THE SECOND DIVISION
Canadians in the clash of World Powers—Effect of losses on Canadian people—Tribute of the British—The Service in St. Paul's—"Pure gold"—Eighteen hundred fresh troops cross the Channel—Prompt action of the Minister of Militia—Call for men from the third contingent to refill the ranks—Outstanding feature of the Second Battle of Ypres—Colonel Henderson on volunteer armies—Adaptability of the Canadians—Gallantry and intelligence v. lengthy training—The real strength underlying great national movements—The superiority of volunteer armies—The conduct of Canadian and Australian troops—The landings at Gallipoli—Lone Pine Hill—Recruiting for the Second Division—Unbounded patriotism of the Provinces—The Commanding Officers—Mid-winter training—Sailing of the Second Contingent—Major-General Steele—Training in England—Ready for any emergency—Divisional Artillery—A satisfactory inspection—Visit of the Prime Minister, the Colonial Secretary, and the Minister of Militia—The great achievement of Sir Sam Hughes—Words of praise from the Colonial Secretary—The New World ready to redeem the balance of the Old—Our King, Our Country, Our Empire—Special message from the King—Towards the firing line—A startling incident in the Channel—The historic landing-place—The French Canadians in France—A dramatic moment.
The repercussion of the battle of Ypres was immediately felt in Canada. It was an event unique in the history of the Dominion. The numbers engaged, the high proportion of casualties, the character of the enemy, and the desperate nature of the fighting made the engagement the most serious military action in which Canadians had ever borne a part, and the effect upon home opinion was proportionate. The American attack of 1812, the Red River Expedition, the abortive Fenian raid, and even the South African Campaign, were by comparison affairs of minor importance. The Canadian regiment had indeed made a name for itself at Paardeberg, and the 7,000 Canadians who volunteered for service in Africa had set a high standard of soldierly virtue in more than one engagement; but as the European conflict dwarfed the struggle of 1899-1902 for the Empire as a whole, so the share taken by the Dominion in the war against the Central Powers entirely overshadowed the effort she had made against the Transvaal and Free State. Here at last in the clash of World Powers a new nation had come into its own. Twenty thousand Canadian troops, many with less than one year's service, had, almost unsupported and wholly outflanked, held their own for days against the vastly superior numbers of the most highly trained troops in Europe, who, in addition to their usual weapons of warfare, had suddenly and unexpectedly made use of a vile and inhuman method of attack. Of these 20,000 nearly one-third were casualties, and the list of six thousand killed, wounded, and missing came as a shock to a public which had not been hardened as Great Britain had been by the battles of Mons, the Marne, and the Aisne to the colossal sacrifices involved in war. So our land grieved her losses, and set herself to make them good.
From each one of our provinces came the same voice of mingled sorrow, pride and invincible determination. The feeling found expression in the memorial services for the dead held on April 31st in Montreal, in five churches representing all religious denominations. The flags were flown at half-mast and the troops turned out to attend the services. "The achievements of our men," said the Bishop of Montreal, "have brought Canada into a new and more honourable place in the Empire. They endured privation, they suffered greatly, and now they have paid life's greatest tribute with their lives."
May 2nd, 1915.
Nor was Great Britain without her tribute. A memorial service was held in St. Paul's on May 2nd, 1915, for the Canadians who fell at Ypres. The officiating clergy were the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, the Chaplain-General to the Forces, and the Dean of St. Paul's. The ceremony took place not without propriety in the City Cathedral of St. Paul's; for though Westminster Abbey is consecrated by long tradition and the immortal tombs of great monarchs and statesmen of times almost out of remembrance, yet the shrines of Saxon, Norman, Angevin, and Tudor kings are a little remote from the dead of a far-off country with which these recumbent figures were never concerned. But St. Paul's possesses not only the monuments of the great soldiers and sailors who laid the foundations of the Empire of to-day, but enshrines that spirit of patriotic and constrained freedom which has made the citizens of London both "the regular army of Liberty" and the firm supporters of all those statesmen, from Chatham to Disraeli, who have combined freedom with Empire. Here the volunteer army of Canada committed to the Imperial cause would find that its dead might speak without constraint to those of an older time. In this temple of a magnificent sobriety was held the funeral service of the heroes of Ypres. In the stiff and formal tombs of their age lay the mortal remains of Wellington and Nelson, who, if there be remembrance among the shades, might well have been present to pay tribute to men whom even they would have been proud to command. But round the walls hung a more significant witness to the fallen in the countless tablets which still hold the memories of the soldiers and sailors, now long forgotten by history, who in many a desperate battle by sea and land laid the enduring foundations of a Canada which has proved itself not unworthy of its origins. Among these records are those of the City merchants whose purses and patriotism supplied the sinews of war to remind us that the great material resources of the Dominion are not inferior to the patriotism of its sons, and are no less a vital factor of national victory. Here, then, were gathered the representatives of an Empire united both by pride and sorrow. Over the vast assembly which thronged the building on that dim summer evening the half-lights scarcely illuminated the interior of the spacious dome. As those lights grew and shot up into the gloom the massed bands opened with the "Dead March," and a thrill ran through the multitude—one of those waves of emotion which only great occasions can evoke. The Bishop of London was the preacher, nor was his eloquence wanting to the occasion. "It was on that tremendous day when French and British had been overpowered by poisonous gas that the manhood of Canada shone out like pure gold. The example of these men will never die, but will remain as a perpetual inspiration to their successors." Those successors were already on their way.
Within three days of the Ypres fight 1,800 reinforcements from the Canadian Training Division crossed the Channel to bring new blood to the decimated battalions in Flanders. The Commander-in-Chief in France at once dispatched Lieut.-Col. Carrick, M.P., to ask for a further supply of new Canadian formations. The Minister of Militia and Defence, General Sir Sam Hughes, did not wait for any request to deal with the instant need. He called for a draft of men from the 3rd Contingent, still training in Canada, to go abroad and help refill the ranks. The losses of the 1st Division were thus partially made good, and it was able now to inscribe on its banners the proud name of the Second Battle of Ypres.
To the military writer of the future the amazing feature of the Second Battle of Ypres will always be the courage and discipline shown by the Canadians, equal to the best to be found in the armies with which they were associated. The greater proportion of the Anglo-French Armies were composed of Regular soldiers in the broadest sense of the term, and it has been held by most military historians as an axiom that no amount of gallantry and intelligence can make up for a lack of prolonged training and discipline.
Ordinary military writers put the case even more strongly. They maintain in effect that the value of troops depends on the length of service and on the character of their training, and on these things alone. This point of view ignores the other factors which go to the making of a soldier or a regiment—physique, natural boldness and resource, intelligence, and high patriotic motives; and would claim that a body composed of naturally inferior but technically better trained troops could defeat an equal number of men possessing the qualities I have mentioned, but deficient in discipline and experience. I would submit that the Second Battle of Ypres does not accord with the expert theory, but rather teaches the reverse.
The late Colonel Henderson, perhaps the best known of modern historians of war, goes so far as to countenance the suggestion that had either the North or the South in the American Civil War possessed at the start a single army corps of Regulars, the struggle would have been decided instantly in favour of its possessors instead of lasting over four years and necessitating the calling to arms of the great majority of the citizens of the United States! Colonel Henderson states the matter more moderately in a passage I cannot forbear to quote at some length, because it embodies the best which can be said for the professional military point of view. Speaking of American Volunteer troops, Colonel Henderson says:
"The Volunteers had proved themselves exceedingly liable to panic. Their superior intelligence had not enabled them to master the instincts of human nature; and although they had behaved well in camp and on the march, in battle their discipline had fallen to pieces. It could hardly be otherwise. Men without ingrained habits of obedience, who have not been trained to subordinate their will to another's, cannot be expected to render implicit obedience in moments of danger and excitement; nor can they be expected, under such circumstances, to follow officers in whom they can have but little confidence. The ideal of battle is a combined effort, directed by a trained leader. Unless troops are thoroughly well disciplined, such effort is impossible; the leaders are ignored, and the spasmodic action of the individual is substituted for the concentrated pressure of the mass.... The Volunteers, although on many occasions they behaved with admirable courage, continually broke loose from control under the fire of the enemy. As individuals they fought well; as organised bodies, capable of manoeuvring under fire and of combined effort, they proved to be comparatively worthless." ("Stonewall Jackson," Vol. I., p. 49; Longmans, 1913.)
Colonel Henderson quoted in support of his view the undisciplined advance and disorganised retreat of the Federal levies at the battle of Bull Run, and the utter failure of the brave French Territorials of the Army of the Loire in 1870-71 to relieve Paris or to make any headway against the Germans when once the French Regular armies had been destroyed at Gravelotte, Metz, and Sedan.
Such views, by ignoring the real strength which underlies great national movements and supports national armies, however ill-trained, lead to that kind of miscalculation which lured Napoleon to his destruction in Spain. They spring chiefly from a study of those periods in history when small mercenary or highly-trained bodies of troops existed side by side with a population whose civic organisation and patriotic ardour were at a low ebb. Such conditions occurred at certain periods of mediæval history, in the Italy of the Renaissance, and during the end of the seventeenth and throughout the eighteenth centuries. But even in those epochs we can notice the victories of the ill-organised levies inspired by Joan of Arc over the highly-trained British men-at-arms and archers, the successful resistance of Volunteer troops in Holland to the veterans of Alva, and the contest waged by the House of Orange with the levies of the United Provinces against the flower of the French Army led by Condé and Turenne. And the system of small, trained armies, and most of the lessons derived from it, were utterly shattered by the armed development of the French Revolution. The Prussian and Austrian Armies which crossed the French frontiers in 1793 were the last word in disciplined perfection. The Prussian Army in particular was the exact model of the instrument which, fighting against similar organisations, had made Frederick the Great. The French Regular Army had vanished with the old régime. In its place was nothing but a mass of ill-trained, ill-armed, ill-supplied National Volunteers, whose only strength lay in a passionate determination to drive the Invader from the soil which they had consecrated to Liberty. The field of Valmy decided the issue in favour of the Volunteers, or, more strictly, of the levée en masse, and it was not till the humiliation of Jena and the slackening of French enthusiasm for the Napoleonic cause had given Germany the National Movement which was ebbing from France, that the military rôles of the two countries became reversed. The armies which finally drove Napoleon back across Europe to abdication and Elba would have compared unfavourably in technique with the old Prussian Regulars, but they were armed with an enthusiasm for their cause which their predecessors had utterly lacked.
The lessons of history receive a startling reinforcement from the conduct of the Australian and Canadian troops. Both were volunteer and semi-trained troops in the strictest sense of the term—and what was true of the rank and file was, with a few distinguished exceptions, true of its officers and of its higher command. Both forces were confronted, the one in Gallipoli and the other at Ypres, with circumstances of unprecedented difficulty and danger. The landings in the Peninsula and the fierce fighting at Lone Pine Hill were certainly operations of an unusual character in war, and just of a kind, if Colonel Henderson's view is correct, to bring out the unsteadiness and unreliability of Volunteer troops, however brave. The same is true of Ypres. Here we find an attack by a new, horrible, and terrifying instrument of war, accompanied by a massed assault of the flower of the Prussian Army; the left of the position becomes a huge gap with the Canadian trenches in the air. Communication between units becomes more and more difficult in the swaying mêlée of the battle, and the senior officers are falling fast; supports for many hours there are none. If our semi-trained troops had broken under these combined stresses, who could have blamed them?
But in the face of these almost unparalleled difficulties, the Canadians showed the world an example of courage, steadiness, and co-ordinated discipline which could not have been surpassed by that Guards Brigade which stemmed the German tide in the first great onslaught at Ypres. The truth would appear to be that although, when other factors are equal between opposing forces, training and discipline will win, yet there resides in intense patriotism, high physical courage and endurance bred of pastimes which are akin to war, and superior personality, a force which can only be equalled by the last word in highly-trained infantry. Sudden and unexpected emergencies, so far from breaking the nerves of great Volunteer armies, as they do those of inferior trained troops, who are confused if the drill book fails them, bring out the resources of an individuality not yet crushed by tradition. The Volunteer adapts himself more quickly than a machine-made soldier.
April, 1915.
But it is time to turn to the fortune of the 2nd Division, part of which was already crossing the Atlantic at the time of the Second Battle of Ypres. The original offer of the Dominion Government had been a full division of all arms numbering 20,000. But the patriotism of the country outran the offer of the Government, and the actual number of the first contingent was 33,000 men. Of these, five battalions, the 6th, 9th, 11th, 12th, and 17th, had been left in England when the 1st Division sailed for France to act as the nucleus of a Drafting and Training Division. But even before the 1st Division had left for England the Dominion Government was feeling its way towards a further offer. The day after the great review of September 7th, 1914, at Valcartier, the Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Borden had cabled Sir George Perley that there were 43,000 men under arms in Canada, and had requested him to sound the Colonial Office as to the dispatch of a second contingent. In the first week of October, 1914, the offer of the 2nd Division of 20,000 men was made by the Dominion and accepted by the Imperial Government, and recruiting for it was started at once.
The 2nd Division consisted of the usual three brigades of infantry, but at the start each battalion was raised as a separate unit, for the purposes of enlistment and training. In fact, in some cases, companies of the same battalion were raised and partly trained in separate localities.
Oct., 1914.
The 4th Brigade was for a time under the command of Col. Denison. Illness intervened, and the high hopes of an officer with a splendid record were completely destroyed. The brigade then passed to the command of Brigadier-General Lord Brooke. The battalions were recruited from such well-known regiments as the Queen's Own (of Toronto), Royal Grenadiers, 21st Essex Fusiliers, 24th Kent Regiment, 28th Perth Regiment, 29th Highland Light Infantry, 7th London Fusiliers, 14th Prince of Wales' Own Rifles, 45th Victoria Regiment, the Brockville Rifles and the Governor-General's Foot Guards. Mobilisation commenced in October, 1914, and the 18th (Western Ontario Battalion) was commanded by Lieut.-Col. Wigle, the 19th (Ontario Battalion) by Lieut.-Col. MacLaren, the 20th (Northern and Central Ontario Battalion) by Lieut.-Col. Allan, and the 21st (Eastern Ontario Battalion) by Lieut.-Col. St. Pierre Hughes.
The 5th Brigade consisted of the 22nd (French Canadians), the 24th (Victoria Rifles), the 25th (Nova Scotia), and 26th (New Brunswick) Battalions. All these regiments began their mobilisation in the latter part of October and the first week in November, 1914, but they completed it for various reasons at very different dates. The brigade was taken over by Brigadier-General Watson, formerly commanding the 2nd Battalion of the 1st Division.
The 22nd Battalion, under Col. Gaudet, was recruited entirely from the French Canadians, and nearly all its officers and men hailed from Montreal or Quebec. Its point of concentration was St. John's. Some two thousand recruits offered themselves, and of these 1,100 were finally accepted or retained, the process of enlistment being completed by November 27th.
The next battalion of the brigade, the 24th (Victoria Rifles), Lieut.-Col. Gunn, was mobilised in Montreal on October 22nd, 1914, but did not complete its mobilisation until May 8th, 1915. There appears to have been a great rush of recruits, no fewer than four thousand offering themselves. The method here was to accept 1,800 men and continue to weed them out by a process of selection for several months until the full complement of the regiment was obtained. A great proportion of this battalion came from Montreal, and, like the 22nd, had carried out most of its preliminary training in the middle of the winter snows.
The 25th Battalion was recruited in Nova Scotia, including a contingent from Cape Breton. Lieut.-Col. Le Cain was in command, and Halifax was its main centre of mobilisation.
The 26th Battalion, commanded by Lieut.-Col. McAvity, was recruited in New Brunswick and mobilised in the first three weeks of November at St. John's.
The 6th Brigade, which when constituted was taken over by Brigadier-General Ketchen, was mainly raised in the West.
The 27th Battalion (City of Winnipeg) was mobilised in Winnipeg and the surrounding districts, and was almost entirely composed of local recruits. Lieut.-Col. Snider was in command. The next battalion, 28th (North-west), under Col. Embury, was more composite in its origin. From Regina came 12 officers and 246 men; from Moose Jaw, 6 officers and 246 men; from Saskatoon, 6 officers and 228 men; whilst smaller detachments were raised at Fort William, Port Arthur, and Prince Albert. It reached Winnipeg on November 1st, 1,025 strong; and it was there able to take part in combined training with the 27th.
The 29th (Vancouver) Battalion was raised entirely in British Columbia and was mobilised very rapidly in the last week of October, 1914. Lieut.-Col. Tobin was in command.
The 31st (Alberta) Battalion, Lieut.-Col. Bell, was mobilised at Calgary in November, and was recruited from that town and from Edmonton, Medicine Hat, Lethbridge, and Red Deer.
The two regiments, which had joined the brigade in Winnipeg on March 1st, were somewhat handicapped in battalion training owing to the bad weather. However, all ranks were kept hard at work at platoon and company training, and route marching was freely indulged in. The 29th and 31st, on the other hand, found the climates of Calgary and Vancouver more fortunate, and were able to carry out battalion training to a fairly large extent.[[1]]
The sailing of the second Canadian contingent was less spectacular than that of the first.
The 1st Division had started from the mouth of the St. Lawrence as a single whole under the escort of warships—the most formidable Armada which had ever crossed the Atlantic. The 2nd Division left in single ships and without the picturesque accompaniments of the first embarkation.
The units had been raised separately and were transhipped separately to their point of union and divisional concentration in England. The voyage was accomplished in safety, and nothing except speculations on possible submarine attacks relieved the ordinary routine of the voyage. A recapitulation of the dates of arrival of the various units and of the vessels which carried them would be tedious. It is enough to say that the transhipment was begun in April, 1915, was in the main completed by May, and that the last body arrived in August. May to Aug., 1915. Although some of the units did not join up till August, the division was actually constituted on May 24th, 1915, the first divisional standing orders being issued on that day by Colonel Dennison. On the 25th Major-General Steele assumed command.
The 2nd Division was fortunate in the man who was appointed to command it. Major-General Steele, C.B., M.V.O., had taken part in practically every event in the military history of the Dominion since he joined the 35th Regiment of Militia as an ensign at the age of sixteen during the Fenian raid of 1866.[[2]]
In December, 1914, he became Inspector-General for Western Canada, and organised the 6th Infantry Brigade. In all these activities he was ably assisted by Lieut.-Col. Ketchen, whose efforts were largely responsible for the success of the recruiting in the West, and who finally took over the command of the 6th Brigade. He, too, like the Divisional Commander, had served in the North-West and in South Africa, where he obtained a commission from the ranks.
April to Sept., 1915.
The further training of the units began as soon as each was landed. Up till May 25th those which had arrived took part in the work of the Training Division at Shorncliffe. After that date the 2nd Division was constituted as a separate formation, and as each battalion, battery or squadron was landed it was gradually brought up to full strength. The 2nd Division was, in many respects, more fortunate than its predecessor. It had the best of an English summer, since its time at Shorncliffe ran, roughly, from April to September of 1915; the high green downs above that well-known seaside resort abut on a charming country, and the pleasure of being able to go into a town was added. The men thus avoided the hardships, mud, and isolation of a winter on Salisbury Plain which had fallen to the lot of the 1st Division, and they carried away to France, no doubt, a more pleasant impression of English weather and scenery. All these months they were to be seen tramping the Kentish lanes, the very picture of health and vigour. Their work, of course, was heavy, special care being given to musketry. From the first it was impressed upon every man that he must learn to shoot, and to shoot straight. The musketry courses began in the middle of May, and so great was the number of men to be trained, so limited the time and range accommodation available, that rifle practice went on continuously at Hythe from 5 a.m. until 7 p.m. The 29th and the 31st Battalions carried out their musketry training at Lyd, marching eighteen miles to the ranges and camping on the flats for three weeks. The men, needless to say, were as keen as mustard, and their Regular instructors found them apt pupils. A machine-gun school was set up. Practice in bayonet fighting and the ordinary processes of infantry training went on simultaneously with musketry. The method of preparing new units to take their place in the field is, however, much the same all the world over, and by now only too familiar to millions of the citizens of the British Empire. It is the old story of learning to do things under favourable conditions so thoroughly and completely that in moments of stress they are done almost sub-consciously, leaving the mind free to grapple with anything novel there may be in the situation or in the actions of the enemy. It was in this quality of rapid decision in the face of unexpected emergencies that the Canadian Contingent proved itself pre-eminent.
The Divisional Artillery was far behind the rest of the formation as regards training. Drafts of artillery reached England as late as the middle of August. For some time practice was retarded by lack of equipment, and even so late as October 10th, when the infantry were becoming used to life in the trenches, progress made by the artillery in England was poor. It stands to reason that far more time and trouble are required to make an efficient gunner than an efficient infantryman. The personnel of the Artillery brigades was, however, such as to inspire high hopes, and these were fully justified by the 2nd Divisional Artillery when it finally reached the Front.
Ten weeks later the Inspector of Royal Horse and Field Artillery inspected the training, and congratulated Brigadier-General Morrison, D.S.O. (who had returned after serving with great distinction with the 1st Division in France), and Major Constantine on the work accomplished. "All ranks," he reported, "know their work, the drill at the guns is good and quiet, and good effects were obtained. I consider them the best Divisional Artillery I have seen on Salisbury Plain this year."
A break was made in the daily task of training the Division by two weeks' field manoeuvres in August in the valley. Here the Division operated as a whole and existed entirely under Service conditions.
The 2nd Division had now gone through its preliminary training both in Canada and Europe and was ready for the ordeal of battle. It has, however, always been the habit of statesmen, leaders, and commanders to address their troops in the field before the hour of action comes. The Great Causes which inspire volunteer armies to supreme exertion gain added strength from the presence of the leaders themselves.
Aug. 4th, 1915.
The Prime Minister of the Dominion had visited the troops at Shorncliffe in July, 1915 (Vol. I., page 165). He was followed on August 4th by the Rt. Hon. A. Bonar Law, M.P., Secretary for the Colonies, who was accompanied by General Sir Sam Hughes, K.C.B.
The presence of General Hughes was significant, for he above anyone else was the embodiment of Canada in arms. He had performed the amazing feat of raising a huge army in a country remote from Europe to do battle for the Imperial cause. When one remembers that the presence of 7,000 men in South Africa at the beginning of a century only fifteen years old was regarded at the time as a crowning achievement on the part of the Dominion; that the enrolment of 40,000 men for the camp at Valcartier and the dispatch of the First Contingent had been considered only twelve months before this review as a triumph of patriotism and organisation, who would have ventured to predict that in September, 1915, another contingent of equal strength would be about to set sail for Flanders; that by the dawn of 1916 a 3rd Division would be in the trenches and engaged in the death grapple of June; and that far beyond this huge reserves would lie waiting in Canada to create yet other divisions or replace the fallen in the field? Great Armadas had crossed the Atlantic carrying armies beside which those dispatched by the might of Great Britain against Washington and his levies in a day when Chatham still lived, dwindle into insignificance. And the tireless energy of Sir Sam Hughes directed the system which procured the men to meet the demand. Like all strong men he has, and has had, not only friends, but opponents; but if these will set aside the controversies of the present and look down the vista of the future to an impartial and final judgment, both alike will perceive the singleness and simplicity of purpose which constitute greatness of character, and, joined to strength of will, lead to greatness of achievement. As the General looked on the march past of the 2nd Division he might well have been thinking of the pride of work well done; but in reality his heart was with the men, who were going out to fight, suffer, and perhaps to die for their common cause; and in such thoughts there is no room for any pride except that of the aim and the race.
The Colonial Secretary has a natural claim to address a force of Imperial troops, but in this case there are special reasons why Mr. Bonar Law should have been given a cordial welcome. He is Canadian born and British trained, and therefore represents a natural link of union between the Dominion and the Mother Country. Direct and business-like, at once enthusiastic and unimpassioned, he is the natural interpreter between the newer nations and the old.
The conditions of the review were not happy. A heavy thunderstorm had broken the summer weather, and the troops were wet through long before the inspection began. The men, of course, were not worried, and it struck more than one observer that the driving rain and heavy cloud-wrack behind it gave a solemnity to the occasion which might have been lost in the mere picture of green glades, tall immemorial trees, and brightly-dressed spectators. Rain, after all, has about it a certain air of reality for anyone who is going to Flanders. As the artillery removed itself on its own devices, the long columns of infantry, platoon by platoon, began to swing past the saluting base, where stood the Colonial Secretary and the Canadian Minister. The dull afternoon light shone on the rippling bayonets, beneath which thousands of men, superbly fit, marched by to prove to Canada and the Empire that the New World was still ready to redress the balance of the Old. Something of this seems to have stirred in the Colonial Secretary's mind as he addressed the officers. In simple language he told his hearers that when he watched them marching past he thought how strong had been the call of duty which had brought them there. The world knew what they had sacrificed, and that every one of them was prepared to face danger and death and to give a good account of himself when the opportunity came. He realised their courage and their devotion, and he thought also, when he saw so many young faces, that, after all, their sacrifice was not perhaps so great as that of those whom they had left behind in anxiety as to the fate of their dearest. He himself was born in Canada—he was proud of what Canadian troops had done and of the future which lay in front of them. "After the war things would never be quite the same again." Already by an arrangement with the Mother Country and the self-governing Dominions it was understood that when the time came for peace, the Dominion Governments were to have a say in the negotiations. That marked a great step onwards, but it was only a step. It had long been his hope and was now his belief that as a result of the war the time would come when the whole of the self-governing Dominions, in proportion to their population and resources, would share with the Mother Country in the duty and honour of governing the British Empire.
Sept. 2nd, 1915.
The 2nd Division had at least the sense that they were contributing to the making of history. Nor were they without the further assurance that their efforts were appreciated. On September 2nd, 1915, his Majesty the King, accompanied by Lord Kitchener, inspected the Division before it left for the Front. Once more, under a grey and gloomy sky, it marched out—this time to parade before its Sovereign. The 2nd Division was only following in the steps of the 1st, which had already received that supreme honour. But the 1st Division had already earned the King's accolade in the field, and there was a rigid determination on the part of the 2nd to do the same. So, as line after line of infantry went by the saluting point, the unspoken homage was in the heart of every man: "One King, One Country, One Empire."[[3]]
Sept. 14th, 1915.
Major-General Turner (Vol. I., p. 190) had taken over the Division from General Steele, who had been appointed to command the troops in the Shorncliffe area. Preparations were now begun for departure. The Divisional Supply Column had already started on September 5th. The real crossing, however, began on September 13th, 1915, when the transport, with the 4th Canadian Infantry Brigade, the Borden Machine-Gun Battery, the Divisional Signallers, the 4th Canadian Field Ambulance, and all the motor ambulance wagons of the Division, left Southampton for Havre. On the night of September 14th the Headquarters Staff and the bulk of the Division embarked, including the 4th Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery. The rest of the Divisional Artillery, the 5th, 6th[[4]] and 7th Brigades, were left behind for a time to complete their training, proceeding later to France on January 18th, 1916.
Eight battalions were left in reserve and absorbed in the Training Division at Shorncliffe—the 23rd, 30th, 32nd, 36th, 39th, and 43rd, to supply drafts for the Infantry, the 48th for the Pioneers, and the Royal Canadian Regiment afterwards incorporated in the 3rd Division. The 2nd Canadian Division Headquarters in Shorncliffe were then closed.
The voyage of the 2nd Division was not to be a long one like that of the 1st, from Bristol in the West of England to St. Nazaire on the coast of Brittany. The high, white cliffs of Folkestone by day and the light of its lamps by night are clearly visible from the high downs above Boulogne in fair weather; while the light of Gris Nez flashing like a wheeling spearshaft has long been familiar to the Canadian troops. It was for Boulogne that the 2nd Division set out—to the harbours below the heights from which the statue of Napoleon on its great bronze column still looks out, as he did all the summer of 1805, at the white cliffs on which he was never to set foot, to the coast, too, whence Cæsar first saw the almost fabulous land of Britain. Those conquerors of the modern and ancient worlds would have marvelled had they beheld the sailing of 20,000 men of French and British birth from the other side of the Atlantic across the narrow salt-water trench, once the confluent of the Thames and Rhine, to defend the land of Gaul against that Teuton menace which both of these had overthrown.
Who of the millions that have undergone the experience will ever forget their first crossing of the Channel in a troopship? The absence of any lights and the swift drive of the engines give the sense of a stealthy escape from the unseen perils of the deep. Dimly visible for a moment is a dark shape of another transport or some destroyer of the escort. The men who can crowd below are perhaps asleep, but to the remainder, shivering a little on deck in the sea breeze, the whole air and the chopping seas seem to breathe something of danger, of the mystery of the dark, and the romance of the High Adventure yet ahead. It was in this atmosphere that a serious collision occurred. The Staff of the 4th Brigade under Brigadier-General Lord Brooke and the 10th Battalion were aboard a paddle-wheeled steamer when a dark mass suddenly shot out of the night and rammed her amidships. The shock threw everybody off their feet; no one could tell at first whether it was a German cruiser or a friend; and had panic broken out among the massed humanity of over a thousand souls on board it would not have been surprising. But the Volunteer troops showed themselves in calmness and discipline the equal of any Regulars. The instant the collision occurred the troops were paraded on deck with the life-belts which had been provided for them. For a time it was thought that the ship was going down. But the men ranged on deck remained steady in the ranks, and the parties told off to loose the rafts carried out their duties swiftly and surely. The incident adjusted itself. The stranger, which turned out to be one of our own destroyers, had by a fortunate chance struck the great wooden paddle-box of the steamer, and though the latter was for a time out of control, no irretrievable damage had been done. The transport carrying the Divisional Staff stood by and endeavoured to tow her in, but the hawsers and steel cables parted under the strain of the rough weather. It was necessary to send for tugs from Boulogne, and, finally, at five in the morning, that port was made. All through the night an escort of destroyers which had raced up at the first news of the accident circled round flashing their searchlights over the seas to guard against a possible submarine attack, but no enemy appeared to disturb the work of rescue. The remaining ships of the Division, despite the heavy weather, made the passage in security, and the whole body began to pass up country to effect its junction with its comrades of the 1st Division.
The landing in France possessed one feature both of racial and historic importance. The 1st Division had included one company of the 14th Battalion, which was entirely composed of French Canadians, and many others of the same race were scattered among the various units. The 22nd Battalion of the 2nd Division was entirely recruited, as has been recorded, from the French of the old province, and its appearance on the sacred soil of France serves to awaken a host of memories.
There is no parallel in history that matches the picture of the descendants of the men who founded Port Royal and Quebec under Champlain in the first decade of the seventeenth century returning, after three hundred years of absence and a hundred and fifty years under a different flag, to fight once more for the soil whence their ancestors sprang. The German menace has welded the two great nations of the West on the two sea-boards of the Atlantic and linked the centuries together beyond imagination and almost beyond belief. In the firing line at Ypres were found side by side not only the successors of the British who had stayed in their island home and of the French who had remained in France and dealt with the British since on many a hard-fought field in Europe, but the sons of those who had struggled together before the entrenchments of Ticonderoga or on the fateful Plains of Abraham. When after the Seven Years' War in 1763 the Empire of the West passed finally to Great Britain under the pressure of British sea-power and the military inspiration of Chatham, France must have mourned what seemed the irrevocable loss of her sons. Yet in France and Flanders to-day they are risen again for her service, returned across the Atlantic by that same sea-power that once claimed them, and are now warring on the very fields their fathers held, with the same courage and fortitude their race displayed in the eighteenth century against Great Britain.
The French are of all people the most susceptible to an appeal to the imagination. One can imagine their feelings when they learnt that a whole regiment of French Canadians had landed with the 2nd Division. Very strange must have been the meeting between these two branches of a race separated so long by the Seas of Time!
Gradually it dawned on these people that among the strange soldiers from across the ocean were men speaking their mother tongue—not the French, perhaps, of modern Brittany and Normandy, but French none the less. One must picture the joyous effort to find the common idiom and accent, the older country casting back in memory across the years to the point where the two streams of speech had divided, the younger nation of the older speech casting forward to catch the new French which had sprung up since the division. The scene is one for the painter or the novelist, and this wonderful journey's end in lovers meeting must leave an ineffaceable imprint on the memories of both England and France. Dramatic moments are few in modern war, but this was one of them—a fitting pendant to that other scene when the joint memorial to Wolfe and Montcalm was unveiled on the heights of Quebec.
[[1]] The Divisional Artillery consisted of the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th Brigades of the Canadian Field Artillery, and the 97th, 98th, and 107th Siege Batteries. The 4th Brigade was recruited in Toronto, and commanded by Lieut.-Col. W. J. Brown, the 5th (Lieut.-Col. Dodds) came from Winnipeg, the 6th (Lieut.-Col. King) was raised from various quarters, and the 7th (Lieut.-Col. Stewart) from Montreal, Toronto, and New Brunswick. The Divisional Ammunition Column was under the command of Lieut.-Col. Harrison. The entire artillery of the 2nd Division was commanded by Lieut.-Col. Thacker, until June 25th, 1915, when that officer took command of the 1st Divisional Artillery and was succeeded by Brig.-General E. W. B. Morrison. Mention must also be made of the other units of the Division. The Divisional Engineers were under Lieut.-Col. J. Houleston until September, 1915, when Lieut.-Col. H. T. Hughes took over command; the Divisional train was under Lieut.-Col. A. E. Massey, the Cyclist Company under Lieut.-Col. Denison, and Nos. 4, 5, and 6 Field Ambulances under Lieut.-Cols. Webster, Farmer, and Campbell respectively, with Col. J. T. Fotheringham, C.M.G., as A.D.M.S.
[[2]] Major-General Steele's career in the army reads more like a romance than reality. Having distinguished himself as a mere boy in all his examinations while attached to the British Regulars then stationed in Canada, he left the Service, only to rejoin as a ranker in the Red River Expedition of 1870. Here he spent a year in Fort Garry, which was then "the farthest West." After a short time in the Royal Canadian Artillery he went West again, became a Major in the Alberta Field Force during the rebellion of 1885, having raised his own corps of "Steele's Scouts." He was through all the fighting of that summer, and finally broke up Big Bear's band at Loon Lake, a place in the Great Northern Forest where no white man had ever before set foot. In 1898, as soon as the Klondyke gold rush began, he was dispatched at once to secure the frontier, erect customs posts, and prevent American miners establishing claims on the wrong side of a vast and ill-defined frontier. In 1899 he was promoted Lieut.-Colonel, and became the military representative of the Government in the Yukon. The South African War brought him immediately into the field. Within the space of five days he recruited "Strathcona's Horse" from the Western provinces; within a month he had them ready to move from Ottawa—truly a miraculous performance. In South Africa he saw a good deal of fighting in Natal and the Lydenberg district east of Pretoria, notably at Belfast. On August 26th, 1900, he was mentioned in despatches, obtained the Queen's medal with four clasps, and finally took command of a division of the new South African Constabulary. At this stage he was for six months under the direct orders of Lord Kitchener, with whom he became intimately acquainted. In 1906, after a period of mixed civil and military administration in South Africa, he returned to the Dominion to take over the command of the Western Canada military district, a post he occupied until December, 1914. Seven thousand six hundred men went from his command in the West to the First Canadian Contingent, and before he left to take command of the 2nd Division no fewer than 24,000 men in his district had joined the Colours.
[[3]] The Special Message from the King to the 2nd Canadian Division was published after the inspection:—
"Officers, Non-commissioned Officers and Men of the 2nd Canadian Division,—Six months ago I inspected the 1st Canadian Division before their departure for the Front. The heroism they have since shown on the field of battle has won for them undying tame. You are now leaving to join them, and I am glad to have the opportunity of seeing you to-day, for it has convinced me that the same spirit which animated them inspires you also. The past weeks at Shorncliffe have been for you a period of severe and rigorous training; and your appearance at this inspection testifies to the thoroughness and devotion to duty with which your work has been performed. You are going to meet hardships and dangers, but the steadiness and discipline which have marked your bearing on parade to-day will carry you through all difficulties. History will never forget your loyalty and the readiness with which you rallied to the aid of your Mother Country in the hour of danger. My thoughts will always be with you. May God bless you and bring you victory!"
[[4]] The 6th Brigade was formed by reorganising the 8th Howitzer Brigade from the Reserve Brigade at Shorncliffe.