[CORPORAL FILIP KONOWAL, 47TH BATTALION]
The fighting about Lens in August, 1917, called for more individual dash and initiative on the part of the troops engaged than had been required before. The house-to-house fighting, the repeatedly isolated and difficult positions, the many knotty problems which required instant solution—all these combined to make leadership, whether of a section or a battalion, more arduous and responsible and, with it all, much more fascinating. Such fighting is after the hearts of most Canadians. As was expected, our men did well at it.
After the successful attack on Hill 70, incessant fighting was forced upon our troops to maintain the new positions. The enemy's bombardment was constant and intense. It was decided to continue the offensive and improve our line. The 10th Brigade was instructed to capture Green Crassier and the enemy's defences about this point, and accordingly the attack was arranged for the 21st, with two companies each of the 50th, 46th and 47th Battalions, the 47th Battalion on the right to attack through Cité du Moulin to the Lens-Arras Road and Alpaca Trench.
At 4.35 a.m. our men went forward, penetrating the immediate German barrage without hesitation, and moving as if on parade. The morning was bright and sunny, and our fellows got away in splendid style, though they were badly harassed by machine-gun fire from Green Crassier, a barren expanse of slagheaps and broken railway tracks on the right front. However, our smoke barrage was most effective, and the drums of blazing oil thrown upon the enemy's communication lines and attempted formations did much to take the heart out of his resistance. Crossing the Lens-Arras Road, the troops plunged into the ruined houses beyond, and stiff fighting, in cellars, long dark tunnels, and comparatively deserted outhouses, ensued. Many were the isolated heroic combats that took place, and many men were reported missing after the battle who had fought out their lives in some underground chamber.
Corporal Konowal was in charge of a mopping-up section. In fighting of this description it is an undecided point whether the original assailants or the moppers-up get most excitement. The main attack sweeps on; but in such a rabbit-warren of broken houses and tunnelled foundations many Germans and frequent machine-guns are left to be eliminated at some cost by our following waves. The buildings about the Lens-Arras Road proved difficult enough to clear. The main body of our troops had passed through and continued to the objectives beyond, but a couple of buildings still held Germans and German machine-guns, and there was heavy firing upon the rear of our advancing men. Entering one of these houses Konowal searched for the Germans, and finding no living traces of their occupation, dropped daringly into the cellar. Three men fired at him as he landed, but this he escaped unharmed. Then ensued a sanguinary battle in the dark, a mêlée of rifle fire and bayonets, with the odds three to one. Finally the scuffling ceased and Konowal emerged into the daylight—he had bayoneted the whole crew of the gun!
But this is all taken for granted in the business of mopping-up, and the corporal and his section continued their way along the road, every sense alert to locate the close rifle-crack that might betray the wily sniper. There was a large crater to the east of the road, and from the bodies of our good men before the edge it seemed obvious that a German machine-gun had been in position there. Halting his men, Konowal advanced alone. Upon reaching the lip of the crater he saw seven Germans endeavouring to move the ubiquitous machine-gun into a dugout. He opened fire at once, killing three, and then, charging down upon them, accounted for the rest with the bayonet.
These drastic methods rapidly concluded the clearing of their section of the line, and the corporal and his men moved on up to our new front, where the enemy was delivering heavy and incessant counter-attacks.
Heavy fighting continued throughout the night, and in the morning troops of the 44th Battalion, who were making an attack upon the Green Crassier, requested the aid of a party of the 47th in a raid upon a machine-gun emplacement in a tunnel about Fosse 4. Corporal Konowal was an expert in this subterranean fighting, and his party succeeded in entering the tunnel. Two charges of ammonal, successfully exploded, somewhat demoralized the German garrison, and then Konowal, dashing forward in the darkness with the utter disregard of his own safety he had displayed all through the fighting, engaged the machine-gun crew with the bayonet, overcoming and killing them all. Altogether this good fighting man killed sixteen men in the two days of the actual battle, and continued his splendid work until he was very severely wounded.
