Frederic C. Curry

“ Here men are posted, while all work is for a time stopped, to listen for the first sounds of the enemy's sappers—the thud-thud of the picks or the "cough" of the man whose lungs seek this relief in the stuffy air of the cramped tunnel.
If the enemy is not found, progress is continued forward from both ends of the cross-gallery and the game goes merrily on.
About this stage the mining officer will, if you happen to be holding the trench under which he is grovelling, wax eloquent over a crumpled sheet of tracing linen that he presents to your view as a diagram of the workings. ”

“ A tree was cut in half by a shell, and the plumed top, falling clear of the stump, planted itself like a dart in the ground a few feet away.
A pack horse suddenly bolted across the open field with a slight cut on one flank, and half a dozen men made wild grasp at its bridle before one succeeded in recapturing the brute. And here and there groups of men finding their corner of the field a bit too "hot" for comfort would just as suddenly bolt across to another part and start feverishly digging in anew. ”

“ In the midst of this ghastly scene, lit up by fitful glances of moonlight as clouds scudded over the sky, two companies moved forward, a long line of shadowy forms, to act as a covering party while the remaining half-battalion dug the new trench.
As we moved forward and lay down we could hear the thudding of the picks as they were driven into the ground, and from somewhere in the darkness ahead the plick-plock of the sniper began. Captain H——, our new company commander, passed down the line to warn us to count our men and see that all bayonets were fixed and magazines loaded. ”

“ Sometimes, but not often, the mining is so quietly done that the first sign of the enemy is the sudden collapse of the wall of earth between the two galleries, leaving the rival workers face to face!
At other times, and this is a normal occurrence, the enemy are heard to one side or the other, and a small charge of powder is laid and his gallery is blown in, crushing his workers to death, or perhaps merely burying them to perish miserably by suffocation.
To prevent this occurring men are kept in the ends of all the passages listening for the tap-tap of the picks that spells danger! ”

“ Thus a flourishing full-strength battalion may be housed in a dingy, drab wooden structure, and in the next town a very ornate and modern building may be tenanted by a corps that is only struggling for existence, or perhaps not even struggling. It is well, however, to refrain from too much criticism of these buildings, pretentious and hideous as they may be, for in them are taught the ideals and principles which so many of our youth have died to uphold in the rain-sodden fields of Flanders. ”

“ Meanwhile the main guard have reinforced the first thin lines of skirmishers, and the enemy are already falling back through the wood. We follow at a more leisurely pace, as the whole place is a mass of charred tree trunks, burnt underbush and ashes. A voice from the rear bids us "Lie down" in no uncertain tones, so, reflecting that after all the Government knows best, we do so, and from then on the khaki begins to blend with its surroundings in a way that the inventor of this variety of cloth never dreamed of. ”

“ But here, as at Neuve Chapelle, we found that the enemy front line, once penetrated, brought us in front of a series of strong points bristling with machine-guns, with dug-outs of almost incredible strength, some of them twenty and thirty feet under ground and safe against anything but the heaviest of field-guns, weapons that we were lamentably short of. ”

“ A fountain of earth roared upwards from "No Man's Land," and, armed to the teeth with bombs, we rushed forward, losing a couple of men on the way who had been struck by the falling débris, and manned our trench while machine-guns raked the enemy's parapets. ”

“ Breakfast over, there came the censoring of mail, so that it could be sent to battalion headquarters before 2 o'clock. This is supposed by some to furnish an endless amount of amusement to the officers, and often facetious remarks are introduced by the writer to this end, but to most of us censoring is a beastly bore, and one views with dismay the enormous pile of letters that your platoon sergeant dumps down on your bed each day at noon with the laconic announcement of "Mail, sir!"
One runs across people of many sorts while reading through this heap. ”

“ Two colts that were evidently confined near the blaze started to whinny and neigh, and a man who had been hit began to curse vilely.
From somewhere in rear a battery of French "seventy-fives" opened up with their ear-splitting reports, and we could see the outlines of the ruined farm ahead of us silhouetted against the crimson flashes of their bursting shrapnel. But of the enemy there was no sign—nothing but the arching trail of the flares that shot up and the steady plick-plock of the snipers. It was most trying. ”

“ The loss to the battalion was, however, immeasurable, as the ladies had been most devoted, and no matter at what hour the troops came in there was always a cup of coffee or soup awaiting them, and a smile—a smile that means so much to men whose hearts are lonely. ”

“ But it was not our fate to meet the enemy again while in the salient. After continuing our march about another quarter-mile we lined a roadside and commenced digging another trench.
Here we lay and shivered all night, the men crouching in the trench, every fourth man alert and watching, the officers lying on the ground behind in shell holes or walking up and down swinging their arms and trying to keep warm. ”

“ Between our line and the Western Ontario men, who held the old German trench ahead of us, lay hundreds of bodies that had been there since the last winter, for this narrow strip—not much more than a hundred yards in width—had been "No Man's Land." Attempts made by day and night to bury some of these bodies had to be given up, as the enemy swept the parapets of both trenches, on the least sign of movement, with "whizz-bangs." The Western Ontario Battalion suffered horribly, a constant stream of stretchers coming through our lines, starting with daybreak. ”

“ A patch of land that one day was covered with cedars would next day be bare of all but stumps, the brushwood blazing merrily in huge fires. Next day the stumps in turn would be gone and by evening the new area would be covered with tents.
Already some hundreds of tents had been erected on each side of what was to be the main street of the camp. A ditching machine pantingly laboured on one side of the road and dug as much in a day as fifty men. In the ditch already made on the other side pipes had been laid and running water was available. ”

“ Presently we come on the horses of our mounted brethren in little groups of four in rear of a hill, and as we climb the hill itself we see the backs of Smith's gallant troopers as they fire from behind bushes that would certainly prove their death warrants on active service. The enemy are hidden in the edge of a large and straggly wood that only two days before was the scene of a roaring bush fire. Occasionally a man can be seen moving against the background of the charred trunks, but they, too, are making the best of what cover there is. ”

“ Among the other things we took over from the outgoing battalion when we first moved into this position was the care and continuance of a mine, and this mine was to form our chief worry as long as we held that line.
At first we were inclined to regard the mining officers—of which we had two—as a sort of nuisance like engineers, trench mortar men, and some others, who were always demanding men for carrying and working parties. But we were not long in finding that they were, like ourselves, necessary evils, and they became welcome guests at our little mess when in the trench. ”

“ On the 2nd and 3rd Canadian Brigades fell the brunt of the fighting in which the Canadians took part, as the 1st Brigade was in rest billets in reserve.
But, without detracting from their work, it must be admitted that the account by the official "Eye Witness" does not give the 1st Brigade the credit it deserves. This, however, is inevitable. In a modern battle one sees nothing but what happens in the immediate vicinity of the observer, and we must therefore depend largely on the accounts furnished by others of what occurred in other parts of the field. ”

“ Looking backward one cannot help thinking what a pity it was he had not been given a free hand. He supported the Ross rifle, and raised it from the status of a political weapon to that of a military one, and whatever opponents to this weapon may claim they must remember that it was the weapon that held the line at Ypres in those last few days of April, 1915, and had it not been available the Canadian Division would have probably been in England patiently drilling with dummy rifles, and the glory of having saved the situation would have fallen upon other troops. ”

“ The day, October 13th, was ideal for observation, beautifully clear, with a gentle breeze from our trench towards the enemy's. Nothing finer could be desired for our operations to the south.
About 2 o'clock our guns, along the whole British front, started to cut wire as though preparing for an attack. ”

“ We lay in some trenches just in front of the ruined distillery, dug in a commanding mound that had been thrown up in building the canal, and stayed there till next night, when we moved forward again, two companies going into the front line and two, one of them the writer's, occupying a support trench.
Here we learned what work was, every bit of food, bombs, and ammunition required for the front line being carried up these narrow twisted communication trenches by the support companies, for the proximity of our line to the enemy would not permit of taking a single man from the front line. ”

“ In less than two weeks our trenches, once the pride of the division, were a series of collapsed heaps where the sandbag walls had been undermined by the seepage of water.
But we suffered nothing like the discomforts endured by the British troops during the previous winter. Rubber boots reaching to the thigh were issued, sparingly at first, but gradually until every man had a pair, and whale oil and spare socks were available in large quantities to aid in the fight against trench-foot. Nothing, however, could prevent the mud, which lay a foot deep along the gangways of the trench. ”

“ The whole brigade busies itself in drawing the blankets from the waggons and rolling them into long cylinders, which with a spare boot-lace are made into an exaggerated sort of horse-collar. The luckless owner then thrusts a head and one arm through the roll and he is ready to move on. A hotter method of carrying a blanket could scarcely be devised, but it is much preferable to the antique leather equipment that hangs year in and year out on the armoury walls. ”

“ Lucky indeed is the company commander who can bring a full company every year to camp, for many who come one year come not again, and such are the conditions that no man sayeth him nay lest recruiting be stopped altogether in that district. One sighs for the press gang of Merrie England and subscribes for such incendiary journals as those of the various National Service Leagues, for one has a limited area to secure the recruits from, and must recruit at least 60 per cent. each year at a season when farm labour is at a premium. ”

“ We were already beginning to learn that the British infantry equipment is the finest in the world.
The shelling over, the draft was divided up amongst the remnants of the four companies, and Lyte and the writer had the good fortune to be placed with the same one.
Our company commander had been a lieutenant till a few days before, and was now a temporary captain. His senior subaltern was wearing a "British warm," the skirt of which had been riddled by machine-gun bullets, and a sergeant was to come out in orders that evening as an officer to take the remaining platoon. ”

“ The Germans continued to discharge gas against our line until May 15th, when they retook Hill 60. The bitter struggle of the past three weeks had begun as a mere counter-attack to our capture of this small but important mound.
By this time, however, the Canadians had been withdrawn, and we left the salient with few regrets. But somewhere on the German side of our trench line there are thousands of graves of our fellow-countrymen, and when the time comes for the balancing of accounts we shall expect these to weigh heavy in the scales. ”

“ Near Locon we passed some of the Indian Cavalry, gigantic-looking men with their turbanned heads. They surveyed us gravely as we passed, one or two flashing brilliant smiles in response to some friendly greeting. Then shortly afterwards we crossed the canal, and without further incident reached the outskirts of Bethune, where we went into bivouac in an open field, being favoured, most fortunately, with fine weather. ”

“ On entering Vlamertinghe we saw signs of shelling on most of the buildings, particularly around the church and the square, the steeple of the former forming, of course, the aiming mark for the German guns. Here, too, the body of a woman lay half in and half out of a doorway. The place seemed absolutely deserted. An aeroplane droned overhead, but whether our own or the enemy's we could not ascertain. ”

“ The prisoners taken in the Petite Douve affair had boasted of the preparations they were making for a gas attack on a scale hitherto unknown, and on the Sunday before Christmas the enemy made another attempt to gain the Ypres salient by this means.
Early in the morning of the 20th the smell of gas was evident even down as far as our position a few miles south of the salient, and our guns began a desultory bombardment of the enemy lines. Thinking we were as deficient in artillery as in the previous April, the enemy infantry advanced in mass formation about 9 o'clock. ”

“ Listening posts and covering parties were sent out, and by morning we were occupying a ditch about three feet deep with a fairly good parapet in front. No fires were permitted, as we were hidden by grass from the enemy and the trench was not yet in shape to stand any bombardment.
The next night we were fortunate in obtaining more sandbags and some timber from a German trench we had passed on the way up. Some mail and parcels of food came up, and we managed to clear out our wounded. Most welcome was ammunition for the flare pistols the officers carried. ”