The Red Watch Part 23

A number of French troops had come up and so had the gallant Lah.o.r.e Division consisting of Indian troops, and they had attacked the Germans and driven them back some distance towards Pilken.

No jauntier soldier ever trode the plains of Flanders than the brave Ghurkas. Short and swarthy with that peculiar elastic step and well set-up figure which can only be obtained by a rigorous course of physical setting up drill of the old style with "thumbs behind the seams of the trousers," the Ghurkas are in a cla.s.s by themselves.

Their battalions are led by pipe bands. The weird music of the Highland Glens seems to have the same potency with the Indian Highlanders that it has with the Scottish and Canadian. In a charge at close quarters the Ghurka uses a peculiar shaped knife with a blade as heavy as a butcher's cleaver and keen as a razor. Like the Highland Pipers who play

"Mo dhith mo dhith gun tri lamhan Da laimh 'sa phiob 's laimh 'sa chlaidheamh."

"My loss, my loss, without three hands Two for my pipes and one for my sword,"

the Ghurka bewails his great loss, also that he has not three hands, two for the pipes and one for his "crookie."

That evening orders came through that we were to march out again and we followed the old line along the hedges and ditches back to our transport. We found that our transport had been moved further back to a field on the Ypres Poperinghe Road to avoid sh.e.l.ling. We were all thoroughly done out when we arrived and we had a good sleep.

Next morning we had roll call and counted our losses. It was the saddest moment in the history of our regiment.

The "roll call" showed killed, wounded and missing, seventeen officers and six hundred and seventy-four men, a fearful total of six hundred and ninety-one out of a battalion of nine hundred and twelve effectives. Seven officers and one hundred and fifty-seven men, all of them ga.s.sed and wounded, were taken prisoners. The rest had paid the price of Empire. As the wounded I had sometimes pitied had always said, "That is what we came here for," but it was very hard to be reconciled to the loss of the flower of the regiment. Of all our officers only Major Marshall and myself were left unhurt. How we escaped the Lord alone knows. His mercy was very great. How jealous we had all been of the lives of the men. What care we had all bestowed on their drill, their discipline, their health and equipment. We were all a happy family, no quarrelling, no disputes either among the officers or men. Everyone tried to live up to the best traditions of the old Highland Regiments that oftentimes went through campaigns without a crime. When we reached France not a dozen men in the battalion had entries on their conduct sheets. We all fondly hoped that our efficiency, our courage and power would be reserved for some great day when we would march triumphantly through the German trenches, charging with our bayonets and clearing the road to Brussels, the Rhine, and Berlin.

But our day came differently to what we expected. Still we did our duty. Had we come to grief through any blunder or fault of mine or any of our officers there might have been cause for regret and heartburnings. Our orders were very simple--to hold the trenches at all costs until relieved. We carried out these orders and held the line. When finally ordered out we left nearly four hundred dead in the trenches.

Often during our days and marches in Flanders, in admiration of the men of my regiment and the other gallant men of the First Canadian Division, there would recur to me the words spoken at St. Helene by Napoleon of the men of the Army of Italy:

"Another libeller says that I conquered Italy with a few thousand galley slaves. Now the fact is that probably so fine an army never had existed before. More than half of them were men of education, the sons of merchants, of lawyers, of physicians, of the better order of farmer and _bourgeoise_. Two thirds of them knew how to write and were capable of being made officers. Indeed in the regiment it would have puzzled me to decide who were the most deserving subjects, or who best merited promotion, as they were all so good. Oh! that all my armies had been the same."

A new form of "casualty" had been written into the records of the hospitals and dressing stations, "suffering from" and "died of gas poisoning."

If there is a law of compensation which evens up injustice, if there is an avenging Deity, then the German nation is doomed to die and be forgotten. Cowardly methods of attack will ultimately sap the vigor and courage of their men, and they will curse the day when their ruler wrote them into the history of the ages as a race of cowardly poisoners, unfit even to stand alongside of the Red Indians or the savages of the Soudan.

The tortures inflicted by savages of burning and flaying alive are not comparable to the torture of burning lungs with tissues seared as with a red hot iron. The agony which often ended in gangrene of the lungs was worse than a thousand deaths from pneumonia and the suffering is very long drawn out.

I know whereof I speak as to the torture of scorched lungs, and my case, I am thankful to say, was not as severe as many of them.

On the 28th all the Canadians were west of the ca.n.a.l having a little rest which was enlivened constantly by salvos of high explosive sh.e.l.ls sent by the Germans into our vicinity. Every village and farm building for miles back were being sh.e.l.led.

In the evening we were ordered to prepare to go back into action again. We started out at dusk and followed the familiar paths back down to the engineers' pontoon bridge and then along up the highway in the rear of La Bryke. We were sh.e.l.led and several men hit with shrapnel while we waited for some transports to get out of our way on the west side of the ca.n.a.l.

When we got to the east and began climbing the slope we were halted again while a battery pa.s.sed us on the way out. The battery looked very weird against the skyline as they came down the roadway and pa.s.sed us. The feet of their horses and the waggon wheels were m.u.f.fled, and they appeared for all the world like the ghostly hors.e.m.e.n out of some old world tale.

We met some English soldiers who told us that the gallant Col. Geddes, who had taken charge of this section and whose corps was the first to come to our aid as we were trying to stop the first mad onrush of the Germans, had been killed in the morning by a sh.e.l.l that entered his headquarters.

We turned to the left and steered straight north to a point in support of the French troops who were in position on the east bank of the Ca.n.a.l opposite Brielen. Further along the road we found some transports and a French Battery stuck. A huge German sh.e.l.l had fallen in the road at this point and blown a crater in which a good sized house could easily have hidden. The hedge had to be cut to allow of a pa.s.sage, and it took some engineering to get this tangle straightened out. After a little manoeuvring we found our trenches, and as the Germans began sh.e.l.ling the highway immediately in our rear, following the transport waggons along the road, it did not take us long to dig in. Some one remarked that the Germans have underground telephones along the roadways.

That morning our base company, under Captain Musgrove and Lieutenant Muir, reached us. A few days later at Festubert Musgrove was to lose an arm and Lieutenant Muir was to be killed. They were full of ginger and cheered us up considerably.

During the night we consolidated our trenches. The sh.e.l.ling continued all the next day. Thousands of French troops continued to arrive and it looked very much as if a general offensive was going to be organized against the Germans on our front.

On the evening of the 29th we moved into trenches at Number Four Pontoon Bridge and remained there until the 4th of May. Day and night the sh.e.l.ling continued. Many stirring and some even humorous incidents occurred during these twelve glorious days of fighting.

CHAPTER XXVIII

WINNING ANOTHER CHAMPIONSHIP

"Jump down into the trench quick, Colonel! That sh.e.l.l may explode,"

called Captain Musgrove.

"What sh.e.l.l?" I enquired, as I had not heard any "whispering w.i.l.l.y"

arriving, but something seemed to have covered my clothes suddenly with mud and splinters of wood and bark.

"Look up over your head. It is a wonder it did not stun you. And please do move out of there for a while at least, for fear it may be still alive."

I glanced up at the pollard willow over head, against which I had been leaning to steady my field gla.s.ses as I watched our artillery "strafe"

the Germans who were attacking the Ghurkas. Captain Musgrove stood by my side when the sh.e.l.l arrived. It struck the hard red clay about twelve feet directly in front of me, plowed up the earth about three feet and turning upwards entered the tree directly over my head. The sh.e.l.l, which was a large one from a four-inch howitzer, entered the willow bole, burying itself in the soft wood all but about half an inch of the base.

These sh.e.l.ls are fused with what are called detonating fuses that burst when the sh.e.l.l touches anything. It should have exploded when it struck the ground in front of us. If it had we would have had about one chance in a thousand. Again, when it struck the tree it should have blown up. The "kickback" would have certainly killed or wounded us both. But a Merciful Providence caused that sh.e.l.l not to function.

I climbed down into the trench. Next day when the Germans were quieter, Colonel Leckie photographed us. It was a marvellous escape.

On the evening of the 29th we had moved a short distance to our left and again dug in in four lines in rear of the French and as guard over Pontoon Bridge No. 4. The ca.n.a.l here pa.s.sed north between high banks and a schooner, that had doubtless plied between the North Sea ports and Ypres, had been sunk in the middle of the ca.n.a.l and furnished a pier for the bridge which the engineers had perfected.

Along the banks of the ca.n.a.l were shelters and places where previous troops had "dug in" and the place looked like a huge rabbit warren.

Our batteries were in action along the banks and they were very skilfully hidden. I looked them up and found some old friends from Ottawa, Lieut. Colonel Morrison, the commandant, amongst them.

We had tried to preserve the Belgian buildings in the same condition as we found them as much as possible, but since the Germans were setting fire to all the barns with thatched roofs we decided to annex some straw from the roofs to put in the bottom of our trenches.

The trenches in our front were being unmercifully sh.e.l.led by the Germans all the time, and about three times a day the Germans and the French would exchange front trenches. Divisions of French troops kept coming up. They carried on in the most casual way. The cooks took soup down to the front line trenches in broad day. They did not seem to care for shot or sh.e.l.l.

The French always moved in single file with men about three yards distance. We learned to like and admire them. They are great soldiers.

The Germans would sh.e.l.l the French troops out of their trenches and then charge and take the low parapets which the French built. After a short rest the French would fix their terrible long four-cornered bayonets which they call there knitting needles, charge the enemy and recover their parapets again. This game of see-saw went on for several days.

The second morning we were at the bridge a handsome well set-up French officer came past our lines and stopped to chat. He wore the gold medal of honor given by the Czar which he had won a few weeks previously for conspicuous bravery. He was very proud of it. We all envied him his good luck. He went on up to the front line. About an hour later he pa.s.sed us again, lying in an ambulance hand cart very severely wounded. Poor fellow, he was in a bad way but still cheerful.

When the Germans got tired sh.e.l.ling the French they would start in and give it to us. Three and four sh.e.l.ls would follow in close succession.

They would search up and down the fields and hedges with their guns showering sh.e.l.ls on everything within their range.

The gallant 16th Canadian Scottish were dug in about fifty yards in front of us. Colonel Leckie was in a dugout at the extreme left, and alongside of him was another dugout in which were some of his staff. A large German sh.e.l.l fell in the staff dugout during the night, completely obliterating all traces of four men who were sleeping in it at the time. A part of Lt.-Colonel Leckie's dugout was torn off at the same time and he had a very narrow escape.

The same night while I was dozing in my "digin" I was awakened by heavy breathing on my right as if a man was dying. It was pitch dark, so I called the sentry and told him some one was hurt.

Sergeant Miller, who was close at hand, jumped up and with an electric torch we started to search the line to find out who was wounded. In the second digin on my right we found Corporal Kells very nearly gone.

A large five-inch sh.e.l.l had fallen in his "digin," slicing a large piece of flesh off the calf of his leg and stunning him. Fortunately the sh.e.l.l had not exploded. He had almost bled to death when the peculiar heavy breathing of a man suffering from bleeding attracted my attention. We bound him up and had him taken back to the dressing station. He subsequently died from the shock.

One morning about daylight I was wakened in my narrow cell by a lot of earth tumbling down on my face. I fancied a sh.e.l.l had fallen on my parapet, and after clearing the dirt out of my eyes and ears I lay awake listening to the seventeen-inch Austrian batteries which were sh.e.l.ling some place very heavily. The guns were apparently in a position not far from Pilken. I could hear the "Kerr-Rump" of four guns of a battery firing in rapid succession, then a pause, and I could hear the huge projectiles go roaring on their deadly mission till the sound ceased. I waited for the report so I could count the time to find out how far away they were ranging, but I noticed a very strange thing. I could hear no report from the explosion of the sh.e.l.l.

Evidently it was falling too far away for me to hear it. A few days later we learned that they had been sh.e.l.ling Dunkirk, some twenty-odd miles away.

The second day we were at the bridge, the Germans were searching diligently for us with their sh.e.l.ls when I was called to the telephone which was located in the next hole in the ground to mine. I found Corporal Pyke in charge of my wire. Pyke was a brave cheerful lad, a splendid operator and telephone expert. He was thoroughly posted in wireless work and used to rig up an attachment to our telephone by means of which he could read all the wireless messages that came over the wires from the ships of the Navy in the Channel to the naval batteries that were working behind our lines which were called the Admiral Churchill batteries. If there were any German wireless men in the neighborhood they could also get these messages. Pyke could hear the Germans working on their lines but could not get their code.