Chapter 6 ToC No.6

THE DAYS BEFORE YPRES.

The following day we drove over to Estaires, five miles away, to see the first Canadian division coming back into rest after a month in the trenches. As we passed the infantry on the road it was pleasant to see broad smiles spreading over the faces of the men who recognized us as having been with them at Valcartier and Salisbury Plain. Fit and rugged they looked as they swung along with the confident air which newly arrived troops often seem to possess. Their officers were pleased with them, and were satisfied that the division needed only an opportunity to make good. The division had been on the left at the battle of Neuve Chappelle, and had had no real fighting as yet; but it had received an excellent month's training in trench warfare, and was now well broken into the new game.

The division remained for a week in that neighborhood resting, and we had several opportunities of visiting our friends. On Sunday three of us called on my old friend General Mercer of the first brigade, and had tea with him and Majors Van Straubenzie and Hayter of his staff. General Mercer expressed himself as being delighted with the men and as having the highest confidence in them.

We also had dinner with Colonel (now General) Rennie and our old friends of the third (Toronto) battalion who were located in a little peasant cottage in Neuf Berquin. In a room adjoining Captain Haywood, the medical officer of the battalion, lay on a pile of straw with symptoms of appendicitis. He was not too sick to give some extremely graphic descriptions of his first experiences in the trenches, while we all sat around and smoked. The room was lighted by a single stable lantern which also smoked and we sat on boxes; I have seldom passed a more pleasant evening in my life than that spent in the little peasant cottage with my soldier friends, Captains George Ryerson, Muntz, Wickens, Major Allan (all since dead), Major Kirkpatrick (now a prisoner in Germany), Captains Hutchison, Bart Rogers, George, Lyne-Evans, Robertson, (of the first battalion) and others. Some of these chaps I knew well in Canada and we talked of home and the old times, all the while realizing that some of us would never again get back. The feeling was now fast settling down upon us that we were actually at war, and that soon some of the men we had grown to admire and love would have to pay the price.

During the evening two stocky little French girls came in and sang "Eet's a longa, longa wye to Teeperaree" in English for the "seek Capitan."

The Canadian division was in rest during those early April days when the cold, long-drawn out spring became almost imperceptibly warmer and the buds were beginning to swell on the trees and bushes.

On the first day of April, Bismarck's birth-date, we were expecting something unusual along the front and were not disappointed. While driving up to the Clearing Station to breakfast, we noticed a couple of Hun aeroplanes being shelled by our "Archibalds." When we returned to the town half an hour later we found that the place had been bombed.

One bomb had gone right through Rankin's billet, exploded in the workshop on the ground floor and blown out all the windows; another had fallen in the square about twenty yards in front of my billet and had failed to explode, while six others had fallen in different parts of the town, half of which were "duds." Nobody was hurt and no other damage was done.

Bittleson, Captain Rankin's batman, who happened to be looking out of the top window at the time, swore that the bomb which went through the roof beside him had grazed his forehead.

The bomb which had failed to explode in the square was taken possession of by our staff sergeant and placed on my laboratory table as a souvenir. A staff officer from headquarters, fortunately, came along before we returned and bore it off to his chief after promising to return it. Needless to relate it never came back, much to my relief and to the disgust of the staff sergeant who on several occasions referred to the iniquity of this high handed action.

On Easter Sunday we were invited to some sports by the divisional cavalry. As we drove up to the orchard specified in the invitation a crowd of typical big western cowboys with their broad brimmed Stetson hats came streaming up the road from a nearby farm where they had been foregathering.

A clear stretch of turf was selected, a ring formed by the crowd and the first event was announced-a cock fight between Von Kluck and Joffre. Cock fighting is the native sport of the countryside in that region where nearly every farmer keeps a couple of game cocks and fights them on Sunday afternoons, incidentally betting on the results.

After everybody had been warned not to move, the two birds were placed gently on the ground on opposite sides of the circle. Carelessly, and without apparently having noticed one another, the roosters walked about picking at the grass but gradually getting nearer to one another. When they got within a yard of each other they became more wary, though still feigning carelessness, until one seeing an opportunity, sprang into the air and struck at the head of the other with the curved wire nails attached to his legs in place of spurs. The other dodged and counter attacked and the action became general.

Using beak, wings and spurs they jumped, flew and struck at one another as opportunity afforded, until Joffre got a strangle hold on Von Kluck and buried his spurs again and again into the prostrate body until he finally struck a vital spot and the combat was over. Then, stretching himself, the victor flapped his wings once or twice as if to say "bring on the next" and went on picking at the grass as before.

It was the first time that I had ever seen a cock fight and I hope it will be the last. The concentration on the faces of those men as they watched the cruel "sport" and the play of expression passing over them was intensely interesting to me; you could almost tell what some of them were saying within their minds and it was pleasant to know that to the great majority of them the game was as repulsive as it was to us. It was obviously unsuited to the taste of our new country and men who might themselves be dead in the course of a week or two.

One other cock fight was put on and then we turned to a game much more suited to our men-a wrestling bout on horseback. Four men on each side mounted on horses, without saddles or bridles, were drawn up at opposite sides of the field. The men were dressed in trousers and shirts only; the horses were guided solely by a halter.

At a given signal the two parties approached one another at a trot, each man selecting as his antagonist the one opposite him. In the first crash a couple were dismounted almost instantly, and the battle resolved itself into several separate encounters.

The horses seemed to enter into the spirit of the thing and backed up, wheeled, side-stepped and did their best to help their owners win.

Meanwhile the riders, grasping one another by body, arm or leg, did their utmost to tear one another off their horses. When it became three against two, the two would tackle one opponent and it was the task of the single man to try to keep the two others on the same side so that they could not grasp him on both sides at once. It was exciting enough to see one man being pulled by one arm from one side, while another man was trying to throw his opposite leg over the horse. Even when they succeeded in accomplishing this he clung to the horse's neck and it was only with the greatest difficulty that his feet were made to touch the ground and he was thereby put out of the game.

One or two obstreperous animals who objected to the game ran away with their riders and tried to brush them off on the apple trees. The contestants were all as hard as nails and could stand any amount of rough usage such as they received in this gladiator-like contest.

After the games were over we adjourned to the Colonel's billet for afternoon tea and music. The Colonel was exceedingly fond of his gramophone, and, being troubled somewhat with insomnia, would sometimes rise in the middle of the night and put on a few of his favorite records, much to the annoyance of the rest of the staff billeted in the same house. Knowing this, one did not think it so strange as it might otherwise have seemed, that, during the course of a move of the division, the gramophone fell from a wagon and was run over by six other wagons. What did seem mysterious was the fact that none of the drivers had seen the gramophone in the road until it had been crushed as flat as a board.

When I visited the divisional cavalry a few months later the Colonel was still carrying forty dollars' worth of records with him but had not yet ordered a new gramophone.

Gradually the Canadian division moved on. One night we found them in the neighborhood of Winnizeele and Oudezeele, hamlets near the Belgian border. In searching for a battalion headquarters we asked one soldier sitting in front of a barn what village this was and received the not uncommon answer "I don't know." It was astonishing how frequently that answer was given. Apparently some men were quite content to be moved about like pawns in a game of chess without question as long as they were fed and clothed; they seemingly had adopted the attitude of the Mohammedan, "It is the will of Allah."

We had dinner with Colonel Rennie and his staff that night, and a pleasant dinner it was. I remember yet how envious we were of Major Kirkpatrick who took us up to his room and there opened up a box just received from his wife in England-a box containing cigarettes, chocolates, taffy, gum, magazines and other things so greatly appreciated by the soldier in the field, and so liberally shared by them with less fortunate ones. Some men were very lucky in having wives who seemed to spend a great deal of thought-and money-in things that would be appreciated by their husbands in France. The Major was taken a prisoner a fortnight later and I sincerely hope that he was as lucky in having his boxes come through to him in Germany.

After dinner we accompanied some of the younger officers to a mysterious place called "The Club"-an Estaminet in the village, operated by a French woman and recently "out of bounds" for several days because of failure to observe the early closing law.

The scene in that little French "Pub" that evening might have been from a comedy written of the period of one hundred years ago. In the common room were a number of officers playing cards at little tables. The air was blue with smoke and numerous bottles of wine stood on the tables.

A young French woman sat over in a corner chatting confidentially in French to a Canadian officer who thought he was replying in the same language. Neither understood a word that the other said, though both were obviously delighted at their success in making themselves understood, so what was the difference?

The scene, which grew more and more interesting as the evening advanced, was brought to a sudden conclusion by the entrance of a Lieutenant, who announced that nine o'clock had struck; in a moment the room was emptied, lights were out and we were all wending our ways homeward.

The first impressions of a soldier at the front are invariably the most vivid. A week after we had settled down to routine work we had occasion to visit one of the advanced dressing stations in our area. Leaving our little town by motor we crossed the canal by the lift-bridge after waiting to allow three Dutch barges to pass through. These lift bridges are hinged about one third of the way from one end and are raised by means of stout cables hitched to the other end and passing back to towers. They are so balanced that little effort is required to raise or lower them.

Turning to the left we struck into a pavé road which led for some distance along the canal bank. Pavé is not a bad road when kept in good repair as this one was, and when you get used to the vibration of the car bouncing from one cobble stone to another; when, however, it is not kept in repair, depressions form which rapidly increase as cart and motor wheels fall into them and hammer them deeper and deeper.

A little grey tug boat, painted the regulation battleship grey, slipped quietly along through the canal towing several barges loaded with road metal and lumber.

A buzz like a huge bee approaching us across the fields attracted our attention, and we looked up to see an aeroplane, like a gigantic dragon fly bearing directly down upon us. A hundred yards away it left the ground and passed over our heads climbing steadily in a great spiral into the sky. Another aeroplane, and another followed till there were five circling above us, getting smaller and smaller as they soared into the heaven, looking like herons in flight among the clouds. They then made off towards different parts of the German lines to their daily task of reconnaissance.

The women, old men and children, were busy on the farms ploughing, harrowing and putting in the seed. Though the men were away there was no dearth of labour on the farms and everything was going on as it should. The silly-looking, heavily-built, three-wheeled carts, empty or loaded with manure, bumped along behind the broad-backed Flemish horses, guided solely by a frail looking piece of string. The driver, seated crosswise on a projecting tongue of wood, guides the horse by mysterious signals conveyed through jerks of the piece of string, and steers the cart by leaning over and shoving the small front steering wheel to the right or left by hand. The Flemish horses are very placid and are never startled by motors, gun fire, or anything else.

Away to the right we could see the spires of a church in a little village nestling among the trees. Our road took its tortuous course through fields as flat as a board. Tall trees flanked the roadside which was separated from the fields by ditches three or four feet wide, serving to drain both road and fields and ultimately emptying into some canal or creek. In this particular part of Flanders hedges were not in universal use for fences. In one place we execrated the Germans for having cut down dozens of the roadside trees, only to discover later that the British themselves had cut them down in order to clear the course for aeroplanes ascending and descending to the aerodrome close by.

We overhauled a trotting dog team dragging a heavy little milk cart and driven by a boy who ran alongside. At the sound of the motor horn the dogs turned sharply to the right without waiting for orders from the boy, ran over his foot, and nearly upset the cart. One judged that they had had some previous and possibly not pleasant experiences with motor cars, and were taking no chances. What the boy said to them was shameful, judged even by our limited knowledge of French and the short time we were within hearing of him.

Coming into the little town of La Gorgue we could see to our right a chateau in quite pretentious gardens-a chateau in which the German Crown Prince is said to have been staying when a British shell crashed through the roof and made him move on the double quick. This town like our own was intersected by a canal which was used both as a sewer and source of water supply for washing purposes. The streets in this town are dirty and ill kept; the stores uninteresting, and the houses squalid; it ran into the next town of Estaires by the continuation of the main street.

Canadian soldiers were everywhere in evidence, wandering along the roads in the manner so characteristic of them. Canadians have never been over fond of saluting officers, and have never quite accepted the statement that it is the uniform of the representative of the King they are called upon to salute-not the man.

The first story I heard was about a chauffeur I had had in Valcartier. He had been standing at the doorway of a store trying to talk to a French girl when a couple of British officers passed. The man did not see them till they were just going by and drew himself up to a sort of a half attention. The officers passed, halted, and came back.

"Why didn't you salute?" queried one officer.

"I didn't see you," replied the man.

"Oh, yes, you did; you came to a kind of sloppy attention as we passed," said the officer.

"Yes," said the man. "I did as you were almost past; but anyway we don't salute much in our army."

"What?" said the officer, "are you a Canadian?"

"Yes, sir," said the chauffeur proudly, and the British officers went on laughing heartily.

The officers we came to see were out and we seized the opportunity to run over for a look at the shell-shattered town of Laventie-the first battered town we had seen. To us, at that time, it was an awe-inspiring spectacle, though nowadays it would be considered a comparatively undamaged town.

The houses on the outskirts were quite intact, but as we approached the centre of the town, shattered windows, pitted walls, and scarred woodwork indicated that the town had been heavily shelled. Near the church the buildings were wrecked; roofs were lifted off, windows blown out, and walls were frequently half down or had great holes in them, while the block right around the church was a heap of rubbish.

The church itself had been hit scores of times, and the walls though still standing were perforated like a sieve. The stones in the foundation of the church were fractured by the force of the exploding shells into tiny fragments, still pressed together with the weight of the material above them. So crushed were they that if removed, a tap with a hammer would make them fall into thousands of splinters.

The houses round about the church had been completely razed to the ground. Those adjacent were partly unroofed, with perhaps a wall blown out showing an upstairs with a stairway swinging from the floor, beams from the roof fallen over the iron bedstead, sheets of wall paper dangling from the walls, and every other imaginable combination of wreckage. And yet a few doors away down the street where the houses had not been very badly damaged they were occupied by civilians who tried to eke out an existence by selling candy and foodstuffs.

It is a never-failing source of wonder to see people in such places which were being shelled daily, hanging on desperately to the old homes, not knowing when a shell might come through the roof and kill them all. That was brought home to me later on when, as I passed through a village one afternoon, I saw three women being dug out of the cellar of a house in which a shell had exploded a minute before. On another occasion in a village close by a mother with her babe at her breast, three children of various ages, the husband and the grandmother, were all killed in one room by a German shell, the walls, ceiling and floor being splattered with blood and brains. And so it goes on day after day among the civilians in the shelled area in France. Most of them escape but many of them pay the price.

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