Canada in Flanders, Volume II

by Baron Max Aitken Beaverbrook

The knoll of St. Elbi is in itself of no great magnitude. From the plateau which it crowns the ground drops suddenly to the south and the German second line trenches. But though it possesses this local advantage it is in its turn dominated both by the rise at Eikhof Farm some 1,000 yards to the east and by gun positions well back in the German line. This drawback was aggravated by the fact that, like most positions, such as Hooge or Hill 60, in the Ypres salient, it could be subjected to a converging fire from the front and either flank. The German observers could thus look north past the knoll, and watching any signs of the movements of our troops far behind the line, turn on them a rain of shells from at least three points of the compass. The Canadian Higher Command was compelled in consequence to order the dispositions of the troops accordingly. The divisional frontage was taken by only one brigade with two battalions in the advance positions. The centre and support battalion had to find cover farther back, while the reserve battalion was right back near Dickebusch nearly three miles away. Such a dispersion cannot but be disadvantageous. But the configuration of the ground would have been of less importance had there been no great concentration of German guns to face. Such a collection of heavy pieces takes days to assemble or disperse, and is not therefore to be looked for on the side of the defence. The enemy, ex hypothesi, should have been taken by surprise when the craters were blown up and the 3rd British Division attacked, and plenty of time given to the assailants to consolidate the new position before a great concentration of guns could be brought to bear on them. But this did not happen, by a simple piece of bad luck, as has been related in Chapter IV. In February the British Division holding the Bluff to the north of St. Eloi, just east of the Canal, and included in the subsequent Canadian position, had some trenches there snatched from them. They took the matter calmly; got up the heavy batteries, including even the monstrous 15-inch guns, blew the Bluff practically to pieces, and took back the lost ground on March 2nd. This performance caused keen irritation to the Germans, who looked round for the best spot on which to retaliate, and selected St. Eloi. The troops then who carried the new line, and the Canadians, who had to hold it, found a ready-prepared artillery concentration against them from the moment they started. The whole area was laid waste, and the old British line in the centre, and many of the support and communication trenches behind it, were rendered untenable.

Map—St. Eloi area

Depth then, not length, is the distinguishing feature of the section occupied by the 2nd Canadian Division. And here the third factor comes into play, the state of the soil. In war, distance, time, and energy are interchangeable terms. The interval between a line and its supports is not to be measured by the number of yards between them, but by the time it will take to traverse and by the amount of fatigue involved in the process. Undisturbed earth under rain forms mud, but in a country which is not marshy it can be crossed somehow. But earth disintegrated by high explosive and drowned in water becomes pulp. One can wade through water, or struggle over mud, but this stuff was neither. As men splashed from shell-hole to shell-hole—and the surface of the earth consisted of nothing else—they sank up to the armpits and could find no grip for their feet. One of the strongest men in the 2nd Division has declared that after sixty yards of this work he was incapable of going further.

To make new—or, worse still, to repair old—trenches out of this material was impossible. Add darkness for a night attack, and the picture is complete. Even by daylight, parties reported in the utmost good faith that they had reached such and such a point on the map, when, as a matter of fact, they had done nothing of the kind, for all the old landmarks had vanished. Yet it was on this information that schemes of attack had to be based.

Morning, April 6th, 1916.

On the morning of the 6th, as soon as the enemy attack was known of at Headquarters, a forward movement of the supports and reserves of the 6th Brigade began. Two companies of the 29th were already up with the 27th in the original British trenches and the new Canadian line beyond, and a bombing party followed them into the former position. The 28th occupied Voormezeele in the support centre line, where they were subjected to as severe a shelling as any experienced in the forward trenches. Two battalions, 18th (Western Ontario), commanded by Lieut.-Col. Wigle, and 21st (Eastern Ontario), under Lieut.-Col. Hughes, of the 4th Brigade, took their places at Dickebusch in reserve. Two counter-attacks were then organised. The attacks were to be simultaneous and converging. From the right of the line the bombers of the 27th and the 29th were to head an assault against Craters 2 and 3, which lay to the south-east of the original line. From the left-centre of the line, the bombers of the 28th and 31st Battalions were to re-occupy Craters 4 and 5, should these have been abandoned, moving in a south-westerly direction. The men of these two regiments had to come up from well behind St. Eloi on to ground with which they were utterly unfamiliar, and from which all landmarks had been blotted out. As they advanced through the half-ruined communications in the full light of day, the German observers caught a glimpse of them and a tremendous barrage of fire was turned on them. Dashing through this, they saw in front of them the outlines of two craters and immediately assumed that their objective was before them. No one knew at the time which craters on our left were in German hands, and as has been noted before, the 31st under Major Doughty, when they evacuated their forward position at the time of attack, were firmly convinced that they had seized Craters 4 and 5, whereas they had actually occupied Craters 6 and 7, and from these repulsed the assault.

It was into these two craters that the bombers of the two battalions broke, and found one still occupied by a party of the 31st, and the other abandoned under a rain of shells. They reported accordingly, and the original error was again confirmed in the minds of the Brigade. In the meantime, the raid on Craters 2 and 3 had come to grief. It was delivered across the open, where the only cover was shell-holes, in face of a sweeping machine-gun fire from the German redoubts in the craters, backed by their gunners behind their lines. To advance in the face of this hail of death was impossible, and finally the attempt was abandoned.

An attack organised for 1.30 a.m. on April 6th was postponed while our artillery bombarded the craters. All through the day the German barrage hardly lifted, but it was decided to make a new push against Craters 4 and 5, then supposed to be Craters 2 and 3, as soon as the dark descended. But at dusk the Germans themselves took the initiative for a moment. 6 P.M., April 6th, 1916. When the 31st had repulsed the attack at dawn on the 6th, they imagined that the surviving Germans had made a final retirement. This proved not to be the case; some 50 or 60 of them had flung themselves flat down in the shell-holes in front of Craters 6 and 7 and the trenches on our left, and had remained crouching there all day. As evening fell, they leapt up suddenly and charged the 31st. A withering rifle fire swept the enemy's groups, which faded out of existence. Some fell and some fled, but a few dropped back again into their shell-holes, and remained there during the night. The strain appears to have been too much for the nerves of the survivors. Driven mad by their position and the fire of our artillery, they leapt up again at dawn on the 7th, and with their rifles slung danced "like Red Indians," as an eye-witness observed, in front of the Canadian lines.