“Gentlemen,” said he, in the midst of the drill, “when I see you handle your rifles I feel like falling on my knees and thanking God that we’ve got a navy.”
On June 2d, after the third battle of Ypres, while Macfarlane and I were sitting wearily on our bunks during an odd hour in the afternoon when nobody had thought of anything for us to do, a soldier came in with a message from headquarters which put a sudden stop to the discussion we were having about the possibility of getting leave to go up to London. The message was that the First, Second and Third divisions of the Canadians had lost forty per cent. of their men in the third fight at Ypres and that three hundred volunteers were wanted from each of our battalions to fill up the gaps.
“Forty per cent.,” said Macfarlane, getting up quickly. “My God, think of it! Well, I’m off to tell ’em I’ll go.”
I told him I was with him, and we started for headquarters, expecting to be received with applause and pointed out as heroic examples. We couldn’t even get up to give in our names. The whole battalion had gone ahead of us. They heard about it first. That was the spirit of the Canadians. It was about this time that a story went ’round concerning an English colonel who had been called upon to furnish volunteers from his outfit to replace casualties. He backed his regiment up against a barrack wall and said:
“Now, all who don’t want to volunteer, step three paces to the rear.”
In our battalion, sergeants and even officers offered to go as privates. Our volunteers went at once, and we were re-enforced up to strength by drafts from the Fifth Canadian division, which was then forming in England.
In July, when we were being kept on the rifle ranges most of the time, all leave was stopped, and we were ordered to hold ourselves in readiness to go overseas. In the latter part of the month, we started. We sailed from Southampton to Havre on a big transport, escorted all the way by destroyers. As we landed, we got our first sight of the harvest of war. A big hospital on the quay was filled with wounded men. We had twenty-four hours in what they called a “rest camp.” We slept on cobble stones in shacks which were so utterly comfortless that it would be an insult to a Kentucky thoroughbred to call them stables. Then we were on the way to the Belgian town of Poperinghe, which is one hundred and fifty miles from Havre and was, at that time, the rail head of the Ypres salient. We made the trip in box cars which were marked in French: “Eight horses or forty men,” and we had to draw straws to decide who should lie down.
We got into Poperinghe at 7 A.M., and the scouts had led us into the front trenches at two the next morning. Our position was to the left of St. Eloi and was known as “The Island,” because it had no support on either side. On the left, were the Yser Canal and the bluff which forms its bank. On the right were three hundred yards of battered-down trenches which had been rebuilt twice and blown in again each time by the German guns. For some reason, which I never quite understood, the Germans were able to drop what seemed a tolerably large proportion of the output of the Krupp works on this particular spot whenever they wanted to. Our high command had concluded that it was untenable, and so we, on one side of it, and the British on the other, had to just keep it scouted and protect our separate flanks. Another name they had for that position was the “Bird Cage.” That was because the first fellows who moved into it made themselves nice and comfy and put up wire nettings to prevent any one from tossing bombs in on them. Thus, when the Germans stirred up the spot with an accurate shower of “whiz-bangs” and “coal-boxes,” the same being thirteen-pounders and six-inch shells, that wire netting presented a spectacle of utter inadequacy which hasn’t been equalled in this war.
They called the position which we were assigned to defend “The Graveyard of Canada.” That was because of the fearful losses of the Canadians here in the second battle of Ypres, from April 21, to June 1, 1915, when the first gas attack in the world’s history was launched by the Germans, and, although the French, on the left, and the British, on the right, fell back, the Canadians stayed where they were put.
Right here I can mention something which will give you an idea why descriptions of this war don’t describe it. During the first gas attack, the Canadians, choking to death and falling over each other in a fight against a new and unheard-of terror in warfare, found a way—the Lord only knows who first discovered it and how he happened to do it—to stay through a gas cloud and come out alive. It isn’t pretty to think of, and it’s like many other things in this war which you can’t even tell of in print, because simple description would violate the nice ethics about reading matter for the public eye, which have grown up in long years of peace and traditional decency. But this thing which you can’t describe meant just the difference between life and death to many of the Canadians, that first day of the gas. Official orders: now, tell every soldier what he is to do with his handkerchief or a piece of his shirt if he is caught in a gas attack without his mask.