There was a good deal of jealousy at that time between the Canadians and the Australians. Each had the same force in the field—four divisions. Either force was bigger than any other army composed exclusively of volunteers ever before assembled. While I belong to the Canadian army and believe the Canadian overseas forces the finest troops ever led to war, I must say that I have never seen a body of men so magnificent in average physique as the Australians. And some of them were even above the high average. The man that punched me in the eye in an “estaminet” in Poperinghe made up entirely in his own person for the absence of Les Darcy from the Australian ranks. I don’t know just how the fight started between the Australians and us, in Poperinghe, but I know that it took three regiments of Imperial troops to stop it. The most convincing story I heard of the origin of the battle was told me by one of our men who said he was there when it began. He said one of the Australians had carelessly remarked that the British generals had decided it was time to get through with the side-show in Belgium and this was the reason why they had sent in regular troops like the Australians to relieve the Canadians.
Then some sensitive Canadian wished the Australians luck and hoped they’d finish it up as well as they had the affair in the Dardanelles. After that, our two days’ rest was made up principally of beating it out of “estaminets” when strategic requirements suggested a new base, or beating it into “estaminets” where it looked as if we could act as efficient re-inforcements. The fight never stopped for forty-eight hours, and the only places it didn’t extend to were the church and the hospitals. I’ll bet, to this day, that the Belgians who run the “estaminets” in Poperinghe will duck behind the bars if you just mention Canada and Australia in the same breath.
But I’m bound to say that it was good, clean fighting. Nobody fired a shot, nobody pulled a bayonet, and nobody got the wrong idea about anything. The Australian heavy-weight champion who landed on me went right out in the street and saluted one of our lieutenants. We had just one satisfying reflection after the fight was over. The Australian battalion that relieved us fell heir to the counter attack which the Germans sent across to even up on our bombing raid.
We began our march to the Somme by a hike to St. Ohmer, one of the early British headquarters in Europe. Then we stopped for a week about twenty miles from Calais, where we underwent a course of intensified training for open fighting. The infantry tactics, in which we were drilled, were very similar to those of the United States army—those which, in fact, were originated by the United States troops in the days of Indian fighting. We covered most of the ground around Calais on our stomachs in open order. While it may seem impertinent for me, a mere non-com., to express an opinion about the larger affairs of the campaign, I think I may be excused for saying that the war didn’t at all take the course which was expected and hoped for after the fight on the Somme. Undoubtedly, the Allies expected to break through the German line. That is well known now. While we were being trained near Calais for open warfare, a very large force of cavalry was being assembled and prepared for the same purpose. It was never used.
That was last August, and the Allies haven’t broken through yet. Eventually I believe they will break through, but, in my opinion, men who are waiting now to learn if they are to be drawn for service in our new American army will be veterans in Europe before the big break comes, which will wreck the Prussian hope of success in this war. And if we of the U. S. A. don’t throw in the weight to beat the Prussians now, they will not be beaten, and, in that case, the day will not be very far distant when we will have to beat them to save our homes and our nation. War is a dreadful and inglorious and ill-smelling and cruel thing. But if we hold back now, we will be in the logical position of a man hesitating to go to grips with a savage, shrieking, spewing maniac who has all but whipped his proper keepers, and is going after the on-looker next.
We got drafts of recruits before we went on to the Somme, and some of our wounded men were sent back to England, where we had left our “Safety-first Battalion.” That was really the Fifty-first battalion, of the Fourth Division of the Canadian forces, composed of the physically rejected, men recovering from wounds, and men injured in training. The Tommies, however, called it the “Safety-first,” or “Major Gilday’s Light Infantry.” Major Gilday was our battalion surgeon. He was immensely popular, and he achieved a great name for himself. He made one realize what a great personal force a doctor can be and what an unnecessary and overwrought elaboration there is in the civil practice of medicine.
Under Major Gilday’s administration, no man in our battalion was sick if he could walk, and, if he couldn’t walk, there was a reasonable suspicion that he was drunk. The Major simplified the practice of medicine to an exact science involving just two forms of treatment and two remedies—“Number Nines” and whale oil. Number Nines were pale, oval pills, which, if they had been eggs, would have run about eight to an omelette. They had an internal effect which could only be defined as dynamic. After our men had become acquainted with them through personal experience they stopped calling them “Number Nines” and called them “whiz-bangs.” There were only two possibilities of error under Major Gilday’s system of simplified medicine. One was to take a whiz-bang for trench feet, and the other to use whale oil externally for some form of digestional hesitancy. And, in either case, no permanent harm could result, while the error was as simple of correction as the command “about face.”
There was a story among our fellows that an ambulance had to be called for Major Gilday, in London, one day, on account of shock following a remark made to him by a bobby. The Major asked the policeman how he could get to the Cavoy Hotel. The bobby, with the proper bus line in mind, replied: “Take a number nine, sir.”
Two weeks and a half after we left Belgium we arrived at Albert, having marched all the way. The sight which met our eyes as we rounded the rock-quarry hill, outside of Albert, was wonderful beyond description. I remember how tremendously it impressed my pal, Macfarlane. He sat by the roadside and looked ’round over the landscape as if he were fascinated.
“Boy,” said he, “we’re at the big show at last.”