Chapter 8 A BATH UNDER DIFFICULTIES

Over near Hooge was a large naval gun of high velocity and long range, mounted on an armored train. The particular purpose of this nautical monster was to shoot up objects at short notice, such as a body of moving troops, a battery on the road, a train of ammunition wagons. It was concealed in a tunnel made for its specific use, and when it would discharge its missives of destruction it would first project itself from the tunnel, send the message, and then shoot back inside.

It was at this time paying particular attention to the Square in Poperinghe,-the little station and the hospital there,-and it had become such a diabolical nuisance that it was determined to resort to heroic measures to "get it." A monster balloon was enlisted in the work and the mission of the floating bag was to direct the correspondence of one of our 9.2 naval guns, which was operating on a short railroad built by the Canadian Pacific Railway. This railroad, I may add, has been doing mostly all the track laying and railroad operating for the Canadian forces in Flanders. It was a matter of amazement for the natives to see how quickly a railroad could be placed and operated, and even the soldiers who were all more or less familiar with the workings of this magnificent system in Canada, were astonished at the speed with which the new machine, especially built by the Company for army purposes, would throw down the rails, fasten them-presto! a railroad to order.

Victorious, But Dead Tired

It was resolved that the first work of the balloon should be devoted to putting this German naval gun out of action. In this section at this time the German balloons were thick in the air, and this gave them good control of the Ypres salient. We dared not attempt the experiment there for a long time, but it was finally determined to launch this one, and it was brought up one evening, with its volunteers, inflated during the night, and launched in the morning. Promptly at 10:00 o'clock, when it was ready for raising, the German planes hummed busily overhead. Despite their activities, the balloon got well up and was doing good observation work on its way over to the naval nuisance; there it reached its objective, making the necessary notations and records. Then-Kr-kr-kr-p! Kr-kr-kr-p! And the shells commenced to scatter around it. Then it was a case of getting the bag down, which was not so easy. These observation balloons are operated from a large armored truck, to which they are fastened, and the truck runs along carrying the air-bag with it, attached with a long cable; it is handled just as a toy balloon would be carried by a boy,-when the boy runs along, the balloon runs with him. Attached to the bottom of the gas bag is a basket, usually holding four observers, with a parachute for each man, and while in the air they have to work as fast as possible, because their stay in the azure is as short as the energies of Fritz can make it. If the wind is up and the sky cloudy, it is one chance in a dozen that they will escape before the planes get them, as the swing of the basket makes it difficult in the extreme for them to notice the danger until it is upon them.

On this morning the first indication that they had that their time was up was the swooping down of a cluster of birds of death on all sides. The weather was foggy, a stiff wind blowing and the basket swinging from side to side. This was the first time an attempt had been made to float a balloon in the Ypres salient, as the danger was too obvious to take the risk. However, as I say, the chance was taken. It so happened that our guns were taking a breathing spell, and we stood on the top of our gun pit eagerly watching the fall of the balloon and its escape. The road along which the armored truck had run ran at one point quite close to the German lines, and the airplanes were now coming thicker every moment and bombing it from every quarter. Telephone and telegraph wires running from trenches to headquarters and all parts of the lines intervened between the balloon and safety, and there was nothing for them but to cut the wires to let the bag get through. Each minute the danger increased, but the men in the truck scrambled up the poles, nipped the wire with their nippers, and the balloon passed through. This was done repeatedly before it reached its haven. Bets were freely made by every man in my gun crew, with the odds of 5 to 1, that the Huns would get it. Somehow I had an inspiration that she would navigate the storm, and I took up all the offers in my battery against the bag-and lost. Her mission of observation had been accomplished, but when she got through the wires she floated to the wagon line, and the result of her arrival here was disastrous in the extreme, as the German shells followed the bag as assiduously as any bunch of schoolboys snowballing a foe, and hundreds of splendid horses were mangled to a jelly by the explosion amongst them.

When it got to the wagon line the crew on the truck commenced to pull it down as rapidly as they could, but when half-way to the ground a flying shell split the cable in twain as neatly as it could have been done with a razor blade, and the bag floated away with the remaining two men out over the German lines. When the descent had commenced two of the crew had taken to their parachutes and got away safely.

Anti-aircraft guns now opened up on it from our lines in an endeavor to destroy it and prevent it getting into the hands of the enemy, and German airplanes and anti-aircraft guns were also firing at it, so that it was a target for all concerned. This, perhaps, is about the only incident in the entire war to date where both the British and the Germans were equally bent upon the destruction of a common object.

The wind suddenly changed and a steady current of air in the other direction brought it back over our own lines; then the two remaining men seized the opportunity to leave the floater in their parachutes, dropping to safety. A bevy of our planes then went after it, riddled it with rifle bullets, causing the gas to escape, and it finally sank majestically to the ground.

After the battle, I resumed my place at the gun and the usual day's work. Two days later I was detailed to watch for airplanes and was sitting crouched under a culvert, when the familiar humming struck my ear. I could not at first locate it, and crawled out to have a better look skyward, but still failed to place it. Presently the humming stopped, and I thought it had departed, and seized the chance to go to the cookhouse for a cup of tea. When almost there-Kr-kr-kr-p! Kr-kr-kr-p! a slather of German guns had opened upon ours and the fellows fled pell-mell from the gun pit and made for the culvert, taking shelter underneath. They were there about a minute when a shell landed straight on the culvert, going through eight feet of cement and brick, blowing everything in all directions and killing 15 out of the 16 men who had taken refuge there. Less than sixty seconds had elapsed since I left the spot.

When the battle was at its greatest height a wonderful discovery was made. Complaint had been made about the horses dropping on the road on the way up. Some thought it was cramps, others, colic; the veterinary officers were quite puzzled. One night 18 loads of ammunition, three horses to a load, were on their way to the guns and ten of the horses dropped. The vets then took it for granted there must have been poison in the feed, and an examination disclosed that little steel oats were in the grain. The oats had come from the United States and they had been deposited in the grain there.

The discovery was so important that the O.C. offered a prize of five francs to every man discovering these death-dealing pellets in a bag of oats. The bellies of the horses were secure forevermore, as far as these pills of Kaiser Bill were concerned; those five francs did the trick; every grain of the feed that went down the animals' throats first passed an individual examination through the hands of every money-hungry Tommy in the bunch.

After the third battle of Ypres had cooled down, we were permitted to go to the rear as far as Poperinghe, for the purpose of giving ourselves a scouring, as we were filthy with dirt and lousy with lice. My particular chum on this journey was the little telephonist, Fox, who had been through every big battle up to that time, including the Sanctuary Woods carnage. We got to the wagon lines, eight miles off, by stealing rides on any passing vehicle upon which we could fasten a tooth or a finger nail,-ammunition wagon lorries, ambulances, supply wagons,-as we were thoroughly tired out.

At the wagon lines we persuaded the Q-M to loan us horses for the balance of the journey, which he cheerfully consented to do. But the horses, unfortunately, were mules, practically ready for the bone-yard; the Quartermaster had put them to one side, as they were useless for any further work, and they were awaiting the arrival of the veterinary officer to receive capital punishment. Every time I dug my spurs in my mount, in a mad endeavor to make it go, the only result was a kick in the air with its hind feet.

There was another transportation service in vogue there,-a large number of donkeys, and each time a donkey passed my charger, it would stop dead and wag its ears much after the fashion of a Hebrew gesticulating with his hands in selling a suit of clothes. This was repeated every time we met one of the little donkeys, and each time I had to get off and back the brute for some distance, until it again took the notion to go forward; it was a case of one step forward and two back before I reached my destination.

The most ridiculously funny instance connected with the meeting of the mule and the donkey was the manner in which each indulged in its muleism and donkeyism; the little donkey would shoot its head straight forward, stick its ears out sidewise, at right angles, and commence its song of greeting, which sounded exactly like a man sawing wood, and the mule would warble its well-known lyric of sweetness,-"Hee-Haw! Hee-Haw! Hee-Haw!" keeping time with the flapping of its long lugs.

When I got to Poperinghe Square the mule and myself were all in; save for the ride on the Parson's charger to the wagon lines, I had not been riding for the space of a month, and my legs were so chafed I was compelled to walk like an aged rheumatic for three or four days; but I had company,-the other fellows were similarly affected.

We made our way to the bath in a rush, as every man wanted to be in first. The bath contained 200 men at a time, and 200 tubs; there was no pool in which to bathe; every man had to do his swimming and slopping and washing in a tub; and the sight of the women and girl attendants was a welcome one, as it had been a couple of months before anything feminine had come within the range of our vision. We had to take our turn in going through the routine of the bath.

When I was next, the woman attendant handed me a shirt; a little further along I got a pair of socks, then drawers. Thus equipped, I entered the bathroom; there were about 100 men in there, splashing each other like mad in their wild joy. In stepping along the water-soaked boards, I happened to slip and fall in the wet, and my dry garments were soaked with the water slopped on the boards, assisted by the splashing showers the men were throwing around.

It so happened that one of the fellows had been particularly well splashed by a chum and he was watching for a chance to get even; he determined to wait until his chum had put on his clothes, so that he could execute his vengeance with all the more fullness of perfection. The avenger stood just inside an alley leading to the dressing room, with a pail of water in hand for his intended victim; the water had been scooped out of a tub that had just been used, and it was as dirty as water could be.

As I came even with the alley opening, thinking I was the victim, he let me have it full in the face. I was blinded for a moment with the greasy, soapy, dirty water, and, when my eyes were sufficiently open, it was impossible for me to learn who it was. However, like all things of that kind, I took it in good part and hastened to undress. I filled my tub with pails of water from the tap and started my bath. Oh, how refreshing it was! I don't think I ever appreciated the luxury of a bath until that moment. When through with my ablution it was necessary, before I could dress, to grease my body with a vermin-killer that is supplied the men. This done, I commenced dressing, and had donned my underwear and pants when,-Kr-kr-kr-p! Kr-kr-kr-p!-and a shell landed right in the middle of the bathroom, and the bunch of merry-hearted fellows was transformed into a panic-stricken crowd, leaping and jumping out of the tubs in every direction in a pell-mell rush, helter-skelter, of men, some half dressed, others absolutely naked, intermingled with the women attendants, in the scramble for safety. Civilians, coming from their houses in a mad rush, added to the confusion.

When the smoke of the explosion cleared, thirty of the bathers lay dead in, on and around the tubs, and forty were wounded, all more or less badly. Inside of three minutes, more shells were planted, some of them landing plumb in the square, and, to my intense sorrow, I learned later that Fox, my little chum, there had paid the supreme price. These shells were totally unexpected, coming from the Hooge district, 11 miles distant.

Everybody sought shelter in the cellars, or any other hole they could crawl into, until night. I searched out my mule, and was thankful to find it where I had left it, tied to a tree, gave it a feed of oats, waited until it munched, unperturbed by the crashing explosions breaking in the immediate neighborhood, and utterly oblivious of the fact that I was counting the seconds until it had finished.

Under cover of the night, I returned to the wagon lines, and in much better time than coming down, for which I had to thank the feed of oats. The bath gave me a new hold on life; I felt ten years younger and several pounds lighter.

I learned next day that the station master at Poperinghe had been arrested, tried as a spy and shot. It transpired that he had a wire running from the station depot straight to the German lines, together with some other signaling apparatus, and there was no doubt in the minds of the trial board that it was due to this man's espionage that the bathers lost their lives while in the tubs.

The spy system had so thoroughly impregnated every hole and corner of the district around Ypres that it became the sorest thorn in the sides of the Command, but we finally managed to root it out hip and thigh, and that sector is now as immune from their activities as any other sector in the front lines.

Going up to take my position with the gun next day I met a bomber of the 21st Canadian Infantry, carrying a bag of his wares-hand grenades. We walked together for some distance, and just as I was on the point of leaving him to turn off over to my battery I was appalled by one of the most horrifying sights I have seen at the front. One of the pins of a grenade worked loose in the bag and exploded, blowing his right hand and leg completely off. I have seen scores of happenings, each of which in its entirety was a thousand times more terrible, but there was something about the suddenness, the total unexpectedness, and the fearful spurting of his life's blood, that filled me more full of horror than anything before or since.

In this conflagration that is shaking the world, death stalks on every hand in a hundred different forms, entirely apart from the destruction that the enemy can bestow. I was standing but three feet behind him. As quick as I could I gave him first aid and yelled for a stretcher, but there was nothing that could be done; he lived until sundown.

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