The nearest I can come, in print, to telling you what a soldier is ordered to do in this emergency is to remind you that ammonia fumes oppose chlorine gas as a neutralizing agent, and that certain emanations of the body throw off ammonia fumes.
Now that I’ve told you how we got from the Knickerbocker bar and other places to a situation which was just one hundred and fifty yards from the entrenched front of the German army in Belgium, I might as well add a couple of details about things which straightway put the fear of God in our hearts. At daybreak, one of our Fourteenth platoon men, standing on the firing step, pushed back his trench helmet and remarked that he thought it was about time for coffee. He didn’t get any. A German sharpshooter, firing the first time that day, got him under the rim of his helmet, and his career with the Canadian forces was over right there. And then, as the dawn broke, we made out a big painted sign raised above the German front trench. It read:
WELCOME,
EIGHTY-SEVENTH CANADIANS
We were a new battalion, we had been less than seventy-two hours on the continent of Europe and the Germans were not supposed to know anything that was going on behind our lines!
We learned, afterward, that concealed telephones in the houses of the Belgian burgomasters of the villages of Dinkiebusch and Renninghelst, near our position, gave communication with the German headquarters opposite us. One of the duties of a detail of our men, soon after that, was to stand these two burgomasters up against a wall and shoot them.
CHAPTER II
THE BOMBING RAID
When we took our position in the front line trenches in Belgium, we relieved the Twenty-sixth Canadian Battalion. The Twenty-sixth belonged to the Second division, and had seen real service during the battle of Hooge and in what is now termed the third battle of Ypres, which occurred in June, 1916. The organization was made up almost exclusively of French Canadians from Quebec, and it was as fine a fighting force as we had shown the Fritzes, despite the fact that men of their race, as developments have proved, are not strongly loyal to Canada and Britain. Individually, the men of this French Canadian battalion were splendid soldiers and the organization could be criticized on one score only. In the heat of action it could not be kept in control. On one occasion when it went in, in broad daylight, to relieve another battalion, the men didn’t stop at the fire trench. They went right on “over the top,” without orders, and, as a result, were badly cut up. Time and again the men of this battalion crossed “No Man’s Land” at night, without orders and without even asking consent, just to have a scrimmage with “the beloved enemy.” Once, when ordered to take two lines of trenches, they did so in the most soldierly fashion, but, seeing red, kept on going as if their orders were to continue to Berlin. On this occasion they charged right into their barrage fire and lost scores of their men, struck down by British shells. It has been said often of all the Canadians that they go the limit, without hesitation. There was a time when the “Bing Boys”—the Canadians were so called because this title of a London musical comedy was suggested by the fact that their commander was General Byng—were ordered to take no prisoners, this order being issued after two of their men were found crucified. A Canadian private, having penetrated a German trench with an attacking party, encountered a German who threw up his hands and said: “Mercy, Kamerade. I have a wife and five children at home.”
“You’re mistaken,” replied the Canadian. “You have a widow and five orphans at home.”
And, very shortly, he had.
Scouts from the Twenty-sixth battalion had come back to the villages of Dinkiebusch and Renninghelst to tell us how glad they were to see us and to show us the way in. As we proceeded overland, before reaching the communication trenches at the front, these scouts paid us the hospitable attentions due strangers. That is, one of them leading a platoon would say: