Canada in Flanders, Volume I

by Baron Max Aitken Beaverbrook

Two days later, on the 18th, Private G. F. Clark, of the 8th Battalion (Winnipeg Rifles), displayed even greater coolness and daring.

About midday, in the neighbourhood of "Duck's Bill," Lieut. E. H. Houghton, of Winnipeg, machine-gun officer of the 8th Battalion, saw a wounded British soldier lying near the German trench. As soon as dusk fell he and Private Clark, of the machine-gun section, dug a hole in the parapet, through which Clark went out and brought in the wounded man, who proved to be a private of the East Yorks. The trenches at this point were only thirty-five yards apart. Private Clark had received a bullet through his cap during his rescue of the wounded Englishman, but he crawled through the hole in the parapet again and went after a Canadian machine-gun which had been abandoned within a few yards of the German trench during the recent attack. He brought the gun safely into our trench, and the tripod to within a few feet of our parapet. He wished to keep the gun to add to the battery of his own section, but the General Officer Commanding ruled that it was to be returned to its original battalion, and promised Clark something in its place which he would find less awkward to carry. Private Clark comes from Port Arthur, Ontario, and, before the war, earned his living by working in the lumber-woods.

After several days of heavy artillery fire our troops were relieved and the Headquarters moved to the north. Here a trench line was taken over from a British Division.

When Dominion Day came they remembered with pride that they were the Army of a Nation, and those who were in the trenches displayed the Dominion flag, decorated with the flowers of France, to the annoyance of the barbarians, who riddled it with bullets. Behind the lines the Day was celebrated with sports and games, while the pipers of the Scottish Canadian Battalions played a "selection of National Airs."

But the shouting baseball teams and minstrel shows, with their outrageous personal allusions, the skirl of the pipes and the choruses of the well-known ragtimes, moved men to the depths of their souls. For this was the first Dominion Day that Canada had spent with the red sword in her hand.

[[1]] On June 12th the 4th Battery, Canadian Field Artillery, commanded by Major Geo. H. Ralston, received orders to place two guns in our front-line trench, at "Duck's Bill," and to have them dug in and protected by sandbags by the morning of the 15th. The German trench was only 75 yards away at this point, and the purpose of the two guns was to cut wire, level parapets, and destroy machine-gun emplacements on a front of 200 yards.

The positions for the field guns in our trench were ready by the night of the 14th, and at 9.30 of the same night the two guns, their wheels muffled with old motor tyres, left the battery's position near the canal, and, in charge of Captain Stockwell and Sergeant-Major Kerry, passed through Givenchy. At this point the horses were unhooked, and the guns were hauled to their places in our front-line trench by hand. Shells were also drawn in by hand, in small armoured wagons. The guns were protected by one-quarter-inch armour plate, and their crews remained with them throughout the night.

The Right Section gun was commanded by Lieut. C. S. Craig, with Sergeant Miller as No. 1, and the Left Section gun by Lieut. L. S. Kelly, with Sergeant E. G. MacDougall as No. 1.

On the afternoon of the 15th, the batteries of the Division commenced firing on certain selected points of the enemy's front. At 5.45 the infantry, working to the minute on advance orders, knocked down our parapet in front of the two entrenched guns and so uncovered their field of fire. The guns opened fire instantly on the German position, and by six o'clock had disposed of six machine-gun emplacements, levelled the German parapets and cut the wire to pieces. Our infantry attacked immediately after the firing of the last shot, and just as the German batteries began to range on our two guns. A shell burst over and behind the Right Section gun, killing three of its crew and wounding Lieut. Craig and Corporal King, who died of his wounds. Lieut. Kelly was wounded a few minutes later. Sergeant MacDougall found Lieut. Craig lying helpless among the dead and wounded, and carried him back to a dressing station. Later, the Right Section gun was smashed by a direct hit.

Sergeant MacDougall, who comes from Moncton, New Brunswick, and is a graduate of McGill University in Electrical Engineering, again did valuable work on the following night in removing the two guns from the trench back to safety.