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Canada in Flanders, Volume II

by Baron Max Aitken Beaverbrook · English · Gutenberg #46115 · 456,816 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Canada in Flanders, Volume II

Author: Baron Max Aitken Beaverbrook


        
Release date: June 27, 2014 [eBook #46115]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CANADA IN FLANDERS, VOLUME II ***

  CANADA IN FLANDERS
  BY LORD BEAVERBROOK

  THE OFFICIAL STORY OF THE
  CANADIAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

  VOLUME II




  CANADA IN
  FLANDERS

  By Lord Beaverbrook



  VOLUME II



  _WITH MAPS AND APPENDIX_



  HODDER AND STOUGHTON
  LONDON TORONTO NEW YORK
  MCMXVII




PREFACE


The narrative of the Second Battle of Ypres was written on the spot and
immediately after the action.  It was not until long afterwards that it
was possible to collect and collate the whole of the battalion diaries.
The story, therefore, could only be compiled from the personal reports
of the officers commanding units, and in some cases these were not
available, and certain regiments did not therefore receive the
prominence which was their due.  These regiments will, I am sure,
readily understand that the omission was not intentional, but due to
the impossibility of making sure of all the details of a great and
confused action until months after the event.  Although the material
has become available, I have decided not to attempt to rewrite the
story.  It is, in its main features, absolutely accurate, and has the
advantage which must belong to any narrative written within sound of
the guns, and while the impressions of the battlefield are still vivid
to the mind.  I am, in fact, afraid that any attempt on my part to
reconstruct the narrative would spoil whatever merit it may possess.

In the first place, it is necessary, however, to make good some
mistakes in the first volume which have been pointed out by persons who
were engaged in various actions.

The majority of errors occur in the matter of names, which, in about a
dozen cases, have been given inexactly.  In some cases it has been
possible to make the requisite corrections of initials, rank, or
spelling in succeeding editions.  I particularly regret the confusion
between the two brothers, Sergt. L. G. Newell and Sergt. F. C. C.
Newell, both of whom took part in the charge at Langemarke.  The
first-named, the older brother, died of his wounds after that attack,
while the second and younger recovered, returned to the trenches, and
won the D.C.M. at Givenchy.  With reference to the names of regiments
concerned in the Second Battle of Ypres, the King's Own Royal Leinsters
have been named by a misprint instead of the King's Own Royal
Lancashires, as part of Colonel Geddes' command, on page 56.  King
Edward's Horse should have the prefix 2nd throughout.  I offer my very
sincere apologies to both regiments.

As to the position of various units, it is stated on page 74 of Vol. I.
that Lieut.-Col. Watson, of the 2nd, was employed with his regiment on
a dangerous digging operation to connect a weak point in the line on
the night of April 28th, 1915.  It should have been added that the
entire 1st Brigade took part in this, the 2nd Battalion being on the
left, the 3rd in the centre, and the 1st on the right, the 4th
Battalion digging in the meanwhile a support trench close in rear.  The
omission of the description of the part played by the 5th Battalion
(Colonel Tuxford) in the Second Battle of Ypres was a serious one, but
this is dealt with in the course of the next few pages.

The only serious accusation of inaccuracy in the tactical survey of any
situation is preferred by those who maintain that the sketch of the
action at Festubert is wrong or misleading.  I have communicated with
Colonel J. E. Leckie, of the 16th Battalion, who, as a major, took a
prominent part in the assault and succeeded to the command of the
regiment, when his brother, Brigadier-General R. G. E. Leckie, was
promoted to a brigade.  He assures me that the sketch of the two
positions occupied by the Canadians in their successive attacks is
quite accurate, and, in fact, it is so.  None the less, it is easy to
see how the idea that there was an error originated.  In an attempt to
secure largeness of scale in the map, the area is unduly limited in its
scope.  The position from which the Canadians attacked is not given,
and the extent to which the Germans were forced back is only just
indicated.  In consequence, the words "First Canadian Position" might
be held to imply that this was the line from which they sallied forth
instead of the first position they occupied before they advanced to the
final attack on the orchard.  It is a misfortune if the plan
underestimates the ground won by the 14th and 15th.  No further serious
errors have been suggested so far as Vol. I. is concerned.

Mistakes will no doubt be discovered in the second volume.  They will
be found, however, to apply to the misspelling of the names of
individuals and to an occasional mistake or doubt as to the precise
position of a particular unit on a certain date, and not, I hope, to
any main question of the tactics or strategy of battle.

The contemporary historian cannot hope to avoid these errors.  He has
at his disposal neither the leisure nor the information of the writer
of after years.  He must take his information as it comes to him and
trust that rough justice is done, believing that his honest
misjudgments will be cleared up when the full history comes to be
written.  In the meantime, he may hope to supply material of value for
subsequent examination and use.  But for this final judgment we may
have to wait some years.  In the confusion and isolation of a modern
battle men are acutely aware of their own experiences, and can have
little knowledge of what is passing to the right or left, while the
staff behind have the same difficulty in discovering what is happening
on their front.  In these circumstances, the eye-witnesses themselves
often disagree.  Even the historians of the past have not infrequently
made mistakes and waged with the pen as fierce battles over stricken
fields as were ever fought by the opposing hosts with the sword.

There is, of course, one easy way out of these troubles; it is to have
no immediate record, but to await the official publications of after
time.  The Dominion Government has, and I think rightly, declared
against this policy.  It has been from the start in favour of publicity
so long as there was no danger to national interests.  It has not
concurred in the suppression of the deeds of regiments or individuals,
believing that in a democratic country the greatest stimulus to
exertion is the knowledge that one is known and approved by one's
fellow-citizens.  Its eye-witness accounts, therefore, set in many
respects the tone for similar publications, and it has adopted the same
liberal view in authorising a contemporary story.  In another respect,
the Dominion Government has been wise.  Enormous sums were spent after
the American Civil War in collecting the official records.  The units
had been disbanded and the witnesses scattered to civilian pursuits all
over the country, and the inquiry was in consequence laborious and
expensive.

The Dominion Government, warned by this example, have taken prompt
measures to secure from day to day and week to week full reports of the
movements and actions of all units, at a cost which is trifling
compared with what it would cost in after years; in this way the
framework has been erected for an official narrative.  This is a
prudent measure which will be endorsed by Canadian students of history,
since there is a growing tendency to demand a full and intelligent
documentary record of our progress.  All the officers of the Canadian
Corps have in one respect or another contributed to the collection of
these facts, and have done so often in the face of grave danger and
complete exhaustion, when they might well have been excused from
troubling about such trivialities as to what posterity would think
about them.  The members of the Record Officer's Staff have been
unwearied in collecting all the available material, and this common
sense of duty has laid the foundation of our records on a substantial
basis of fact.

For all mistakes which occur, and more particularly for the omissions,
I, as Record Officer, take full responsibility, for the Record Officer
is no more exempt than others from the fog of battle.  But I would
point out that my task would be rendered less difficult, and the
chances of error or injustice diminished, if the commanders of units
would supply exhaustive diaries and reports on all occasions of
importance.  I have particularly in my mind's eye the case of
Brigadier-General (then Lieut.-Col.) Tuxford, of the 5th Battalion, who
with his regiment conducted a most heroic defence of the extreme right
of the position during the Second Battle of Ypres.  His regiment was,
in fact, the pivot of the retirement, and, had it given way, very few
of the 1st Division would have come back to tell the tale.  The General
is well known as a man of action and a brilliant soldier, and is
perhaps, therefore, though well qualified to write, little disposed to
do so, and so it was long after the stress and confusion of the great
conflict that I became fully aware of the part that he and his regiment
had taken.  Yet his defence of the Gravenstafel Ridge was a great feat
of arms, well worthy of the 7th Division, the Household Cavalry, and
the Guards Brigade, who had fought up and down that bloodstained soil
against overwhelming odds in the autumn of 1914.

I hope to make all mistakes good in some final edition of "Canada in
Flanders"; if not, posterity will vindicate any who have been wronged
by accident.  But in return for such confessions as I have made, I
would give one word of warning to the critics.  The original twelve
battalions have become an army corps, and if one division or another
happens to find itself involved in a great battle, it is not unnatural
that the attention of the public should be concentrated on its
achievements, failures, or losses, even though the others are doing
their work equally well.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, the turn of
each division comes, and the 1st is known by Ypres, the 2nd by St.
Eloi, and the 3rd by Sanctuary Wood.  There is enough glory and enough
suffering to go round.

My thanks are due to those who have helped in the production of this
volume.

To Chapters II. and III., which deal with the period from the
embarkation of the 2nd Division at Folkestone in September to the
beginning of March, 1916, Capt. Theodore Roberts has contributed much
valuable information and material.  So excellent was it, that I have
availed myself of his permission to insert many passages in the very
words that he employed, and the Canadian public will be a gainer
thereby.  His services were very valuable in the post he occupied at
the Front.  The April and June operations involved the reading and
careful consideration of a great mass of documents.  To reduce them to
a satisfactory form entailed an extraordinary effort of intense
concentration; for this work I am indebted to Capt. Maurice Woods and
to Capt. Talbot Papineau.  Capt. Woods in particular has largely
contributed to the fabric of the chapters which deal with this part of
the story.  In placing these services on record, I must make mention of
Lieut.-Col. Sims, who performed at the Front the difficult and onerous
task of preparing the weekly _communiqué_ to the Canadian Press and of
organising the collection of the various diaries and other data with
great success, and of Lieut. Bradley, who was indefatigable in
collecting material.

The kindness of the public in England, Canada, and the United States
called for fourteen editions of the first volume of this work within a
very few months.

I am encouraged to hope that the attempts to continue the narrative
which I began nearly two years ago may not be unwelcome.

The present volume contains no central drama quite comparable to that
presented by the Second Battle of Ypres, but I believe it will be found
to present an accurate account of much suffering and much glory.

BEAVERBROOK.

CHERKLEY, LEATHERHEAD,
  _Jan._ 27_th_, 1917.




CONTENTS


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


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


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


CHAPTER IV

FORMATION OF THE THIRD DIVISION

Coming events cast no shadows before--General Seely's command
redistributed--The Seventh Brigade in the trenches--Heavy bombardment
at Messines--Fortified positions of the Huns battered--Good work of the
Artillery--Three privates distinguish themselves--Death of a daring
explorer in "No Man's Land"--Visit of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales and
the Colonial Secretary--Canadians co-operate with British--A terrific
bombardment--The Huns establish themselves in British
trenches--Canadian guns aid the British--"Tobin's Tigers"--The Tenth
Battalion in a serious encounter--A fierce medley in the dark--An
unfortunate day--Two Generals wounded--A survey of the strategic
position--The force of massed artillery--A new era--Mr. Lloyd George's
work--Iron lips produce conclusive arguments--A successful
ruse--Ingenious device of Captain Costigan--A swollen river aids the
Canadians--A hero indeed--An exchange of front--The value of salients
questioned--The problem of transferring a sector--The Battle of St.
Eloi a joint affair--Description of the ground--The process of exchange
described--Adequate reasons for changes--A critical moment--Second
Canadian Division supports the British--Six huge craters created by
exploding mines--Activity of Northumberlands and Royal
Fusiliers--Timely assistance of Canadians acknowledged--The "Canadians'
Trench"--The enemy cleared out of debatable land--Good fighting of the
enemy at St. Eloi--Trenches filled with the dead of both
combatants--The Sixth Canadian Brigade to the relief


CHAPTER V

ST. ELOI

Canadians in a serious engagement--The old German line--The new British
line--The effect of the eruption--Trenches little better than
drains--The Second Division in "No Man's Land"--The situation described
by General Turner--A gap in our line--The call for additional
guns--Welcome relief--The importance of rear exits--Evacuation of the
wounded--Our weak spot discovered--Prompt and intelligent action by
General Turner--Steadfast endurance--The bravery of Privates Smith and
Bowden--Conspicuous gallantry of Captain Meredith--Miscalculation--The
enemy dashes through the zone of our artillery--Desperate situation of
the Canadians--Communication by telephone intermittent--Confusion in
the trenches--Under bombardment for sixty hours--The enemy's artillery
preparation begins--Pandemonium inevitable--Clogged rifles and
machine-guns--A brave struggle for existence--A moment of doubt--The
enemy gains the craters--An unfortunate mistake--Unorganised
retirement--Precipitate action--A case for help--Dilemma of the Higher
Command--Trench mortars put out of action--Full story of the retirement
cut short by death--A hand-to-hand encounter--Failure less welcome than
success--Reasons for retirement only appreciated by those experienced
in trench warfare--The Fates unpropitious--The error of the
craters--Success denied though well deserved


CHAPTER VI

ST. ELOI (_continued_)

Counter-attacks--Obstacles to victory--The ground described--The enemy
deceived--Ravage wrought by heavy guns--Impassable ground--Schemes
based upon unreliable information--Forward movement ordered--The 28th
severely shelled at Voormezeele--Confusion regarding the occupation of
the craters--Raid on Craters 2 and 3 fails--Wrong craters attacked--The
Canadian infantry in Craters 6 and 7--Enemy patrols walk straight into
Canadian trenches and are taken prisoners--The actual situation
revealed by aerial photographs--Unit follows unit to certain death--The
brave 28th--Heavy casualties--Determination of the Higher
Command--Sniper Zacharias--A gallant deserter--Imperative order to take
the German positions--Crater No. 1 captured--Unfortunate lack of
reliable information--Four privates hold an exposed position for 70
hours--Individual acts of bravery common--Good work of the Lewis gun
team--"Get on at any cost"--Brave though fruitless attempts--A glorious
failure--Repeated counter-attacks unsuccessful--The third phase of the
Battle of St. Eloi--A parallel of Verdun--The enemy seizes a dominant
position--A deadlock--General Turner's suggestions--Reconstruction of
the old British line under General Watson--The inglorious drudgery of
digging--Perilous position of Canadians in advanced positions--Carrier
pigeons used as messengers for the first time--Value of position
problematical--Superior trenches of the enemy--Useful work of
aircraft--Historic ground--First and second great actions of Dominion
Army contrasted--Failure and success enter into the education of a
nation


CHAPTER VII

ST. ELOI (_conclusion_)

The enemy's final effort to capture Canadian trenches--The Higher
Command decides to hold on--The precise position of affairs--The 5th
Brigade in inferno--Loneliness of the watchers--Carrier pigeons killed
by shell-shock--Crater No. 6 abandoned--The enemy's lack of
imagination--The power of the British Army "to come again"--Troops of
the Allies able to act without support--General Watson on the state of
the craters--The report of Lieut. Vernon--Linking up the craters with
the old British line--Advantageous position of the Huns--Four attempts
to take Canadian craters--The Huns driven back--The assault on Craters
6 and 7--Isolated position of the Canadians--Aeroplanes reveal the true
position--Army Commanders blameless--The importance of dominant
ground--Difficulties of the Higher Command--The enemy begins an intense
bombardment--Many casualties--Permission to surrender---Lieutenant
Myers fires his last round--Five survivors--Sergeant Bostel's
narrative--The failures at St. Eloi--The garrison of the Canadian
craters swept out of existence


CHAPTER VIII

THE BATTLE OF SANCTUARY WOOD

Moving northwards--The immortal field of Ypres--The greatest of all
Canadian battlefields--Description of the ground--Who holds the rim
holds the saucer--Advantageous position of the enemy--Sanctuary
Wood--Observatory Ridge--The unpleasantness of life and the prevalence
of death--Situation of the Canadians--Fortified posts--The German
attack begins--The artillery preparation--Jack Johnsons--Whole areas
destroyed--A tornado of iron and steel--Canadian trenches swept out of
existence--The thunder of high explosives--German guns on the second
line--The capture of General Williams--Tragic death of General
Mercer--The 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles swallowed up--Heavy
casualties--A gallant advance--Machine-guns on Hill 60--Lieuts. Key and
Evans make a brave stand--The Princess Pats in the firing line--The
exploits of Captain Niven--The gallant-hearted gentleman--A
mix-up--Between two fires--Game until the last--Major Critchley--Rescue
of men buried alive--Lieut. Glascoe--Canadian guns spotted by the
enemy--Attacks repulsed by the Royal Canadians--Plucky deed of Corporal
Hood--Loss of sacrifice guns--Lieut. Cotton killed--Faithful unto
death--A critical position--The colours of Princess Pats returned to
Headquarters--Second Canadian Mounted Rifles move under heavy fire--The
enemy loses an opportunity--Energetic action of General Macdonell--The
Seventh Brigade in peril--Timely support of the Royal Canadian
Regiment--General Butler sends relief--The Fifth Canadian Mounted
Rifles hard pressed--Daring reconnaissance of Sergeant Jones--Fifth
Canadian Mounted Rifles save the Salient--Heavy losses of the Eighth
Brigade--Help at hand


CHAPTER IX

THE COUNTER-ATTACK

Method of counter-attack--Successful efforts of the French--The
question of time--Attacks which failed--Precipitancy of main
counter-attack--Enemy reinforced--The assaulting forces--Inadequate
system of railways--Failure of well-laid plans--Value of armoured
cables--A stroke of misfortune--Uncertainty as to the enemy's
positions--A test of endurance--Defective communications--Artillery
unable to support infantry--An American officer gives a lead--The death
of Major Stuart--Observatory Ridge--Enemy well supplied with
machine-guns--The fatal trench--Heavy casualties--Gallant attempt of
the 15th Battalion--The 14th Battalion digs itself in under heavy
fire--The fateful gap bridged--Lieut. Beaton and Sergt. Topham--The
Higher Command misinformed--Misfortunes of the 52nd and 60th
Battalions--The Princess Pats cheer their comrades--Gallant officers of
the 49th--Main object of the counter-attack fails--The road to Ypres
blocked to the enemy--The 3rd Division wins its spurs--A prospect of
defeat turned into an achievement of victory


CHAPTER X

A LULL IN THE STORM.  THE FIGHT FOR HOOGE

Relief of the front-line Battalions--Heavy losses of the Seventh
Brigade--Good work of the Third Pioneer Battalion--Sudden advance of
the enemy--The Knoll of Hooge--The Menin Road--Description of the
scene--The 28th relieves the Royal Canadians--Heavy bombardment by the
enemy--The importance of the Knoll of Hooge--The enemy springs four
mines under the first-line trenches--A company of the 28th perishes--A
terrific explosion--Fierce fighting of the 6th June--Effective work of
Captain Styles--The enemy in dangerous proximity to our support
line--Former tragedies in Zouave Wood--Serious casualties of the 6th
Brigade--The effective loss of the village of Hooge--Preparations for
retaliation


CHAPTER XI

THE FINAL VICTORY

Canadians take the initiative--The Anglo-French offensive--Good
fellowship between the Imperial and Canadian Army--British Brigade
supports the Canadians--The Württembergers and the Canadians--General
Burstall commands formidable assembly of heavy guns--Aeroplane
photographs--Battalions massed in strength--Divisional
Commanders--Artillery pounds the German position--The enemy
demoralised--The advance to the assault--Intense artillery
preparation--A struggle between weapons of attack and methods of
defence--Unforeseen developments of trench warfare--The significance of
the Battle of the Marne--The use of gas a failure--Terrific force of
great guns--Mr. Lloyd George and the industrial development of
England--The 3rd Toronto Battalion advances--The centre attack--A
daring scheme to baffle the enemy--The front line moves forward
unnoticed--German listening post captured--The forward rush--The
bayonets clear the trenches--Captain Bell-Irving's daring exploit--The
16th and the 3rd Battalions recapture the heights--The 13th Battalion
to the charge--Machine-gun fight and bombing encounters--Hill 62 in
Canadian hands--Real gain of the day--Counter-attacks dispersed--The
enemy dazed by the suddenness and the success of the onset--Splendid
arrangement and precision of the attack in face of difficulties--Ypres
salient reconquered with bayonet in semi-darkness--A devastated
territory--The natural green blotted out--Earth churned up into masses
of mud--The sight after the battle--Where captains and soldiers
lie--Those we shall remember--Defeat turned into victory


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]

[Sidenote: _Jan. 30th, 1916._]

On the night of January 30th-31st, 1916, two battalions of the 6th
Canadian Infantry Brigade (Brigadier-General Ketchen), supported by
artillery, machine-guns, and trench mortars, succeeded in an important
attack against the unsuspecting enemy on their brigade front.  The
objects of this operation were the same as those of the 7th Battalion's
offensive in November, to obtain prisoners and information, to cause
casualties, apprehension, and material damage.  This enterprise
exceeded that of our 2nd Brigade in that it pierced the German line at
two widely separated points.

In their conception and plans of attack the General Officer Commanding
the 6th Brigade and his Staff gave the same careful attention to
details as had their comrades of the 2nd Brigade two months before.

The 28th (North-West) Battalion's objective was a point on the northern
side, and that of the 29th (Vancouver) Battalion a point on the
southern face of the Spanbroekmolen salient.  Here, a little to the
south-east of Kemmel and about the centre of the Canadian line, the
German line runs sharply in to a western thrust over some 1,900 yards,
and the attacks were like the jaws of pincers gripping the base of the
protuberance at that distance from each other.  The two objectives were
about eleven hundred yards apart.  The wire in front of these selected
points was cut solely by hand, as one of the chief features of this
attack was to dispense with the customary artillery preparation and so
take the enemy by complete surprise.

The operation, as has been stated, consisted of two widely separated
and individual attacks, delivered simultaneously, both maintained in
the hostile trenches for the same number of minutes and simultaneously
withdrawn.  Scout-Sergeant Turner and Corporal Conlin, of the 28th
Battalion, worked in the enemy's wire from 10 p.m. to 1.45 in the
morning, and stayed there until joined by the attacking party, with
whom they entered the German trench at about twenty minutes to three.
The enemy's entanglements had been strongly reinforced during the
previous day, under cover of a heavy fog; but Turner and Conlin stuck
to their difficult and dangerous task and completed it without an error.

The raiders of both battalions advanced from their positions of
readiness in "No Man's Land" at half-past two sharp.  The 28th
Battalion party, thirty strong, commanded by Capts. D. E. MacIntyre and
K. C. Taylor, lost a few minutes in negotiating the trunk of a fallen
tree, and were still strung out in the German wire when sounds of
exploding grenades and an increased flaring of star-shells told them
that their comrades of the 29th were already in violent touch with the
enemy.  There was no time to lose.  Lives hang on fractions of seconds
in such work as this.  The two captains and the two tireless
wire-cutters were still in the lead.  Together they crawled up the
sloping face of the big German parapet, and each threw a grenade into
the crowded trench.  Four explosions followed.  Sentries shouted and
fired their rifles.  Capt. MacIntyre accounted for one of the sentries
with the second shot of his automatic.  Then the four leaders jumped
down into the 10-foot-deep trench, into the midst of confusion and rage
and fear.  The other raiders followed them with a rush.

Here were thirty Canadians with blackened faces[2] and armed with
sudden death in a trench full of Germans.  Many of the Germans were
"standing to," many had but then scrambled from their dug-outs, their
blankets still about them, and their feet still unbooted.  Make the
picture for yourself, with the help of these extracts from Capt.
Macintyre's report:--

"The trench seemed full of men running both ways....  Almost at once
Corporal Conlin fell at my feet shot through the head.  Behind Conlin
was a Hun.  I shot him through the stomach.  The noise was frightful,
and I could not tell where it was coming from.  The flares made it
nearly as light as day.  I was knocked down by something once, but
don't know what it was.

"After six minutes I blew the horn, and all the men heard it and the
squads retired to the point of entry.  Capt. Taylor held the right and
Sergeant Cameron the left.  I asked them if all their squads were out,
and they said 'Yes.'  Then I told them to 'beat it,' and we all jumped."

The casualties suffered by this party were two men killed and two
officers and eight men wounded.  Capt. Taylor, though wounded in the
leg while in the very act of invading the trench, did terrible
execution.  It is claimed for him that he killed fourteen of the enemy,
shooting some and bayoneting others.  He was wounded in eight places,
but returned to our lines unaided when the affair was over.

The majority of our casualties were caused by a machine-gun which
enfiladed the invaded trench.  This gun was fortunately put out of
action by a bomb from our trench-mortars just before the retirement
commenced.  The 28th Battalion party brought out no prisoners, but
inflicted thirty-nine casualties by actual count.

While the North-Westerners were thus engaged at Peckham, the raiders of
the 29th Battalion were as busily employed in their chosen place of
trench at Spanbroekmolen.  The officers in charge of the Vancouver
Battalion's assault were Lieuts. G. I. Gwynn, N. E. O'Brien, and L. A.
Wilmot.  Lieut. Wilmot and his men cut the wire, then acted as guides
to the others, and accompanied them into the trench.  The leading men
of the right and left parties went over the parapet together, using the
loophole of a machine-gun emplacement as a step.  Sergeant Dungan
bayoneted the first two sentries encountered by the left party.  Lieut.
O'Brien entered a dug-out and captured one of its inmates.  A
machine-gun opened fire on the raiders, but the gunner was promptly
shot by Lieuts. Wilmot and O'Brien and the gun and the dug-out of the
crew were bombed.  Other dug-outs were also bombed.  The right party,
on the other flank of the central machine-gun emplacement, did equally
fine execution.  The work of Lieut. Gwynn was conspicuous.

Things had gone very well with the raiders thus far, when Lieut. Wilmot
was wounded by a grenade.  In spite of his injury he kept his head
clear and a grip on the situation.  Seeing that a number of prisoners
had been taken and that the alarm of the enemy had become general, he
ordered a retirement, and then signalled to our artillery to open fire.
The return to our lines was accomplished without accident.

The 29th Battalion killed at least twenty of the enemy, did
considerable damage to dug-outs and machine-guns, and brought back
three prisoners.  Lieut. Wilmot, Sergeant Kirkland, and two men were
wounded.

These two successful raids illustrate not inaptly the various phases
through which advance patrol work has gone.  The first stage, as soon
as trench warfare set in, was the casual encounters of hostile parties
in the dark.  The second was the organised trench raid by night, in
which the Canadians led the way.  The last stage was reached in
midsummer, before the Canadians fought on the Somme, when the 19th
Ontario Battalion made a most successful daylight rush into the enemy
trenches, led by Lieuts. B. O. Hooper and S. S. Burnham.  They disposed
of forty or fifty of the enemy, and after remaining in the enemy's
lines for five minutes returned with very valuable information as to
the enemy's dispositions.  And these, as I have said, are instances,
chosen almost at a venture, to show in what manner and under what
conditions we go raiding in "No Man's Land."



[1] Lieut. John Galt was taken prisoner, but died of his wounds very
soon afterwards.  He was buried by the enemy, and the words "Here lies
a British Officer" inscribed on his tomb.

[2] The one thing most likely to be seen by the flare-lights sent up by
the enemy is the face of an opponent.  Those advancing in "No Man's
Land," therefore, blacken their faces to avoid being seen.




CHAPTER IV

FORMATION OF THE THIRD DIVISION

Coming events cast no shadows before--General Seely's command
redistributed--The Seventh Brigade in the trenches--Heavy bombardment
at Messines--Fortified positions of the Huns battered--Good work of the
Artillery--Three privates distinguish themselves--Death of a daring
explorer in "No Man's Land"--Visit of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales and
the Colonial Secretary--Canadians co-operate with British--A terrific
bombardment--The Huns establish themselves in British
trenches--Canadian guns aid the British--"Tobin's Tigers"--The Tenth
Battalion in a serious encounter--A fierce medley in the dark--An
unfortunate day--Two Generals wounded--A survey of the strategic
position---The force of massed artillery--A new era--Mr. Lloyd George's
work--Iron lips produce conclusive arguments--A successful
ruse--Ingenious device of Captain Costigan--A swollen river aids the
Canadians--A hero indeed--An exchange of front--The value of salients
questioned--The problem of transferring a sector--The Battle of St.
Eloi a joint affair--Description of the ground--The process of exchange
described--Adequate reasons for changes--A critical moment--Second
Canadian Division supports the British--Six huge craters created by
exploding mines--Activity of Northumberlands and Royal
Fusiliers--Timely assistance of Canadians acknowledged--The "Canadians'
Trench"--The enemy cleared out of debatable land--Good fighting of the
enemy at St. Eloi--Trenches filled with the dead of both
combatants--The Sixth Canadian Brigade to the relief.


[Sidenote: _Dec., 1915._]

The main event of the New Year was the formation of the 3rd Division.
Authority to create this force had been received in the last week of
December, and at the same time the 7th and 8th Brigades had come into
being.  The 7th Brigade, which was commanded by Brigadier-General
MacDonell (who handed over the command of Lord Strathcona's Horse,
R.C., to Lieut.-Col. C. M. Nelles, C.M.G.) consisted of the Princess
Patricia's Light Infantry (Lieut.-Col. C. H. Buller), the Royal
Canadian Regiment (Lieut.-Col. C. H. Hill, D.S.O.), the 42nd Royal
Highlanders of Canada (Lieut.-Col. G. S. Cantlie), and the 49th
(Edmonton) Canadian Battalion (Lieut.-Col. W. A. Griesbach), all of
which had been acting for some time as corps troops.  The 8th Brigade
was made up of the six Canadian Mounted Rifle regiments, which had up
till now been part of Seely's force.  They were made into four
battalions of infantry, known as the 1st (Lieut.-Col. A. E. Shaw), 2nd
(Lieut.-Col. C. L. Bott), 4th (Lieut.-Col. S. F. Smith), and 5th
(Lieut.-Col. G. H. Baker) Canadian Mounted Rifles, and placed under the
command of Brigadier-General Williams.  Early in January the 3rd
Division was constituted out of these two brigades, and Major-General
Mercer was appointed to the command.  Coming events cast no shadows
before, and there was no fore-knowledge of the ill-luck which was to
attend one of the distinguished officers, and the death in action which
awaited the other.  All seemed fair for the prospects of the 3rd
Division, which was within a few months to pass through the most
terrible ordeal that the Canadians had yet sustained.  The creation of
this new force scattered Brigadier-General Seely's command.[1]  The
Canadian Mounted Rifles, as we have seen, were incorporated in the 3rd
Division, while the Cavalry Brigade was removed altogether from the
Corps Command.  The 2nd King Edward's Horse was dispatched on January
14th to General Headquarters, and the remaining units, the Royal
Canadian Dragoons, Strathcona's Horse, and the Royal Canadian Horse
Artillery, were attached on January 26th to the 1st Indian Cavalry
Division at Friville.[2]

General Seely commanded a Brigade holding the front trench line since
May of 1915, and it was unfortunate that the fact of his commanding a
Cavalry Brigade compelled him to abandon the advanced command on the
redistribution of the cavalry units.  In the opinion of the Higher
Command and of all Canadian officers who came in contact with him, he
exhibited conspicuous intelligence, coolness, and courage in a degree
which qualified him for high command and a distinguished military
career.

[Sidenote: _Jan 7th, 1916._]

By the end of the first week in January the 7th Brigade was able to
begin its share of trench duties, and took over from the 1st Brigade of
the 1st Division.  Their first turn of duty as a Brigade was a long
one, lasting for full three weeks.  The month was, on the whole, a
quiet one until the trench raid of January 30th/31st, described in the
previous chapter.  The weather turned from wet to fine and cold, and
the most persistent reminders of winter were the occasional fogs, which
settled down like white blankets on the flats and enabled parties to
move about with impunity in the day-time.

The artillery bombardment on both sides formed the main feature of the
month.  Although the corps was not able to keep up the great
superiority over the Germans in the number of shells fired in November
and December, very heavy bombardment of the trenches in front of
Messines took place.  The enemy, perhaps in reply, shelled the front
trenches somewhat severely.  On the whole, however, their bombardments
were characterised by the usual features--a wide dispersement of shells
over a large area, Dranoutre being heavily bombarded during the early
part of the month.  This kind of attack is annoying rather than
serious.  The policy of the Canadian gunners was very different.  It
was to concentrate on objects of real importance.  Organised
bombardments of sections of the enemy's front were carried out by the
artillery, and the combination of the heavy batteries and field guns
was most effective.  German mounds and fortified positions near the
front lines were battered in, and all machine-gun emplacements were
carefully registered in case of sudden emergencies.  It is the custom
of the enemy to occupy farm buildings as redoubts, and two direct hits
were obtained by the gunners at La Douve Farm on January 7th.  Germans
were seen scattering as the result of these shots, and were instantly
pursued by shrapnel.  It is necessary to lay some stress on the work of
the artillery, which is liable to suffer neglect; only the infantry can
know the relief of hearing the guns roaring over their heads.

[Sidenote: _Jan. 16th and 17th, 1916._]

Throughout the month of January considerable liveliness in patrol work
was kept up, and if encounters between parties were infrequent, this
fact was due to Teutonic caution.  Some encounters, however, did take
place, and there was fighting on the 16th and 17th on the front of the
3rd Infantry Brigade.

[Sidenote: _Jan. 22nd and 23rd, 1916._]

On the night of the 22nd and 23rd the 8th Battalion (Winnipeg Rifles)
made a careful reconnaissance of their front--a task in which Privates
Bole, Gunn, and Matkin, scouts of the regiment, particularly
distinguished themselves in a short, severe encounter with the enemy.
Here again the lack of automatic pistols and sufficient ammunition
proved a handicap in the struggle.

The incidents in which good work was done are almost too numerous to
mention, but a particular interest attaches to the death of Lieut.
Owen, of the 7th British Columbia Regiment, well known as a daring
explorer in "No Man's Land."  Lieut. Owen and three of his men
encountered some fifteen Germans in the sudden and nerve-breaking way
which characterises a patrol battle.  A fierce fight with revolvers and
bombs ensued, and four Germans at least were seen to fall; then the
bombs ran out, and a retreat became imperative.  The officer ordered
the men to retire, saying, "I am coming right after you," and remained,
covering the retreat by revolver fire.  He never returned, and when his
party went back to seek him they found him lying in the wet ground with
a bullet through his head.

The end of the month, which passed in comparative quiet until the
assault of the night of the 30th, described in the previous chapter,
was chiefly marked by the arrival of two distinguished visitors.

[Sidenote: _Jan. 28th, 1916._]

On January 28th H.R.H. the Prince of Wales spent a day with the
Canadian Corps, surveying the whole field from the eminences behind the
lines and passing down a portion of the front trenches.  He met and
conversed with the various Brigadiers and a few of the Regimental
Commanders.  On the 30th, Mr. Bonar Law, Secretary of State for the
Colonies, whose interest in the corps is well known, arrived, and
addressed the 31st (Alberta) Battalion.

[Illustration: Map--Ypres-Armentières area]

[Sidenote: _Feb., 1916._]

In February began that period of close co-operation with the V British
Corps which was destined to last for nearly seven weeks owing to the
persistent fighting at the Bluff and about the Mound of St. Eloi.  So
long is the range of modern artillery that the guns of neighbouring
corps and divisions can be of the greatest assistance to the actual
combatants by firing slantwise into the enemy positions around the
field of action, while an infantry demonstration may hold up his
reserves.  [Sidenote: _Feb. 13th, 1916._] About three o'clock in the
afternoon of February 13th a terrific bombardment was directed against
the British trenches north of the Bluff, a high artificial mound
covered with trees immediately north of the Ypres-Comines Canal; a
series of mines was exploded in the neighbourhood of Hill 60 and in the
direction of Hooge and of Sanctuary Wood.  As the dusk fell several
assaults were delivered along the line defended subsequently by the
Canadians on the day of June 2nd.  The majority of these assaults were
repelled, but the Germans broke through the Bluff north of the canal,
and succeeded in establishing themselves in the British front trenches,
where they stayed until they were expelled on March 2nd.  This action
was the beginning of many woes to both combatants.  The moment the
trouble started the V (British) Corps called up the Canadians and asked
for the help of their guns.  This was readily accorded, and throughout
the evening of the 13th and the day of the 14th a combined
Anglo-Canadian shoot was directed with success on the German positions
in front of the Bluff.  [Sidenote: _Feb. 16th, 1916._] Further relief
to the British was afforded by an extension of our line on the night of
February 16th, 700 yards to the north, as to set free the
Northumberland Fusiliers.  This task was given to the 6th Brigade, and
brought it into the trenches which flanked the line on the right of the
St. Eloi position, and from which the final relief of the
Northumberlands was made in the battle of the first week of April.  The
29th (Vancouver, "Tobin's Tigers"), supported by the 28th (North-West),
took over this additional task.

Patrol fighting went on steadily all this time.  Early in the month of
February a particularly exciting action was fought between a large
party of the 10th (Western Canada) Battalion and an equally numerous
party of Germans.  It had been decided to creep up, cut the German
barbed wire, and bomb their front-line trenches.  Lieut. Kent and
Sergeant Milne, of the 10th, with two privates, succeeded in cutting
the wire, and were joined by a column of fifty men.  While waiting
immediately in front of the German trench for the best opportunity of
bombing the enemy positions, a patrol of thirty or forty Germans
stumbled across them from the flank.  A fierce medley in the dark
followed, the Germans attacking with bombs and revolvers, and our men
with grenades, bayonets, and knobkerries.[3]  The enemy machine-guns
took the alarm and fired blindly into the scrimmage.  Eventually the
German patrol was dispersed with heavy casualties, and the 10th
returned with five prisoners.

[Sidenote: _Feb. 23rd, 1916._]

The 17th was an unfortunate day for the Canadian Corps.
Brigadier-Generals MacDonell and Leckie were both hit by stray bullets
and seriously wounded during their tour of the trenches.[4]  On the
23rd, the 9th Brigade of the 3rd Division was formed.  It consisted of
the 43rd Canadian Battalion, under Lieut.-Col. R. McD. Thomson; 52nd,
under Lieut.-Col. A. W. Hay; 58th, under Lieut.-Col. H. A. Genet; and
60th, under Lieut.-Col. F. A. de L. Gascoigne, and was placed under the
command of Brigadier-General F. W. Hill, D.S.O.  The 3rd Division had
now its three brigades; and with a sharp brush between the 42nd (Royal
Highlanders of Canada) Battalion and some over-adventurous Germans, the
month came to a close.

The Canadian Corps was now approaching the second crisis in the history
of its various divisions; this was to lead them through three months of
continuous fighting steadily northwards across the blood-stained fields
of St. Eloi and Hooge until they almost reached the scene of the Second
Battle of Ypres.  To grasp the inner meaning of these movements and the
consequences to which they led, it is essential to take a wider survey
of the strategic position which the Allied Commanders had to face on
the Western front.  Two great bodies of the German reserves were known
to be in existence, the first opposite Verdun, the second in the region
of the northern British line.  Whether this last concentration was a
defensive measure against a possible British advance, or portended a
third German assault on the Ypres salient, could not in the month of
March be known for certain.  One fact at least was clear.  The
persistent and violent offensive against Verdun which marked that month
made it incumbent on the British armies to come to the assistance of
the French.  This was done in two ways.  A fourth army was assembled
out of the growing hosts in France, and the Arras sector of the line
given into its charge--a step which released a French army for the
heroic contest before Verdun--while a series of attacks was delivered
from the original British line, any of which might have been the
beginning of an assault on a larger scale.  The actions of the Bluff,
of the Mound of St. Eloi, and of Vimy, were designed to show the enemy
that in the northern line we were "ware and waking," and to pin the
enemy reserves to the ground.  Nor, it may be added, were the Germans
slow to take up the challenge.

[Sidenote: _Mar. 2nd, 1916._]

Indeed, the whole series of actions with which the remainder of this
volume is concerned began with the German assault on February 12th on
the Bluff, when the troops of the V British Corps, who held the line on
the left of the Canadians, were driven from the position on the Bluff
and the front-line trenches to the north.  Preparations had been made
for the recapture of the lost positions, and the advance took place on
March 2nd.  The Divisional Artillery of the 1st and 2nd Canadian
Divisions[5] co-operated that day with the gunners of the V British
Corps in a terrific bombardment of the ground to be taken.  As a result
of this fire a large section of the German front-line trenches and
communication trenches north of the canal was reduced to ruins, and the
successful assault of the British on the morning of March 2nd met with
little resistance.  The lost ground was regained and consolidated.
This action was one of the first to demonstrate the increased blasting
force of massed artillery, which became the standard weapon of offence
on either side during the battles of the next five months.  The
continued piling up of munitions and guns during the preceding twelve
months had begun to modify profoundly the tactics of the Western front,
and it would be alike an error and an injustice to judge the
performance of the infantry in the spring of 1916 by the standards of
the previous year.  The old British idea of a solid and immovable front
line held almost entirely by the fire of a rifleman to a yard of
trench, was beginning to give way in the stress of circumstances and
the example of the French.

A line more lightly held by the aid of machine-guns and wire
entanglements, and a greater disposition to yield or gain ground, were
the signs of a new era.  But chiefly the enemy's guns were our
teachers, for their iron lips pronounced very conclusive arguments.

However, if the main work of the Canadians in the attack on the Bluff
lay with the Canadian gunners, the infantry were by no means idle.
They assisted the V Corps by a demonstration on their front, and by
massing three battalions of the 4th Infantry Brigade behind their left
flank to come to the aid of the British in the event of a
counter-attack.  All arms contributed to the frontal demonstration.  In
the early morning of March 2nd smoke-bombs were loosed from the
trenches as though in prelude to an attack, and a great blare of
musketry and machine-gun fire roared up and down the line.  The Germans
sprang to arms and hurried supports up their communication trenches
into their lightly-held front line.  It was for this that our field
guns had been waiting, and with continued bursts of fire they ranged
the denser masses opposite as they came crowding into the trenches.
The retaliation of the German artillery was singularly ineffective,
probably because their attention was now wholly occupied with the line
further north.  This operation produced one striking incident of
ingenuity in warfare.  At one point in the corps position the stream of
the Douve, flowing rapidly with the winter rains, ran through our
trenches and disappeared into the German line.  This fact suggested to
Capt. Costigan, D.S.O., of the 10th Battalion, a new method of alarming
the Hun.

This enterprising officer suggested that a raft loaded with high
explosive might be floated down the current and exploded in the enemy's
lines.

The stream was, however, narrow, and, as anyone who has thrown sticks
into a river will remember, the tendency of a floating object is to get
stuck on some obstacle or corner on the way down.  Capt. Costigan
therefore proposed to accompany the raft himself until it was within
certain reach of the objective.  He and Corporal Witney came out of the
trenches and carried the raft to the river.  After floating down some
distance, he found the stream continually obstructed by low overhanging
boughs, and to avoid any chance of failure he continued to pilot his
dangerous convoy to within thirty yards of where the German barbed
wire, stretched across the channel, barred any further progress.  Here
he waited in the water until the light of a flare gave the signal for
the general demonstration.  The fuse was then lit and the load shot
fair at the enemy's obstruction from a distance of thirty yards.  The
explosion was a very fine one, and so perturbed the gentle soul of the
enemy that he fired off several concealed machine-guns, the existence
of which the 10th Battalion had long suspected but the location of
which they had never known.  Writing in cold blood, it is easy to
represent such a feat of arms as ordinary, but when one considers what
the action really entailed, the exploit was heroic even as we count
heroism to-day.  It was something which an ordinary man could not have
done and could not reasonably have been expected to do.  The long
stumble in the dark with sudden death in one's hands, the plunge into
the icy stream, the physical struggle with the sweeping boughs and
jutting bends, the swift drift down towards the enemy, and the calm
waiting in the cold, dark water for the given signal, serve to show
that the most romantic deeds of the hero of fiction can be matched and
mastered in the battlefields of to-day.

That the whole demonstration was a success is witnessed by the
following telegram from the V Corps:--


    "SINCERE THANKS FOR YOUR MOST VALUABLE CO-OPERATION.  SHOULD ENEMY
    RENEW COUNTER-ATTACK TO-MORROW AT DAWN OR LATER, HOPE YOU WILL
    AGAIN HELP US."


[Sidenote: _Mar., 1916._]

Early in March orders were issued by the 2nd Army Commander for the
exchange of fronts between the V and the Canadian Corps.  The sector
held by the V Corps runs from the Ypres-Roulers Railway just north of
Hooge down south as far as St. Eloi.  It constituted the southern half
of the Ypres salient, and was by common consent about the worst portion
of the whole British line.  In the autumn of 1914 during the first
battle of Ypres, it had been heroically defended by the Guards Brigade,
the Household Cavalry, and the 7th Division, seldom mustering more than
5,000 men at any given time, against the successive attacks of two
German Army Corps and of the Prussian Guard lasting for a month.

The V Corps had now held it for little short of a year, and had during
that period incurred heavy losses.  Nor is this to be wondered at when
one considers the number of general and minor actions which had taken
place in the area since the great attack on Hill 60 in April, 1915.
The trenches round Hooge had continually changed hands.  Fierce
divisional actions had been fought there on June 16th, July 30th, and
August 8th, 1915; while later in the autumn an unsuccessful British
assault had been launched against the Bellewarde Lake line.  Of minor
actions there had been no end, while the great bulge of the salient
rendered every trench in it liable to that most deadly of dangers, a
direct lateral fire from heavy guns placed to the south or to the
north.  Salients are valuable as examples of the British soldier's
willingness to die rather than to live.  They make a great many widows
and orphans and splendid material for patriotic speeches.  For the
rest, their utility may be questioned--and has been.

[Sidenote: _Mar., 1916._]

The transfer of a sector from one Army Corps to another is one of those
operations which the layman thinks of as done by a single sweeping
stroke of the Commander-in-Chief's pen.  In reality, it is a slow and
intricate process--nothing less than the gradual interchange of all the
population of two countrysides and all the means of feeding and
clothing them--a wave of immigration and emigration affecting more than
120,000 people, and this has to be carried out with the minimum of
disturbance, since the inhabitants of the two areas must be ready to
man the trenches and fight a battle at any stage in the process of
change.

The Staffs are in the position of two householders who are exchanging
residences and moving their families under the immediate threat of a
burglary at either or both houses.  If it is done on too large a scale,
there will be confusion, but, on the other hand, every day that the
move is protracted, there will be mixed Staffs and units in the same
battle line and sector--a state of affairs not conducive to the
efficient management of a sudden crisis.  Far behind the front line
trenches the ramifications of the services extend; for though a brigade
may be holding a frontage of a couple of thousand yards, its section
runs back through miles of land crowded with reserves, with light and
heavy artillery, with transport services, hospitals and depots, and all
the paraphernalia of modern war.  The trench line is like a tooth, the
depth of the roots of which is only discovered when one tries to pull
it out.  To the Staffs, at any rate, the period of movement is one of
strain and anxiety, and the total changes were not completed under a
period of three weeks, during which time both corps were engaged in
heavy and continuous fighting.

The battle of St. Eloi was indeed a joint or rather a successive affair
carried on by units of two Corps, the Canadians and the V (British).

[Sidenote: _Mar. 17th-April 8th, 1916._]

The moves began as early as March 17th, when the heavy divisional
artillery, supporting the 3rd Canadian Division, were taken north, and
were completed by the night of April 8th.  The Corps Command of the two
sections was not handed over till April 4th.  A glance at the map will
show the problem which confronted the Corps Commanders.  The V Corps
held exactly the southern curve of the Ypres salient from almost due
east of the town.

The left of its 24th Division rested on Bellewarde Beek, and its line
continued along the rise through Sanctuary Wood to a high point
south-east of the extremity of Zillebeke Lake, known as Mount Sorrel.
We shall have occasion later to study this ground with more
particularity, for the force which holds it holds Ypres in the hollow
of its hand.  Here the salient headed back violently, running almost
due east and west, took a southerly turn again, crossed the railway to
Comines, passed Hill 60 of glorious and tragic memory, and struck the
Ypres-Comines Canal by the Bluff.  This was the sector of the 50th
British Division--south again was the 3rd British Division holding what
was destined to be the field of St. Eloi from the canal to Bois
Quarante.

At the village of St. Eloi there was another of these violent turns of
the line which leave the opposing forces facing each other due north
and south.  The total length of this corps sector was about six miles,
but the curves of the trenches and the ground would make the actual
number of yards to be held considerably greater.  It was, roughly,
broken up into three sections of two miles each belonging to a single
division.  With Bois Quarante the salient of Ypres came to an end.  The
Canadian Corps line to the south reaching to Ploegsteert has already
been described.  It was devoid in the main of salients and had become
increasingly peaceful since the fierce fighting in the streets of
Comines and Wytschaete in the autumn of 1914.

It was held, when the 3rd Canadian Division was formed finally in the
middle of February, by three divisions on a frontage of six brigades.
The 3rd Division had no line of its own, but sent its brigades up
indifferently to relieve those of the other two divisions.  It was
therefore selected as the first of the infantry formations for
transference to the new Canadian front.

A moment's consideration will make it clear that to exchange two bodies
of men in the front line would mean an open gap in the defence during
the period of the full relief.  As in the game of "Fox and Geese,"
though the metaphor is perhaps not very complimentary to the enemy or
ourselves, a single hole in the ranks lets the fox through.  The change
can therefore only be made in two ways.  It can be begun by moving the
reserve troops of the two corps into each other's positions and pushing
them up into the front line in succession until the process is
complete, or by a swifter and more direct method of marching the
reserve division of one corps to relieve a front line division of the
other, this division in turn becoming a temporary reserve for its
neighbouring corps.  In accordance with the former plan, the 3rd
Canadian Division was taken up in the third week of March and took over
from the 24th Division in the Hooge-Zillebeke sector, while the 24th
Division came back to the rest area of the Canadian Corps, whence they
in turn displaced a front line Canadian Division.  The process once set
on foot by the initial move becomes more or less automatic.  But it is
necessarily slow.  It would be in the last degree inadvisable and
dangerous to substitute larger bodies of troops in a single night and
place each on ground with which it is thoroughly unfamiliar.  Even the
ordinary visits of officers to their new trenches a day or so in
advance would be no protection against confusion in the dark on ground
unknown to a whole brigade or division--and this lesson was written in
letters of blood in the first week of April over the stricken field of
St. Eloi.  The 3rd Division move was therefore made by degrees.  It
began on March 18th with two battalions of the 8th Brigade to the V
Corps camp behind the lines, while two British battalions took their
place in Canadian reserve.  The next day the exchange of the remainder
of the Brigade was effected, while in the course of the night the two
original Canadian battalions took over their share of the British
trenches.  On the day of the 20th the entire 7th Canadian Brigade
marched from its own reserve area into that of the V Corps near
Poperinghe, and went into the firing line the following night.  The 9th
Brigade followed them on the 23rd, and became the supporting brigade of
the whole division.  The relief of the north section of the line was
now complete, and the divisions changed on the night of the 21st.  In
the meantime as each British unit was pulled out it came swiftly and
surely into the place of the Canadians.  The change can be put most
simply in a mathematical form.  If _A_ represents the British in the
trenches, _B_ the British in reserve, _C_ the Canadians in the
trenches, and _D_ the Canadians in reserve--_B_ and _D_ change places.
That is the first move.  On the following day or night approximately
_D_ relieves _A_, and _B_ relieves _C_ in the trenches.  That is the
second move.  There remains only the substitution between the two units
_C_ and _A_ and the full relief has been accomplished, and each party
stands complete within its new area.  The process in a corps will be
slow, since the unit of exchange will be only two battalions out of
thirty-six, or at most of a brigade.

[Sidenote: _Mar. 23rd-25th, 1916._]

Thus the 24th British Division as soon as the 3rd Canadians had got
into place, began to relieve the 1st Canadian Division.  On the night
of the 23rd two of their battalions took the lines of the two
battalions of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade in the trenches, and
the change was finished by the night of the 25th.  Next came the turn
of the 1st Canadian Brigade, which was out by March 28th-29th.

[Sidenote: _Mar. 28th-29th, 1916._]

On that night the 50th British Division began to move to the rear as
the leading columns of the 1st Canadian Division came up to take its
place.  The process was continued until the 2nd Canadian Division in
its turn stood in the trenches of the 3rd British Division.  The length
of time and the order of the moves are best indicated by the days in
which the various high commands took over their new responsibilities.
The 3rd Canadian Division took over from the 24th British Division, as
has already been mentioned, on March 21st.  The 24th British Division
from the 1st Canadian Division on March 30th, giving ten days for the
double change.  The 1st Canadian Divisional Staff assumed
responsibility for the area of the 50th Division on the night of April
3rd, four days later.  The 50th relieved the 2nd Canadian Division on
the same night, while the 2nd Canadian Division did not relieve the 3rd
British till the fatal night of April 4th-5th.  Reading the map from
north to south, we find the 9th and 7th Brigades holding the front of
the 3rd Canadian Division; the 3rd and 1st Brigades in the same order
as that of the 1st Division, while the 6th Brigade covered the whole
frontage of the 2nd Division opposite St. Eloi.  The Corps Commanders
changed their functions on April 4th, and by the 7th-8th the V Corps
were safely ensconced in the Canadian area.

But in describing this move in its completeness we have run ahead of
history.  While the columns of weary men were tramping through the dust
of the day, the delicious cool of the evening, and the chilliness of
the night march, and the great batteries were being slowly removed from
position to position, an event had occurred which added greatly to the
difficulty.  If the transfer of a corps can be done in peace so much
the better for all concerned.  In this case a fierce conflict was
raging on the front of the 3rd British Division before the 2nd Canadian
Division had taken over from them.  After the fighting at the Bluff in
February and March, it had been determined that the V Corps should
assault the enemy's position at St. Eloi, and this attack had no doubt
originally been intended to be the business of the corps concerned.
[Sidenote: _Mar. 27th, 1916._] For other reasons, which it is not
necessary to relate here, the Canadians were brought up half-way
through the intended action, which began on March 27th.  The strategic
reasons for a move on the British front in answer to Verdun have been
indicated; the tactical reasons for a change in the _personnel_ of the
line were strong.

None the less, the obvious disadvantage of changing the higher command
in the middle of an action would have been overwhelming but for one
single reason.  The mineshaft and the mines, the explosion of which
would hurl the charge, were by the end of March ready for use.  Every
hour's delay meant a risk of their discovery and a counter-explosion by
the enemy, when the labours of weeks would have been lost for ever.  In
these difficult and conflicting circumstances it was decided by the
higher authorities to send the 3rd British Division to the attack
opposite St. Eloi, and to bring the Canadian 2nd Division up to their
support and relief as soon as the first stage of the fighting was over.

On the night of March 27th the mines were exploded, with cataclysmic
effect, and six huge craters full of dead or wounded Germans took the
place of the enemy's front trenches.  The Northumberlands and the Royal
Fusiliers of a British Division were over the parapet in a moment and
dashed on the shattered enemy position.  A heavy barrage of artillery
fire was kept up by the various divisional artillery brigades to
prevent the counter-attack; in this the Canadians took their share, as
the Commander of the V Corps telegraphed in the following message:--


    "The handling of the trench mortars reflected the greatest credit
    on the officers and men concerned."


In the meantime, the 4th Canadian Brigade had been giving most valuable
assistance in linking up the right of the attacking regiments with the
old line.  They had driven a communication trench during the four days
of doubtful fighting through from the trenches on the right of the St.
Eloi position to the new line--and it was christened forthwith "The
Canadian Trench."  Further demonstrations were made by our infantry up
and down their front and were duly and generously acknowledged as
before by our brothers-in-arms of the V Corps.  "Thank you very much
for all the most valuable help you are giving.  Your assistance has
contributed very largely to the success which we have achieved."  But
the attack of the Northumberlands, though it had attained its immediate
objective, had not been uniformly successful.  It had begun to
encounter all those difficulties which were to confront the 6th
Canadian Brigade.  The centre attack went right through the crumbled
_débris_ of the craters, and a position was established some two
hundred yards south of them and four hundred yards in advance of the
old British line.  The 3rd Division fought throughout with the greatest
gallantry and resolution.  On the right, the efforts of the 4th
Canadian Brigade succeeded finally in establishing touch, but the left
remained in the air, and Crater 5, the easternmost of the big craters,
was still in the enemy's hands.  [Sidenote: _April 2nd, 1916._]
Finally, after four days' fighting, it was necessary to make what was
practically a renewed assault on April 2nd and clear the enemy out of
the debatable area.  This was done with the utmost gallantry by the 3rd
British Division and a new line well beyond the craters finally
established.  But this last effort absolutely exhausted the energy of
the troops concerned.  They had fought like heroes, but there are
limits to human endurance, and it was imperative to bring up the
Canadians to their support.  A considerable number of German prisoners
passed through the lines of the Canadian troops in support, and the
reports speak of them as fine upstanding men in the main, but too young
from our military point of view.  The Divisional Command was able to
extract from them much valuable information as to the distribution of
the German regiments.  There can be no doubt that the enemy infantry
fought well at St. Eloi, and with a nerve and initiative that they have
seldom displayed.  They may have been new troops, but they were not old
men driven on by their officers to certain death in massed formation,
and they were all the more formidable for that.

It was now necessary to move the 2nd Division into action.  The 6th
Brigade led, and the 27th and 31st Battalions were its spearhead, with
the 28th and 29th in support and reserve.  The Northumberlands had been
in the new line for about forty-eight hours, but they had been unable
to place it in a good condition for defence.  Their trenches were the
remains of German second or third line defences choked with the dead
and wounded of both combatants; their communications were only to left
and right; firing trenches or platforms there were practically none;
the earth was a sodden pulp and the skies full of falling shells; the
schemes for the reconstruction of the lines put forward by their
divisional command, wise as they were, had not been carried out owing
to extreme weariness and the want of material; the position of the
enemy was unknown, and doubt and darkness enveloped the whole
situation.  It was under this cloud of danger and uncertainty that the
6th Canadian Brigade advanced to the relief.



[1] This had consisted of the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, Lord
Strathcona's Horse, 2nd King Edward's Horse, Royal Canadian Dragoons,
and 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th Canadian Mounted Rifles.  The Fort
Garry Horse did not come out until February 24th, 1916.  Brig.-General
Seely had commanded his Brigade with marked ability, and its dispersal
was much regretted by the troops.

[2] The 3rd Divisional Train, under Lieut.-Colonel C. H. Lougheed, and
the Machine-Gun Companies accompanied the Division to France in
January, 1916.  The Divisional Signal Company was formed from units in
the field in December, 1915, and placed under the command of Major T.
E. Powers.  The Supply Column was also formed in the field.  The 9th
and 10th Field Ambulances, under Lieut.-Colonels C. A. Peters and A. W.
Tanner respectively, went to France on April 3rd, 1916 and the 8th
Field Ambulance, under Lieut.-Colonel S. W. Hewetson, followed a month
later.  The 3rd Divisional Engineers, with Lieut.-Colonel T. V.
Anderson in command, arrived at the Front early in April.

[3] These were made locally in the trenches, and consisted of about two
feet of hedge-stick, covered at the top with nails bound round with
wire.

[4] General Leckie was assisted back to safety by Major E. McCuaig, of
the 13th Battalion.  This officer, while temporarily in command of the
Battalion, subsequently repulsed a very severe German attack on the
line north of St. Eloi on April 19th, 1915.  The 13th were very heavily
bombarded, and lost 10 officers and 225 men, but held their ground.

[5] The remaining three Brigades of the 2nd Division--the 5th
(Lieut.-Colonel G. A. Carruthers), the 6th (Lieut.-Colonel W. B. M.
King), and the 7th (Lieut.-Colonel J. S. Stewart) Canadian Field
Artillery--had crossed to France in January.  The 4th Brigade C.F.A.
had been out since September, 1915.




CHAPTER V

ST. ELOI

Canadians in a serious engagement--The old German line--The new British
line--The effect of the eruption--Trenches little better than
drains--The Second Division in "No Man's Land"--The situation described
by General Turner--A gap in our line--The call for additional
guns--Welcome relief--The importance of rear exits--Evacuation of the
wounded--Our weak spot discovered--Prompt and intelligent action by
General Turner--Steadfast endurance--The bravery of Privates Smith and
Bowden--Conspicuous gallantry of Captain Meredith--Miscalculation--The
enemy dashes through the zone of our artillery--Desperate situation of
the Canadians--Communication by telephone intermittent--Confusion in
the trenches--Under bombardment for sixty hours--The enemy's artillery
preparation begins--Pandemonium inevitable--Clogged rifles and
machine-guns--A brave struggle for existence--A moment of doubt--The
enemy gains the craters--An unfortunate mistake--Unorganised
retirement--Precipitate action--A case for help--Dilemma of the Higher
Command--Trench mortars put out of action--Full story of the retirement
cut short by death--A hand-to-hand encounter--Failure less welcome than
success--Reasons for retirement only appreciated by those experienced
in trench warfare--The Fates unpropitious--The error of the
craters--Success denied though well deserved.


[Sidenote: _April 3rd, 1916._]

On the night of April 3rd began the most serious engagement in which
Canadian troops had been involved since the Second Battle of Ypres.
The 2nd Division was ordered to occupy the ground won by the 3rd
British Division in the two successive actions on March 27th and April
2nd.  To understand the protracted battle which ensued it is necessary
to have a clear grasp of the ground over which it was fought.  The
opposing lines opposite St. Eloi ran almost due east and west, instead
of the north and south frontage which marked the usual direction of
Allied and German trenches.  The old German line had been a salient
north pushed out towards St. Eloi and receding from it right and left.
The new line captured by the 3rd British Division was a salient thrust
due south into the German position and receding again slightly on its
right and abruptly on its left, to meet the old British line.  In other
words, the old British line had been the arc of a bow turned north and
the new line became the arc of a bow pushed south.  The distance
between these bows never exceeded 500 yards, and both of them were less
than 1,000 yards in length from end to end, with a direct frontage of
600 yards.  In the middle, running as the string of both concave bows
and separated by 200 or 250 yards from either old or new line, was the
original German line blown to atoms in most places and represented
throughout the centre part of its length by a series of four huge
minecraters.  These crowned the mound of St. Eloi, a rise in the ground
which dominated the surrounding country.

To hold the craters and the mound was to look down into your enemies'
trenches.  The explosion of the great mine had leapt to heaven in a
colossal shower of yellow smoke and _débris_; it could be seen from
miles away and shook the earth like the sudden outburst of a volcano.
The effects of the eruption on a narrow space of 600 yards were
tremendous.  Trenches on both sides collapsed like packs of cards under
the shock; old landmarks were blotted out, and right in the centre of
the arc of the bow stretched a line of huge tumbled _débris_.  In front
lay the new trenches captured by the 3rd British Division on April 2nd.
Behind lay the remains of the old line, while the crater stood as an
almost impassable bar between troops holding the one and troops holding
the other.  To get to the new front trench, you had to enter it from
the left or the right, and a line to which supports cannot be brought
up from the rear is always in grave danger.  So much for the general
position; its particular features have yet to be considered.

We have learned from a study of the French reports at Verdun what can
be effected by concentrated artillery fire on a selected area.  The
frontage at St. Eloi was that of 600 to 1,000 yards, and against it was
directed for over three weeks a colossal concentration of German fire,
answered shell for shell by our own artillery.  Under the combined
efforts of the artillery of both sides and the result of the mine
explosions, the whole face of the country was altered.  The "high hills
were laid low and the valleys were exalted" until an officer of the 3rd
British Division who had stayed behind to assist the newcomers, twice
confessed himself utterly unable to recognise the ground destroyed by
man as bearing any resemblance to the ground he had known designed by
Nature.

In this change will be found the explanation of much that followed.
But there was to be added another cause, the inclemency of the weather.
In this battered soil was nothing but mud.  Every shellhole was a pond,
every step might lead one up to the waist in the sticky element, and
earthworks fell in from the flood as much as from the shell-fire of the
enemy.  It is then under a doubtful star that we must conceive of the
whole action being fought.  The trenches in the first firing line were
little better than scattered drains--behind was the crater
barrier--underfoot were the mud and the water, and above the unceasing
whine of the shells.  The air was heavy with a damp mist, even by day,
and by night all objects were magnified and uncertain till a shell-hole
appeared a crater, an advance of fifty yards like one of 500 yards, and
an hour grew into years!  The battle was fought in "No Man's Land"--a
_débris_ of shattered trees, sudden pool-holes, and upraised earth,
"where no man comes, nor hath come since the making of the world."

[Illustration: Map--St. Eloi area]

Into this area the 2nd Division came on the night of 3rd April.  The
6th Brigade, under Brigadier-General Ketchen, took over the immediate
front, while the 5th and 4th Brigades were in reserve.  The post of
honour was given to the 27th (Winnipeg) Battalion, commanded by
Lieut.-Col. Snider, on the right of the line and to the 31st. (Alberta)
Battalion, under Lieut.-Col. Bell, on the left.  The 29th (Vancouver)
Battalion, under Lieut.-Col. Tobin, was in support of the 27th, while
the 28th (North-West) under Lieut.-Col. Embury, occupied a position
behind the craters and in the centre, with its left supporting the
31st.  It is on the first two regiments that attention must be
concentrated for the moment, for they had to occupy the southern thrust
of the line and to file into their new positions from the old line on
either flank.

A glance at the map will show the position, while Gen. Turner has given
a lucid description of the state of the various defences three hours
after the men were in.  From the right of the old British line, the
Canadian communication trench, built by the 4th Canadian Brigade--as
elsewhere mentioned--broke straight out to the left and ran east with a
touch of south, until it met the original German firing trench at a
point known as Sackville Centre, of which we shall hear more in the
future.  The General described it as 250 yards in length, "a wet,
shallow communication trench."  This was held by a company of the 27th,
under Lieut. Wilson.  Continuing to our left the line crossed the first
of the two roads (that to Wytschaete) which run from north to south and
meet in St. Eloi; here the front, after going south-east for about
fifty yards, swung round due east until it reached Bathurst Butts, near
the second road; it then bent sharply north, so as to complete the
salient by striking the old German firing trench again at Campbelltown
Corner.[1]  This bit was about 540 yards in length, and consisted of a
deep _untraversed_ firing trench, with a few firing platforms _facing
north_: that is, the wrong way.[2]  Apparently the 3rd British Division
had been unable to turn it about after they took it by storm.  The last
two hundred yards were--adds the General--badly battered.  The frontage
was fairly evenly divided between two companies of the 27th.  The
left-hand company thus secured the most shaky point in the frontage--a
200 yards which proved a miniature gap of Alsace to the Germans.  From
Campbelltown Corner to the original British line the circuit was
completed by one company of the 31st.  Here the old British line
continued due east to the canal and was occupied by two more companies
of the 31st, with a third in support.

Machine-guns were also posted at intervals along the line.  It was
found necessary, owing to the extent to which these were being
constantly put out of action, to call for additional guns.  These were
supplied by the 5th Brigade, the 22nd, 24th, 25th, and 26th each
sending up a Lewis gun and team; but they were not available till the
night of the 5th just before the German attack, when they were posted
by Lieut. McLorg, of the 28th.

The relief, in the language of the official reports, was successfully
concluded during the night of the 3rd and 4th.  How much doubt, how
much discomfort, how much danger a single sentence can cover!  As the
Canadians slipped and struggled along the wretched drains, or clambered
over the places where shell-fire had destroyed them, they found
everywhere the men of the 61st British Brigade, 3rd British Division in
a state of considerable exhaustion.  They had been fighting what was
practically a continuous general action for five days under terrific
shell-fire.  The last push, which had driven the Germans 200 or 250
yards south of the craters, left the British in such casual shelter as
they could obtain, encumbered with the dead on both sides and with
their own wounded, whom they were unable to evacuate.  A firing trench
with no direct way in or out from the rear exposes its occupants to
every horror and hardship and danger.  The supply of food, water, and
ammunition, is intermittent and uncertain, while the knowledge that
supports may take hours to come up in case of attack is added to the
mental torture and physical staleness induced by a persistent
bombardment by heavy guns.  But the presence of wounded men in a
crowded trench passes the limit of horror.  The dreadful nature of the
injuries inflicted by high explosive, the irrepressible cries and moans
of pain; the impossibility of bringing relief to the sufferers form a
combination of sight, sound and sensation which if protracted for many
hours absolutely unnerves the unwounded survivors and forms the
nightmare of their sleep for years.

[Sidenote: _April 3rd and 4th, 1916._]

Even with fair weather and solid defences a night relief has its
trials; under the conditions of the night of April 3rd, its success was
an achievement.  As the 27th (Winnipeg) and the 31st (Alberta)
succeeded to this bed of thorns, in the pitch dark of night, they
discovered that the officers of the 61st (British) Brigade, through no
fault of theirs, but owing to the lie of the ground and the conditions
of the assault, could tell them practically nothing of the whereabouts
of the enemy.  They looked out into a noisy darkness which covered the
Unknown.  Such a state of affairs is by no means uncommon in trench
warfare.  Furthermore, while the line throughout could nowhere be held
continuously, that portion of it between Bathurst Butts near the second
road, and Campbelltown Corner could only be held by small bombing posts
linked together by visiting patrols.  By daylight it was altogether
untenable for any body of men in sufficient number to resist a resolute
attack.  There was thus a gap sparsely and insecurely occupied by
patrols of the 27th between the left of that regiment and the right of
the 31st Battalion.  This was the joint in the harness, and against it
the Germans directed a continuous shower of heavy explosives.

It was obvious to the Higher Command that if the position was to be
made secure or even tenable, a drastic scheme of consolidation must be
set on foot.  General Turner grasped the situation firmly and clearly;
and after consulting General Haldane (3rd British Division) put forward
the following plan.  He proposed to repair the front line, to dig
communication trenches through the intervals between the craters, so as
to link old and new lines together, to make good the damage done to the
old line, and finally to dig another trench about halfway between the
firing line and the craters where supports could be kept handy.  Dummy
trenches were also to be made in the lips of the crater and both lines
wired.  The work was carried out by small parties, one N.C.O. and a few
men of the 28th, centre support battalion, and most of them were
overwhelmed by the German onrush on the morning of April 6th.

This plan would have saved the situation had time or opportunity been
given to carry it out, but the Fates ruled otherwise.

The first thing to do was to evacuate the British wounded, and this
gruesome task was accomplished during the morning to the accompaniment
of heavy shelling, which began at ten o'clock and lasted at intervals
nearly all day.  Lieut. McCaw and his company, holding the bad part of
the line, endured, without shifting an inch, a terrible bombardment
which destroyed the greater part of their position from under their
very feet.  Out of the 90 men present (for 40 had been sent back as
there was no cover for them), 67 were killed or wounded--a notable
example of endurance.  The trenches were blown out of existence and men
lay down in the open under what cover they could find.  As one wounded
man was seen to fall, Private Smith dashed out to render first aid
under the shower of high explosives; he was himself struck down at
once.  Private Bowden went in his turn to the two men, dressed their
wounds, and remained with them until they both died, with no cover
against the rain of shell except a shovel over his head.

Wading in many places waist-deep in the mud, Capt. Meredith, of the
27th, who behaved with conspicuous coolness and gallantry in the action
which ensued, found that the day's bombardment had practically wiped
out the position he was to occupy.  There was a little cover on the
right, just east of the second road; but to the left, in the Gap
itself, it was impossible to do more than put out isolated groups of
sentries and bombers, to crouch in shell holes, or behind improvised
shelters, and trust that one would not be observed.  A single fact
speaks volumes; although Capt. Meredith had only 110 men for his
company, it was found impossible to get cover by daylight for more than
a few isolated posts, and the remainder of the men had to be sent back
in the early morning of April 5th, to come up again on their weary
journey as soon as it was dark.  There was, in a word, no longer a line
for over 250 yards of the front.  Some 40 men were trying to hold the
position of a strong company of 200.

[Sidenote: _Night, April 5th and 6th, 1916._]

On the following night, that of the 5th and 6th, it was decided to
relieve the two sorely-beset companies of the 27th.  Capt. Gwynn, of
the 29th Battalion, was to take over from Capt. Meredith the left of
the line, and Lieut. O'Brien, of the same regiment, was to relieve the
company of the 27th on the right.  It was during the concluding stages
of this relief that the German attack took place.  The blasting fire of
our artillery had been well maintained on the German second and third
line trenches, and it was supposed that this barrage[3] had proved
effective in preventing any considerable force of the enemy reaching
through to their own front line.  This did not prove to be the case.
The German 214th Battalion, with some units of the 216th,
had--according to the accounts of prisoners--succeeded in passing
through the barrage into the front line, from which they launched their
assault.

On the night of the 5th, the Germans had dashed through the zone of our
artillery fire in a succession of small parties in extended order, and
had thus, by choosing their occasions, escaped with comparatively small
casualties, and massed in strength within striking distance of our
front.  It may be said that throughout the action the Germans showed a
far greater aptitude for fighting in small parties than is usual with
them, and that they nowhere attempted the mass formation attack which
has generally been a prelude to their defeat.

But while the Germans are forming up for the assault at dawn, we must
return to the fortunes of the Canadians.  The working parties are out
for the second night in succession, and a strong second line trench
with barbed wire entanglements has been constructed in front and south
of the craters.  Behind and north of the craters a third supporting
line is being dug, while the reliefs of the 29th are struggling up
through the delays of mud and barrage to reach the battered 27th.

[Sidenote: _Night, April 5th and 6th, 1916._]

Capt. Gwynn, of the 29th, had already been informed that the left of
his line would only be occupied by machine-guns, bombing, and sentry
posts, and with some 40 men, picked out for these danger posts, he went
on ahead of the remainder of his company and found Capt. Meredith near
Bathurst Butts at 2 o'clock on the morning of the 6th.  The position
was rapidly becoming desperate.  One of Capt. Meredith's subalterns,
Lieut. Dunlop, had been out under a rain of shells to try to find the
original line to the left, held by the 31st, and the posts holding it.
He returned to say that he could find no vestige of either the trench
or the posts.  Everything had been wiped out; and two machine-guns and
their crews perished with the exception of a single man, who crawled
back wounded hours after.  A party of the 31st who had made a similar
attempt to keep connection from their right, returned with the same
news.  Under the circumstances, Capt. Meredith could supply no guides
into the unoccupied chaos of shell-holes which represented his left,
and the two officers having completed their relief in the small
fraction of surviving trench, returned to the nearest telephone, at
Fredericton Fort, to get orders from the Colonel of the 29th Battalion.
It was at this point in the line alone that the telephone was working,
and that only intermittently, in spite of the heroic conduct of the
signallers in going out into the open again and again to repair the
shattered wires.  Lieutenant Browne of the 22nd (French Canadians), of
the 4th Brigade, with his machine-gun party, remained behind with the
40 men of the 29th on the left of Bathurst Butts.  The two officers and
the men who had been relieved reached Fredericton Fort successfully at
about 2.45 a.m., and found there several officers of the 27th, and also
Lieut. O'Brien of the 29th, who was trying to relieve Lieut. Wilson's
company of the 27th.  Less fortunate than Capt. Gwynn, he had not
succeeded in finding the officer he was to replace, but none the less
he appears to have got his men somewhere near the trench he was to
occupy.  This place he found full of stray units, ration-carrying
parties of the 27th, many of whom had lost their way, and having placed
his men in position, he also returned to the telephone at Fredericton
Fort in the hope of finding someone in authority.

The Canadian communication trench was by this time practically
abandoned under heavy shell-fire.  For the rest, then, one must
conceive the remains of the front line as held, where there was any
cover, by isolated groups of the 29th, intermingled here and there with
men of the 27th who had not been relieved or who had missed their way,
and with a gaping space on the left.  Beyond this, the line on the left
still held firm for the moment.

The 27th Battalion, the relief of which was by now more or less
complete, had suffered a terrible experience.  It had been almost
continuously under heavy shell fire in hopeless trenches for about
sixty hours, during which sleep, rest, or refreshment had been
practically out of the question.  Major Kitson had conducted the
defence of the first line with skill and judgment, and the Company
Commanders, Capt. Meredith, Lieut. McCaw, Lieut. Wilson, and their
subalterns had shown great courage and coolness in the face of adverse
circumstances.  Lieut. R. E. N. Jones, of the same battalion, met a
gallant death in the early morning of the attack in an attempt to keep
touch with and collect the left of the regiment during the retirement.
He went out into the open under a terrific fire and was killed almost
instantly.

[Sidenote: _April 6th, 3 A.M._]

It was by now three o'clock of a misty morning; and as the officers
around the telephone dug-out discovered that the line was cut, and were
taking counsel together, the German artillery preparation began.

The shelling--heavy but intermittent--rose to a roar and the night
overhead became pandemonium, while the ground underneath shook with the
concussion or dissolved under the explosions.  Officers endeavoured to
rejoin their units, but it most cases found it impossible, and every
group turned to their official or natural leader for orders.  It is
easy for those whose experience of the movements of bodies of men is
confined to reviews in peace time, or to the organisation of a big
political demonstration, to consider that this state of affairs is not
to be expected of an army.  Such a view simply springs from ignorance
of conditions.  Not here was a broad plain, smiling in the sun, on
which battalions could be moved with uniformity; or the familiar
pavements, where every street turning is known to the marshals of the
delegations; not here the frictionless chess-board of the war game,
with its moves pondered silently long in advance.  The ground on which
to move is certain death; the shattered and almost impassable trenches;
the vast distance away in time of any supports; the blindness in the
sense of direction which affects nearly every man on unknown country in
the dark; the line of craters behind and the noise of the shells
overhead: these are the elements making up the picture of the situation
which, on that April morning, the 6th Canadian Brigade had to face.
The rifles and machine-guns on which armed men are accustomed to depend
for their lives, were half-clogged and useless.  The very position of
the enemy was unknown.  But the native hardihood of the race asserted
itself; groups made up of every unit formed themselves for the struggle
f

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