Herbert W. McBride

“ To the left, another group of farm buildings, called Shelley Farm, was in about the same condition, and where St. Eloi had been was nothing but a barren waste. Not a sign of a house or any part of a house was visible; not a brick remained and even the roads, the fine stone-paved roads, had been obliterated. Where had been hedges or trees there was nothing but a desolate expanse of mud which, from a distance, appeared to be a smooth level plain. For a good six hundred yards back of our front line there was not a shrub or bush or tree nor any landmark of any kind. ”

“ In the midst of a battle many men do things which would, at other times, fill them with horror. The excitement of combat seems to breed a lust for killing and the sight of blood is like a red flag to a bull. This, unfortunately, is not confined to Germans. One of our officers who had had a brother killed a few days before deliberately shot and killed several unarmed prisoners. ”

“ But in every engagement there comes a time when every man is "on his own," when it is impossible for the officer, if he be still living, to direct the action. The idea that an officer can exercise "fire control" as taught in our service schools, or can personally direct the fire of a number of machine guns, once the action has started, is ridiculous. The limits of one man's sphere of action, at such a time, are extremely small. ”

“ As we seldom had charcoal, it was necessary to start (p. 109) the fire before daylight, using wood to ignite the coke which made no smoke but, with careful nursing, could be made to burn all day. The presence of smoke always drew the fire of rifle grenades, trench-mortar shells and even artillery. It was one of our favorite forms of amusement to locate a cook house and shoot it up; and when a shell made a direct hit, if, among the pots and pans flying through the air, we could distinguish a German cap or something that looked like a part of a boche, there was much rejoicing in our lines. ”

“ It would not be fair to others to specify any particular branch as being better. All who serve in the front line at a time like this are equally entitled to credit. At times, when it is necessary to go out and search for breaks and repair them, the work of the signalers is "extra hazardous," just as is that of the stretcher-bearers when obliged to expose themselves to succor the wounded, or the machine gunner when it is necessary to mount his gun on top of the parapet, within plain sight of the enemy, or the riflemen, bombers and scouts in advancing to the attack. ”

“ All we could do was to construct sand-bag parapets or barricades, while our so-called "dug-outs" consisted of huts constructed of sand-bags, roofed with corrugated iron and covered with more sand-bags. They afforded protection from shrapnel and small shell fragments, but, of course, not against direct hits from any kind of shells. Even a little "whizz-bang" would go through them as though they were egg-shells. All the earth thereabouts was of the consistency of thick soup and our parapet had a habit of sloughing away just about as fast as we could build it up. ”

“ It is just this ability to assimilate individual instruction that has made the Canadian superior to the native-born Briton. He is better educated, as a rule, has lived a freer and more varied life and, as a result, possesses that initiative and individual ingenuity which are so often necessary at the critical stages of a fight. We have every reason to expect that the American soldier, for these same reasons, will prove to be at least the equal of the Canadian--the finest type of fighting man yet developed by this war. ”

“ As the battalion was crossing the long open stretch we came under fire from an enemy machine gun and some men were hit. There's no use talking, no other weapon used in the war is as deadly as a machine gun. Where you can walk through an artillery barrage with a few casualties, the well-directed fire of only one machine gun will pile men up as fast as they come along. ”

“ When the final history of this war is written, it is doubtful if any other name will so appeal to the Canadian as Ypres and the Ypres Salient; every foot of which is hallowed ground to French, Belgians, British and Colonials alike; not a yard of which has not been consecrated to the cause of human liberty and baptized in the blood of democracy. ”

“ We had here many demonstrations of a matter about which I have been questioned, times without number, by both military men and civilians, and that is, "What is the effective radius of a shell of a certain caliber?" It is one of the things which our theorists in general, and artillerymen in particular, delight in. Many hours of learned discourse have been devoted to proving, theoretically, that an area of a given size can be made impassable by dropping a certain number of shells on it, at stated intervals. This is all rot. Common sense should teach us better. ”

“ The trouble with us is that we have not, and never have had, any machine gunners in the United States Army. By this I mean men skilled in machine gunnery as applied to present-day warfare. The evolution of machine-gun tactics is, perhaps, (p. 095) the most outstanding feature of the whole war. From being, as it was considered four years ago, merely an emergency weapon or, as the text-book writers were pleased to call it, "a weapon of opportunity," it has become the most important single weapon in use in any army, not even excepting the artillery. ”

“ Afterward, on the Somme and Ancre, it had become a permanent condition; but to us, who had been "carrying on" under the overwhelming odds of the German guns, it was a welcome change. It did our hearts good to hear those monster thirteen hundred and fifty pound "babies" coming over our heads with a "woosh" and landing in the lines across the way, on Hill 60, where they left marks like mine craters. We could put up with quite a lot just to see that, and although we were suffering considerably from the rifle grenades and the "Minnies," every one appeared to be in a good humor. ”

“ Disembarking was nothing more than common, every-day, hard labor, relieved, occasionally, by the antics of some of the horses that did not want to go down the steep narrow gangway. It was the devil's own job to get them aboard in the first place and equally difficult to persuade them to go ashore. Such perversity, I have noticed, is not confined to horses: the average soldier can give exhibitions of it that would shame the wildest mustang. ”

“ From that time on, I "lived" in Sniper's Barn. It made no difference whether the battalion was in the front line or in billets, I was there for a purpose and I accomplished it. When the guns were in the front or in support, we had one mounted in the hedge and kept the rifle handy. Bouchard, with a large telescope, and I with my binoculars, scanned everything along the enemy's front and behind his lines. We knew the ranges, to an inch. If one or two men showed, I used the rifle; if a larger number, the machine gun. ”

“ It is their task to administer first aid to all wounded and then to carry or otherwise assist them back to the dressing stations which may be anywhere from a few hundred yards to a mile or more, depending on the ground. When a man is hit while in an exposed place, whether in No Man's Land or behind our lines, it is up to the stretcher-bearers to get to him at the earliest possible moment. I have seen these men, time after time, rush to the assistance of a stricken soldier, knowing full well that they would immediately become the target for snipers' bullets. ”

“ We arrived at the appointed place ahead of time, and while we were lying about waiting we had our first glimpse of real war. It was a long way off and high up in the air but it was a thrilling sight for us. A couple of German airplanes were being shelled by some of our anti-aircraft guns, and as we watched the numerous shell-bursts, apparently close to the planes, we expected, every moment, to see the flyers come tumbling down. ”

“ The havoc created in a trench by one of the large ones passes belief. The strongest dug-out is wiped out in a twinkle; whole sections of parapet are obliterated, and where was a strong, well-built wall eight feet or more in height there remains a hole or "crater" fifteen or twenty feet in diameter and several feet deep. ”

“ In this war, as in most others, it is the infantryman who stands the brunt of the fighting. True, he is disguised under many other names, such as rifleman, bomber, automatic rifleman, rifle-grenadier, scout, signaler, sniper, runner or machine gunner but, when you get right down to the bottom of the whole business, he is the fellow who travels on his two feet and actually "goes over and gets 'em." ”

“ From that time on I never met up with any body of British Imperial soldiers who did not show this same consideration and solicitude for the stranger. And they do it so unostentatiously and naturally that they challenge the admiration of all, especially of Colonials such as we, who were, I fear, very apt to forget the little niceties of manner which are inbred in the native Briton. ”

“ Usually one or two guns would do a little strafing every night: simply going out into the field in front of the building and setting up the gun in a convenient shell-hole. After a while, from our own observations and from information supplied by the artillery, we occasionally located an enemy battery within range of our guns. Then we would have a regular "strafing party." Laying all the guns so as to deliver a converging fire on the battery position, we would, as soon as it was dark, open up on them, knowing that they would be moving about in the open and exposed to fire. ”

“ Every foot of ground in France, Belgium and Germany has been so thoroughly and accurately mapped that there need be no such thing as estimating ranges. You know the range; you do not have to depend on mental or mechanical estimates. And, as machine-gun fire is almost entirely indirect fire, the guns must be laid by using map, compass, protractor and clinometer (quadrant) , in exactly the same manner as artillery fire is directed. The average machine gunner will probably go through the whole war without ever seeing a live enemy--excepting prisoners. ”

“ Our instructors have been technical theorists of the very highest order, basing their theories and working out their problems on the experience furnished by previous wars and of course it is difficult for them to realize that nearly every hypothesis which they have assumed in working out their theories has been proved false. They can not believe that "fire control" of infantry, as taught in the school of fire, has no place in modern trench warfare. ”

“ At times, when the mud was nearly waist deep, he would throw away his overcoat, blanket and other personal effects, but never would he give up his beloved gun. When trenches were absolutely impassable he would climb up on top, scorning bullets and shells, intent on the one job in hand--to get to his appointed station without delay. ”

“ There can be no fair distinction--they all, taken as a unit, are in a class separated by a wide gulf from those back in supporting or reserve or artillery positions, who, in turn, are separated from the transport and ambulance drivers, who, while occasionally under shell fire, are in the zone of comparative safety, where "people" still live and farm (p. 170) and run stores and estaminets. I would not have you think that I am minimizing the value of the services of these men. Their work is of vital importance to the success of the fighting forces and must be done ”

“ After going over all the ground back of our lines, I decided to try the experiment of placing the gun in a small hedge which ran across the lower end of an old garden or orchard, in front of Sniper's Barn; that (p. 089) is, on the side toward the enemy. It looked rather foolhardy, at first glance, for the place was in plain sight from the German lines and only about five hundred yards away at the nearest point; but I remembered our experience at our first strafing place and depended on Heinie to jump to the conclusion that we were in the farm buildings, and devote his attention to them. ”

“ We can only hope that it will prove as good as the Vickers and Lewis which are giving perfect satisfaction on the battle-fields of Flanders and France. No real machine gunner expects or requires anything better, but I can not imagine any one type of gun that can replace both of them, any more than a single class of artillery can combine the functions of both the light field guns and the heavy howitzers. ”

“ The foreign officers, British and French, who are now in this country acting as instructors and advisers are doing everything in their power to impress upon our officers and men the necessity for keeping up to date in all the various and complicated departments of military training, even to the exclusion of many of the pet ideas of some of the most accomplished instructors in our service schools. ”

“ It was only later we learned that it is the rarest thing in the world for an airplane to be brought down by guns from the ground. I suppose I have seen several hundred thousand shots fired at them and have yet to see one hit by a shell from an "Archie" and only (p. 028) one by machine-gun fire from the ground. The majority of planes destroyed are shot down by machine guns in combat with other flyers. ”

“ Exposure to fire such as theorists had told us would demoralize any army is merely a part of the day's work. Troops go in and out of the trenches, often under artillery fire that, according to our books, ought to annihilate them, and they do it without thinking it anything unusual or (p. 135) worthy of comment other than perhaps, in answer to a question, to remark: "Oh, yes, they shot us up a bit in the P. & O." or "They handed us a few 'crumps' and 'woolly bears' coming through Ridgewood." ”

“ In spite of all the difficulties, we managed to get our rations and mail every day. The regular shelling had become a part of our daily life, and the constantly growing list of killed and wounded we accepted without comment. The Machine Gun Section was gradually losing its original members and replacing them by drafts from the infantry (p. 139) companies. It was simply a case of "Conditions continue normal in the Ypres salient," to quote the official reports. We now maintained two strafing guns, shifting about from one position to another whenever an opportunity offered to harass the boche. ”

“ We did dig out and mount a German gun which was used for a while, but I then had it taken, with several others, back to our line. We could do so much more good from our original position by maintaining a continuous barrage (p. 159) to hamper the enemy in getting up supports. From prisoners taken later we learned that our machine-gun barrage was much more effective than that of our artillery. However, as we were obliged to fire from temporary positions, on the parapet and without cover of any kind, it was impossible to prevent the loss of some guns by direct hits from shells. ”

“ A properly directed machine-gun barrage is far more difficult to traverse than anything the artillery can put down and the combination of artillery and machine guns, working together, whether on the offensive or defensive, represents the highest point ever attained in the effective use of fire in battle. ”

“ Where (p. 101) opposing lines are so close together, say less than one hundred yards apart, and the ground is level and star shells are going up almost continuously, it would seem to be nearly an impossibility for any man or number of men to venture out into No Man's Land without being seen and fired upon by the enemy. But with certain members of each organization it is merely a part of the daily routine. Every night they slip over the parapet and, in small groups, patrol up and down the line, constantly on the alert to prevent any surprise attack by the enemy. ”