Canada in Flanders, Volume I

by Baron Max Aitken Beaverbrook

As soon as the policy of the Government had been ratified, General Hughes devised and ordered the establishment of the largest camp that had ever been seen on Canadian soil. The site at Valcartier was well chosen. It lay some sixteen miles to the west of Quebec, within a day's march of the gathering transports. The soil was, in the main, light and sandy, and a river of pure water was available. Yet the work of adapting this virgin soil to military purposes was enormous, and the transformation, effected within a fortnight by an army of engineers and workers, a remarkable triumph of applied science. Roads were made, drains laid down, a water supply with miles of pipes installed, electric lighting furnished from Quebec, and incinerators built for the destruction of dry refuse. A sanitary system, second to none that any camp has seen, was instituted. Every company had its own bathing place and shower baths; every cookhouse its own supply of water. Troughs of drinking-water, for horses, filled automatically, so that there was neither shortage nor waste. The standing crops were garnered, trees cut down and their roots torn up. A line of rifle targets 3-½ miles long—the largest rifle range in the world—was constructed. Three miles of sidings were run out from the wayside station, and a camp telephone exchange was quickly put in working order.

Camp and army leaped to life in the same hours. Within four days of the opening of the camp, nearly 6,000 men had arrived in it. A week later the number was 25,000. In those August days all roads led to Valcartier, and the railways rose to the occasion, gathering the first Division to the rendezvous, from every corner of the country, in great trains, each of which carried and fed 600 men.

The assembling force comprised elements from every phase of Canadian life. There were those whose names were known throughout the land. There were men who had fought at Paardeburg—some of them "very barely" within the age limit of 45. One, who had retired from a colonelcy of a regiment, offered to serve as a private, so anxious was he to go. He was more than satisfied when he received a majority. Another, who had spent his fifteenth birthday as a bugler in South Africa, has since celebrated his third war birthday in the Flemish trenches.

The original intention of the authorities was to send to England a Division, consisting of the regular complement of three infantry brigades; but, on September 1st, General Hughes announced at the camp that a fourth brigade would be formed, to be used as drafts to supply the war wastage in the other three. Towards the end of the month the Government decided to send all four brigades over together. "The total reinforcements for the first year of a great war," said Sir Robert Borden in announcing his decision, "are estimated at from 60 to 70 per cent. If the reserve depots necessary for supplying such reinforcements were established in Canada, eight or ten weeks might elapse before they could reach the front.... For these reasons, as well as others, we deem it advisable that the reserves shall be kept on hand in Great Britain, as the Force at the front must continually be kept at full strength, and that without the slightest unnecessary delay."

While the new army underwent its preliminary training at Valcartier, there were other preparations of every kind to be made. The cloth mills of Montreal began to hum with the manufacture of khaki, which the needles of a great army of tailors converted into uniforms, greatcoats and cloaks. The Ordnance Department equipped the host with the Ross rifle—a Canadian-made arm. Regiments were shuffled and reshuffled into battalions; battalions into brigades. The whole force was inoculated against typhoid. There were stores to manufacture and to accumulate; a fleet of transports to assemble; a thousand small cogs in the machine to be nicely adjusted.

Early in September, the whole First Division was reviewed by the Governor-General in a torrential downpour of rain; and again, towards the end of the month, a few days before embarkation, the Duke of Connaught (accompanied by the Duchess and the Princess Patricia) took the salute at Valcartier from the first army of Canada. At this final review the contingent was fittingly led past the saluting base by the man whose name, more than any one other, will be linked in history with the first Canadian Division. General Hughes had cause to be proud of the 33,000 men who marched past that day, fully armed and fully equipped, well within two months of the declaration of war in Europe.

The feat of raising such a force is all the more remarkable when one considers that, with the exception of the Princess Patricia's Light Infantry, the overwhelming majority of the men who volunteered for the great War were civilians, without previous experience or training. The "Princess Pats," as that already famous regiment is now commonly called, was the only one that consisted almost entirely of old soldiers.

The Governor-General's review over, news from the camp came fitfully. The censor was at work, and the public guessed rightly that the division was on the move. Through the darkness and the rain and the mud of the night of September 23rd-24th, the guns crawled down the sixteen miles of valley that brought them to Quebec at daybreak, the men drenched, but happy in the knowledge that they were at last off to the war. The weather was so bad that the infantry, instead of marching, were brought down in a long succession of heavy trains. The embarkation of horses, men, guns and wagons was completed in less than three days. And so the First Canadian Division, with its Reserves, sailed away down the St. Lawrence, in a fleet of Atlantic liners such as the mighty gateway of Canada had never before borne on her bosom.

The fleet assembled in Gaspé Basin, on the coast of Quebec, where the warships which were to convoy it across the Atlantic awaited it. On October 3rd the transports steamed out of Gaspé Bay in three lines ahead, led by His Majesty's ships Charybdis, Diana, and Eclipse, with the Glory and Suffolk on the flanks, and the Talbot in the rear. Later, the Suffolk's place was taken by the battle-cruiser, Queen Mary. The sealing-ship Florizel, with the Newfoundland Regiment aboard, joined the fleet after its departure from Gaspé Bay.

The voyage was uneventful if rather long, the fleet entering Plymouth Sound on the evening of October 14th. So strict had been the censorship that the arrival of the Canadian Armada was quite unexpected by the people of Plymouth and Devonport; but no sooner had the word gone forth that the Canadian transports had arrived, than the townsfolk flocked to the waterside, to cheer and sing, and cheer again.