One stalwart French-Canadian, Arseneau by name, who had often faced wild animals in the backwoods, burning with ardour, could not be restrained from leaping up on the improvised parapet and repeatedly emptying his rifle, before the enemy could recover from his astonishment. His captain tells me that no fewer than eight Germans fell to this man's marksmanship alone in that swift encounter. When it was over, at least one hundred of the enemy slain lay on the ground. Afterwards the officer mentioned shepherded his men into a section of trench, he himself spending the whole of the ensuing night perambulating the trenches, directing defences, ministering to and encouraging and directing his men. It was truly an astonishing feat of physical endurance.
"We had lost so many," he said, "I felt I ought to be on deck as long as I could crawl." He was still giving orders when the stretcher-bearers lifted him out and bore him away to the field hospital.
A gallant youth in his twenty-fourth year was Captain Cotton, son of a Major-General, sometime Inspector-General of the Canadian Forces. Cotton was ordered to take two machine-guns and dig them in in such a manner in the front line that they would enfilade the enemy's trenches on the left. If the Germans rushed his own position, he was to disable his guns and retire with his men. After fighting valiantly for a time, the enemy charged, whereupon Cotton, instead of retiring, coolly hauled both guns out of their emplacements and turned them on the advancing Germans. He and his men continued firing until all were slain, and lay a heap of mangled flesh about their guns.
On the edge of the craters the bodies were seen of a stalwart Sergeant-Major of the Mounted Rifles and two privates of the Princess Patricia's. Lying around them and beneath them were the bodies of no fewer than twelve Germans whom they had slain with the bayonet.
By half-past five o'clock the enemy had penetrated and possessed themselves of about a mile of our front line trenches in the middle of the arc they had attacked with such demoniac force. The trenches south of Hooge for 1,000 yards we still held, and also the front east of Hill 60. After nightfall the Germans, renewing their bombardment, pushed on 700 yards further towards Zillebeke, and proceeded to entrench themselves firmly. For the moment their artillery had won them an advantage, but the price they had paid was at least as terrible as our own--how terrible we shall not know until the close of the War, and the German official records or the German survivors of this battle speak and tell us.
(Photograph--street in Ypres)
I write in haste, surrounded by the terrible evidences of a bloody struggle. It would be impossible within the limits of time and space to recount even a tithe of the outstanding deeds of heroism of yesterday's battle, which waged without cessation until nine at night. Albeit one more incident I must relate. It is the story of the Rev. Gilles Wilken, a parson from Medicine Hat, on the Bow River. At the outbreak of war Wilken flung aside his surplice and enlisted as a private. He came to England with his battalion, where his talent for ministration and good works could not be concealed, and he was promptly, when a vacancy occurred, appointed chaplain. Having on this day, in Sanctuary Wood, done all he could for the dead and dying, Wilken felt it his duty to strike a blow of sterner sort for his country. He seized a rifle, wielding it with accuracy and effect as long as his ammunition lasted, and then went after the Germans with a bayonet. After one particularly fierce thrust the weapon broke. Whereupon this astounding parson, baring his arms, flew at one brawny Boche with his fists, and the last seen of him he was lying prone and overpowered.
The outstanding feature of the day was, however, not the numerous traits of individual valour. It is the marvellous tact and moral impetus of the officers and non-commissioned officers, and the discipline and cohesion of the men which I find evokes most praise. When one was struck down and unable to give or receive orders, another took his place automatically, and was obeyed implicitly and instantly. In one battalion only two officers survived. In some other battalions the losses have been very severe. One lost three-quarters of its strength. But the morale of all ranks was unimpaired, and the troops, who had endured this day an experience which might well weaken the purpose of the strongest and stoutest, were fit and ready at dawn on the morrow to undertake a counter-attack.
II.