Part 1

Produced by Al Haines.

IN THE YPRES SALIENT

THE STORY OF A FORTNIGHT'S CANADIAN FIGHTING JUNE 2-16, 1916.

BY

BECKLES WILLSON,

_Author of "Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal," "The Romance of Canada" etc., etc._

SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON KENT & CO. LTD. 4 STATIONERS' HALL COURT : : LONDON, E.C.

*IN THE YPRES SALIENT.*

Long after the issue of minor engagements in this War are forgotten, and when everybody has ceased to care whether at any moment we gained or lost a hundred yards of ground or a mile of trench, the memory of how the Canadians fought against hopeless odds near Hooge will be remembered, and Canada will be proud and the Empire will be proud of these men. Nor will Canada or the Empire ever forget--what every neutral in the world should be told to-day--how the Germans called these men cowards.

_The Times, June_ 12, 1916.

*AVANT-PROPOS.*

Je saisis cette occasion pour rendre un nouveau hommage a l'armee britannique, dont la longue et heroique resistance a rendu notre ville inviolee. Si Ypres a ete detruite par les barbares germains en haine d'Angleterre, notre magnanime protectrice, nous avons l'espoir que, grace a votre pays, la ville martyre ressuscitera aussi belle, si non aussi prospere, qu'elle le fut aux siecles de sa splendeur. Deja nous avons un Vicomte d'Ypres portant un nom anglais! deja des hommes genereux de votre pays songent a faire reconstruire nos splendides monuments. Pourquoi ne pourrions nous pas esperer que le sol d'Ypres, arrose du sang de vos enfants et ou reposent vos heros morts pour nous, verra prochainement surgir une ville digne du nom Anglais et de notre ancienne renommee?

To the Memory

OF

MAJOR-GENERAL MALCOLM SMITH MERCER, C.B.

*PREFATORY NOTE ON THE SALIENT*

On October 16th, 1914, the Ypres Salient, the theatre of three of the most deadly and critical battles in this War, was born. Up to that date the area it comprises--a few thousand acres at most--was merely a tract of well-tilled Flemish meadowland, with patches of forest and here and there a village or hamlet.

Ten weeks before the Germans had invaded Belgium, and in the fateful and anxious time which followed, the Belgians had been pressed slowly back, those who had not been utterly crushed. Antwerp fell, and a mighty German host, foiled in its advance southward to Paris, was moving relentlessly towards the sea-coast, destroying and desolating the land as it came.

A newly-landed British force advanced to check them and to take up a position in the long line of Allied troops. This force, the 7th Division, under Major-General Capper, and the 3rd Cavalry Division, commanded by Major-General the Hon. Julian Byng, marching through the quaint old Flemish city of Ypres, penetrated to a point six miles beyond the British, French, and Belgian alignment as it ran north and south. There they halted, their ranks causing the Allied front to project forward a bold "salient," or peninsula, on the map. To crush that salient--to flatten out that line at any cost--instantly became the aim of the enemy. Consequently, he flung himself on the point of the Salient (which was then Becelaere) and the fierce and bloody First Battle of Ypres was the result. It lasted from October 20th to November 11th. On October 30th the Kaiser told his troops that they must break through the line to Ypres, and to the Bavarian Crown Prince he said: "Take Ypres, or die." He considered the attack to be "of vital importance to the successful issue of the war." It was then that we became familiar with the names of these little villages and hamlets, first drenched with blood and then crumbled to dust, Zonnebeke, Zillebeke, Wytschaete, Hooge, Langemarcke, and the rest; with those fields, woods, and hillocks which have then and since seen some of the most terrible slaughter and the most gallant deeds in all military history, and where lie to-day more than one hundred thousand of our British dead. The enemy recoiled, bruising his legions against the sharpness of the Salient, and his failure marked a notable stage in the progress of the War.

For six months the two hostile armies faced one another in the crescent line of trenches defending Ypres towards the east. Spring came, and on April 22nd the Second Battle of Ypres began, lasting until May 13th, only two days less than the first. In that second action the Canadians won deathless renown. They had then only a single division at the front, commanded by Lieutenant-General Alderson, and at the end of February were entrusted with the task of defending the north-eastern segment of the Salient. Two days before the battle the bombardment of Ypres re-began--a bombardment which did not cease until the picturesque little city was a shapeless heap of ruins. While the shells rained upon Ypres, the Germans let loose the hideous fumes of poison gas upon the French trenches, causing a four mile breach in the line, into which the foe came pouring.

But the Canadians, staggering under the crushing weight of the artillery assault, held firm. Although the losses of the British were appalling, and the Salient was blunted a little, the path to Calais through Ypres was still barred.

In the thirteen months which followed there was constant bombardment and much intermittent fighting, sometimes, as at St. Eloi last March, fierce and bloody. But the Salient was held fast; more and more was it consecrated by heroic deeds, as

A corner of a foreign field That is for ever England.

"When," wrote a gifted English chronicler,[#] many months ago, "the War is over, this triangle of meadowland, with a ruined city for its base, will be an enclave of Belgian soil consecrated as the holy land of two great peoples. It may be that it will be specially set apart as a memorial place; it may be that it will be unmarked, and that the countryfolk will till and reap as before over the vanishing trench lines. But it will never be common ground. It will be for us the most hallowed spot on earth, for it holds our bravest dust, and it is the proof and record of a new spirit. In the past, when we have thought of Ypres, we have thought of the British flag preserved there, which Clare's Regiment, fighting for France, captured at the Battle of Ramillies; the name of the little Flemish town has recalled the divisions in our own race and the centuries-old conflict between France and Britain. But from now and henceforth it will have other memories. It will stand as a symbol of unity and alliance, unity within our Empire, unity within our Western civilisation, that true alliance and that lasting unity which are won and sealed by a common sacrifice."

[#] Mr. John Buchan.

Once again, foiled in his designs on Verdun, the greatest battlefield of the War, the enemy, perhaps for the last time, sought to wrest this sacred ground, the Ypres Salient and Ypres itself from our hands. This time the Canadians had three divisions in the fighting-line. The Corps commander, on the 2nd of June last, when the German fury burst forth anew, was that same General (now Sir) Julian Byng who had first, in October, 1914, at the head of his cavalry troops, marked out the frontiers of the Salient.

What happened in this Third Battle, which began on June 2nd, and may be said to have finished June 16th, when we regained the ground lost at the outset, is imperfectly related in the following pages. It was written from day to day by one who was on the spot, and so may serve to convey to the reader something of the spirit with which our Canadians fought, and may also suggest a reason for their pride in having again successfully held the Salient against the foe.

_It is said that Ypres and the Salient are chiefly retained for sentimental reasons. This is true, in the sense that this whole War was avowedly waged, in the first instance, for sentimental reasons._

_Not long ago a French general said to me that the Germans were attacking Verdun, and the French were defending it, not for strategical, but for political and dynastic reasons. "If they took Verdun to-morrow, they could not advance, but to lose Verdun would be for France a blow over the heart."_

_If we have pledged our honour to Belgium, we are pledged to the hilt to guard the soil of Ypres inviolate from the heel of the living enemy. It is only a heap of ruins, but it is an eternal memorial of British valour. It is only a shell-swept graveyard, but the graves are those of our heroic dead._

_To abandon Ypres now would tarnish our banners. It would be like offering our sister for violation because she had been bruised and buffeted with stones._

_Military strategy very properly takes into account political and moral prestige, and to "straighten out the Salient" by the voluntary abandonment of a single mile of ground would inflict upon us a moral and political loss equal to an army corps. If Ypres goes, Belgium goes, and if Belgium goes, whatever the final issue, something of glory passes from the Allied arms._

_It is a terrible responsibility to stand steadfast, but every soldier who has died in the Ypres Salient has yielded his life to protect his country's honour. Vulnerable the Salient may be, but our troops are invulnerable. While they continue so, Ypres and this little remaining fragment of Belgian soil and the path to Calais are safe._

*IN THE YPRES SALIENT*

*I.*

*WITH THE BRITISH ARMY IN THE FIELD,*

_June 3rd._

From the summit of the Scherpenburg the eye sweeps over a low-lying, gently undulating tract of country chequered by field and copse and traversed by roads. On the extreme left the crumbling towers of the city of Ypres upstand white in the morning sunlight. Far on the right the spires and chimneys of Menin loom on the distant horizon, Between these two points in the range of vision a broad swathe of naked red earth, torn and fretted and pitted with "craters," marks the eastern and southern boundary line of the bloodiest battlefield of the War--the Ypres Salient. The northern portion of this famous area, which is almost exactly bisected by the Menin road, is hidden behind the city. Here are Langemarcke, St. Julien, St. Jean, and Zonnebeke, the scene of Canadian valour thirteen months ago in the Second Battle of Ypres; the segment we now overlook touches just east of Hooge and curves along past Zillebeke, St. Eloi and Hill 60, which is the south-western extremity of the Salient.

When the sun rose on Friday, June 2nd, the whole of this part of the Front, from the battered little hamlet of Hooge on the north to Hill 60 on the south, and passing through Sanctuary Wood, a distance, roughly, of a couple of miles, was held by 20,000 soldiers from the Overseas West. They were drawn from all classes--ranchers, farmers, miners, merchants and clerks from Winnipeg, Calgary, and Vancouver. There was a sprinkling of professional soldiers. Some hailed from Toronto, and others from as far East as Montreal. On their extreme left, where it linked up with a British Division, was a famous regiment whose deeds have already thrilled the Empire, which, repeatedly shattered, has returned again and again to take up a post of danger on the firing-line. The two divisions to which all these troops belong have been serving in the Salient for months, watching eagerly and ardently every move of the enemy's game. What that game was every man knew well. It was to push past them and gain that tragedy-haunted grey heap of crumbling masonry whose name is already writ large on the page of Canadian history. This they were--each man of them--pledged to frustrate to the last drop of his life's blood. Were the Germans to break through here, all the efforts of our race for nineteen months would be as naught, all the valour and sacrifice would be in vain.

For weeks there had been a lull in the artillery fire, which is generally heavy in this sector. Battalions weary with work and tension came in and out, as they were relieved or went to relieve. Yet uppermost in every man's mind was this: When will the next offensive come, and where? Twice the Germans have come on in smashing force to blot out the Ypres Salient from the war map--two deadly battles have been fought. Am I fated to take part in a third?

For several days it had not gone unobserved that the enemy was unusually active in pushing forward saps and trenches towards the centre of this line. It has since been asked: Did the General in command of the Third Canadian Division suspect that something unusual was impending? If his suspicions were aroused, the Germans had worked in impenetrable secrecy, and even the reports of his advanced scouts and of the Army aerial reconnaisance could not have told him that on this brilliant June morning behind those hostile parapets, from one to three hundred yards away, the Hun had been for weeks massing his artillery--guns of every age, shape, and calibre, but chiefly the terrible 5.9 naval guns (the "Silent Lizzies" which our men have learnt to dread), and howitzers, mountains of shells, pyramids of bombs. Long rows of German gunners along those two miles of front to-day awaited the signal, and the hour for the signal had come. It is stated that this divisional commander, the gallant General Mercer, ever alert, often astir soon after daybreak, never before had gone forward to the front trenches at so early an hour as six o'clock. Small wonder, therefore, that his appearance there caused comment. He was accompanied by his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Gooderham, and was met by Brigadier-General Victor Williams, commanding the brigade then holding the front trenches. These, in company with Colonels Shaw and Ussher, made the inspection.

The soil hereabouts is loose, damp, and sandy, and only by rigid care and incessant exertions can the trenches be maintained in effectiveness. After breakfast the men were observed to be everywhere in high spirits, and went about their tasks of digging, repairing, rifle cleaning, and general tidying up with unusual good humour. General Mercer entered a number of the observation stations and officers' dug-outs and examined machine-gun emplacements with care. The day's work had begun well--all were at their appointed posts. Occasionally a sniper's rifle rang out, or a shrapnel shell burst harmlessly overhead. A soldier told me he was watching a flight of birds immediately above him in the clear blue sky, when lo! "the Thing" happened. This man did not see the sky again for hours, and when he did he was on his back, being borne on a stretcher to the rear.

It was the lull before the storm. For at ten minutes to nine o'clock, without any warning, hell broke loose. The detonation, from being stunning, grew absolutely overwhelming. It did not come from one part, but from the whole length of the opposing line opposite the Canadian Third Division. It not only deafened the ear and paralysed the nerves, but darkened the firmament. For the next hour or two dazed men groped about in the storm, unable to hear any word of command from their officers, clutching their rifles, trying to save the surrounding earth from engulfing them, waiting for what was to happen. The two Generals, attempting to reach the communication trench, found their retreat cut off.

At the outset it appears that no shells, or very few, fell into the front trenches, and the machine gunners and trench-mortar men held to their posts. But behind our front line a high wall of descending shells, screaming, crashing, exploding, emitting clouds of noxious smoke, shut off chance of escape by the communication trenches and all hope of support and succour, from the reserve trenches in the rear. Moments passed that seemed hours, and then the iron and steel missiles began to rain down and explode in the front line, scattering death and destruction. Nothing could live for long in such a tempest. The sides of the trenches began to crumble and fall in. Yet by a miracle our men held on, darting from one devastated section to another in order to gain refuge.

Beginning with Hooge, which was held--600 yards of front--by the men of the Royal Canadian Regiment, there came a fifty yards' gap in the line, low-lying sodden ground which was undefended--it being thought it might prove a trap for the Germans; then came the section of front held by the Princess Patricia's, which included the embowed hollow known as the "Appendix" (only forty yards from the German trenches) and the Loop. On their right was a brigade of the Canadian Mounted Rifles, who defended a portion of Sanctuary and Armagh Woods.

In the fatal Loop was stationed a whole company of Princess Patricia's Light Infantry. As the men hung on there, grim and expectant, there was a terrific explosion. When the flying fragments had subsided, a watcher from a balloon would have seen only a jagged and enormous crater--awful in its stillness. The Loop had been mined by the enemy, and the entire company of brave men had perished. Another monstrous German mine exploded, but with less deadly effect.

By this time all the communication trenches were battered flat. Orders had somehow been conveyed to the troops to flee for their lives, and some few hundreds attempted to beat a retreat through the deadly barrage. Only a handful of them got through. The majority of the survivors stayed on the ground or hid in such refuge as they could find. One--two--three hours passed; not for a moment--not for a single second did the hideous thunder slacken.

It was now that there took place in the intervening ground between the enemy's barrage and our own a thousand struggles between brave men palpitating with health and life and hundreds of merciless hidden machines belching forth fragments of insensate metal. For this is the essence and image of modern warfare. It was flesh and blood grappling with lead and iron.

On our own side the sound of our artillery was indistinguishable; but a great volume of British shells did pierce that infernal barrage and crash eastward into the German line. Once, it is related, two shells from opposing sides collided in mid-air with a shriek like a woman in agony. Our gunners worked madly, and it is certain they wrought havoc amongst the enemy. But they were severely handicapped. It was an unequal contest. The Germans seemed to know the position of every Canadian battery, and all of these got their share of the enemy's attention.

In the intervening territory many gallant men were ministering to the wounded who, torn, splintered, and bleeding, lay strewn upon the ground. Stretcher-bearers were moving backwards and forwards as though their nerves were of steel. Officers were huddling their men together in places of uncertain sanctuary. Colonel Shaw, of the Canadian Mounted Rifles, directed eighty of his men to Cumberland dug-outs--a little shallow square. When it became too hot there, he forced them all out through a gap and bade them run for their lives. He himself refused to leave his wounded men, and remained there valiantly at his post until a shell struck him and he was killed.

Seventy yards from this spot was the dressing-station of the battalion. Here the medical officer in charge toiled unceasingly all through that terrible morning, the wounded coming to him, some crawling on hands and knees, by scores. Before the war Captain Haight was a jovial ship's surgeon on a steamer plying between Vancouver and Honolulu. He was a man of infinite courage--"nothing ever rattled him or upset his temper," said one survivor to me. When the dressing-station was shelled, he moved with his assistant, Lieutenant Atkinson, calmly and coolly to another on more exposed ground, and continued his humane work to the last, when he was dispatched by a bayonet in the most revolting manner.

Another officer, Captain Harper, who hailed from Kamsack, in distant Saskatchewan, was ministering to an officer and three desperately wounded men. He refused to leave them when the lull came and the Germans were seen advancing, although they urged him to do so. "I said I'd stand by you boys," he said, "and I will." A few minutes later and he, too, was gone.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the barrage, two battalions of desperate men were watching for a chance to cleave their way through to their comrades in peril. But there was little hope that any in the front line of trenches survived.

It was now ten minutes to one o'clock. After four hours' steady bombardment the storm of shell ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Forthright from the opposite trenches sprang a swarm of grey-coated Huns. They must have been firmly convinced that amidst those rugged, battered, seared, and bloody mounds and ditches, which four hours before had been the British trenches, not one single soul had escaped. Fully accoutred and with overcoats and full haversacks, they advanced in high spirits. Apart from a few bombers, not a man of those advancing hordes appears to have been in proper fighting trim. They came forward gaily, light-heartedly, as victors after a victory.

It was then the most wonderful thing of the day happened. Out of the earth there leapt a handful of wild-eyed soldiers, two officers amongst them, pale, muddied and reeking with sweat, who, running forward with upraised rifles and pistols, bade defiance to the oncoming foe. On they ran, and having discharged their weapons, flung them in the very faces of the Huns. Death was inevitable for these--the only surviving occupants of the British front line--and it was better to die thus, breathing defiance to a cowardly enemy, than be shot in a ditch and spitted through with a Hun bayonet. Thus they perished.

Few but the wounded fell into the hands of the enemy. A Toronto officer, himself in the very thick of the fight, and performing wonders of valour, told me that he had last seen General Mercer sitting dazed and wounded on the ground, just as the shell fire ceased and the Germans were advancing. Amongst the prisoners were General Williams and Colonel Ussher, both of whom were lying in a communication trench at "Vigo Street." General Williams was wounded in the face.

The cessation of fire was the signal for the Canadian supports to hasten forward to meet the enemy, who was now advancing in force and bringing up his machine-gunners and bombers. The battalion holding Maple Copse became planted firmly and refused to budge, and having dug itself in, held that position all day. Colonel Baker, M.P., of the Mounted Rifles, was unhappily hit by shell in the lungs, and died later in the day. The Princess Patricia's fought with their accustomed gallantry, led by the brave Colonel Buller, lately Military Secretary to H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught, and helped, although at terrible cost, to check the further German advance.

Buller, his blood up, seeing his men giving way a little, ordered them to charge along a trench known as Gordon Road. They obeyed with a rush, and, not to impede their onset, Buller leapt up on to the edge of the trench and ran forward, crying: "On, boys, on! Break them to pieces!"

He was thus encouraging them when a bullet pierced his heart.