relieved the ordinary routine of the voyage.

A recapitulation of the dates of arrival of the various units and of

the vessels which carried them would be tedious. It is enough to say

that the transhipment was begun in April, 1915, was in the main

completed by May, and that the last body arrived in August. [Sidenote:

_May to Aug., 1915._] Although some of the units did not join up till

August, the division was actually constituted on May 24th, 1915, the

first divisional standing orders being issued on that day by Colonel

Dennison. On the 25th Major-General Steele assumed command.

The 2nd Division was fortunate in the man who was appointed to command

it. Major-General Steele, C.B., M.V.O., had taken part in practically

every event in the military history of the Dominion since he joined the

35th Regiment of Militia as an ensign at the age of sixteen during the

Fenian raid of 1866.[2]

In December, 1914, he became Inspector-General for Western Canada, and

organised the 6th Infantry Brigade. In all these activities he was

ably assisted by Lieut.-Col. Ketchen, whose efforts were largely

responsible for the success of the recruiting in the West, and who

finally took over the command of the 6th Brigade. He, too, like the

Divisional Commander, had served in the North-West and in South Africa,

where he obtained a commission from the ranks.

[Sidenote: _April to Sept., 1915._]

The further training of the units began as soon as each was landed. Up

till May 25th those which had arrived took part in the work of the

Training Division at Shorncliffe. After that date the 2nd Division was

constituted as a separate formation, and as each battalion, battery or

squadron was landed it was gradually brought up to full strength. The

2nd Division was, in many respects, more fortunate than its

predecessor. It had the best of an English summer, since its time at

Shorncliffe ran, roughly, from April to September of 1915; the high

green downs above that well-known seaside resort abut on a charming

country, and the pleasure of being able to go into a town was added.

The men thus avoided the hardships, mud, and isolation of a winter on

Salisbury Plain which had fallen to the lot of the 1st Division, and

they carried away to France, no doubt, a more pleasant impression of

English weather and scenery. All these months they were to be seen

tramping the Kentish lanes, the very picture of health and vigour.

Their work, of course, was heavy, special care being given to musketry.

From the first it was impressed upon every man that he must learn to

shoot, and to shoot straight. The musketry courses began in the middle

of May, and so great was the number of men to be trained, so limited

the time and range accommodation available, that rifle practice went on

continuously at Hythe from 5 a.m. until 7 p.m. The 29th and the 31st

Battalions carried out their musketry training at Lyd, marching

eighteen miles to the ranges and camping on the flats for three weeks.

The men, needless to say, were as keen as mustard, and their Regular

instructors found them apt pupils. A machine-gun school was set up.

Practice in bayonet fighting and the ordinary processes of infantry

training went on simultaneously with musketry. The method of preparing

new units to take their place in the field is, however, much the same

all the world over, and by now only too familiar to millions of the

citizens of the British Empire. It is the old story of learning to do

things under favourable conditions so thoroughly and completely that in

moments of stress they are done almost sub-consciously, leaving the

mind free to grapple with anything novel there may be in the situation

or in the actions of the enemy. It was in this quality of rapid

decision in the face of unexpected emergencies that the Canadian

Contingent proved itself pre-eminent.

The Divisional Artillery was far behind the rest of the formation as

regards training. Drafts of artillery reached England as late as the

middle of August. For some time practice was retarded by lack of

equipment, and even so late as October 10th, when the infantry were

becoming used to life in the trenches, progress made by the artillery

in England was poor. It stands to reason that far more time and

trouble are required to make an efficient gunner than an efficient

infantryman. The _personnel_ of the Artillery brigades was, however,

such as to inspire high hopes, and these were fully justified by the

2nd Divisional Artillery when it finally reached the Front.

Ten weeks later the Inspector of Royal Horse and Field Artillery

inspected the training, and congratulated Brigadier-General Morrison,

D.S.O. (who had returned after serving with great distinction with the

1st Division in France), and Major Constantine on the work

accomplished. "All ranks," he reported, "know their work, the drill at

the guns is good and quiet, and good effects were obtained. I consider

them the best Divisional Artillery I have seen on Salisbury Plain this

year."

A break was made in the daily task of training the Division by two

weeks' field manoeuvres in August in the valley. Here the Division

operated as a whole and existed entirely under Service conditions.

The 2nd Division had now gone through its preliminary training both in

Canada and Europe and was ready for the ordeal of battle. It has,

however, always been the habit of statesmen, leaders, and commanders to

address their troops in the field before the hour of action comes. The

Great Causes which inspire volunteer armies to supreme exertion gain

added strength from the presence of the leaders themselves.

[Sidenote: _Aug. 4th, 1915._]

The Prime Minister of the Dominion had visited the troops at

Shorncliffe in July, 1915 (Vol. I., page 165). He was followed on

August 4th by the Rt. Hon. A. Bonar Law, M.P., Secretary for the

Colonies, who was accompanied by General Sir Sam Hughes, K.C.B.

The presence of General Hughes was significant, for he above anyone

else was the embodiment of Canada in arms. He had performed the

amazing feat of raising a huge army in a country remote from Europe to

do battle for the Imperial cause. When one remembers that the presence

of 7,000 men in South Africa at the beginning of a century only fifteen

years old was regarded at the time as a crowning achievement on the

part of the Dominion; that the enrolment of 40,000 men for the camp at

Valcartier and the dispatch of the First Contingent had been considered

only twelve months before this review as a triumph of patriotism and

organisation, who would have ventured to predict that in September,

1915, another contingent of equal strength would be about to set sail

for Flanders; that by the dawn of 1916 a 3rd Division would be in the

trenches and engaged in the death grapple of June; and that far beyond

this huge reserves would lie waiting in Canada to create yet other

divisions or replace the fallen in the field? Great Armadas had

crossed the Atlantic carrying armies beside which those dispatched by

the might of Great Britain against Washington and his levies in a day

when Chatham still lived, dwindle into insignificance. And the

tireless energy of Sir Sam Hughes directed the system which procured

the men to meet the demand. Like all strong men he has, and has had,

not only friends, but opponents; but if these will set aside the

controversies of the present and look down the vista of the future to

an impartial and final judgment, both alike will perceive the

singleness and simplicity of purpose which constitute greatness of

character, and, joined to strength of will, lead to greatness of

achievement. As the General looked on the march past of the 2nd

Division he might well have been thinking of the pride of work well

done; but in reality his heart was with the men, who were going out to

fight, suffer, and perhaps to die for their common cause; and in such

thoughts there is no room for any pride except that of the aim and the

race.

The Colonial Secretary has a natural claim to address a force of

Imperial troops, but in this case there are special reasons why Mr.

Bonar Law should have been given a cordial welcome. He is Canadian

born and British trained, and therefore represents a natural link of

union between the Dominion and the Mother Country. Direct and

business-like, at once enthusiastic and unimpassioned, he is the

natural interpreter between the newer nations and the old.

The conditions of the review were not happy. A heavy thunderstorm had

broken the summer weather, and the troops were wet through long before

the inspection began. The men, of course, were not worried, and it

struck more than one observer that the driving rain and heavy

cloud-wrack behind it gave a solemnity to the occasion which might have

been lost in the mere picture of green glades, tall immemorial trees,

and brightly-dressed spectators. Rain, after all, has about it a

certain air of reality for anyone who is going to Flanders. As the

artillery removed itself on its own devices, the long columns of

infantry, platoon by platoon, began to swing past the saluting base,

where stood the Colonial Secretary and the Canadian Minister. The dull

afternoon light shone on the rippling bayonets, beneath which thousands

of men, superbly fit, marched by to prove to Canada and the Empire that

the New World was still ready to redress the balance of the Old.

Something of this seems to have stirred in the Colonial Secretary's

mind as he addressed the officers. In simple language he told his

hearers that when he watched them marching past he thought how strong

had been the call of duty which had brought them there. The world knew

what they had sacrificed, and that every one of them was prepared to

face danger and death and to give a good account of himself when the

opportunity came. He realised their courage and their devotion, and he

thought also, when he saw so many young faces, that, after all, their

sacrifice was not perhaps so great as that of those whom they had left

behind in anxiety as to the fate of their dearest. He himself was born

in Canada--he was proud of what Canadian troops had done and of the

future which lay in front of them. "After the war things would never

be quite the same again." Already by an arrangement with the Mother

Country and the self-governing Dominions it was understood that when

the time came for peace, the Dominion Governments were to have a say in

the negotiations. That marked a great step onwards, but it was only a

step. It had long been his hope and was now his belief that as a

result of the war the time would come when the whole of the

self-governing Dominions, in proportion to their population and

resources, would share with the Mother Country in the duty and honour

of governing the British Empire.

[Sidenote: _Sept. 2nd, 1915._]

The 2nd Division had at least the sense that they were contributing to

the making of history. Nor were they without the further assurance

that their efforts were appreciated. On September 2nd, 1915, his

Majesty the King, accompanied by Lord Kitchener, inspected the Division

before it left for the Front. Once more, under a grey and gloomy sky,

it marched out--this time to parade before its Sovereign. The 2nd

Division was only following in the steps of the 1st, which had already

received that supreme honour. But the 1st Division had already earned

the King's accolade in the field, and there was a rigid determination

on the part of the 2nd to do the same. So, as line after line of

infantry went by the saluting point, the unspoken homage was in the

heart of every man: "One King, One Country, One Empire."[3]

[Sidenote: _Sept. 14th, 1915._]

Major-General Turner (Vol. I., p. 190) had taken over the Division from

General Steele, who had been appointed to command the troops in the

Shorncliffe area. Preparations were now begun for departure. The

Divisional Supply Column had already started on September 5th. The

real crossing, however, began on September 13th, 1915, when the

transport, with the 4th Canadian Infantry Brigade, the Borden

Machine-Gun Battery, the Divisional Signallers, the 4th Canadian Field

Ambulance, and all the motor ambulance wagons of the Division, left

Southampton for Havre. On the night of September 14th the Headquarters

Staff and the bulk of the Division embarked, including the 4th Brigade,

Canadian Field Artillery. The rest of the Divisional Artillery, the

5th, 6th[4] and 7th Brigades, were left behind for a time to complete

their training, proceeding later to France on January 18th, 1916.

Eight battalions were left in reserve and absorbed in the Training

Division at Shorncliffe--the 23rd, 30th, 32nd, 36th, 39th, and 43rd, to

supply drafts for the Infantry, the 48th for the Pioneers, and the

Royal Canadian Regiment afterwards incorporated in the 3rd Division.

The 2nd Canadian Division Headquarters in Shorncliffe were then closed.

The voyage of the 2nd Division was not to be a long one like that of

the 1st, from Bristol in the West of England to St. Nazaire on the

coast of Brittany. The high, white cliffs of Folkestone by day and the

light of its lamps by night are clearly visible from the high downs

above Boulogne in fair weather; while the light of Gris Nez flashing

like a wheeling spearshaft has long been familiar to the Canadian

troops. It was for Boulogne that the 2nd Division set out--to the

harbours below the heights from which the statue of Napoleon on its

great bronze column still looks out, as he did all the summer of 1805,

at the white cliffs on which he was never to set foot, to the coast,

too, whence Cæsar first saw the almost fabulous land of Britain. Those

conquerors of the modern and ancient worlds would have marvelled had

they beheld the sailing of 20,000 men of French and British birth from

the other side of the Atlantic across the narrow salt-water trench,

once the confluent of the Thames and Rhine, to defend the land of Gaul

against that Teuton menace which both of these had overthrown.

Who of the millions that have undergone the experience will ever forget

their first crossing of the Channel in a troopship? The absence of any

lights and the swift drive of the engines give the sense of a stealthy

escape from the unseen perils of the deep. Dimly visible for a moment

is a dark shape of another transport or some destroyer of the escort.

The men who can crowd below are perhaps asleep, but to the remainder,

shivering a little on deck in the sea breeze, the whole air and the

chopping seas seem to breathe something of danger, of the mystery of

the dark, and the romance of the High Adventure yet ahead. It was in

this atmosphere that a serious collision occurred. The Staff of the

4th Brigade under Brigadier-General Lord Brooke and the 10th Battalion

were aboard a paddle-wheeled steamer when a dark mass suddenly shot out

of the night and rammed her amidships. The shock threw everybody off

their feet; no one could tell at first whether it was a German cruiser

or a friend; and had panic broken out among the massed humanity of over

a thousand souls on board it would not have been surprising. But the

Volunteer troops showed themselves in calmness and discipline the equal

of any Regulars. The instant the collision occurred the troops were

paraded on deck with the life-belts which had been provided for them.

For a time it was thought that the ship was going down. But the men

ranged on deck remained steady in the ranks, and the parties told off

to loose the rafts carried out their duties swiftly and surely. The

incident adjusted itself. The stranger, which turned out to be one of

our own destroyers, had by a fortunate chance struck the great wooden

paddle-box of the steamer, and though the latter was for a time out of

control, no irretrievable damage had been done. The transport carrying

the Divisional Staff stood by and endeavoured to tow her in, but the

hawsers and steel cables parted under the strain of the rough weather.

It was necessary to send for tugs from Boulogne, and, finally, at five

in the morning, that port was made. All through the night an escort of

destroyers which had raced up at the first news of the accident circled

round flashing their searchlights over the seas to guard against a

possible submarine attack, but no enemy appeared to disturb the work of

rescue. The remaining ships of the Division, despite the heavy

weather, made the passage in security, and the whole body began to pass

up country to effect its junction with its comrades of the 1st Division.

The landing in France possessed one feature both of racial and historic

importance. The 1st Division had included one company of the 14th

Battalion, which was entirely composed of French Canadians, and many

others of the same race were scattered among the various units. The

22nd Battalion of the 2nd Division was entirely recruited, as has been

recorded, from the French of the old province, and its appearance on

the sacred soil of France serves to awaken a host of memories.

There is no parallel in history that matches the picture of the

descendants of the men who founded Port Royal and Quebec under

Champlain in the first decade of the seventeenth century returning,

after three hundred years of absence and a hundred and fifty years

under a different flag, to fight once more for the soil whence their

ancestors sprang. The German menace has welded the two great nations

of the West on the two sea-boards of the Atlantic and linked the

centuries together beyond imagination and almost beyond belief. In the

firing line at Ypres were found side by side not only the successors of

the British who had stayed in their island home and of the French who

had remained in France and dealt with the British since on many a

hard-fought field in Europe, but the sons of those who had struggled

together before the entrenchments of Ticonderoga or on the fateful

Plains of Abraham. When after the Seven Years' War in 1763 the Empire

of the West passed finally to Great Britain under the pressure of

British sea-power and the military inspiration of Chatham, France must

have mourned what seemed the irrevocable loss of her sons. Yet in

France and Flanders to-day they are risen again for her service,

returned across the Atlantic by that same sea-power that once claimed

them, and are now warring on the very fields their fathers held, with

the same courage and fortitude their race displayed in the eighteenth

century against Great Britain.

The French are of all people the most susceptible to an appeal to the

imagination. One can imagine their feelings when they learnt that a

whole regiment of French Canadians had landed with the 2nd Division.

Very strange must have been the meeting between these two branches of a

race separated so long by the Seas of Time!

Gradually it dawned on these people that among the strange soldiers

from across the ocean were men speaking their mother tongue--not the

French, perhaps, of modern Brittany and Normandy, but French none the

less. One must picture the joyous effort to find the common idiom and

accent, the older country casting back in memory across the years to

the point where the two streams of speech had divided, the younger

nation of the older speech casting forward to catch the new French

which had sprung up since the division. The scene is one for the

painter or the novelist, and this wonderful journey's end in lovers

meeting must leave an ineffaceable imprint on the memories of both

England and France. Dramatic moments are few in modern war, but this

was one of them--a fitting pendant to that other scene when the joint

memorial to Wolfe and Montcalm was unveiled on the heights of Quebec.

[1] The Divisional Artillery consisted of the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th

Brigades of the Canadian Field Artillery, and the 97th, 98th, and 107th

Siege Batteries. The 4th Brigade was recruited in Toronto, and

commanded by Lieut.-Col. W. J. Brown, the 5th (Lieut.-Col. Dodds) came

from Winnipeg, the 6th (Lieut.-Col. King) was raised from various

quarters, and the 7th (Lieut.-Col. Stewart) from Montreal, Toronto, and

New Brunswick. The Divisional Ammunition Column was under the command

of Lieut.-Col. Harrison. The entire artillery of the 2nd Division was

commanded by Lieut.-Col. Thacker, until June 25th, 1915, when that

officer took command of the 1st Divisional Artillery and was succeeded

by Brig.-General E. W. B. Morrison. Mention must also be made of the

other units of the Division. The Divisional Engineers were under

Lieut.-Col. J. Houleston until September, 1915, when Lieut.-Col. H. T.

Hughes took over command; the Divisional train was under Lieut.-Col. A.

E. Massey, the Cyclist Company under Lieut.-Col. Denison, and Nos. 4,

5, and 6 Field Ambulances under Lieut.-Cols. Webster, Farmer, and

Campbell respectively, with Col. J. T. Fotheringham, C.M.G., as A.D.M.S.

[2] Major-General Steele's career in the army reads more like a romance

than reality. Having distinguished himself as a mere boy in all his

examinations while attached to the British Regulars then stationed in

Canada, he left the Service, only to rejoin as a ranker in the Red

River Expedition of 1870. Here he spent a year in Fort Garry, which

was then "the farthest West." After a short time in the Royal Canadian

Artillery he went West again, became a Major in the Alberta Field Force

during the rebellion of 1885, having raised his own corps of "Steele's

Scouts." He was through all the fighting of that summer, and finally

broke up Big Bear's band at Loon Lake, a place in the Great Northern

Forest where no white man had ever before set foot. In 1898, as soon

as the Klondyke gold rush began, he was dispatched at once to secure

the frontier, erect customs posts, and prevent American miners

establishing claims on the wrong side of a vast and ill-defined

frontier. In 1899 he was promoted Lieut.-Colonel, and became the

military representative of the Government in the Yukon. The South

African War brought him immediately into the field. Within the space

of five days he recruited "Strathcona's Horse" from the Western

provinces; within a month he had them ready to move from Ottawa--truly

a miraculous performance. In South Africa he saw a good deal of

fighting in Natal and the Lydenberg district east of Pretoria, notably

at Belfast. On August 26th, 1900, he was mentioned in despatches,

obtained the Queen's medal with four clasps, and finally took command

of a division of the new South African Constabulary. At this stage he

was for six months under the direct orders of Lord Kitchener, with whom

he became intimately acquainted. In 1906, after a period of mixed

civil and military administration in South Africa, he returned to the

Dominion to take over the command of the Western Canada military

district, a post he occupied until December, 1914. Seven thousand six

hundred men went from his command in the West to the First Canadian

Contingent, and before he left to take command of the 2nd Division no

fewer than 24,000 men in his district had joined the Colours.

[3] The Special Message from the King to the 2nd Canadian Division was

published after the inspection:--

"Officers, Non-commissioned Officers and Men of the 2nd Canadian

Division,--Six months ago I inspected the 1st Canadian Division before

their departure for the Front. The heroism they have since shown on

the field of battle has won for them undying tame. You are now leaving

to join them, and I am glad to have the opportunity of seeing you

to-day, for it has convinced me that the same spirit which animated

them inspires you also. The past weeks at Shorncliffe have been for

you a period of severe and rigorous training; and your appearance at

this inspection testifies to the thoroughness and devotion to duty with

which your work has been performed. You are going to meet hardships

and dangers, but the steadiness and discipline which have marked your

bearing on parade to-day will carry you through all difficulties.

History will never forget your loyalty and the readiness with which you

rallied to the aid of your Mother Country in the hour of danger. My

thoughts will always be with you. May God bless you and bring you

victory!"

[4] The 6th Brigade was formed by reorganising the 8th Howitzer Brigade

from the Reserve Brigade at Shorncliffe.

CHAPTER II

PATROLS

An interval of calm--Process of forming the Second and Third

Divisions--St. Eloi--The sector of Bailleul--Work of the Army Corps

Staff--Changes in the Higher Command--The first experience of the

Second Division--A demonstration opposite La Douve Farm--Dummy

trenches--Smoke sacks--Veterans of the Third Brigade act as

instructors--Bombardment of the Fifth Brigade--The gallant deed of

Major Roy--Steadiness of the French Canadians--New Brunswickers on

their mettle--Heroism of Sergeant Ryer--Canadians at home in patrol

work--Stolidity of the Germans--Inventiveness of Canadians--Plucky

rescue of Corporal May--Deadly land mines--Lucky escape of the Winnipeg

boys--A thrilling adventure in the air--Capture of a German

'plane--Singular recovery of a Colt gun--The value of model

trenches--The formation of a Brigade--Difficult night work--Havoc

wrought by storms--Useful work of Labour Battalion--Holy ground.

[Sidenote: _Sept., 1915._]

With the junction between the two divisions the work of the Canadian

troops in Flanders enters on a new and broader phase. The meeting took

place in time midway between the tempest which raged on the plains of

Ypres in May of 1915 and that scarcely less violent iron-storm which,

in the same month of 1916, burst in the fields of St. Eloi. An

interval of calm, or such calm as modern war knows, was permitted for

that reunion. It is well for the soldier that there should be such

intervals, for the strain of modern action, were it never relaxed,

would destroy the mind and nerve of man as surely as the continuance of

its shell fire must destroy the body. But though modern armies cannot

always be locked in desperate conflict, the reader may not find the

ensuing chapters altogether dull. He will be able to trace the steps

by which the original 1st Division added unto itself first a second and

then a third, and developed into an army corps. He can watch the

multiplication of the Staffs, the promotion of Brigadiers to command

divisions, of Colonels to brigades, and of Majors and Captains to

regiments; the process of the division of labour as the specialists

develop in bombing, mining, or machine-gunning; the foundations of

schools of instruction behind the line; the methodical study of the

arts of patrolling and raiding. He can survey, in fact, the full range

of those methods by which large bodies of men carrying rifles gradually

develop into a self-sufficient army far greater in numbers than the

British troops that the Duke of Wellington commanded, not so far away,

on the field of Waterloo. As a stream draws into it confluent after

confluent until it attains the dignity of a river, so the original

Canadian Expeditionary Force, by the flow of men across the Atlantic,

is becoming an army; and it is the history of this process that the

next few chapters must relate. In artillery alone is the development a

slow one, and here the 2nd and 3rd Divisions were for long dependent on

the assistance of the British gunners.

The scene is laid in a sector to the south of Ypres and to the north of

Armentières. Its more southerly position in the line is marked by the

greater number of spinneys, small eminences, and commanding heights,

such as that of Kemmel, from which the enemy's lines can be overlooked.

But portions of it are a dead level, and it is very far from the

well-covered hills of the real southern line. The main features are

still those of Flanders--the slightly rolling flat where the

transparent richness of the crops which spring from the sand and the

clay seems no deeper than the paint of a fresco on the wall, and the

scraggy trees and ragged woods mock one with a delusive memory of

forest cool and shade. As the army grows the winter draws on, and the

fine, hot autumn days and brilliant nights with the moon high in the

heavens behind the trenches turn to the rains of November and the mists

and frosts of Christmas. The ground grows wet underfoot and the air is

clammy and cold. Such is the winter season of Northern Europe, when

most of the campaigners of history allowed their troops to hibernate in

warm and comfortable billets.

The 1st Division had spent the later summer on a sector the right of

which rests on the northern edge of Ploegsteert. As the 2nd Division

came by degrees into the fighting line the Canadian sector was extended

northwards until the left of the Corps finally rested on a spot a

little to the south of St. Eloi. The moves which resulted in the final

disposition were not all made in a day, but it would be tedious to do

more than note in passing the various shifts the new corps made with

the II British Corps to the south of them and the V British Corps to

the north. Roughly speaking, the northern line ending by St. Eloi was

taken over by the 2nd Division while the 1st Division remained in the

Ploegsteert area to the south. The dividing point was a little to the

north of Wulverghem, facing the German trenches half-way between

Messines and Wytschaete. For the sake of clearness one might call it

the sector of Bailleul.

The distinguishing feature of the line is length rather than depth--the

precise converse of the subsequent St. Eloi position. The line from

that place to Ploegsteert is not excessive for a corps of three

divisions, but it is distinctly so for one with only two. In fact, on

March 1st, when the whole three divisions were assembled, the frontage

was occupied by six out of the nine brigades, and this six brigade

frontage was throughout the normal one. But the 3rd Division was not

in full existence till the middle of January, 1916, and in the meantime

the reliefs could only be effected by such elements of corps troops as

happened from time to time to be in readiness. Thus on October 3rd,

when an additional two thousand yards were taken over, and the 2nd

Division occupied our final position to the north, the only corps

troops available for reliefs were Brigadier-General Seely's force,

consisting of three regiments of the Cavalry Brigade and the 1st

Canadian Mounted Rifle Brigade. The 42nd Battalion (Royal Highlanders

of Canada) and the 49th Battalion (Edmonton Regiment) did not arrive

till the middle of that month, the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifle Brigade

till towards the end of it, the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light

Infantry and the Royal Canadian Regiment till November, and the various

units which finally formed the 3rd Division were not completed till

January. This necessarily entailed a somewhat extended sojourn in the

front line area by the various brigades of the first two divisions.

The task, therefore, of interchanging the different units was one that

required careful working out on the part of the Corps Staff. The

ordinary divisional front is held by two brigades, with a third at rest

well in the rear. The business of interchanging them becomes as

mechanical as that of a bridge-player opening a long and strong suit;

every unit knows to within two or three days its time in the front

line, support line, reserve line, or rest billets. As the units of the

3rd Division began to arrive, matters, of course, became simpler, but

in the last months of the year the Corps found itself compelled to make

heavy calls on the endurance of the various battalions.

[Sidenote: _Sept. 14th, 1915._]

To return to the narrative. The 2nd Division arrived at Caestre on

September 14th. On the previous day the Canadian Corps had been

formed. Upon his appointment as Corps Commander, General Alderson

relinquished the command of the 1st Division to Major-General Currie,

who was in turn succeeded in the 2nd Brigade by Brigadier-General

Lipsett. Major-General Turner was already in command of the 2nd

Division, and he was succeeded in the command of the 3rd Brigade by

Brigadier-General Leckie. The 16th Battalion was taken over from

Brigadier-General Leckie by his brother, Major Leckie. The changes in

the Higher Command were now for the moment complete. The duty of the

2nd Division was to relieve the 28th British Division in what may be

called for convenience the Kemmel section of the line, which stretched

north from the ground of the 1st Canadian Division. As in the case of

all inexperienced troops, they were given a "trial trip," and their

officers went in with the 84th and 85th British Brigades for a few days

to learn the tricks of the trade and the lie of the land. [Sidenote:

_Sept. 23rd, 1915._] The relief was finally accomplished by September

23rd, 1915. The 4th Brigade, 2nd Division, took the north of the line;

the 5th Brigade the south; while the centre was stiffened by the

hardened veterans of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Division. The 6th Brigade

remained in reserve at Kemmel.

The first experience of the 2nd Division and of the new Canadian Corps

was a curious one, as a glance at the dates will suggest. The last

week of September was the time of the great Anglo-French offensive,

which to us spells Loos and to our Allies Champagne. The advantage of

the initiative is the uncertainty for the enemy as to where the real

blow will fall. Until he knows, he dare not shift his reserves. The

ingenuity of the Canadian Force was, therefore, exercised to produce

without loss of life the appearance of an attack which would pin the

Germans opposite to their ground and prevent them from going to the

assistance of their sorely-pressed colleagues to the south. The new

corps rose gallantly to the demand for theatrical effect, and a

demonstration was arranged along the whole line, but particularly in

front of the 1st Division, opposite La Douve farm. It must have been

exciting for everyone to think out methods of simulating a bogus

assault to keep the Germans on tenterhooks. On the night of the 24th

the guns opened on the enemy wire and cut great gaps thirty yards wide

in it as though to open the way for the assaulting columns. Dummy

trenches were dug close behind the firing line to hold the supports of

the supposed assailants. [Sidenote: _Sept. 25th, 1915._] In the early

dawn of the 25th the Germans could see great and dangerous activity in

the Canadian trenches, which hummed like a hive of bees about to swarm.

At 5.45 a.m. sacks full of wet straw were fired and thrown on the

parapets whenever the wind blew towards the enemy. That same morning

real gas was covering in grim earnest the rush of the British over the

stricken field of Lens and to the Hohenzollern Redoubt. To intensify

the effect, the platoon commanders shouted orders and blew their

whistles, while scaling ladders and the shimmer of bayonets were shown

above the edge of the parapet. Our troops then opened fire, both with

rifles and machine-guns. The Germans, in the face of this provocation

and menace, became convinced that an attack was imminent, though

reflection might have convinced them that serious assaults are seldom

so well advertised. They put down a heavy barrage behind our firing

line to prevent the arrival of supports, and thronged their own

second-line trenches. This was precisely the intention of the Canadian

Command, whose gunners shelled the communication and support trenches

severely. About six o'clock in the morning, when it was too late to

move troops to Loos, the false smoke thinned, and the enemy could see

clearly that no attack was in progress. The fire died away; but the

German bulletin announced the successful repulse of a determined

advance. It is not surprising that the Canadians have achieved a

certain unpopularity among their _vis-à-vis_ in the trenches owing to

their predilection for "slickness." Such incidents, as the men know

well, relieve the monotony of trench warfare.

[Sidenote: _Sept. 26th to 30th, 1915._]

From September 26th to 30th, following this episode, certain changes

were made in the British line on the right of the Canadian Corps. The

12th Division was pulled out, to be sent further south, and a new

division, the 25th, was brought up to take its place. During the

change the 3rd Brigade took over a part of the British line and acted

as instructors to the inexperienced troops of the 75th British Infantry

Brigade for the space of a week, when the scholars took over from the

tutors. Their place in the 2nd Division was occupied by the 6th

Canadian Brigade, commanded by Brigadier-General Ketchen, and until

then in reserve at Kemmel.

All three brigades of the 2nd Division were now in the front line, and,

as has been mentioned, they were extended two thousand yards to the

north to complete the final frontage of the corps. They possessed in

Divisional Reserve Brigadier-General Seely's force, which had been

replaced in the firing line by the 2nd Infantry Brigade. The line of

the 1st Division was held by this brigade and by the 1st Brigade, while

the 3rd enjoyed a well-earned rest as corps reserve. These two

brigades were, however, holding the frontage of three, and it must be

observed once more that the forces behind the entire British line were

at this period hardly sufficient to supply adequate reliefs, much less

to resist a strong attack. This state of affairs was merely the result

of the general lack of preparation of the British Empire for the

duration and scale of the land war. In the first week of October five

brigades were in the front line of a six-brigade frontage, and their

total reserve was four battalions of infantry and six regiments of

cavalry. During the month, however, the situation was improved, since

the 42nd (Royal Highlanders of Canada), under Lieut.-Col. Cantlie, and

the 49th (Edmonton Regiment), under Lieut.-Col. Griesbach, arrived on

October 10th, and the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifle Brigade, under the

command of Colonel Sissons, on the 26th.

[Sidenote: _Oct. 5th, 1915._]

The beginning of October was not, however, by any means without its

incidents, both tragic and glorious. On the evening of October 5th,

while the great struggle round Loos was still raging, the 5th Brigade

was subjected to its first severe bombardment. The perpetual pillars

of yellow and green smoke, slashed with black _débris_ spouting to

heaven, and the earth-shaking roar of heavy shells, are enough to try

the nerve of the most trench-hardened warriors, and this brigade was

but a week in the trenches and entirely new to the experience. In

these cases all depends on the example and leading of the officers. It

may be recorded here how that example was set. Brigadier-General

Watson had been moving continually up and down in the front of his

brigade, and was passing through the line of the 22nd (French

Canadians). He passed Major Roy of that regiment in the muddy trench

and spoke a word to him. Hardly had he turned the traverse when out of

the sky fell one of those huge abominations fired from a trench mortar.

There it lay in a trench full of men, ready to explode any second.

Like a flash Major Roy took his risk and dashed to save the lives of

the rest. As he stooped to pick up the great greasy cone of steel and

hurl it over the parapet he slipped in the mud, and the shell exploded

in his arms. There died a very gallant gentleman, and with him all

doubts as to the steadiness of the French Canadian regiment under shell

fire.

Throughout the early part of October the enemy exhibited great activity

in mining on the front of the Corps. It was the turn of the New

Brunswickers to show their mettle in a first raid into "No Man's Land."

The fibre of the race that province breeds has become indurated by

generations of contest with the elements, and has taken on something of

the unbending hardness of the North. They were now to test these

ingrained qualities against a new antagonist, for immediately on their

front the enemy one day blew up a great mine.

[Sidenote: _Oct. 13th, 1915._]

The 26th (New Brunswick), under Lieut.-Col. McAvity, was ordered to

make a reconnaissance on October 13th, and the company commanded by

Major Brown held the post of honour. If the mine crater could be

occupied with advantage, then it was to be held by the attacking party;

if, on the other hand, it was useless to hang on there, the crater was

to be abandoned. Imagine the infantry, bombers and bayonet men in four

successive lines, straining on the leash till the artillery had

finished pounding and the smoke-bombs which had been prepared to cover

the advance from the sight of the German trenches had been let loose.

Thrilling is the moment when warriors climb their trenches to the

assault. The New Brunswickers were untried. But before dawn, at four

o'clock, out they came from a saphead dug in advance of their trench,

and raced for the crater over forty yards of open ground. The weight

of a threefold decision lay upon them. Major Brown and Lieutenant

Fairweather, of the 26th, and Lieutenant McPhee, of the Engineers, had

to survey the ground, determine whether to hold on or retire, and guard

against counter and flank attacks. One party at their order rushed to

within throwing distance of the German side of the crater, where the

enemy occupied a saphead from which noises of tapping had been heard,

and held off assault with bomb and rifle. Shielded by their efforts

our officers examined the ground, while Major Brown extended the

supports right and left of our saphead to ward off a flank attack.

Both advanced support parties were met by high-explosive bombs and a

heavy crossfire from enemy machine-guns. In the words of Captain

McMillan, of the 26th:--"In the face of a shower of bombs from the

front, and enfiladed from both sides by machine-gun fire, the first and

second lines went forward and gained the crater. After a careful

reconnaissance made by the officers in charge it was found inadvisable

to remain in the crater, and the order to retire was given. Nor did

that order come a moment too soon. Just as the officers and party

cleared the crater, a mine trap, whose existence had been suspected,

was fired by the Germans and the whole force barely escaped

destruction. At this moment the ground between the crater and our

trench was covered with a hail of bullets from the machine-guns of the

enemy, and by flying shells and bursting bombs." The explosion stunned

everyone within reach. Sergeant Ryer, a well-known scout and trapper

in civil life, remained unshaken. "Instead of retiring at once, he

kept in the open, using his rifle as opportunity offered with good

success, accounting--it is believed--for eleven of the enemy." After

he had helped to cover his comrades, with an indifference to orders not

unlike Nelson at Copenhagen, Ryer turned to the wounded. The losses of

the 26th had been severe. Imagine a ground swept by machine-gun fire

"with a noise like a giant tearing calico," the shattering crash of

bombs, and the perpetual spit-fire rattle from the enemy. To live in

it seemed impossible. But Sergeant Ryer, his fancy shooting done,

tried to give assistance to Sergeant Cotter, who had led the first line

to the German sap. Finding him beyond all aid, he turned to Pte. D.

Winchester, who was badly wounded, unwound one of the wounded man's

puttees, passed it under Winchester's armpits and around his own

shoulders, and crawled back to the trench, struggling under the weight

of his comrade. Pte. Daly came to his help, and between them they

dragged Winchester into safety.

For all kinds of patrol work between the lines the Canadians showed an

inherent aptitude from the start. The art of woodcraft, the inherited

instinct of men whose fathers and grandfathers had been mighty hunters

before the Lord, gave the corps supremacy almost at once over their

adversaries in these contests of small groups in the dark.

Except for one brief period, when a particularly adventurous Saxon

corps developed a tendency to dispute the mastery of "No Man's Land,"

the Canadians throughout the winter of 1915 ranged almost at will over

that doubtful territory. They won the right by their conspicuous

victories over larger bodies of the enemy in struggles where good

shooting, steady nerves, and individual initiative were more vital to

success than drill or routine. They excelled in the most fascinating

of pursuits which modern war has left to its votaries. The sharp night

air, the rustle in the grass or the trees which may mean an enemy, the

stealthy crawl with the fingers on the trigger, the fitful flare of the

star-shells, the rasp of barbed wire, the knowledge that life depends

on one's own personal swiftness of action, wake again in civilised man

the old instincts of the hunter and the hunted. Life runs keen in the

veins because Death lurks under every shadow. In spite of their

personal courage, the disciplined stolidity of the Germans is hardly

adapted to this peculiar kind of sport. They lacked the range of

inventiveness of their opponents, and by posing opportunities of quick

action they lost the initiative of attack. Instances without number

could be given of these small engagements on the front at night in

which every regiment has borne its share. One could almost select

one's instances at random and do no injustice to the general picture.

[Sidenote: _Oct. 20th, 1915._]

On the night of October 20th, 1915, a patrol from the 4th (Central

Ontario) Battalion, in charge of Sergt.-Major Matheson, became

enveloped in a heavy fog in "No Man's Land" and lost its way. While

trying to regain direction, Pte. Inwood was wounded. Corporal May went

to Inwood's assistance, and found him lying in the German

entanglements. In attempting to remove Inwood from the wire, the

corporal's foot struck a tin can, and the sound drew an instant volley

of fire from the enemy's parapet. Inwood received another wound in his

body and May was hit in the thigh and shoulder. The corporal remained

with Inwood in the German wire until the latter's death, and then

crawled into the cover of a clump of bushes close at hand. In the

meantime, the other members of the patrol had been forced back to our

trenches by a converging fire from the enemy. Sergt.-Major Matheson,

accompanied by Sergt. Norwood, went out and searched unsuccessfully for

the wounded men. At dawn the Sergeant-major went out again, this time

with Pte. Donoghue. These two separated soon after leaving our trench,

the better to cover the ground in their merciful quest. Donoghue found

Corporal May in the little clump of bushes near the German wire,

dressed his wounds, and slowly, tenderly, and under the constant menace

of death, removed him to the head of one of our saps.

On the same evening Lieutenant Cosgrave, of the Engineers, supported by

a small party of the 15th (48th Highlanders), under Lieutenant

McLaurin, of the 16th (Canadian Scottish), who had reconnoitred the

ground beforehand, went out two hundred yards from our trenches and

blew up a heavily-wired and fortified house.

The weather during the latter part of October was inclined to be misty,

and this led to a considerable activity on the part of the patrols in

front of the line by night, and of the digging parties behind it by day.

[Sidenote: _Oct._ 23_rd_, 1915.]

But a new horror was added to life--the discovery of land-mines laid

down by the Germans between the lines, some fired by trip-wires after

the fashion of the spring gun in forbidden woods, others electrically

connected by wires with the hostile trenches. On the 23rd, a whole

party of the 8th (Winnipeg Rifles) nearly fell victims to one of the

former kind, and Pte. Green, who actually touched off the wire, was

blown to atoms.

The end of the month was marked by one or two very daring

reconnaissances by Lieutenant Owen, of the 7th (British Columbia)

Battalion, up the bed of the Douve River, and by a great aeroplane

battle.

The aeroplane battle occurred upon a morning warm and bright with

sunshine. The conditions were admirable for flying and observing, and,

as usual, a German Albatross took advantage of them. Soaring high

against the warm blue of the sky, over Bailleul, over the headquarters

of a division, over our brigades and trenches and back again, it

glinted like silver in the morning sun. The snow-white blobs of

bursting shrapnel from our anti-aircraft guns followed its graceful

sweeps and curves--followed and followed, but never caught it up; and

thousands of our men stared after it. But a more dramatic spectacle

was in store for the watchers on the brown roads and in the brown

trenches.

A British machine appeared suddenly low against the blue, mounting and

flying out of the west. The men in the Albatross were evidently so

intent on their task of observing the landscape beneath them and

keeping well ahead of our blossoming shrapnel that they failed to

observe the approach of the British 'plane as soon as they should have

for their own good. They were heading west when they saw their danger,

and instantly the Albatross swerved round and sped towards home. But

the British flier had the heels of the German and the advantage of the

position. It circled and dipped, and down through the clear air aloft

came the rippling "tap-tap-tap" of the aerial machine-guns. Again and

again the enemy's frantic efforts to escape were frustrated by the

skill and daring of the British pilot and the hedging fire of the

British guns. Suddenly the gun of the German 'plane jammed and ceased;

the pilot was hit and wounded; the Albatross commenced a rapid descent,

in which it was followed by the British 'plane to within a thousand

feet of the ground. Then, under heavy shell-fire from German

batteries, the victorious machine rose and flew away undamaged, and the

unfortunate Albatross struck the earth between the front and support

trenches of the 14th (Montreal) Battalion and turned turtle. The

German pilot was dead; the observer, slightly wounded, crawled to our

support trenches and surrendered. The German batteries kept up a hot

fire of high explosives and shrapnel on the machine with the object of

smashing it beyond hope of repair before the Canadians could salvage

it. They made several direct hits, but our men sapped out to the wreck

and managed to bring most of it in, piece by piece. Among the articles

brought in was the machine-gun that had jammed in the heat of the

fight. This was found to be a Colt gun. Closer examination proved it

to be one of the original guns of our 14th Battalion--to whose lines it

had just made such a dramatic return! The gun had been abandoned

during one of the desperate and confused fights of the Second Battle of

Ypres half a year before.

[Sidenote: _Sept. and Oct._, 1915.]

In these months of September and October great efforts were expended on

improving the line. Work in the front positions was done by the

occupying battalions, and the troops in reserve came up night after

night to assist their labours and to create new secondary positions and

drive through fresh communication trenches. Even the training of new

units was occasionally and rightly sacrificed to the performance of

this essential task. The weather was, on the whole, favourable for

these operations, with the exception of three days of rain early in

September and a wet week late in October. The 1st Division, long on

the ground and fortified by the experience of what good trenches mean

for comfort and safety, was pre-eminent in these exertions, as would be

proved by the trench-map with its continuous increase, month after

month, in the black and zigzag lines of new work. Each tiny scrawl on

the surface of such a map represents the labours of hundreds of men,

extended over many nights. Second and third lines grew apace, so that

a sudden attack of the enemy would still leave trenches to be held and

would reduce the German bite to mere nibbles at the forward trench.

The communication trenches are driven true and straight from well in

the rear, and up these the ration parties toil in safety night after

night under their burdens of food, water, ammunition, and R.E. material

to feed the front line. These parties know well enough the difference

between well-made lines and bad ones. Stooping under the heavy weights

as they struggle on through the dark, they will bless in army fashion a

smooth and dry surface underfoot and a sound high parapet which

protects them from the casual German shells which are searching for

them, or the intermittent whistle of the long-range bullet humming on

its errand in the dusk. Messengers or stretcher-bearers with their

burdens can move backwards or forwards even by day along the well-built

hollow, and all those who pass are protected both from the arrow that

flieth by night and the terror which walketh in the noonday. Very

different is the story of a badly-kept line. It finds carrying parties

struggling in, hours late, exhausted by wading through mud and water,

and delayed by continually climbing out and walking outside the trench

to avoid impassable sections. Here an unlucky shell or a casual bullet

may take its toll. The men struggle back with difficulty, arriving

hardly before the dawn, and with their period of supposed rest and

recuperation turned into the most arduous of labours. It is not too

much to say that the efficiency of a regiment or division can be tested

by a comparison between the state in which it takes over and that in

which it leaves its trenches.

The creation of secondary positions is as important as that of

communication trenches, and on this task the Canadian Corps worked

unsparingly throughout the autumn.

The disposition of a brigade is two, or on occasion three, battalions

in the front line and one or two in support or reserve trenches. But

in most cases even the leading regiments will not have their whole

strength in the firing trench. One or two companies lie close up in

support or reserve to reinforce any threatened point. The nearness of

these supports is a very present help in time of trouble, and gives

confidence to officers and men, who would be nervous if they knew that

no assistance was nearer than a mile away in distance and an hour in

time. But these lines must be dug under cover of dark, so the men

toiled with the spade through the nights of autumn and blessed the dawn

which put a term to their labours. Their record is written on the

scarred earth from St. Eloi down to Ploegsteert. Let us hope that the

corps which took their place in March was duly grateful for the

blessing of a well-constructed line.

[Sidenote: _Nov., 1915._]

With the end of October and the beginning November, however, trouble

began. The mists of early autumn had enabled some of the back-line

digging to be done by day, without undue attention from the German

gunners, but with the rain of the end of the first-named months the

efforts of weeks began to dissolve in hours. As a sudden thunderstorm

fills all the ditches to the brink, so two days' rain in the horrible

clay of Flanders turns every trench into a miniature mill-race.

Traverses, parapets, and parados, which in the summer sun had assumed

the solidity of Egyptian monuments, collapsed like melting jelly as the

torrents tore under the foundations. Men struggled waist-high in water

to repair the damage, only to hear the heavy splash of falling earth

and sandbags as the rain broke away the trenches as a cheese-scoop cuts

out cheese. Many of the communications became impassable, and parties

had to walk outside them even in broad daylight and in plain view of

the enemy's observers. The situation of the Germans, at any rate, was

no better, and our gunners had their revenge on them when they also

were compelled to walk in the open. The last fortnight of November

was, however, fortunately drier, and the Canadian Corps were able by

increased exertions to make their trenches safe and habitable for the

winter. The weak places in the trenches were revetted with

chicken-wire, and strutted wooden paths two or three feet high, like

the crossings of a swollen stream, were placed in the worst parts of

the communication trenches, so that even if men's feet were in water,

they had a firm foothold beneath them instead of a deadly morass. In

this work they were assisted by the 11th (British) Labour Battalion,

which was attached on November 1st to the Canadian Corps. A scientific

system of drainage was devised and carried out.[1]

One can cast one's eye southwards from Voormezeele and St. Eloi through

Vierstraat to Kemmel, and from Kemmel and Petit Bois to Wulverghem,

Neuve Eglise to Hutte and Ploegsteert, and everywhere line upon line of

Canadian trenches score the ground like a succession of gigantic

furrows. Far beyond the line extends till it strikes the grey seas of

the Channel on the north and the snow-clad Alps on the south. The

labour of these vast field-works would have built the Canadian Pacific,

and one may wonder how long these gashes in the earth will survive the

passions and ideals of the men who created them. For some years after

the war soldiers will be able to move freely over the ground where once

the bravest man dared scarcely show his head, and say, "Here we charged

and here we stood our ground"; or, "It was there the captain fell."

Then the kindly work of Nature will crumble the well-built trenches and

cover them with grass, and the industry of man will drive the plough

once more over the stricken fields of history, and Ypres and St. Eloi

will become as Valmy or Gravelotte. None the less, certain great

earthworks or craters will remain, and, like the hoof-prints "stamped

deep into the flint," will serve to remind the Canada of the future

that a line on the soil of Flanders is for the nation holy ground.

These upheavals of the raw earth, covered in time by the grass and turf

of centuries, may survive almost as long as the great emplacements of

the Bronze Age which, after four thousand years, still guard the loop

of the Thames by Dorchester, command the valley under White Horse Hill,

and ring with a double forty-foot ditch the immemorial Temple of

Avebury.

[1] On November 27th, 1915, the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light

Infantry, led by Lieut.-Col. Buller, rejoined the Canadian Corps after

a long separation.

CHAPTER III

TRENCH RAIDS

The manner of raiding in "No Man's Land"--Winter in grim earnest--The

use of the grenade--Changes in methods of warfare--The musket and the

field gun--Adaptability of Canadians--Rehearsal of each assault--Good

work of the Headquarters Staff--General Lipsett--A bold decision--A gap

in the wire entanglements--A desperate venture--A welcome

storm--Canadians in the German trenches--The exploit of Captain

Costigan--A hot twenty minutes--German prisoners--Bridges placed across

the Douve--Lively times in Ploegsteert--Good work of the Seventh

Battalion--A series of failures and a stirring success--A "crack

shot"--"Missing"--Its significance---The German line pierced--Careful

work of the General Officer Commanding--At work in the enemy's

wire--Into the jaws of death--Canadians disguised--The Huns caught

napping--Captain McIntyre's report--A timely shot.

[Sidenote: _Nov., 1915._]

The winter had now set in in grim earnest, as the rains and mists of

November bore witness. The nights were longer, and with them stretched

out hour after hour the possibility of activity denied to the infantry

of either side in the long summer days. For great actions or extended

movements the sodden soil afforded no scope. The sharp edges of

conflict are stationary--sunk in the muddy trenches and nailed down to

machine-gun emplacements. But while the fronts of the great war

machine are thus held, they are never still. The wear and tear of

conflict go on day and night, week after week, month after month.

Behind the infantry in their earthy strongholds the great guns of the

artillery hide, long-sighted and tireless. Some 30,000 shells a month

pour out from their unseen lips--nearly double the number given in

exchange by the Germans. But, after all, gunnery is, in the main, an

affair of daylight; the dark has given birth to the adventure of the

midnight escalade. "One form of midnight activity," says Sir Douglas

Haig, in his report of events from December 19th to May 19th, 1916,

"deserves special mention, namely, the raids or cutting-out parties

which are made at least twice or three times a week against the enemy's

line. They consist of a brief attack with some special object on a

section of the opposing trenches, usually carried out at night by a

small body of men. The character of these operations--the preparation

of a road through our own and the enemy's wire, the crossing of the

open ground unseen, the penetration of the enemy's trenches, the

hand-to-hand fighting in the darkness and the uncertainty as to the

strength of the opposing force--give peculiar scope to the gallantry,

dash, and quickness of decision of the troops engaged, and much skill

and daring are frequently displayed." The Commander-in-Chief adds that

the initiative has, on the whole, been with the British, and that

statement would certainly be true of the Canadian section of the line.

The objects of such expeditions might roughly be described as

threefold:--To gain prisoners and information; to lower your opponents'

moral--a form of terrorism; and to kill as many Germans as possible

before beating a retreat. Two features of the attempts of this

character undertaken by the Canadian Corps will at once arrest

attention; the immense pains taken to rehearse the actual performance

beforehand and the lavish and successful use of bombs as a weapon of

offence.

The grenade, indeed, seemed to have passed into history with the

fortress warfare of which it was the product. It has always required

for its effective use an enemy tethered to his ground and impervious

from his cover to rifle fire. In open fighting the rifle must always

have the mastery of any hand-thrown weapon because of its superior

range. Now the importance of fortifications or fixed defences has

always depended on the nature of the weapons employed by man. The

original dyke, moat, or vallum, from the Stone Age to the Fall of Rome

and the rise of the Middle Ages, gave the defender the advantage both

of cover against arrow or javelin, and of the psychological moment for

the counter-attack, sword or spear in hand, as the advancing force

floundered in confusion against a sudden obstacle. It was used as the

Duke of Wellington used the ridge of Busaco and many other crests of

the Peninsula to inflict the maximum loss on the assailant, and to keep

reserves well in hand for a counter-stroke, the power and place of

which could not be foreseen by the enemy. It possessed, of course, the

disadvantage of all field works of a non-continuous nature: it might be

outflanked and surrounded. It was to guard against this danger that

Imperial Rome in the second century constructed a permanent line of

works, wherever Nature failed in her protection, from the mouths of the

Rhine to the mouths of the Danube, and from Carlisle to Newcastle, and

thus produced the only parallel to the gigantic trenches which bestride

Europe to-day. The defence of such a system implied, of course, a

great Central Power; and as that Power sank into impotence, the

fortress keep of stone, impervious to anything but treachery or

starvation, arose in its place to protect the local potentate against

his neighbour. But these great structures again vanished into smoke

before the blasting force of gunpowder. Earthworks were the next

answer of the defence to the new attack, but these in their turn failed

because no country had the population, the wealth, or the will to keep

an adequate garrison on the whole of a threatened frontier, while an

army superior in the field could outflank the defender or compel him to

give battle in the open. The musket and the field gun became,

therefore, the supreme arbiters of war, and sieges a mere incident in

their struggles. Napoleon simply carried the process to its logical

conclusion. But the advance of science brought new developments in its

train. First, it gave weapons so terrible that men could hardly live

against them in the open field, and the advantage was to the prepared

defence. This in itself would have mattered little, for Metz would

have fallen in 1870 by starvation though it had been as strong in guns

as the Russian fortress of Port Arthur. But science also gave

populations great enough to hold with a continuous garrison, as did the

Roman Empire, the whole line of national frontiers. With this the

inherent weakness of the field work, its liability to outflanking,

vanishes; and we come back once more to fortress warfare, and with it

to the grenade. In all sieges the grenade is there, from the

seventeenth century to Badajos, Sevastopol, and Port Arthur. The

opposing trenches are impervious to rifle fire, but not to the lobbing

of high explosives thrown in a curve from anything up to forty yards.

Neither side was quite prepared for this development, and the original

jam-tin bomb with a protruding fuse lit by a match was indeed a sorry

device begot of native ingenuity and urgent need, and was soon improved

upon. The 1st Canadian Division showed their adaptability by taking

very readily to the new weapon. The Guards acted as their instructors,

and the Canadian Corps set the pace at once by being the only troops

that attached to each brigade a bombing-school of its own.

The result of this earnest preparation was seen in the success of the

bombing assaults in the encounters of the winter of 1915-16. Perhaps

more admirable, because more rare, was the careful rehearsal of each

assault given to the units behind the lines. The photographs taken by

the aeroplanes and the results of dangerous personal reconnaissances

were used in this service, until an accurate model of the enemy's

trenches could be dug and each man could go through the precise task he

would have to perform at the actual moment of crisis. Rarely were

these ground plans found to be wrong. But the Staff which could

conceive and carry out such a laborious undertaking deserves to be

given the kind of praise which history has bestowed on the Headquarters

Staff of the great Von Moltke. They had grasped the true principle

underlying all success in war. You must practise and practise the

expected together and disseminate all available knowledge through all

ranks, so that when the unexpected comes, as it must in battle, every

man knows the situation and the probable conduct of his neighbours, and

can act on his own initiative without throwing the whole plan into

irremediable confusion.

The doctrine, at any rate, was justified by its results. Early in

November the Officer Commanding the 2nd Infantry Brigade

(Brigadier-General Lipsett) decided that conditions on his front were

ripe for the proving of his belief that strong parties of determined

troops, properly equipped and led and operating on carefully-planned

lines, could enter the German trenches and inflict casualties out of

all proportion to their own losses, make prisoners, and get away.

These objects were fully realised. At this time "No Man's Land" on the

whole Canadian front was well in our control, and so completely so in

the area through which the River Douve meanders from the German

position before Douve Farm to a point at which it cuts our trenches

just north of Red Lodge, that German patrols seldom ventured beyond

their wire entanglements. The Scouts from the 5th Battalion, commanded

by Lieut.-Col. G. S. Tuxford, reported a gap in the wire before the

point of their intended attack twenty yards in width and leading to the

hostile parapet. The scouts of the 7th, however, found that a screen

of trees protected the defences before the point selected by their

battalion for entry into the German trench. The Commanding Officer of

the 7th (Lieut.-Col. V. W. Odlum) then decided that such wire-cutting

as was required for his share in the raid should be done by hand.

The night closed in chilly with a promise of rain. The moon was

frequently obscured by clouds. Lieut. W. D. Holmes, Sergeants Merston

and Ashby (7th Battalion), and Corporals Odlum and Babcock crept out

and were busy with the enemy's wire by nine o'clock. They worked on

this job until midnight, lying flat when the moon was clear, and

cutting fast when it was clouded. As the task was one which caused

both muscular and nervous fatigue, hot cocoa was carried out to the

wire-cutters at intervals during those three hours. During that time

two lanes were cut completely through the German entanglements. They

ran diagonally so as not to be observed from the German parapet, and

converged on the point of attack. Satisfied with his work in the wire,

Lieut. Holmes then took up his bridging party and spanned the River

Douve in three places. One bridge was laid at a point within sixteen

yards of the German parapet. Sergeant Ashby and Lance-Corporal Weir

were conspicuous in this enterprise.

The raiders from both battalions were to enter the German trench at

2.30 a.m., but the attacks were entirely separate as to their striking

points and their control.

The 5th Battalion party, under Lieuts. J. E. Purslow and K. L. T.

Campbell, was checked directly beneath the German parapet by an

obstacle which had been overlooked by their reconnoitring party. That

obstacle was a trench or ditch about 12 feet wide and 6 feet deep, full

of water from the overflow of the Douve. In the water, rising from the

bottom of the ditch to within a couple of feet of the muddy surface,

were coils and tangles and strands of barbed wire. Five men of the

party fell into this ditch and were with difficulty rescued. The

officers made several attempts to negotiate it, only to learn that it

could not be crossed either by swimming or wading. As further

investigations failed to disclose a passage across the wired and

flooded ditch, the party bombed across it into the heavily-manned

trench. This grenade fire, delivered at a considerable distance from

the 7th Battalion's point of attack, doubtless served well in

misleading the enemy as to the extent and exact location of the threat

against his front. Also, it must have caused him numerous casualties.

Their supply of grenades exhausted, the 5th Battalion party returned to

their own line.

In the meantime, the British Columbians (7th Battalion) had left our

front-line trench by way of a gap in our parapet in front of Irish

Farm. Led by scouts along the Douve, they crossed the bridges, passed

the lanes through the enemy wire, and scaled the hostile parapet, and

commenced operations.

Capt. C. T. Costigan, grenade instructor for the brigade, led one party

of thirteen men, and Lieut. McIllree led another. These parties were

composed of bayonet-men, grenadiers, grenade-carriers, wire-men, and

shovel-men. Every man wore a black mask, and none carried any badge or

mark of identification. Each bayonet-man had a small electric lamp

fastened to his bayonet in such a way that he could flash it without

shifting his grip on the rifle.

Lieut. A. H. Wrightson followed with the rifle party and telephone.

His command consisted of five riflemen, a telephonist, a linesman, and

two stretcher-bearers.

Before the raiders reached the German wire a sudden heavy downpour of

rain commenced. Under the black screen and splashing patter of the

storm our men went over the enemy parapet. Capt. Costigan and Lieut.

McIllree dropped into the trench together--on top of a German sentry

crouched beneath a sheet of corrugated iron, seeking shelter from the

rain. McIllree shot the sentry, seized another German, disarmed him

and threw him down, then clubbed yet another of the enemy with the

German rifle. He was then overtaken by his men, and they all moved

down the trench to the right, bombing, bayoneting, and shooting as they

went. In the meantime, Capt. Costigan--a medium-sized officer of the

most charming manners--had dispatched three of the enemy with his

revolver and bombed his way along the trench to the left for a distance

of three bays before being joined by his party.

The trench was heavily garrisoned, and (as we afterwards learned from

the prisoners) the men had been warned by their officers to expect an

attack, but all the forewarning had not forearmed them sufficiently for

their salvation.

For twenty minutes the Canadians toiled terribly in the outraged

stronghold of the enemy, by the light of star-shells from the German

support trenches, under a tumult of fire from artillery and

machine-guns in both lines and the crashing of their own bombs. The

dug-outs were full. While our raiders made prisoners of the occupants

of some dug-outs by dragging them bodily forth, and dead men of others

by simply throwing grenades in at the narrow doorways, our artillery

made a barrage in the rear of the invaded trench and our machine-guns

searched with their fire all the roads by which German reinforcements

would be likely to move. Lieut. Wrightson, with his rifle party,

remained at the point of entry into the German trench during the

bombing. He communicated the progress of the affair by telephone to

the Commanding Officer of the 7th Battalion, and the officer in charge

of operations (Capt. L. J. Thomas) guarded against a German

counter-attack from the rear and passed prisoners over the parapet to

our scouts. The scouts took the prisoners as they came over the

parapet to our bridge-covering parties; these in turn passed them back

to a strong party which supported one of our listening posts, and from

the listening post they were handed back to and through the gap in our

front line.

When the allotted time of twenty minutes was up, Lieut. Wrightson gave

the signal for the bombing parties to get out and come back.

As soon as our men were clear of the enemy's parapet our artillery

dropped its fire from the German communicating roads and rear positions

to the bombed trench, in the hope of catching the reinforcements which

the enemy was sure to have got up by this time at all costs to repulse

the invasion. It is probable that our gunners' hope was realised.

The return of the raiders across "No Man's Land" was safely

accomplished. Captors and captives retired immediately from our

front-line trench by the rising and waning illumination of star-shells

shooting up hysterically from the enemy's bewildered positions. They

moved back to safety under a brisk fire of a variety of weapons.

But this condition of being "under fire" is nothing to write about so

long as one happens to be far enough under it.

Lieuts. Holmes and Wrightson, with their scouts and riflemen, did not

come in until they had withdrawn all our bridges from the Douve.

The artillery and machine-guns put the finishing touches on the

offensive operation. At about four in the morning every British and

Canadian gun cut loose again and drubbed the German positions for

twenty minutes. Machine-guns spat from every grey bush behind Irish

Farm. The woods about Red Lodge and all the hedges on the Ploegsteert

Road were red and alive with flashes of field-guns and howitzers. From

Romarin way several big naval guns joined in the game.

Thus the enterprise at La Petite Douve was accomplished without a

hitch. A handful of men of the 7th Canadian Battalion had gone into

the German trench, killed at least fifty of the enemy, and brought away

twelve prisoners. They had knocked parapets, dug-outs, and machine-gun

emplacements about. The artillery had knocked things about, too, in

their part of the enterprise, and who knows the extent of the

casualties caused by our high explosives, our shrapnel, and the fire of

our machine-guns?

The moral of the enemy had been shaken and his nerves unstrung. Fame

and decorations had been won, and fresh glory for Canadian arms; a new

branch of the science of trench warfare had been demonstrated and

proved; and against all this one Canadian soldier had given his life

and another a little of his blood.

The next episode begins with a series of failures and ends with a

striking success. A large tree felled across the Messines-Armentières

road by artillery fire, at a point within one hundred and twenty yards

of our front line, had been gradually built into a formidable barricade

by the enemy. Several attempts by our artillery to demolish this

strong point failed, owing to an obstructive screen of large trees

along the roadside. This barricade grew in strength daily. Strong

wire entanglements were put across its face and across the ditches on

its flanks, which ran parallel to the road from our position to the

front line of the enemy. The garrison moved in and out by way of the

roadside ditches.

Several gallant attacks were made on this position before it was

finally taken and demolished. In an unsuccessful attack led by Lieuts.

N. W. F. Rant and A. V. Evans, of the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles,

Lieut. Rant was wounded by the explosion of a German grenade.

[Sidenote: _Dec. 8th, 1915._]

A week later, on the night of December 8th, after a careful

reconnaissance by daylight, Lieut. John Galt, Jr., of Lord Strathcona's

Horse, and fourteen grenadiers and riflemen of his regiment, assaulted

the barricade. The enemy held the position in force, and his fire was

too heavy for the Strathconas. Our party was driven in, and Lieut.

Galt and two of his men were left wounded on the ground. Of the twelve

who got back to our lines, eight were wounded.

[Sidenote: _Dec. 14th, 1915._]

On the night of December 14th-15th, the 5th Battalion and the 3rd

Battery Canadian Field Artillery took the barricade in hand.

Preliminary work was done by our artillery on the 12th, 13th, and 14th.

During the bombardment of the position on the 13th, twenty Germans

broke from the cover of the barricade and made a dash across the open

for their own lines. Sergeant McGlashan, of the 5th Battalion, a crack

shot and an opportunist, dropped five of the enemy before they could

reach their parapet.

The 5th Battalion had constructed an emplacement for a field gun in our

front line where our trench cuts the Messines-Armentières road. From a

flank of the emplacement they sapped out towards the barricade.

[Sidenote: _Dec. 15th, 1915._]

Early on the morning of the 15th an 18-pounder from the 3rd Battery

Canadian Field Artillery was brought down the road by an armoured car

to within a couple of hundred yards of the prepared emplacement. From

that point it was man-handled into position in our trench by Capt. G.

V. Taylor and his gun crew. Attacking parties from the 5th, commanded

by Lieuts. K. T. Campbell and K. A. Mahaffy, and supports under Lieut.

E. H. Latter, took up position to right and left of the gun and just

outside the parapet.

It was now four o'clock in the morning. On the minute our artillery

opened against the German trenches with shrapnel and high explosive,

and Capt. Taylor's gun cut loose at the barricade, point blank at 120

yards, firing five rounds a minute for five minutes. Then our guns in

the rear lifted their fire from the enemy's front line to his reserve

trenches, and the attacking parties of grenadiers and riflemen advanced

to the site of the barricade. Four dead and two living Germans were

found in the ruins of wire and sandbags. The living were captured and

sent back to our trench. Live wires were discovered in the bottom of a

ditch on a flank and immediately in rear of the position. These were

cut in a hurry, in the belief that one or more of them connected mine

locations near at hand with the hostile trench. Our men then mined the

ruined barrier and retired to one of our saps. The German artillery

and machine-guns now became active, and retaliated heavily against the

wrecked barricade and our front line and winter trenches.

During the examination of the prisoners it was learned that three

wounded Canadians--one of them an officer--had been passed back through

Messines a few days before. It was suggested more in a reliance upon

hope than upon fact that those men may have been Lieut. Galt and the

survivors from the attack of December 18th, when Lieut. Galt and two

men were left behind. All we know is that his name appeared in the

list of "Missing"--a word which means a greater tragedy than any other

in the casualty list. The dead have died in their glory, and of them

we know the best and the worst; the wounded we expect and hope to see

again; but the missing remain for months nothing but a supreme and

torturing anxiety.[1]