Canada in Flanders, Volume II

by Baron Max Aitken Beaverbrook

CHAPTER II

PATROLS

An interval of calm—Process of forming the Second and Third Divisions—St. Eloi—The sector of Bailleul—Work of the Army Corps Staff—Changes in the Higher Command—The first experience of the Second Division—A demonstration opposite La Douve Farm—Dummy trenches—Smoke sacks—Veterans of the Third Brigade act as instructors—Bombardment of the Fifth Brigade—The gallant deed of Major Roy—Steadiness of the French Canadians—New Brunswickers on their mettle—Heroism of Sergeant Ryer—Canadians at home in patrol work—Stolidity of the Germans—Inventiveness of Canadians—Plucky rescue of Corporal May—Deadly land mines—Lucky escape of the Winnipeg boys—A thrilling adventure in the air—Capture of a German 'plane—Singular recovery of a Colt gun—The value of model trenches—The formation of a Brigade—Difficult night work—Havoc wrought by storms—Useful work of Labour Battalion—Holy ground.

Sept., 1915.

With the junction between the two divisions the work of the Canadian troops in Flanders enters on a new and broader phase. The meeting took place in time midway between the tempest which raged on the plains of Ypres in May of 1915 and that scarcely less violent iron-storm which, in the same month of 1916, burst in the fields of St. Eloi. An interval of calm, or such calm as modern war knows, was permitted for that reunion. It is well for the soldier that there should be such intervals, for the strain of modern action, were it never relaxed, would destroy the mind and nerve of man as surely as the continuance of its shell fire must destroy the body. But though modern armies cannot always be locked in desperate conflict, the reader may not find the ensuing chapters altogether dull. He will be able to trace the steps by which the original 1st Division added unto itself first a second and then a third, and developed into an army corps. He can watch the multiplication of the Staffs, the promotion of Brigadiers to command divisions, of Colonels to brigades, and of Majors and Captains to regiments; the process of the division of labour as the specialists develop in bombing, mining, or machine-gunning; the foundations of schools of instruction behind the line; the methodical study of the arts of patrolling and raiding. He can survey, in fact, the full range of those methods by which large bodies of men carrying rifles gradually develop into a self-sufficient army far greater in numbers than the British troops that the Duke of Wellington commanded, not so far away, on the field of Waterloo. As a stream draws into it confluent after confluent until it attains the dignity of a river, so the original Canadian Expeditionary Force, by the flow of men across the Atlantic, is becoming an army; and it is the history of this process that the next few chapters must relate. In artillery alone is the development a slow one, and here the 2nd and 3rd Divisions were for long dependent on the assistance of the British gunners.

The scene is laid in a sector to the south of Ypres and to the north of Armentières. Its more southerly position in the line is marked by the greater number of spinneys, small eminences, and commanding heights, such as that of Kemmel, from which the enemy's lines can be overlooked. But portions of it are a dead level, and it is very far from the well-covered hills of the real southern line. The main features are still those of Flanders—the slightly rolling flat where the transparent richness of the crops which spring from the sand and the clay seems no deeper than the paint of a fresco on the wall, and the scraggy trees and ragged woods mock one with a delusive memory of forest cool and shade. As the army grows the winter draws on, and the fine, hot autumn days and brilliant nights with the moon high in the heavens behind the trenches turn to the rains of November and the mists and frosts of Christmas. The ground grows wet underfoot and the air is clammy and cold. Such is the winter season of Northern Europe, when most of the campaigners of history allowed their troops to hibernate in warm and comfortable billets.

The 1st Division had spent the later summer on a sector the right of which rests on the northern edge of Ploegsteert. As the 2nd Division came by degrees into the fighting line the Canadian sector was extended northwards until the left of the Corps finally rested on a spot a little to the south of St. Eloi. The moves which resulted in the final disposition were not all made in a day, but it would be tedious to do more than note in passing the various shifts the new corps made with the II British Corps to the south of them and the V British Corps to the north. Roughly speaking, the northern line ending by St. Eloi was taken over by the 2nd Division while the 1st Division remained in the Ploegsteert area to the south. The dividing point was a little to the north of Wulverghem, facing the German trenches half-way between Messines and Wytschaete. For the sake of clearness one might call it the sector of Bailleul.

The distinguishing feature of the line is length rather than depth—the precise converse of the subsequent St. Eloi position. The line from that place to Ploegsteert is not excessive for a corps of three divisions, but it is distinctly so for one with only two. In fact, on March 1st, when the whole three divisions were assembled, the frontage was occupied by six out of the nine brigades, and this six brigade frontage was throughout the normal one. But the 3rd Division was not in full existence till the middle of January, 1916, and in the meantime the reliefs could only be effected by such elements of corps troops as happened from time to time to be in readiness. Thus on October 3rd, when an additional two thousand yards were taken over, and the 2nd Division occupied our final position to the north, the only corps troops available for reliefs were Brigadier-General Seely's force, consisting of three regiments of the Cavalry Brigade and the 1st Canadian Mounted Rifle Brigade. The 42nd Battalion (Royal Highlanders of Canada) and the 49th Battalion (Edmonton Regiment) did not arrive till the middle of that month, the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifle Brigade till towards the end of it, the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry and the Royal Canadian Regiment till November, and the various units which finally formed the 3rd Division were not completed till January. This necessarily entailed a somewhat extended sojourn in the front line area by the various brigades of the first two divisions.

The task, therefore, of interchanging the different units was one that required careful working out on the part of the Corps Staff. The ordinary divisional front is held by two brigades, with a third at rest well in the rear. The business of interchanging them becomes as mechanical as that of a bridge-player opening a long and strong suit; every unit knows to within two or three days its time in the front line, support line, reserve line, or rest billets. As the units of the 3rd Division began to arrive, matters, of course, became simpler, but in the last months of the year the Corps found itself compelled to make heavy calls on the endurance of the various battalions.

Sept. 14th, 1915.