On the Fringe of the Great Fight Part 7

It was war,--apparently an easy going, leisurely sort of game.

Everybody seemed to be going about as if they had been at this sort of thing all their lives; as if, in fact, they couldn't do anything else.

Every vehicle and every person that went into the salient had to travel on that broad highway, flanked with tall trees, and paved with cobble stone. Wire entanglements and trenches traversed the roads at intervals, and sh.e.l.l holes filled with water in the adjacent fields showed the road to be within range of the German guns.

As we approached Ypres we could see that, like all the towns of northern France and Belgium, it was sharply separated from the adjacent fields; there were no extensive suburbs such as are found around the modern British or American city causing them to merge gradually into the surrounding country. When we pa.s.sed the first houses we were practically in a solid compact town.

According to the custom in Flanders, the houses and stores of Ypres were built close together, right on the sidewalk, without gardens or s.p.a.ces between them. Many were white, and the effect of the white stucco and red brick gave the city a clean and sanitary appearance. It was a town with a population of less than 20,000, a mere reminiscence of that ancient city of Ypres of the 12th century which had had a population of 200,000 inhabitants and which had been the most powerful city in Flanders and one of the richest in the world,--a city larger and more powerful than London. Ypres was famous for its cloth in the 13th century, when it had 4,000 looms in use. Through wars and religious persecutions the population of Ypres had dwindled at one time to 5,000 people. Her fortifications had long ago been dismantled, and with the exception of a few magnificent buildings, her ancient glory had departed.

As our car slowly pa.s.sed through the town evidences of sh.e.l.l fire were abundantly apparent. Here was a house with its roof blown off; another with the windows blown out, the woodwork splintered and the walls pitted with shrapnel; while another had been completely gutted. We turned to the right and came upon the famous church of St. Martin's.

Great piles of stone and debris lay in front of it, the roof was gone and the windows had disappeared, but the tower was still intact; the houses in the neighborhood had been blown to atoms.

Our hearts beat faster when we came upon the building adjacent to it, facing the Grande Place,--the glorious cloth hall of Ypres, beautiful even in its ruin. Few such wonderfully majestic specimens of architecture as this ancient monument of the weavers of Ypres have come down to us through the ages. On the great square in the heart of the city it stood, nearly 500 feet long and half as wide. The walls were yet fairly intact, also the main square tower in the centre and the graceful pointed turrets at each corner. Most of the roof was gone, but enough remained to show that it had been very high-pitched, and that the proportions of the building must have been perfect. The interior was a ma.s.s of rubble; here and there direct hits had blown holes in the wonderfully carved walls, and some of the statues of the famous men of the ancient city had been tumbled from their niches between the third tier of windows. None of the woodwork of the famous painted panels of the interior remained; it had all been destroyed by fire from the incendiary sh.e.l.ls of the apostles of culture.

I stood and gazed, quite carried away by the beauty of even the fragments of the magnificent bit of Gothic architecture, and with indignation at its destruction. The warm spring sun of midday played about its columns, making heavy shadows under the windows and ruined arches; soldiers crossed the square and stood about as if they were a thousand miles from the German lines. Several officers could be seen wandering about studying the ruins; two of them I knew and they came over to shake hands. I asked where I could get some dinner, and was directed to the only decent restaurant left in the town, located just beyond the Cloth Hall on the square.

As we stopped at the door of the estaminet Lt.-Col. (Canon) Frederick Scott, one of our Canadian poets, came by and stopped for a chat. I had not seen him since the memorable days of Salisbury Plain, and he was full of his experiences as a regimental chaplain. He drew from his pocket the ma.n.u.script of a newly-written poem and, oblivious of his surroundings, stood by the car and recited it to me.

The little restaurant was well filled with officers even at this late lunching hour of two o'clock. It had been a millinery store, but latterly there had been little sale for millinery and there had been a great demand for food; the three pretty Flemish sisters who owned the shop had therefore accommodated themselves to the situation and now served most excellent food daintily on clean tables, though not with great despatch. At any rate, my omelette, cheese, toast and coffee tasted very good to me that day, while I chatted to two engineers who had countermined and blown up a German mine at St. Eloi a few days before.

After lunch we hunted out No. 3 Field Ambulance, whose personnel came largely from Toronto. Colonel McPherson of Toronto, the officer commanding, seemed glad to see me, as he always did, and showed me over the ambulance and billets where the officers were quartered. I took water samples for examination of their drinking water supply, which was not above suspicion. The garden at the rear of their temporary home was vibrant with sunshine; the pears, trained against the walls in the rectangular manner so much in vogue in France, and the peach trees, were already bursting into cl.u.s.ters of pink and white blossoms. I picked some beautiful blue pansies to press in my pocket book and send home as souvenirs of my first visit to Ypres.

Upon leaving the ambulance we pa.s.sed over the river by the bridge, where soldiers were filling water carts by means of hand pumps; pa.s.sed the ancient ramparts on the river's edge and through the hamlet of St. Jean to Wieltze, where the advanced dressing station of the ambulance was located. Here I saw my friend Captain Brown and collected water samples for examination. Returning to Ypres we went out to Brielen to see the A.D.M.S. of the Canadian Division and there found some letters from home waiting me.

While in the office a sudden commotion among a group of soldiers outside and the raising of gla.s.ses skyward drew us forth to watch an aerial battle in progress. With the aid of borrowed gla.s.ses I could see six machines in the sky manoeuvring for position. Two in particular seemed to be closely engaged when the German suddenly turned tail and fled. A white puff of smoke beside him indicated that the Archibalds had been watching the combat closely. A second, third and fourth followed in rapid succession until suddenly at the fifteenth burst the Taube began to drop and flutter down, like a leaf falling from a forest tree on a quiet October day. Five minutes later, far out in the salient, we saw a second driven down in a straight nose dive, making the third for that day in the vicinity of Ypres. One might watch for months, as I afterwards did, without seeing another aeroplane brought down.

When we were on our way back from Ypres on our return, a horse ridden by an officer suddenly curvetted across the road in front of us. Rad pulled up the car to a full stop, and the officer pulled in his horse at the same time. The horse reared, his front feet caught in the fender, he pawed the air wildly for a moment and, losing his balance, he fell over backward rolling on the officer. Soldiers quickly caught the horse and pulled him to one side, and greatly to our relief the officer was able to get up and walk. It was characteristic of the British officer that he had no feeling towards us on account of his accident; on the contrary, bruised and aching as he must have been though he would not admit it, he came over to the car and apologized for having caused us inconvenience. It is the British way of doing things.

As we traversed Ypres on our homeward route, a little girl held up bouquets of spring flowers and we stopped while I bought a large bunch of daffodils for the equivalent of two pennies. Crossing the railway tracks by the sh.e.l.l-shattered station we struck into the d.i.c.kiebush--Bailleul Road, and drove slowly homeward over the rough pave.

Near d.i.c.kiebush the fields were pitted with numerous sh.e.l.l holes, and the rails of a light railway at one place pointed heavenward where a sh.e.l.l had exploded between them.

A pup, evidently unused to motor traffic on this bad bit of road, took a chance and tried to dash across in front of the car but miscalculated his distance and was bowled into the ditch.

It was curious to see one field ploughed with sh.e.l.ls and full of holes, and the next field with prominently placed new signs bearing the inscription, "It is forbidden to walk over the growing grain." As we pa.s.sed through the rolling land of Belgium under the brow of "The Scherpenberg," with Mount Kemmel over to the right honeycombed with dugouts, it was difficult to believe that, locked in a death grapple, not three miles away, were thousands of soldiers living underground like moles, and that at any moment the air might be filled with sh.e.l.ls carrying death and destruction.

At the end of a peaceful day we reached our little French home town, glad to have seen our friends in their new area by the famous old city of the Flemish weavers.

Springtime had come in truth; the hedges of Northern France were beginning to bloom white, and the wild flowers were quite thick in the forest of Nieppe near Merville. It was the time in Canada when the spring feeling suddenly got into the blood, when one threw work to the winds and took to the woods in search of the first violets.

On the twenty-second day of April the very essence of spring was in the air; I felt as if I had to go out into the open and watch the birds and bees, loll in the sun, and do nothing. We struggled along until noon with our routine work, and having completed it Captain Rankin and I left for Ypres. A soldier had been transferred to us, and as we did not need him we decided to register a formal protest and see if he could not be kept with his present unit. Our road lay through d.i.c.kiebush and we made good time, again reaching Ypres about two o'clock.

It was quite evident to me as I retraversed the streets of Ypres that it had been heavily sh.e.l.led since I had been there a few days before.

Many more houses had been smashed, and unmended sh.e.l.l holes were seen in the roads. As we crossed the Grande Place there was scarcely a soldier visible. The Cloth Hall, which the Captain had not seen before, showed further evidences of sh.e.l.l fire. After viewing the ruins we drove to the little restaurant kept by the pretty milliners, only to find that the place had completely disappeared--literally blown to atoms. Later on we found that a fifteen-inch sh.e.l.l had landed in the building next door and both houses had simultaneously vanished.

A well known officer, Captain Trumbull Warren of the 48th Highlanders, Toronto, coming out of a store on the opposite side of the square had been killed by a flying fragment of the same sh.e.l.l.

We wondered whether the milliners had escaped, and somewhat depressed, drove along in search of another restaurant. A sign "Chocolat" on a door in a side street made us inquire, and, curiously enough, we found this also to be a little restaurant kept by two other milliners. They informed us that the first three milliners had escaped when the bombardment began, and before their restaurant had been blown up.

One's interest in a place or in a battle is often in direct proportion to the number of one's friends or acquaintances there.

After lunch we drove to Brielen, but found that the A.D.M.S., whom we were in search of, and his deputy were both out. We were shown maps of the salient, and had the area pointed out to us where the French joined up with the second and third brigades of Canadians, and where the British troops joined up with the Canadians. When about to leave, a friend, Major Maclaren of the 10th Infantry battalion, riding a mettlesome horse, rode up and I got out of the car and held the bridle while we had a long talk about the experiences of the Canadians since we had left Salisbury Plain.

We then drove back to the Ypres water pool, which was the largest supply of drinking water in the area. There were at least thirty-five water carts in line waiting their turn to fill up at this presumably good supply. We were told that it was safe because twice a week a couple of pounds of chloride of lime were chucked into the middle of the pool. We took samples of the water and pa.s.sed on to Wieltze, intending to walk into the salient to see what "No man's Land" was like. Men had told us that, unlike the rest of the front near the trenches, there were no growing crops, and no birds sang in that desolate, dreary, sh.e.l.l-shattered area, and we wanted to see it for ourselves.

We were surprised and delighted to find Captain Scrimger, whom we had left convalescing at Bulford, England, in charge of the Advanced Dressing Station. He had just arrived that afternoon, and was in hopes of getting his old battalion again, explaining that on account of his illness in England he had been temporarily replaced as regimental medical officer by Captain Boyd. We talked with him in the little estaminet in which the dressing station was located, while the old woman who kept the place and two peasants chatted quietly together in a corner and drank beer. I wondered at the time whether they were spies. Captain Scrimger walked with us up to the edge of the village and then returned to his charge.

At the outskirts of the village we noticed a peasant planting seeds in the little garden in front of his house. The earth had all been dug and raked smooth by a boy and a couple of children. To our "Bon jour"

he replied, and added "Il fait bon temps n'est ce pas?" looking up at the sun with evident satisfaction.

No motor transport was allowed to pa.s.s Wieltze because the road beyond was exceedingly rough, and it would only have been inviting disaster from breakdowns and German sh.e.l.ls to have proceeded farther.

As we tramped along towards St. Julien our attention was attracted to a greenish yellow smoke ascending from the part of the line occupied by the French. We wondered what the smoke was coming from. Half a mile up the road we seated ourselves on a disused trench and lit cigarettes, while I began to read a home letter which I had found at Brielen.

An aeroplane flying low overhead dropped some fire-b.a.l.l.s. Immediately a violent artillery cannonade began. Looking towards the French line we saw this yellowish green cloud rising on a front of at least three miles and drifting at a height of perhaps a hundred feet towards us.

"That must be the poison gas that we have heard vague rumours about,"

I remarked to the Captain. The gas rose in great clouds as if it had been poured from nozzles, expanding as it ascended; here and there brown clouds seemed to be mixed with the general yellowish green ones. "It looks like chlorine," I said, "and I bet it is." The Captain agreed that it probably was.

The cannonade increased in intensity. About five minutes after it began a hoa.r.s.e whistle, increasing to a roar like that of a railroad train, pa.s.sed overhead. "For Ypres," we e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, and looking back we saw a cloud as big as a church rise up from that ill-fated city, followed by the sound of the explosion of a fifteen-inch sh.e.l.l.

Thereafter these great sh.e.l.ls succeeded one another at regular intervals, each one followed by the great black cloud in Ypres.

The bombardment grew in intensity. Over in a field not two hundred yards away numerous coal boxes exploded, throwing up columns of mud and water like so many geysers. General Alderson and General Burstall of the Canadian Division came hurrying up the road and paused for a moment to shake hands, and to remark that the Germans appeared to be making a heavy attack upon the French. We wondered whether they would get back to their headquarters or not.

Sh.e.l.ls of various calibres, whistling and screaming, flew over our heads from German batteries as well as from our own batteries replying to them. The air seemed to be full of sh.e.l.ls flying in all directions.

The gas cloud gradually grew less dense, but the bombardment redoubled in violence as battery after battery joined in the angry chorus.

Across the fields we could see guns drawn by galloping horses taking up new positions. One such gun had taken a position not three hundred yards away from us when a German sh.e.l.l lit apparently not twenty feet away from it; that gun was moved with despatch into another position.

Occasionally we imagined that we could hear heavy rifle and machine gun fire, but the din was too great to distinguish much detail. The common expression used on the front, "h.e.l.l let loose," was the only term at all descriptive of the scene.

Streaking across the fields towards us came a dog. On closer view he appeared to be a nondescript sort of dog of no particular family or breeding. But he was bent on one purpose, and that seemed to be to put as great a distance as possible between himself and the Germans. He had been ga.s.sed, and had evidently been the first to get out of the trenches. Loping along at a gait that he could, if necessary, maintain for hours, he fled by with tail between his legs, tongue hanging out and ears well back. And as he pa.s.sed he gave us a look which plainly said, "Silly fools to stand there when you could get out; just wait there and you will get yours." And on he went, doubtless galloping into the German lines on the opposite side of the salient.

By this time our eyes had begun to run water, and became bloodshot.

The fumes of the gas which had reached us irritated our throats and lungs, and made us cough. We decided that this gas was chiefly chlorine, with perhaps an admixture of bromine, but that there was probably something else present responsible for the irritation of our eyes.

A lull in the cannonading made it possible to distinguish the heavy rattle of rifle and machine gun fire, and it seemed to me to be decidedly closer.

The Canadian artillery evidently received a message to support, and down to our right the crash of our field guns, and their rhythmical red flashes squirting from the hedgerows, focussed our attention and added to the din.

Up the road from St. Julien came a small party of Zouaves with their baggy trousers and red Fez caps. We stepped out to speak to them, and found that they belonged to the French Red Cross. They had been driven out of their dressing station by the poisonous gas, and complained bitterly of the effect of it on their lungs.

Shortly afterwards the first wounded Canadian appeared--a Highlander,--sitting on a little cart drawn by a donkey which was led by a peasant. His face and head were swathed in white bandages, and he looked as proud as a peac.o.c.k.

Soon after, another Canadian Highlander came trudging up the road, with rifle on shoulder and face black with powder. He stated that his platoon had been ga.s.sed, and that the Germans had got in behind them about a mile away, in such a manner that they had been forced to fight them on front and rear. Finally the order had been pa.s.sed, "Every man for himself," and he had managed to get out; he was now on his way back to report to headquarters.

Then came a sight that we could scarcely credit. Across the fields coming towards us, we saw men running, dropping flat on their faces, getting up and running again, dodging into disused trenches, and keeping every possible bit of shelter between themselves and the enemy while they ran. As they came closer we could see that they were French Moroccan troops, and evidently badly scared. Near us some of them lay down in a trench and lit cigarettes for a moment or two, only to start up in terror and run on again. Some of them even threw away their equipment after they had pa.s.sed, and they all looked at us with the same expression that the dog had, evidently considering us to be madmen to stay where we were. It was quite apparent that the Moroccan troops had given way under the gas attack, and that a break, doubtless a large one, had been made in the French front line.

Then our hearts swelled with a pride that comes but seldom in a man's life--the pride of race. Up the road from Ypres came a platoon of soldiers marching rapidly; they were Canadians, and we knew that our reserve brigade was even now on the way to make the attempt to block the German road to Calais.

Bullets began to come near. Neither of us said a word for a while as we saw spurt after spurt of dust kicked up a few yards in front of us.