From The St. Lawrence To The Yser - free ebook by Frederic C. Curry

FROM THE ST. LAWRENCE TO THE YSER

amesbury Lieuts. Klotz, Strathy and Curry at Amesbury....

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FREDERIC C. CURRY

McCLELLAND, GOODCHILD &amp; STEWART, PUBLISHERS ... Toronto . Printed in Great Britain. PREFACE In presenting this little work to the public the writer wishes to thank those of his fellow-officers and others who brought to his notice incidents that did not come under his personal observation. Valuable assistance has been gained from the official accounts of Sir Max Aitken, and from the historical writings of Mr. John Buchan with regard to the parts played by other brigades and divisions with

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CHAPTER I

ANTE-BELLUM Before the war the Canadian Militia consisted of about 75,000 of all ranks and all grades of efficiency. To a neutral eye it must have appeared to be in a highly disorganised condition, for battalions and corps had sprung up here and there throughout the country with no proportion existing between them and the other arms of the service. And yet within a short two months after the outbreak of hostilities a complete division, armed and equipped, landed in England, and in a bare six mon

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CHAPTER II

PETEWAWA Petewawa is the training ground of the Canadian Field Artillery and the Permanent Force. Until very recently it was strictly reserved for them, and was regarded, by those who had not been there, as a sort of seventh heaven for soldiers. Later, when the city corps were taken there for five days one June—or was it July?—we changed our minds and decided that, geographically speaking, it was part of one of Dante's seven circles. At present it is the internment camp for enemy aliens, and if

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CHAPTER III

MOBILISATION It required the outbreak of the war to bring home the inevitable weakness of such a system, and when the Canadian Parliament announced the intention of sending a contingent of thirty thousand men, even the most enthusiastic shrugged their shoulders and said "Impossible." But the feat not only was accomplished, but nearly trebled in the accomplishment, and if there is one man who can claim to have arisen as a Moses from among the people and achieved this miracle it is Major-General S

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CHAPTER IV

VAL CARTIER A more picturesque site for a camp than Val Cartier could hardly be imagined, situated as it was among the foothills of the Laurentian mountains along the banks of the Jacques Cartier River. A gentle slope, dry sandy soil, and plenty of water made it ideal from a sanitary standpoint, and with the ample manœuvre grounds available, the shower sprays, and running water piped throughout the camp, Val Cartier was the peer of any camp the Canadians have yet seen. But when we tumbled out of

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CHAPTER V

THE CONVOY For two days we lay at anchor opposite the Citadel of Quebec and bemoaned the fate that separated us from the twinkling lights of the Chateau Frontenac and the Dufferin Terrace. Then one evening the throb of the propeller drew the crowd from the saloons to the decks and we watched the lights fade away in the night. From the forts long fingers of light followed us down stream, and blinking lights here and there sent us farewell greetings. Up on the bridge we could hear the clatter of t

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CHAPTER VI

IN ENGLAND Our stay in England was marred by the heaviest rainfall of many years, and Salisbury Plain, where we were quartered all winter, had the reputation of being the muddiest spot in the world until we struck Flanders; and even now there are patriots who maintain that the "Plain" holds the championship. But these were not our first impressions of the Downs. It is hard yet to reconcile the mud in which we lived for months with the velvety swards that first greeted our eyes. We had detrained

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CHAPTER VII

INTERIM For a time there was little news from the Canadians at the front, for they were not immediately placed in the trenches. Trench warfare was then still a novelty; its exact principles had not been developed, and all the training done on the Plain had been the ordinary open style of fighting—quite useless against the strongly entrenched positions the Germans had taken up. So while lying in reserve behind the lines the First Division dug and manned trenches and practised themselves in the ne

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CHAPTER VIII

YPRES, 1915 The Second Battle for Ypres, as the fighting at Langemarck and St. Julien is officially designated, was largely a regimental and company officers' battle. This does not, however, reflect adversely on the brigade and other staffs, who did all that was humanly possible with the information that was at hand. Even at this date there are questions about the action that cannot be cleared up until it will be permissible to reproduce the whole of the war diaries of the various units that too

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CHAPTER IX

WITH THE DRAFT On returning to our barracks we found notices that "the following officers will hold themselves in readiness to proceed to their respective units with the next draft." Eagerly we scanned the list to make sure our names had not been omitted, and then transferred ourselves from the crowd that gathered in the ante-room to those who waited their turn outside the telephone cabinet. Letters and telegrams were being feverishly written in all parts of the building, and a hurly-burly of vo

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CHAPTER X

THE BREAKING IN "We take the old road we have taken for years; For you cannot cut corners in war, it appears." The truth of this old maxim was impressed on us by the roundabout route we took to reach the field only a few hundred yards away where the remainder of the battalion lay. Actually about two companies strong, they looked a mere handful as they lay huddled close to the hedges in the shallowest of shelter pits scratched in the soil with the field entrenching tool. The draft was immediately

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CHAPTER XI

RESERVE BILLETS It was only the prospect of several days of comparative rest that held us together at all as we floundered over the slippery cobble stones into Vlamertinghe. At the cross-roads that formed the battalion rendezvous in case of alarm, we got into some kind of military formation, for we spied the gaunt figure of the colonel there sitting his horse like a centaur. A grim man he was, who never spared his horses, himself or his men, and his only comment as we hobbled past was, "Dress up

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CHAPTER XII

BAILLEUL Our next stop was Bailleul, a town of some fifteen thousand inhabitants just over the Franco-Belgian frontier. Possibly it was never known before the war, but it is now, for sooner or later everyone goes to Bailleul: it was, until the taking over of the line below Arras, the Mecca of the British Army. But it was fifteen weary miles from Brielen, fifteen miles that we stumbled over in a drizzling rain on slippery cobblestones before turning up through an archway off the main street to ou

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CHAPTER XIII

THE TREK SOUTH Until we left Bailleul the Canadian Division had been a part of the 2nd Army under Sir Herbert Plumer. We were now to go to the other end of the British line and become part of the 1st Army, then commanded by the present Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig. The news of this change was greeted with little enthusiasm by the old soldiers in our midst, but old soldiers are invariably pessimists, and imagine that every inspection is the prelude to more "dirty work at the cross-roads"

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CHAPTER XIV

FESTUBERT, 1915 While the 4th Army Corps were trying to gain a footing on the northern end of the Aubers Ridge near Fromelles the 1st Army was making an equally desperate attempt to the south in front of Festubert, a village already in our hands. 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 gro

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CHAPTER XV

CARPE DIEM "Home again!" said Begbie Lyte as he watched his servant unrolling his valise in the little field we had left a fortnight before, and the rest of us laughed, for he voiced the thoughts of all. It required a bit of an optimist to see a home in that apparently comfortless situation, but men just relieved from the firing line are not over-critical, and the prospect of a night under the stars, but away from the crash of shell and the "phit" of striking bullets, was pleasant enough to sati

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CHAPTER XVI

GIVENCHY, 1915 It was now the turn of the 1st Brigade to emulate the gallant deeds of the 2nd and 3rd Brigades at Ypres and Festubert, and right gallantly they did so. Givenchy, while receiving but slight mention in Sir John French's dispatches, was perhaps only a minor affair; but the fact that, owing largely to a shortage of bombs, we were unable to hold the ground we had gained does not in any way detract from the gallantry of the attack. Comparisons with Hulluch or Loos cannot be made, as we

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CHAPTER XVII

NORTHWARD AGAIN After Givenchy the Canadian Division rested for another week around the outskirts of Bethune before starting its long tramp back to the northern end of the line again. But it was far from being a week of idleness, and hard drilling was the order of the day. Great stress was laid on bomb-throwing, and, in spite of the heavy casualties the bombing sections had suffered, there was no dearth of volunteers for the "Suicide Club," as the bombers termed themselves. The men, as well as t

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CHAPTER XVIII

NIGHTS OF GLADNESS! Our nights around Ploegsteert fully made up for the peacefulness of the days, and "No Man's Land" between the two lines of trenches became the scene of many exciting adventures. This was particularly true of the area directly in front of us, as a large beanfield extended from the German line nearly to ours. It was a dull night indeed that our listening post did not either bomb, or get bombed by, an enemy patrol. Casualties, though, were fewer than one would expect from such c

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CHAPTER XIX

IN FRONT OF MESSINES The Second Canadian Division arrived in France during our stay in Ploegsteert, and after a short rest took over a sector on the right of St. Eloi and in front of Messines. Here it was that we relieved them about a fortnight later—our third move while in front of this grim hill, the scene of such hard fighting in October of the year before. The line at this point swung forward in a small salient to within fifty yards of the enemy—the only footing we now held on this famous ri

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CHAPTER XX

MINE WARFARE 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 ourse

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CHAPTER XXI

MYTHS, FAIRIES, ETC. In every position you take over there are a certain number of myths which when you go out you carefully repeat to the incoming battalion; and the tale seldom loses in the telling. These are handed down to posterity in naming new field-works; hence the frequency of "Suicide Alley," "Sniper's Cross-roads," "Dead Man's Corner," &amp;c., &amp;c. Some of these myths are worth repeating—all are worth noting, for they are in most cases founded on possibilities. The most pop

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CHAPTER XXII

THE WINTER MONTHS November brought with it a week of steady rain, and we knew the winter months were at hand. 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 wh

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EPILOGUE

Our later experiences are too recent for publication to-day; here, then, this brief story of the Canadians must make an end. THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS, LTD., LONDON AND TONBRIDGE....

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