When upon the morn in question,
Just about the break of day,
Word the Twenty-fifth was given
To make ready for the fray;
And they sprang up from their trenches
Like the wild lynx with a bound,
And they rushed without a falter
Right across the barrage ground;
And they fell upon the Germans
Like an avalanche of hail,
And the Teutons bent before them
Like the grain before the gale.
And with irresisting fury
They assailed the faltering Hun,
And before the day was over
Famous Courcellette was won.
Then let mothers tell their babies
Whom they nurse upon their breasts,
And the teachers tell the children
In our schools from east to west,
How at Courcellette’s fierce battle,
An undying name was made
By the Twenty-fifth battalion
Of the fighting fifth brigade.
VIMY RIDGE.
For days the cannon roaring
With loud incessant peal,
The terrane and the trenches
Had torn with lead and steel;
Which told the boys in khaki
Of fighting near at hand,
And eagerly all waited
The long wished for command.
Within the first line trenches,
The highland laddies lay,
Their thoughts were of their mothers
Or sweethearts far away;
Each one of them was thinking
Of home and native sod,
And like a Christian soldier
Had made his peace with God.
The morn broke dark and stormy
With hail and snow and sleet,
Which made for many soldiers
Ere night, their winding sheet;
The shrapnel bits were flying,
Like swarms of summer midge,
When Borden’s highland laddies
Charged up the Vimy Ridge.
On the top of this famed mountain,
Nearby the city Lens,
The enemy in dugouts
Lay like lions in their dens;
The mountain strong by nature,
The Germans stronger made
With cannon and with mortar,
On concrete bases laid.
And thousands of machine guns,
In their allotted place,
And thousands of their snipers,
With rifle and with brace;
And lines of barbed wire fencing
Of every strength and size,
And aught else which their science
Or cunning could devise.