From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade

by Frederic C. Curry

Here we were in a fix, as the men would not enter the place till we hunted up that long-suffering individual the interpreter. Then we found the placard to be only a ruse on the part of the unsophisticated peasantry to avoid having troops billeted there.

Having been found out and beaten at this game, Madame produced a sheet of paper she called a "reclamation," for some straw she claimed had been stolen by the preceding troops, and while she and the interpreter harangued over this we stowed our men away and sought our own billets a little distance up the lane.

At Calonne we received newspapers telling of the starting of the French offensive in the Artois district and prophesying an attack on our part to co-operate with them. We got out our maps and saw we were quite close to Neuve Chapelle, and as the Aubers Ridge—the great natural barrier to Lille—formed the obvious point to attack, we were not greatly surprised when a day or two after arriving at this peaceful little village we again took the route—this time toward Neuve Chapelle. We had heard the guns drumming along the Aubers Ridge all the day before during church parade service (May 9th), and were, on the whole, rather disappointed when after a few miles' march we turned off the road into a farm near "le Cornet Malo" and lay there in the mud all day. Some of the Lahore Division passed us on their way into the affair, the Indian gunners sitting on their limbers like statues.

It was rather a wretched day we spent in this farm. A heavy rain had turned the orchard in which we lay into a "bit of a bog," and all the straw we could buy or steal from the inhabitants could not keep us out of the mud. Here, too, we found the first instance of friction between the troops and the civilian populace, and the old lady made no bones about telling us how unwelcome we were. She opened hostilities by taking the rod from the pump so that we could not fill our watercart, and the troops retaliated by stealing bundles of unthreshed wheat. This was speedily put a stop to (and paid for) by the officers, and, for a while, peace reigned supreme while a thriving trade was done in coffee at two sous a cup and beer at three sous a glass.

Then some of the officers, seeing a lot of freshly-baked bread in a room just off the kitchen, offered to buy some. To our surprise the old woman started to wave a knife around dangerously and screamed: "You take my wheat, you take my water, and now you won't even leave me my bread! I would rather the Germans had come; they at least pay for what they take!"

As we had just paid her for the straw we thought this was going a little too far, and F——, who had a fine taste for sarcasm, waved his coffee-cup eloquently in the direction of the two slatternly girls that were peddling the coffee to the soldiers through the window, and said "What? With all these beautiful daughters," and then continued with a graphic description of the horrors in Belgium.

This quieted the old lady down, but we were not sorry to leave there and shift to billets further up the road that night. It was the only instance we encountered of our being unwelcome in France, and the billet we occupied that night, although one of the filthiest houses we came across, was marked by a much more cordial spirit.

We were fortunate to get into this farm, as two of the companies had to bivouac, there being only accommodation for the staff and two companies in the area. The matter was decided by lottery, the major being lucky enough to draw a long straw.