Canada in Flanders, Volume II

by Baron Max Aitken Beaverbrook

The Canadian Corps was now approaching the second crisis in the history of its various divisions; this was to lead them through three months of continuous fighting steadily northwards across the blood-stained fields of St. Eloi and Hooge until they almost reached the scene of the Second Battle of Ypres. To grasp the inner meaning of these movements and the consequences to which they led, it is essential to take a wider survey of the strategic position which the Allied Commanders had to face on the Western front. Two great bodies of the German reserves were known to be in existence, the first opposite Verdun, the second in the region of the northern British line. Whether this last concentration was a defensive measure against a possible British advance, or portended a third German assault on the Ypres salient, could not in the month of March be known for certain. One fact at least was clear. The persistent and violent offensive against Verdun which marked that month made it incumbent on the British armies to come to the assistance of the French. This was done in two ways. A fourth army was assembled out of the growing hosts in France, and the Arras sector of the line given into its charge—a step which released a French army for the heroic contest before Verdun—while a series of attacks was delivered from the original British line, any of which might have been the beginning of an assault on a larger scale. The actions of the Bluff, of the Mound of St. Eloi, and of Vimy, were designed to show the enemy that in the northern line we were "ware and waking," and to pin the enemy reserves to the ground. Nor, it may be added, were the Germans slow to take up the challenge.

Mar. 2nd, 1916.

Indeed, the whole series of actions with which the remainder of this volume is concerned began with the German assault on February 12th on the Bluff, when the troops of the V British Corps, who held the line on the left of the Canadians, were driven from the position on the Bluff and the front-line trenches to the north. Preparations had been made for the recapture of the lost positions, and the advance took place on March 2nd. The Divisional Artillery of the 1st and 2nd Canadian Divisions[[5]] co-operated that day with the gunners of the V British Corps in a terrific bombardment of the ground to be taken. As a result of this fire a large section of the German front-line trenches and communication trenches north of the canal was reduced to ruins, and the successful assault of the British on the morning of March 2nd met with little resistance. The lost ground was regained and consolidated. This action was one of the first to demonstrate the increased blasting force of massed artillery, which became the standard weapon of offence on either side during the battles of the next five months. The continued piling up of munitions and guns during the preceding twelve months had begun to modify profoundly the tactics of the Western front, and it would be alike an error and an injustice to judge the performance of the infantry in the spring of 1916 by the standards of the previous year. The old British idea of a solid and immovable front line held almost entirely by the fire of a rifleman to a yard of trench, was beginning to give way in the stress of circumstances and the example of the French.

A line more lightly held by the aid of machine-guns and wire entanglements, and a greater disposition to yield or gain ground, were the signs of a new era. But chiefly the enemy's guns were our teachers, for their iron lips pronounced very conclusive arguments.

However, if the main work of the Canadians in the attack on the Bluff lay with the Canadian gunners, the infantry were by no means idle. They assisted the V Corps by a demonstration on their front, and by massing three battalions of the 4th Infantry Brigade behind their left flank to come to the aid of the British in the event of a counter-attack. All arms contributed to the frontal demonstration. In the early morning of March 2nd smoke-bombs were loosed from the trenches as though in prelude to an attack, and a great blare of musketry and machine-gun fire roared up and down the line. The Germans sprang to arms and hurried supports up their communication trenches into their lightly-held front line. It was for this that our field guns had been waiting, and with continued bursts of fire they ranged the denser masses opposite as they came crowding into the trenches. The retaliation of the German artillery was singularly ineffective, probably because their attention was now wholly occupied with the line further north. This operation produced one striking incident of ingenuity in warfare. At one point in the corps position the stream of the Douve, flowing rapidly with the winter rains, ran through our trenches and disappeared into the German line. This fact suggested to Capt. Costigan, D.S.O., of the 10th Battalion, a new method of alarming the Hun.

This enterprising officer suggested that a raft loaded with high explosive might be floated down the current and exploded in the enemy's lines.

The stream was, however, narrow, and, as anyone who has thrown sticks into a river will remember, the tendency of a floating object is to get stuck on some obstacle or corner on the way down. Capt. Costigan therefore proposed to accompany the raft himself until it was within certain reach of the objective. He and Corporal Witney came out of the trenches and carried the raft to the river. After floating down some distance, he found the stream continually obstructed by low overhanging boughs, and to avoid any chance of failure he continued to pilot his dangerous convoy to within thirty yards of where the German barbed wire, stretched across the channel, barred any further progress. Here he waited in the water until the light of a flare gave the signal for the general demonstration. The fuse was then lit and the load shot fair at the enemy's obstruction from a distance of thirty yards. The explosion was a very fine one, and so perturbed the gentle soul of the enemy that he fired off several concealed machine-guns, the existence of which the 10th Battalion had long suspected but the location of which they had never known. Writing in cold blood, it is easy to represent such a feat of arms as ordinary, but when one considers what the action really entailed, the exploit was heroic even as we count heroism to-day. It was something which an ordinary man could not have done and could not reasonably have been expected to do. The long stumble in the dark with sudden death in one's hands, the plunge into the icy stream, the physical struggle with the sweeping boughs and jutting bends, the swift drift down towards the enemy, and the calm waiting in the cold, dark water for the given signal, serve to show that the most romantic deeds of the hero of fiction can be matched and mastered in the battlefields of to-day.

That the whole demonstration was a success is witnessed by the following telegram from the V Corps:—

"SINCERE THANKS FOR YOUR MOST VALUABLE CO-OPERATION. SHOULD ENEMY RENEW COUNTER-ATTACK TO-MORROW AT DAWN OR LATER, HOPE YOU WILL AGAIN HELP US."

Mar., 1916.