The troops entered the German front line safely enough and worked their way round the appointed area. The opposition, not very strong, was quickly overcome, but no prisoners could be brought back. Two Bosches did get as far as the parapet but there they decided to stay, and as nothing would induce them to come over, “they had to be disposed of,” as one of the N.C.O.’s afterwards said in his report.

The return home at the appointed time was carried out successfully and as numerous identifications were brought back, the object of the raid had been achieved. The casualties were very few, but unfortunately they included two killed—Lance-Corporal A. T. C. Geary and Private A. F. Pearson.

The success of the raid put the whole party in good spirits for Christmas, which, as in 1915, was spent in the trenches. The Christmas celebrations duly took place, however, early in January at Ottawa Camp, when each Company had a Christmas dinner and concert. The festival lacked nothing on account of the postponement, and in many sections of the Battalion it was kept up for several days. To celebrate their success the survivors of the raid were given a dinner at which the heroes of the evening were Lance-Sergeant H. J. Steele and Corporal J. H. Swain, who had both been awarded the M.M.

CHAPTER XIII
THE SALIENT IN WINTER

Life in the Ypres Salient could now no longer be described as a rest cure, for in addition to increased activity on both sides in the line, the weather was of the real wintry type.

The trenches, where there had been “water, water, everywhere,” had become ice-bound, and remained so for many weeks. Trench stores were often taken over by a C.S.M. who could scarcely see them through the ice, but who was told that he would “find they were all right when the thaw came.”

To complete the wintry scene, snow had fallen and cast a mantle of white over the ugly sights of war. The Ravine certainly looked pretty now, with the feathery snowflakes glistening on the trees, and here and there an icicle giving the genuine Christmas-card impression. No Man’s Land, too, has rarely looked more picturesque with the festoons of barbed wire daintily picked out in white. Yes, it was a beautiful scene on a moonlight night in January 1917, but the sentry on the firestep in the front line, with feet frozen, nose, ears and hands feeling as though they were about to drop off, had no eye for such beauty. His idea of beauty at the time was a little so-called dug-out, with a ground sheet or an old post bag (contrary to G.R.O. “XYZ”) hanging over the entrance, and inside a glorious warm “fug” with three or four of his pals stewing in the fumes given off by a tiny brazier. It was so cold on the firestep and the front line trenches were so near to each other, that he daren’t stamp his feet, for fear of being heard in the German line. Not that it mattered a great deal about being heard, thought the sentry, for with his hands in such a frozen state that he did not know whether he was holding his rifle or not, he couldn’t do much to stop the Bosche if he did come over to-night. Things would not be much better when the Battalion was relieved. He supposed it would be Ottawa Camp again, where it was bitterly cold and the Quartermaster would never give you any fuel. Why couldn’t he have a job like “Posh Harry” at the Brigade School, he wondered? At any rate, there would be a comfortable billet there, and a fire. He must get a stripe, that’s what it came to, and then if he could not get a job at the Brigade School or at the Divisional School in Poperinghe, at any rate he might get sent there on a course. He was fed up with this life, he was sure, and when his turn of sentry duty was finished and he was promptly put on an ice-breaking fatigue, he began to think that there was some sense after all in the peace talk that one read of in the newspapers at this time. If only they would talk about it seriously! But what could one expect when the newspaper folk described the peace talk as “an insult to Tommy in the trenches”?

Meditations such as the foregoing were not uncommon in the early part of 1917, when the wintry weather was almost the sole topic of conversation. But what was dreaded more than the frost and snow was the thaw which would follow, and how every man prayed that his Battalion would move into Divisional Reserve the day the thaw came!

Before the thaw came, however, the Civil Service Rifles were to have a little excitement in the front line, for one night in the middle of January, the Bosche, who had evidently been reading the story of the escape of Mary Queen of Scots from Lochleven Castle, had attired his patrols in white raiment and sent them out across the snow. The trick came off, and the Bosches entered the trench known as Berry Post, inflicted casualties on the garrison, and got back to their own lines unhurt.

This feat so impressed the authorities that by the time the thaw had fairly set in, white patrol jackets were awaiting collection from ordnance.