Baron Max Aitken Beaverbrook

“ It was not given to the 2nd Division to take a part in one of those glittering charges which figure so largely in Press reports and so rarely in actions in the field. Here were no bayonets flashing in the sun, no shouts of a triumphant infantry, but a long struggle against dirt and darkness, the terror of the high explosive, and the sharp spitting of the machine-guns. It is easy to think of war as one triumph reaching to another, and the historians gloss over easily the failure of their national arms. ”

“ It was as though an impenetrable curtain had fallen between the contending parties of infantry. The mud, the darkness, and the shells made every movement a failure. That such a state of affairs could be possible can only be understood by the insight of imagination or by an actual experience of the ground and the conditions. But a study of the photographs taken by aeroplanes makes it at least intelligible. Among the infinite traceries of lines, trenches new and old, which wrinkle the surface of the chart, the rims of the four great centre craters stand out ominous and distinct. ”

“ Every sentence would have to end with the word "shell." The knowledge that to stay is useless because no attack will be made while anyone remains alive; that to bring up supports is impossible under the barrage, and that anyone who came would merely share your fate; the impossibility of keeping pace with the destruction of your only cover; the biting fire from rear, front and flank; the impotence of gripping a useless rifle—these things are indeed worse than the bitterness of death! ”

“ It was the hour when men rub their eyes and shiver in the cool air and stand to arms to meet that period which is most likely to bring the attack. The light of dawn, stealthy and suspicious, was showing in the east over a scene of ruin and desolation, and in this valley of dry bones something began to move. To the group of watchers in the trenches dark forms advancing could be seen through the mist. They came straight on without hesitating up the St. Eloi-Wytschaete road, towards Sackville Centre. It was known to our men that some Pioneers were out in that direction wiring the front. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The shock of squadrons, the bayonet charge, or the exchange of point-blank volleys between opposing battalions has become familiar to us in history-books, and the artist can draw them to the life. It is easy to grasp the recoil of a column down the hill-side under the furious impetus of an overwhelming assault. But to be killed in sections by high explosives and machine-guns in a trench which is rapidly ceasing to exist, so that the agony is prolonged for hours, is an ordeal more difficult to grasp. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And it is part of the tragedy of modern warfare that the real conditions which make such a retirement unavoidable can never be understood to the full by those who have not gone through the experience of a general action in trench warfare. No word painting, however vivid, can make the picture actual to minds which have mercifully been preserved from the experience and to eyes which have never seen a modern battlefield. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Man had defaced Nature until the charm of Nature had vanished.
Gaunt and grey and menacing, the prospect of the low hills swept out from the feet of the observers. Below were the shattered remains of Square Wood and Armagh Wood. Observatory Ridge, lost and recaptured, stood in front, its coppices full of the memories of hidden machine-guns. Behind there peeped out the higher grounds of Hills 61 and 62, to which the remains of Sanctuary Wood still climbed upwards. On the right rose Mount Sorrel, where the grim earth and shattered trunks still met the clear sky. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To the British of all nations this singular tribute must be paid: that their infantry has never been engaged in any protracted war without a universal admission that it was the equal of any infantry in the world; and yet that it has never been afforded the supreme incentive to soldiers, that of fighting on their own soil, and for their own women and children at the moment and on the scene of their instant peril. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a commonplace that no such phenomenon as the great rally of the Dominions has ever been witnessed in history. None of the Great Empires of the world has ever conceded so much freedom to its constituent parts or been rewarded by so much devotion. And it is well known that the whole world—our friends and our enemies alike—have been amazed at the spectacle of Imperial solidarity which the war has exhibited. "For the purposes of a European war," wrote one of Germany's many military philosophers, "the British Colonies, even if they remain faithful, may be ignored." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Indeed, the storm which burst on the 3rd Division at 8.30 that June morning was like a tropical tornado which presses men flat to the ground and suffocates them with the mere force of the wind, which uproots forests and hurls them headlong, obliterates all ancient landmarks and the houses and shelters of men and beasts, and leaves behind nothing but a tangled desolation from which a few survivors creep out scarcely sane enough to realise the catastrophe or to attempt to repair the damage. ”

“ Every man acts according to his instinct. A few lie where they are and chance being taken prisoners. Some make a rush and crawl for the ruined communication trenches and face the barrage once more in the hope of rejoining their comrades. Another group resists desperately, grasping what rude and broken weapons remain to it, and dies in a hopeless struggle. Such in effect is the story of the front and support line companies of the 1st and 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles and the right-hand company of the Princess Patricia's between 8.30 and 1.15 of June 2nd, as their casualties will prove. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the result was one to break the hearts of men trained to regard their weapons as their unfailing friends in the hour of need and danger. The foul mud splashed over them in torrents by the bombardment had worked into breech and magazine, and men threw down their choked rifles with curses, and snatched for one left behind by some dead or wounded man. But these, too, after a shot or two, refused to do their work! All along the line the remaining Lewis guns jammed, groups were too isolated to make a concerted counter-attack with the bayonet ”

“ So terrific was the bombardment that on one occasion Crater 6 had to be abandoned chiefly owing to the annihilation of its defenders.
Under these adverse circumstances the successive regiments of the 5th Brigade held their ground with the customary tenacity of Canadian infantry. The Germans with all their military virtues suffer from one defect of imagination. They can never believe that small bodies of men, unsupported and beyond the control of the Higher Command, will hold on to untenable positions, or will remain fighting units long after they have been beaten by all the rules of war. ”