Canada in Flanders, Volume II

by Baron Max Aitken Beaverbrook

On the following night, that of the 5th and 6th, it was decided to relieve the two sorely-beset companies of the 27th. Capt. Gwynn, of the 29th Battalion, was to take over from Capt. Meredith the left of the line, and Lieut. O'Brien, of the same regiment, was to relieve the company of the 27th on the right. It was during the concluding stages of this relief that the German attack took place. The blasting fire of our artillery had been well maintained on the German second and third line trenches, and it was supposed that this barrage[[3]] had proved effective in preventing any considerable force of the enemy reaching through to their own front line. This did not prove to be the case. The German 214th Battalion, with some units of the 216th, had—according to the accounts of prisoners—succeeded in passing through the barrage into the front line, from which they launched their assault.

On the night of the 5th, the Germans had dashed through the zone of our artillery fire in a succession of small parties in extended order, and had thus, by choosing their occasions, escaped with comparatively small casualties, and massed in strength within striking distance of our front. It may be said that throughout the action the Germans showed a far greater aptitude for fighting in small parties than is usual with them, and that they nowhere attempted the mass formation attack which has generally been a prelude to their defeat.

But while the Germans are forming up for the assault at dawn, we must return to the fortunes of the Canadians. The working parties are out for the second night in succession, and a strong second line trench with barbed wire entanglements has been constructed in front and south of the craters. Behind and north of the craters a third supporting line is being dug, while the reliefs of the 29th are struggling up through the delays of mud and barrage to reach the battered 27th.

Night, April 5th and 6th, 1916.

Capt. Gwynn, of the 29th, had already been informed that the left of his line would only be occupied by machine-guns, bombing, and sentry posts, and with some 40 men, picked out for these danger posts, he went on ahead of the remainder of his company and found Capt. Meredith near Bathurst Butts at 2 o'clock on the morning of the 6th. The position was rapidly becoming desperate. One of Capt. Meredith's subalterns, Lieut. Dunlop, had been out under a rain of shells to try to find the original line to the left, held by the 31st, and the posts holding it. He returned to say that he could find no vestige of either the trench or the posts. Everything had been wiped out; and two machine-guns and their crews perished with the exception of a single man, who crawled back wounded hours after. A party of the 31st who had made a similar attempt to keep connection from their right, returned with the same news. Under the circumstances, Capt. Meredith could supply no guides into the unoccupied chaos of shell-holes which represented his left, and the two officers having completed their relief in the small fraction of surviving trench, returned to the nearest telephone, at Fredericton Fort, to get orders from the Colonel of the 29th Battalion. It was at this point in the line alone that the telephone was working, and that only intermittently, in spite of the heroic conduct of the signallers in going out into the open again and again to repair the shattered wires. Lieutenant Browne of the 22nd (French Canadians), of the 4th Brigade, with his machine-gun party, remained behind with the 40 men of the 29th on the left of Bathurst Butts. The two officers and the men who had been relieved reached Fredericton Fort successfully at about 2.45 a.m., and found there several officers of the 27th, and also Lieut. O'Brien of the 29th, who was trying to relieve Lieut. Wilson's company of the 27th. Less fortunate than Capt. Gwynn, he had not succeeded in finding the officer he was to replace, but none the less he appears to have got his men somewhere near the trench he was to occupy. This place he found full of stray units, ration-carrying parties of the 27th, many of whom had lost their way, and having placed his men in position, he also returned to the telephone at Fredericton Fort in the hope of finding someone in authority.

The Canadian communication trench was by this time practically abandoned under heavy shell-fire. For the rest, then, one must conceive the remains of the front line as held, where there was any cover, by isolated groups of the 29th, intermingled here and there with men of the 27th who had not been relieved or who had missed their way, and with a gaping space on the left. Beyond this, the line on the left still held firm for the moment.

The 27th Battalion, the relief of which was by now more or less complete, had suffered a terrible experience. It had been almost continuously under heavy shell fire in hopeless trenches for about sixty hours, during which sleep, rest, or refreshment had been practically out of the question. Major Kitson had conducted the defence of the first line with skill and judgment, and the Company Commanders, Capt. Meredith, Lieut. McCaw, Lieut. Wilson, and their subalterns had shown great courage and coolness in the face of adverse circumstances. Lieut. R. E. N. Jones, of the same battalion, met a gallant death in the early morning of the attack in an attempt to keep touch with and collect the left of the regiment during the retirement. He went out into the open under a terrific fire and was killed almost instantly.

April 6th, 3 A.M.

It was by now three o'clock of a misty morning; and as the officers around the telephone dug-out discovered that the line was cut, and were taking counsel together, the German artillery preparation began.

The shelling—heavy but intermittent—rose to a roar and the night overhead became pandemonium, while the ground underneath shook with the concussion or dissolved under the explosions. Officers endeavoured to rejoin their units, but it most cases found it impossible, and every group turned to their official or natural leader for orders. It is easy for those whose experience of the movements of bodies of men is confined to reviews in peace time, or to the organisation of a big political demonstration, to consider that this state of affairs is not to be expected of an army. Such a view simply springs from ignorance of conditions. Not here was a broad plain, smiling in the sun, on which battalions could be moved with uniformity; or the familiar pavements, where every street turning is known to the marshals of the delegations; not here the frictionless chess-board of the war game, with its moves pondered silently long in advance. The ground on which to move is certain death; the shattered and almost impassable trenches; the vast distance away in time of any supports; the blindness in the sense of direction which affects nearly every man on unknown country in the dark; the line of craters behind and the noise of the shells overhead: these are the elements making up the picture of the situation which, on that April morning, the 6th Canadian Brigade had to face. The rifles and machine-guns on which armed men are accustomed to depend for their lives, were half-clogged and useless. The very position of the enemy was unknown. But the native hardihood of the race asserted itself; groups made up of every unit formed themselves for the struggle for existence, fought where they could and retreated or died when the choice became retirement or passive annihilation.