TWO YEARS IN THE YPRES SALIENT
AS TOLD BY PRIVATE ALBERT FRANKLIN EDWARDS, NO. 6857, 1ST BATTALION, 1ST BRIGADE, 1ST DIV., CANADIAN INFANTRY
Editor's Note.—These were the first Canadians to go overseas in the Great War.
—H. L. F.
I WAS born in Canada, but had lived virtually all my life in the United States. I thought war was coming and returned to Canada to be ready to do my bit when the time arrived; and I was just in time; arriving in Toronto on August 3, 1914. On August 4, 1914, I was at dinner with seven other boys when the word came that war was declared, and the whole eight of us determined to get in it without delay, so on the next day, August 5th, we enlisted in the Canadian dragoons.
After two weeks in the dragoons I was transferred to the infantry, went into training at Toronto, and afterward at Valcartier, which occupied the next two months.
One Sunday morning we were called for parade and thought we were going to church, but were notified we had to pack up for overseas service. We went to Montreal where we took a boat down the St. Lawrence to Halifax. We there joined the convoy consisting of 33,000 men of the artillery and infantry.
PRIVATE A. F. EDWARDS
We sailed for England on October 22, 1914, and as nearly as I can remember took about sixteen days to make the trip to Plymouth. Though slow the voyage was without incident worthy of mention.
We were, for some unknown reason, held five days in Plymouth Harbor before disembarking, and then they hustled us off to the training camp on Salisbury Plains where we had a miserable existence until February, 1915.
At Salisbury we drilled in mud and water that was at times waist deep, caused by the continuous rains and floods. It sure was fine training for the Flanders mud that we were to encounter later. The storms were so severe at times that tents and their contents were washed away.
As a result an epidemic of spinal meningitis hit the camp, and of the 33,000 who arrived at Salisbury 4,400 were stricken with this disease, only a few of whom recovered.
While at Salisbury I was granted my first leave and started for London, together with my pal, a boy named Frazer, who also had leave. We had three days' absence from camp coming to us and they were "some three days."
We arrived in London at 5.15 P.M. and, in accord with English custom, had tea at once in the Corner House, Piccadilly, where many soldiers congregated.
At the Corner House we received sixty-one invitations to the theater and dinner for the next day. That night we attended the Princess Theater where, as we entered, the orchestra played the Canadian anthem, "The Maple Leaf Forever." The audience cheered and we were forced to make a speech. You see, we were the first Canadians the English people had seen who had come to do their bit. That night I lost track of Frazer.
After three wonderful days I returned to camp as my leave had expired. Frazer was not on the train with me, and as a matter of fact did not arrive until twenty-four hours later. He was called before the colonel for overstaying his leave, and, on being questioned, told the colonel that just as he arrived at the railroad station a band started playing "God Save the King" and he had to stand at attention so long that he missed the train.
He was excused and returned to duty, but they do say there was a suspicious twinkle in the colonel's eye as he dismissed him. I sometimes wish I had Frazer's powers of quick invention.
On February 3rd we left Salisbury encampment, en route for France, landing at St. Lazarre, thence by train to Hazebrouck and St. Omer where the fever laid me up in the hospital for about ten days.
I joined the battalion again at Armentieres where we remained a few days and then went forward to Ypres. On April 22, 1915, we went into battle at Ypres and for the first time in history were called upon to meet a gas attack by the Germans.
Editor's Note.—This was the first time this inhuman method of warfare was used by a supposedly civilized nation.
H. L. F.
At first we thought the gas we saw coming toward us was a bank of fog and it gave us no anxiety. It was at 4.30 P.M. that the Huns turned the gas on us, and I was fortunate to be in the first battalion at a point where the gas was not so thick. The thickest part of the gas swept over the 8th, 10th, 11th, 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th battalions. Eighty-five per cent of the men who met this attack were more or less severely gassed. At points the gas was so severe that it turned the brass buttons, on the tunics of the men, green. Some of the men killed by gas fell, but some remained standing even in death so swift was its action.
Our artillery, although short of ammunition, was our main support in this action. Had the Germans forced a passage here, the roads to Paris, Calais and the English coast would have been virtually open. There were 72,000 Germans opposed to 13,000 Canadian infantry in this action, but the boys from Canada held fast.
The next day, April 23rd, a small fragment of shrapnel in my right hand sent me to the hospital in Boulogne. Fine treatment by the American doctors and nurses there soon had me in shape again and I was returned to the line through the Canadian base at Le Havre. Thence I went through Festubert to Givenchy where the old 1st Battalion went into battle with 919 men and six hours later over 600 had made the great sacrifice. Minor casualties left us only 137 men able to answer roll call and several of these had to go to the hospital on account of wounds received here.
The first week of July we went to Ploegstreet which we called "home" for a long time. We called Ploegstreet "home" because it was so peaceful. (The Germans dared not shell us as we were so close to their trenches that they were afraid of hitting their own men.) The shell craters through which our trenches ran were only thirteen yards from the trenches of the enemy, and we could hear the Saxons who opposed us singing songs in English which they all seemed to speak fluently.
One night I was on patrol when our party passed German patrol not five yards distant. Neither side dared fire for fear of starting the machine gun fire. One of the Saxons called out, "Hello, Canuck, how's Quebec, Winnipeg and Vancouver?"
Evidently he had been in Quebec as he spoke of the St. Regis Hotel.
At Ploegstreet the British had started a "sap" forty-eight feet deep where a tunnel, with twenty-five galleries running off from it, undermined the town. It took two years to build and was planted with one hundred thousand tons of high explosive dynamite. When it was exploded it blew up the entire town and also blew 61,000 Huns "Hell, west and crooked."
This was the only way to take the position as the elaborate trench system of the Germans was practically impregnable. It was at Ploegstreet that the Huns "got our goat" by showing the wearing apparel of Belgian girls on the points of their bayonets.
After exploding the mine we explored the German trenches and found most wonderful underground living quarters for the troops fitted with every modern convenience.
We remained here three and a half months and then were moved to Kemmel to the C-4 trenches, where we spent the winter. Here I was taken sick and sent to the hospital at Bailleu, and returned to duty again at Cambrai, and thence went to St. Quentin.
Remained at St. Quentin until September 17th, when I had a piece of shrapnel lodge in my arm and was burned by a shell while trying to dig out a comrade in a similar predicament, except that he died before we got him out. I was buried, but conscious, for four hours and twenty minutes, and I thought of every event of my life in that time. When finally rescued, the fresh air and reaction were too much for me, and I lost consciousness, which I did not regain until I was in England in the Duchess of Connaught's Hospital. I had been sent there by way of Le Havre and remained six months in bed in a plaster cast. I was then returned to a hospital ship and taken to St. John, New Brunswick, where I received electrical and massage treatment. From St. John I went to the convalescent hospital at Fredericton, N. B., and was discharged on August 19, 1918.