Part 3

Another officer of the same battalion said that the bombing battalion on their right did its work very effectively, and kept the Germans on Hill 60 well occupied. After reaching the objective, this battalion had some stiff fighting on the extreme right, the Germans counter-attacking with bombs. But soon the old British line was made tenable with sandbags. The Germans came back twice, and had to be bombed out of the German front line, and even then some came back again. After the last trench had been taken, the Germans shelled it heavily, and there were many casualties. The men behaved with great gallantry, and were crazy to reach the German trenches. At one time four different men of the battalion went out of the trench after a wounded comrade, and all were killed in the attempt to save him. The wounded man was subsequently brought in at night.

"Lord, it was fine," relates still another officer who was in the thick of the fighting. "I could feel that terrible fretting of the past week just oozing out as the boys jumped the parapets and smashed across to where our old first line had been. I don't think anything could have stopped them. I didn't get in with the first bunch, because my company was held on the edge, watching for the counter-attack, if it came too soon for our fellows to make a stand.

"When we got going we went through the Germans like a knife through cheese. They didn't know what to do with us but throw down their rifles and bolt, or hold up their hands. They said we ran. You should have seen them skedoodle for home and ma, what didn't throw themselves on the ground and beg to be taken. We went clean to the old line, and captured some hundreds of prisoners. Our artillery had kept them from doing much in the digging-in line, and so we had a chance to slam them good and plenty. And you bet we did.

"Then we had to take ours. They had the range of us to a nicety, and they gave us particular hell with shell-fire for days before and during the assault. When we went up and took over the line from the assaulting troops, we had to take another dose of iron which the Huns put on while they were getting their counter-attack ready. But the counter-attack never came off--at least, not what we'd call an attack. Our artillery got them in the belt and cut them up too bad to want to come to close steel with us. So we settled down in a day or two as if there hadn't been even a brush, and Fritz was glad to let it go at that.

"During nearly all the last turn-in the rain poured down in torrents off and on, and you can imagine the state the lads were in, with freshly dug trenches and everything being blown to smithereens by shell-fire. Towards the last our trenches consisted of shell holes connected by ditches and carpeted with water and some Flanders mud. If a shell burst within a hundred yards, we had to get someone to scrape the plaster from our eyes before we knew if we were hurt. You couldn't tell a captain from a Tommy, and it didn't matter much just then, since all we could do was to lie low and hang tight.

"But we did it, we did it. We got even with them for trying to wipe out our old battalion. Why, the Huns were lying so thick when we drove through that we had to jump over them all the way, but we got 'home' at last, and 'home' we mean to stay."

Thus was trench after trench retaken, the Canadians sending up a mighty cheer when they discovered that a great quantity of stores which they had left there ten days before, half buried by the force of minenwerfer shells, had been undiscovered or at least unremoved by the enemy, and were practically intact. Three German officers and 130 men were made prisoners. Another enemy officer was subsequently discovered wounded in the intervening territory and brought in. The utmost frankness was expressed by these prisoners as to the result of the engagement, one going so far as to say:--

"We knew that it was a point of pride with you, and that you would never stop until you had got back your trenches. I knew it--but I had to obey orders--and--here I am!"

In the progress through the darkness and in the hand-to-hand fighting of the day, the struggling up the slimy slopes of Observatory Ridge under heavy shell-fire, many brave officers and men fell. One who will be sadly missed is Major Gibson, of the Royal Canadian Highlanders. In addition to his other qualities, Gibson enjoyed fame as the only man in the Expeditionary Force who wore whiskers. He was a Scottish-American, who had seen service with the American army in the Philippines, where he was wounded in the jaw and throat, necessitating a growth of beard. On his mother's side he was a Macdonald, and very proud of his connection with that clan. A fighter born, Gibson enlisted at the beginning of the War, earning his commission and subsequent promotion by sheer merit. On the eve of battle he begged that his company should be placed on the right, for, said he:--

"The Macdonalds have always been on the right since the '45." And the right this morning was a post of danger. Gibson was heard cheering his troops on in the darkness, and continually pressed on always in the van. When he reached the first parapet of our old trenches he cried: "Come on, boys, home at last!" That moment he was fatally hit by a bullet.

There was a famous race between rival battalions to see which should first reach a certain well-known point which I may call Rutland House. Although under heavy fire, the men's zeal could not be checked. On they pounded, panting in the darkness, until a gleam of red fire shot up, and the hoarse voice of a brawny Canadian Highlander was heard calling:--

"We're in first, you beggars o' the --th!"

As showing the spirit of the men, there is the case of two wounded soldiers hit by the same bullet, one in the face and the other in the arm. They were quarrelling as they lay there on the ground side by side. An officer approached and asked what was the matter. The bone of contention was the bullet. One argued warmly that he ought to have it as a souvenir, as he was the first to be hit by it, but the other contended that it was his by rights, as it stayed in him.

On the whole, the Germans put up a poor fight that first day of the counter-attack, and allowed themselves to be taken prisoners by scores. A batch of eight was put in charge of a corporal, with orders to conduct them to the rear. The little procession moved backward, and was seen by other Germans, scattered about in the supporting trenches, who promptly threw away their rifles and joined it, so that instead of being depleted when it reached battalion headquarters, the astonished corporal found that he had nearly twice as many prisoners as he had set out with.

When Major Kemp was wounded, and he and a wounded private were making their way down a trench, they heard a movement in a dug-out. Neither had any weapon. Out came a German. Kemp seized him, took his rifle from him, and gave the private the bayonet. With the German rifle, and his companion with the bayonet, Kemp took six more prisoners. Thus, when they arrived to have their wounds dressed, they had a following of seven prisoners.

Once an unarmed German private advanced towards two of our men, and, shaking his fist in the direction of his compatriots, badly begged for a British rifle that he might fight on our side. A Canadian officer, since mortally wounded, Lieutenant Kitson, was invited by two German privates to enter their dug-out, where he found four other Germans, who, in broken English, begged to surrender.

Later that same day, when the enemy barrage behind and bombardment in front became hotter, so that the supports we wanted could not come up easily, one brave officer, Lieutenant Richardson, who had received his promotion from the ranks, took charge, with only three men, of a whole line of trenches. "You can count on me, sir, to keep them," he said to his colonel; and he held on to the trenches amidst a most terrific shelling the whole of that day. The supports came up at last, but just too late: the brave Richardson had disappeared--it is feared for ever.

*V.*

_June 15th._

In the observation post at my side is a young engineer who three years ago visited Belgium with his sister. They spent the night at Ypres, and the next day strolled out to Zillebeke, and at Zillebeke Meer they got into a boat and rowed for an hour in the shade of the willows (the vestiges of the boat are there yet amongst the rushes; it is known to many of our soldiers, and the bottom of the lake is paved with splintered metal), and they went on to the old mill at Verbranden. On their left they noticed a bare mound or hillock--perhaps a hundred feet high--not a natural feature, they were told, but made by man's hands from the cuttings of the Ypres-Comines Canal.

"We thought of climbing it for the view. But the day was warm, and we changed our minds and walked back to the city along the banks of the canal. We lunched beneath the trees yonder, close to that little chapel. Exactly where we sat are now our front trenches, and that bare, lonely mound is one of the most famous places in the world--Hill 60."

Just one mile east of Zillebeke is Sanctuary Wood, full of poplars, elms, and maples, and below it to the south is another wood which our soldiers call Armagh Wood. All this is just within the Salient. It is all low-lying ground, save here and there a ridge or mound--for the enemy has all the high ground to the east--that low ridge of hills lying some 150 feet above the level of Ypres, which is only fifty feet above sea-level. The boundaries of the Salient are not imaginary; they are real boundaries, for all that they lie hidden. A deep and narrow trench encompasses the territory, which juts out half a mile east, but south of Hooge, and three-quarters of a mile due west of the Chateau of Herenthage, the scene in happier days of garden fetes and rustic merry-making.

Yesterday, pushing along past Zillebeke lake, the supporting battalions came through the deadly barrage to relieve the weary troops who had spent the whole of Tuesday in constant fighting. "It was a magnificent thing," one of their colonels told me, "to watch those fellows moving on past three barrages, many of them hit and stopping a while to bind up their wounds, and then up and at it again, like dare-devils that nothing could stop. I have never--never seen anything finer."

Once the relieving force was well within the recovered British trenches, the bombardment of the latter grew fierce, and in those sections of the line where our old outposts had not been reached, much desperate fighting took place in the ensuing forty-eight hours. The tide of battle flowed this way or that, as hill or trench was taken by us or retaken by the enemy. One officer had advanced his machine-gun in a favourable position to prevent enfilading, in case the Germans should return to this particular trench. The Germans did return. A shell lifted the gun clean out over the officer's head, and he lay stunned for a while on the ground. When he recovered consciousness, the Germans were behind him. In a moment, with a little assistance, he had it working briskly in the opposite direction, and was hard at it, when a shell gave him a mortal wound.

I was told to-day of one gunner who, thoroughly exhausted, went to sleep by his gun, and was actually not awakened by Wednesday's terrific Boche artillery onslaught. When the enemy pushed through, he still slept. Two of them, thinking him dead, laid hands on his gun and proceeded to work it, when he awoke at last and realised the situation. He sprang upon them in fury, and was in close conflict with them when some of our men came up, giving chase to a platoon of flying Huns. The subsequent effectiveness of his weapon our gunner put down to his having got forty winks of slumber at a time when the enemy was having everything his own way!

I have mentioned one American as having distinguished himself in this fighting in Armagh Wood. He was not alone amongst his countrymen. Major Stewart was formerly an officer in the United States cavalry. He fought hard and well, and died with his face to the foe. Yet another was Captain Stanley Wood, of Missouri, who had served in the Fifth New York Regiment. He became interested in aviation, and joined the Flying Corps earlier in the war, until a commission was offered him with the Royal Highlanders of Montreal. "Wood was a fine fellow," one of his fellow-officers said to me, "and we all hoped great things of him. And he has not disappointed us, for he died in fine fashion."

What nobler epitaph for a soldier could be uttered?

I have just seen some significant documents captured from the dug-out which served as headquarters of a German grenadier regiment.

It is admitted that the regiment had already lost heavily in a heroic defence against the furious counter-attacks for this position wrested from the enemy, and in the murderous artillery fire. This is sterling testimony to the effective work of our artillery. The document continues:--

"The fighting is not yet finished, and the enemy will not cease attempting to regain Doppelhoche 60, which is so important, but it is a point of honour for the regiment to retain this position.

"Faith in the superiority which we have shown hitherto will enable us to carry out this difficult task."

Stress is laid upon the necessity to collect all the debris after the fight. It is urgently enjoined that search be made for the recovery of "boots of all kinds, all sorts of weapons, and parts of their entrenching tools, steel helmets, leather equipment, cartridge pouches, all kinds of weapons for close fighting, belts, tents, material of all kinds, haversacks, tunics, trousers, and sandbags. These goods are of the most decisive importance to the final success of our great cause."

It is ordered that "the enemy's dead will be divested of articles of woollen clothing and boots."

Special instructions are given to guard against the deterioration of German fighting material. "This must be brought back from the first position and its communication trenches as soon as possible. The exceeding disorder of the second line must be at once thoroughly cleared up." It is to be feared that the co-operation of our artillery has in this instance hardly effected the desired result.

One sentence conveys what the Germans really think of the men opposite to them in the Ypres Salient more eloquently than a column of Teutonic abuse: "In view of the enemy's characteristics, we have to expect a strong attack at any time." And six days from the date upon which these words were written the strong attack came. And the issue of the whole struggle is that the integrity of the Salient has been valiantly maintained. I may here quote the lines written concerning the Canadians' part in the Second Battle of Ypres:

Mother, perchance thou hadst a tender doubt, Not of our love, or strength, or will, But of our gift for battle and our skill To stay the foeman's desp'rate fury out.

If so, against this doubt let Ypres plead; We gained, yea--inch by inch--our little glory, too, Helping the store of pride we share with you, Proving us also of the Island breed.

*VI.*

_June 16th._

Forty-eight hours after the relieving battalions went in they in turn were relieved. For two days and two nights they had been subjected to a terrific hammering, and few of either officers or men had had a moment's sleep. When the respite came, many of them on the way back sank down in the mud of what three days before had been No Man's Land and slept peacefully, utterly worn out. Several told me that, when they awoke, it was to find an equally exhausted slumbering Boche a few paces away. These stragglers continue to come in, some of them, wholly unwounded, having been for days wandering about, virtually without food, and drinking only such water as they find in the rain-drenched ditches.

A leading article in the _Times_, which has just come in, truly says:--

"It was undoubtedly the hardest action fought on Belgian soil since the Second Battle of Ypres, more than a year ago."

As for our men, a day has made a wonderful difference to those who have emerged unscathed from the shock of battle. Not soon shall I forget the spectacle which greeted me an hour ago when one Scottish Canadian battalion passed me in the road on the way to neighbouring rest billets. A stalwart band of pipers marched behind a sleek regimental goat, who ever and anon shook his horns in conscious pride. The pipers droned "Bonnie Dundee," and on came the long column of troopers, still unkempt and unshorn and in strangely fitting headgear--for scarce a man had kept the bonnet he had gone out in--but each with a dogged, invincible air that those forty-eight hours' hell in the trenches had failed to subdue. There was a terrible thinning of the ranks, and there were some chargers without riders. I followed them to their new camp. One other battalion had already arrived, and some of the officers, taking advantage of the sudden spell of sunshine, were already playing tennis. It was a strange scene. Our aeroplanes had come out to reconnoitre, and numerous puffs of smoke high overhead showed that they were the target for the German anti-aircraft guns. Other guns boomed forth in the distance, but otherwise amidst these green and peaceful surroundings there was little enough to suggest the tragedy of war.

"Thirty--love!" called out Colonel Rattray, of the 10th Battalion, lowering his racquet at the end of a fine rally. You would never imagine that this clean-cut, debonair figure had just emerged from the jaws of death and the mouth of hell.

The kilted Canadians were in sight of their billets when a slim young officer, pushing a bicycle, stepped off the road with his companion to allow them, their triumphant goat and their pipers, to pass. Not a man of these battle-scarred heroes recognised him. I am sure they would have raised a cheer if they had known.

For this slender young officer, his breast covered with many-hued bits of ribbon, was His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, a captain in the Guards.

*VII.*

_June 23rd._

Exactly one week after I had watched our scarred and shaken but still valiant Canadian soldiers on their way out of the trenches of Maple Copse and Sanctuary Wood, after the third fiercest struggle that has taken place in the Ypres Salient, I stood and marked the passage of the men of the relieving battalions. It was in the chief street of a little town whose church and houses were cruelly disfigured by German shells. The sound of drum and fife was heard, and the whole populace ran to doors and windows. On every lip the cry was heard--

"The Guards--the Guards! They are coming out!"

On they came in column of route, these tall, stern, bronzed men, chins up, eyes front, jaws set, marching with all the firmness and precision of a dress parade, marching as if the eyes of His Majesty the King were upon them, as I had seen them march in scarlet tunics and monstrous busbies in Hyde Park, at Aldershot, on the Horse Guards Parade, the same men, and yet, alas, not the same. You forgot--nay, you did not see--their shabby, faded, stained khaki uniforms, the shapeless steel basins on their heads, the untidy linen sacks slung on their shoulders; you only saw the men, the brave, strong men, the triumph of training, the justification of discipline, the vindication of the old despised Imperial military system, the glory of the British Army--the Guards.

No wonder eyes gleamed and cheeks mantled in that little Flemish town, which has seen so many units of the British Army pass and repass the mouth of hell, whose lips are the hitherward parallel roadways and whose gnashing teeth are the front trenches. Six days before the same scene had been enacted when the cry ran--

"The Guards! They are going in!"

And they went in--the Coldstreams and the Grenadiers--to take over the trenches from the Canadians, to delve and sweat, carrying loads of ammunition on their backs, crawling into No Man's Land, laying mines, shooting Germans or braining them with the butts of their rifles, or treating them to the cold steel, as imperturbable as you see them now--it being all in the day's work. The popularity of the Guards arouses no jealousy in the other divisions. "We don't grudge 'em what they get," remarked a sergeant in a line regiment; "they work hard, and they deserve it. They've got a big name to keep up."

And yet it was one of these same Guards who an hour later, with more emotion than I would have thought credible, waving his brawny hand backwards towards the line, said:

"The Canadians--yes, sir, perhaps we have something they haven't got. But--excuse the liberty, sir--by God, we take off our hats to them! I tell you what, sir, they're MEN! They saved the Salient!"

*EPILOGUE.*

YPRES, _June 24th._

_Fuit Hupra_! The ancient city has at last crumbled into dust; but if she is blotted out amongst the cities of Belgium, she will live for ever in the hearts and the history of Canada and the British Empire. She belongs--her halls and churches, her streets and houses, all her people and her past--henceforth to us and those who come after us. She is, spiritually, as much a part of the British Empire as Vancouver or Toronto. Her quaint memorials will be cherished by us; her story will be told by our children's children. She is a city of the dead--our British dead.

It is strange that it should be reserved for Ypres to play such a prominent part on the stage of this war. For the city was itself but a symbol of a past greatness and a melancholy survivor of centuries-old tragedy. No town of its size in Europe--no town of ten times its size--has suffered more.

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Ypres was the metropolis of Flanders, taking the lead of Bruges and Ghent. In 1267, in a petition to Pope Innocent IV., the aldermen estimated the population at 200,000 souls. It possessed 4,000 looms, and counted seven parish churches. Then was built the vast and splendid Drapers' Guild Hall, the most remarkable secular monument of the Middle Ages. Merchants from all over Europe had counting-houses within its territory. The Kings of France and England and the Emperors of Germany granted special privileges to the men of Ypres who came to trade in their realms.

Then came ruinous and bloody wars against the Counts of Flanders and against the Kings of France; came civil dissensions, riots, and massacres. After being besieged by English troops under Richard II. in 1383, the town found its suburbs destroyed, and its industrial population terribly depleted by exile. In the following century it was visited by repeated misfortunes, and in the sixteenth it became the scene of religious persecution, massacres, and pillage. In 1566 Ypres was sacked by a mob, and the same fate befell it in 1578. It was used as a fortress against the Spaniards, and when it fell, after a siege of eight months, the population had dwindled to 5,000 souls, and within its walls all was in ruins. Sieges and bombardments continued at intervals until, at the French Revolution, Ypres fell into the hands of the troops of the Convention, and once more--"for the last time," says the local historian--became a victim of violence and destruction. Alas, not the last!

Briefly, that is the tale of Ypres, relentlessly pursued by misfortune. And yet, despite all the city has endured, it fronted the world bravely and even with an imposing aspect, repairing the ravages of war with patience and fortitude.