Part 8

After undergoing training in the winter, we embarked at Avonmouth, Bristol, and sailed for France in a cattle boat, landing at St. Naize in the Bay of Biscay, four days later.

Then we had two days traveling in a box car up to the Trout, and after a short rest we went to Ploegstreet Woods and went under a system of training with the Dublin Fusileers.

The method of training we went through was excellent in every way, each one of us being posted with one of the Dublins and to do what they did.

When we reached the trenches, I was posted with "Spud Murphy" who was then on sentry go. Spud was a hero of "Mons," having had safely survived up to the present and so we had quite a lot to talk about.

Ploegstreet being a quiet "front," there was nothing very exciting, so we were pleased when we were shifted to the village of Fleurbaix to relieve an English division and to take trenches over on our own.

We were placed on the line near the village of La Boutillerie, where the trenches cut through the walls of a convent.

The Germans were about 150 yards away and seemed to have well-constructed trenches.

During the first night in, one of the Germans shouted over and asked what part of Canada we were from. How they learned that the Canadians were in front of them I have no idea, but as they had plenty of spies in our rear, they must have received the information from them.

The Germans were in happy spirits that night, as they were singing and playing instruments almost until dawn; one of them had a fine baritone voice and sang several songs in English, including "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep." I think they were Saxons, as it was never customary for the Prussians or Bavarians to act in that manner.

Although the trenches were wet and muddy, things were not too bad, as we were allowed to build fires so we could warm our machonichie rations and also make tea.

There was hardly any artillery fire, but the German snipers were very clever in that region and it meant death to show a head. I had one periscope shot out of my hands which will show what their snipers can do.

After three days in, we were taken out for a rest and billeted in a school house in Fleurbaix.

The next time we went to the front line, my platoon was ordered to man a redoubt behind the front trench. The idea of a redoubt is in case the enemy breaks through the front line the men manning it can pour enfilade fire into the enemy while they are passing in their advance to the second line of trenches.

This particular redoubt was a circular sandbagged construction large enough to allow sixty men to fire through the loopholes, and had two lines of entanglements round it with one narrow path through them to enable us to get in or out. This pathway could easily be blocked by a mass of wire called a "Chevaux de Frize," which was kept in the redoubt, and which could be placed in position when we had all entered.

Food which would last a platoon for ten days and a barrel of water was always kept in stock and was only allowed to be used in case the garrison was besieged. Things being quiet at this time, we had permission to use a cottage, which was only a few yards away, to sleep in at nights.

On the second day we remained in the cottage for part of the time, but as we had lit a fire to cook the dinner on, the Germans must have seen smoke coming out of the chimney, and soon got our range with one of their 77MM. field guns. The second shell hit the roof of the cottage, bursting, the shrapnel bullets were scattered in the next room to where I was.

The platoon lieutenant was in the room when the shell burst, and was talking to a sergeant and a corporal; the corporal was hit in thirty-one places down his left side, and was in a terrible mess. The lieutenant was wounded in the arm and the sergeant in the leg. The rest of us picking them up, rushed to the redoubt, another shell hitting the cottage just after we left. This taught us a lesson, and for the next few days we stayed under cover.

We were moved to the Ypres front in April to relieve a French division, marching twenty-two miles from Estaires to Abeele in one day, with full marching order, including 150 rounds of ammunition. The battalion rested at Abeele for a few days and then we marched through Poperinghe and the town of Ypres up to the front line.

At last we were in the dreaded Ypres salient, the worst sector of the front, and on which the Germans had sacrificed thousands of men in an effort to gain Ypres and the roads to the Channel ports. As the French came down one side of the road, we went up the other into the front line, at the part we were on, the trenches cut across the Polccapelle Paschendale Road, where the British Seventh Division cut the Prussian Guards to pieces the previous October.

The next morning we could see hundreds of dead Germans lying beyond our entanglements who had been dead five months, and as there was a light mist which would easily hide us, the German trenches being 800 yards away, a few of us crawled through the wire and went to have a look at them.

By their epaulettes, we could see that they were the 235th Prussian Regiment, and they must have had a terrible list of casualties by the number who were dead. Any German shell which dropped short fell among them and many had heads and legs missing; the stench was so bad that two of our men vomited, and it was a sight that no doctor would recommend for anyone suffering from shattered nerves.

After six days up there in the badly constructed trenches and under continual bombardment, without a hot drink all the time, working like slaves every night, filling sandbags and strengthening the parapets, our appetites spoiled by the sights and stench of the dead "Fritzies," we were at last relieved by our 5th Battalion, and marched into Ypres to the billets, which were in a large mill alongside the Yser Canal.

Ypres at this time was full of the civilian population and Estaminets. Restaurants and the market-place were open, so we had a splendid opportunity to change our diet from the everlasting bully and biscuits.

Two days after we entered Ypres the Germans opened up their great offensive on the 22d of April, where they used their poisonous gases for the first time. They also commenced to shell the town with every sized gun they had, from 18 pounders to their 14-inch Austrian Skoda howitzers, the largest caliber gun used on the western front.

Scores of civilians were killed as they rushed out of the town, and it was pitiful to see the little children lying dead in the streets.

The Germans broke through the Algerians on our left flank under cover of their poisonous gases, which killed thousands of Algerians and our own men in the front line trenches.

Our battalion and the 16th Canadian Scottish were the only reserves in the whole salient, and as the Germans had broken through, things were looking very black for us.

We were instantly summoned to "fall in" and soon we were on our way to fill the gap. We were two thousand men to stop the German divisions in their countless thousands.

An ordinary general would have posted us in a reserve line of trenches until the Germans advanced the next morning, but not so General Alderson, our divisional commander, an English general, who proved himself one of the geniuses of the war. He tried strategy, which was one of the biggest bluffs of the war, and which utterly surprised the Germans.

Instead of waiting for the Germans to swamp us the next morning with their greater superiority of twenty to one man, he ordered us to make a night attack on the Pilkem Woods, where the Germans were massing for their attack.

The attack was made in lines of double companies, 500 men in each of the four lines, A and B Company of our battalion being in the front line and supported by C and D Company, and then the 16th Battalion behind them.

Unsupported by artillery, we advanced shortly after midnight, getting to within thirty yards of the Germans before being discovered.

The Germans at once opened up "rapid fire" with every machine gun and rifle they had, the night air being rent with the cracks of hundreds of rifles and machine guns.

How any man could pass through that hail of lead has always been a mystery to me, but the remnants of us, after a desperate struggle in the dim light, took possession of the wood at the point of the bayonet.

The German garrison was completely demoralized, and our impetuous advance did not cease until we reached the far side of the wood, and there we entrenched.

An hour later, a most formidable concentration of artillery sweeping the wood, as a tropical storm sweeps the forest, made it impossible for us to hold the position.

Instead of retiring, we tried our old tactics of advancing, and attacked the Germans once more, who were digging themselves in about 200 yards in front.

We soon gained an objective and remained there until the next day. Our ranks by this time were sadly depleted. Our colonel was killed and only two officers still remained in the fight.

We were still losing men, owing to the German artillery fire, and our ranks being now so thin, it was inadvisable for us to remain out in that exposed position.

Fifteen hundred men had already fallen, and what could the remaining 500 of us do against the German hordes?

Sick as we were with the gas fumes and the terrific strain we had undergone, we retreated back through the wood to an old line of trenches and there waited for reinforcements.

Our object had been achieved, the Germans were demoralized, and puzzled as to how many men we had.

Their proposed attack was cancelled for a few hours to enable them to re-form and organize, and by the next hour or two our reinforcements would have arrived.

Our first brigade appeared on the scene and the line was strengthened, and then the Buffs, the famous English regiment, came up at the double after having marched miles from another part of the line.

The bluff that we pulled off was therefore entirely successful, and the Germans thought that we had about 20,000 men attacking them.

It never struck their imaginative, cold-blooded and calculating minds that 2,000 men would have the audacity to attack whole German divisions without artillery support.

They certainly have had many lessons showing the difference between spirit and material.

The charge we made stands out as one of the finest achievements of the war, and only equaled, in the estimation of British experts, by the wonderful charge of the Worcestershire Regiment, who with only 500 men charged a division of Prussian Guards at Gheluvelt in October, 1917; also the famous Black Watch and the Scots Greys in their spectacular stirrup at St. Quentin.

It will always be a source of pleasure to me to know that I was in the front line of the first attack made by soldiers from the continent of America and was in the Battle of Ypres, which made the name of Canada ring through the world.

Remaining on Ypres front for several days, the remnants of the battalion were taken to the rear to await for reinforcements. These, in due course, arrived, and we were then sent to Festubert, and on May 17th our remade infantry brigades advanced toward the firing line once more.

On the 21st of May we went "Over the Top" at Festubert, with the object of capturing a strong German redoubt called "Bechill."

My platoon was practically annihilated by machine guns and none of us succeeded in passing the entanglements; over fifty of the men of the platoon, which numbered sixty, being killed or wounded in less than two minutes.

The rest of us, seeing that things were hopeless, retired to an old communication trench and made our way to bomb our way past the barricade which led to the redoubt.

As we threw bombs over the barricade, the Germans retaliated, and I discovered that it is impossible to indulge in the practice of throwing grenades for any length of time without someone getting hurt. At this time a German bomb fell in the bottom of our trench and burst there, wounding three of us, myself getting a piece of shell in the foot.

I was in the hospital only three weeks, and then returned to the battalion, who were on the La Bassee front.

On the third day of my second time in the trenches at Givenchy, the Germans opened up a bombardment with high explosives, and while walking up a communication trench an 8-inch German shrapnel burst in the air, and one piece of shell hit my ammunition pouches, while another passed through my arm and then hit my side.

While in the hospital, gangrene possomy set in and I was sent to Glasgow, Scotland, where I remained for many weeks.

My arm being partly paralyzed, I was returned to Canada and discharged in May, 1916.

Two weeks after I joined the Canadian Active Militia (pay corps), and was promoted to sergeant, but never recovered the full use of my arm, and consequently was unable to return to France.

THREE YEARS AND TWO MONTHS IN FRANCE

BY LANCE CORPORAL EDMUND HALL, 2ND SCOTTISH RIFLES, B.E.F.

AFTER being in the army eleven years and with one year to go to finish my time as a regular soldier of the British Army, for which period I had signed on, I was beginning to think that I would be unfortunate enough to finish my soldiering without seeing active service, but after all I was not to be disappointed and I saw more active service than ever I bargained for.

At the time Great Britain declared war on Germany I was stationed with the British garrison at Malta, an island fortress in the Mediterranean Sea, where in peace time a garrison is kept consisting of five regiments of infantry and several batteries of artillery. On the 4th of August we received orders to proceed from barracks to take up positions in the land entrenchments and redoubts, as an attack was expected from part of the German fleet, the _Goeben_ and _Breslau_ at the time being somewhere in the vicinity.

The attack which we expected did not materialize, as the German ships ran for cover to the Golden Horn and Constantinople, and were afforded shelter by the Turks. In this respect they were as fortunate as their sister ships who had the protection of the Kiel Canal. We were now waiting for the territorial battalions which were to relieve us so that we could take our place on the western front and fight with the regulars who were stemming the German tide in Flanders. On the 17th of September our relief arrived, and the ships which brought them to Malta took us to England, and we were camped for a time at Winchester while our division was being mobilized. This division, the 8th, was made up of regulars from foreign service and included regiments from Gibraltar, Egypt, India, and our own from Malta. The average service of the men of the Scottish Rifles was seven years and we were in the best of training, having just finished maneuvers. It was this training, excellent shooting and individual initiative which earned for us the praise of the Germans, who said that every British regular was a trained non-commissioned officer. We landed in France on the 5th of November, 1914, and entrained for the railhead nearest the Neuve Eglise and Massines front. This front at the time was being taken over from the French and we relieved one of their regiments in the front line of trenches. At this time of the campaign, trench warfare was just beginning, as the fighting previously at Mons, Marne and the Aisne was a retreat or an advance and was mostly field warfare. The Germans having failed in their terrific drive for the Channel Ports during the first battle of Ypres, where the flower of the Prussian Guard had been destroyed by our 7th Division, decided to dig themselves in and to wait for the spring before opening another offensive on a large scale. Consequently, when we relieved the French the trenches were little better than ditches, and we had not even sandbagged parapets erected or barbed wire entanglements thrown out in front. It was the surprise of my life when our platoon officer informed us that the particular part of the ditch which we were in was a trench, and was to be our home for the next few days. A local attack from the Germans was expected at any time, as they were anxious to get command of the Messines Ridge, ground which they coveted for observation purposes. The French had warned us to be particularly on the lookout this night, and advised us not to post extra sentries, and it was very fortunate that we heeded their warning, because about two hours after the sentries shouted from the listening posts that the Germans were coming. The company commander gave us instructions not to fire until he blew the whistle, and this he did as soon as he could see the gray mass of figures advancing across No Man's Land in the weird light of a misty moon. The Germans received a very warm welcome from our particular part of the "Contemptible Little Army," and must have also had a rude awakening when we opened up with rapid fire with our Lee-Enfield rifles. They evidently thought the French were in front of them, until they heard our fire, but as they heard the rapid fire of the Lee-Enfields on previous occasions, it didn't take them long to know that the hated British were on the spot. "The Britishers' Mad Minute," was the name the Germans gave our rapid fire when they first experienced it at Mons, because they were astonished that infantry could average thirty rounds a minute per man. This speed could not be equaled by any other army at the time, the French being equipped with the Lebel rifle, which did not have a clip loading action, and the Germans, who relied more on their machine gun fire to break up infantry attacks, were amateurs in comparison to our army, where rifles were concerned.

The Germans were mowed down before they reached us, and although they made two further attacks during the night, we had not the opportunity to use the bayonet, the Germans being all killed or wounded before reaching our trench or ditch. The Germans gave up the attempt for the Messines Ridge and during the terrible winter campaign of 1914 and 1915 we did trench duty, three days in the front line and then three days in the reserve.

This awful monotonous life under the worst climatic conditions and living in a sea of mud was only brightened by one incident during the rest of the winter. The Germans hung up Chinese lanterns on Christmas Eve and sang carols, and both sides refrained from firing. During Christmas day some of the bolder spirits of the German regiment opposite stood up on the parapet, and as none of our men would fire on them, an unofficial armistice was therefore on. Our men did likewise, and not a shot was fired, both sides believing in the old saying, "Peace and good will to all men on Christmas Day." This was the only time throughout the war that such an incident happened, as we received strict instructions not to fraternize with the enemy on account of their despicable and treacherous acts in bringing machine guns up under cover of stretcher bearers on several occasions when armistices were allowed to bury the dead shortly before Christmas.

When spring arrived, we were on tiptoe with excitement for the coming offensive, as we were fed up with the trenches and mud and wanted to get the Germans in the open.

The first offensive of the year 1915 was made by the British at Neuve Chapelle on March 10th, and several divisions, including our own, were massed in the vicinity a few days beforehand. Batteries of artillery to the number of five hundred guns were masked and hidden until they opened up for the preliminary bombardment. The Germans had no inkling of the coming attack, and the surprise it caused was a nasty knock to their boasted secret service and civilian spies, who were placed throughout Flanders years before the war, and who posed as Belgian and French farmers. They devised many schemes for informing the enemy what was happening, and on previous occasions they had been able to supply the Germans with accurate information by their windmill and other tricks. This time they were fooled, and when the bombardment commenced at 6.30 A.M. the Germans were at breakfast, according to the statements which the prisoners made when they were captured.

We had taken our positions in the front line trenches the night before and had erected trench climbing ladders for jumping over the parapets.

At 7 A.M. we went "Over the Top" in the first offensive our army made since trench warfare first began after the battle of the Aisne the previous October. At this time I was acting as company stretcher bearer, and therefore had to follow the company as they advanced across No Man's Land.

Although we had a large number of guns, we were very deficient in heavy artillery and howitzers, the majority being 18 pounder field guns and which proved a failure as a means to blast away the barbed wire and parapets of the German trenches and redoubts.

On part of the line where we attacked, the barbed wire was not destroyed and consequently we were held up and suffered terrible losses from machine gun fire. At last, some of our men broke through the wire by breaching it with wire clippers and then jumping in the trenches bayoneted German after German, from traverse to traverse until they were all accounted for in that part of the line.

Our losses were appalling during the few minutes it took to cut the wire, our casualties totaling over 750 men out of the thousand engaged. A young subaltern was the only officer who got through the engagement, the colonel, major, adjutant and company commanders all being killed while leading the attack.

Our officers had all been in the army for a number of years and were excellent soldiers. We could ill afford to lose such men, as there were none who could fill their places, and we noticed a remarkable difference when the reinforcements arrived, the new officers being hastily trained and the ink stains not yet off their fingers.

The remnants of the battalion reached the German third line of trenches and there waited for reinforcements. For two days I carried the stretcher without a rest until at last I collapsed under the strain and had to rest for a few hours. How many men I carried I do not know, and the last few hours seemed like a dream, broken with the cries of the wounded.

My clothes were saturated with the blood of the men I bandaged and carried, and when I was finally relieved, I had to get a new suit from the quartermaster stores.

On the first night of the offensive, the Germans made a counter attack in a vain endeavor to recapture the redoubt, and the line of trenches called Port Arthur. During the attack, I was in the front line attending to wounded men who needed attention, and so I had a good view of the Germans as they were advancing.

They advanced, as was their custom, in close order, or mass formation. Our reinforcements, who had come up just after dark, had brought several machine guns, so we were quite prepared to give the Germans a fight to a finish. Our officers, knowing that the Germans could not break through our wire under the terrific hail of lead we would send over, gave strict orders not to fire until the Germans were up to the entanglements. Thus, at that short range, the slaughter would be much greater, and fewer Germans would reach back to their own lines during their consequent retreat.

There was not enough room on the parquet or firing platform for all our men, and the unlucky ones who were left standing at the bottom of the trench dragged some of the men on the parquets, so that they could get a few rounds off, and so settle "old scores" with "Fritz." Under the rapid fire of our machine guns and rifles the Germans were mowed down almost to a man, very few of even their swiftest runners making a home run.