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

by Frederic C. Curry

The effect of the "minenwerfer" was very local, however, owing to the thinness of the shell wall, but such men as it killed were not a pretty sight. Fortunately, too, the shells could be seen both by day and night, and rose to such a height before dropping that men could scamper for shelter from the threatened spot. But no dug-out could withstand its explosion, and a series of craters, eight or ten feet in depth and twelve feet in diameter, marked the "minenwerfer's" work.

Every battery that covered our area had, by the time winter was over, reported they had silenced "Minnie," but when we left that area months later she was still doing business at the old stand.

To relieve the monotony of this sort of thing the Canadian Corps organised a series of night raids on the German trenches.

The first, and most brilliant, of these was conducted by the 5th and 7th Battalions of the 2nd Brigade on a barricade or forward trench that had been constructed by the enemy near our old position opposite the Petite Douve Farm.

This raid was made on a villainous night blacker than Egypt during the plagues and raining as only Flanders can.

With faces blackened with charcoal, the raiding parties crept out to the enemy wire and cut it strand by strand, a process lasting several hours. During this time the cooks of one of the battalions carried out pannikins of hot tea to the men who were lying in the mud hacking at the wire.

Finally the path was reported clear except at one point where a deep ditch full of water could not be crossed, and at the appointed moment the raiding parties swooped in on the enemy trench.

Secure, as they thought, on such a vile night, the enemy were completely surprised, but put up a stubborn resistance. An officer and about thirty men were secured as prisoners, and where resistance was more determined the enemy was driven from his trench with bombs. Then on a given signal the raiders returned to their own trenches, bringing helmets, saw-tooth bayonets, and Mauser rifles as souvenirs of their midnight call.

By this time the alarm had spread through the German lines, and his artillery, in response to red signals shot up by men very lately deceased, began to pound their own trench, thus catching their own bombing parties, who, now the trench was only occupied by dead and wounded, had regained the barricade.

But we had another surprise awaiting them. A field-gun had been man-handled up to our front line and at point-blank range proceeded to blow the barricade to bits. This was done and the gun successfully withdrawn by a car from a motor-machine-gun battery, in spite of the fact that the first car sent for this purpose had to be hauled from the ditch into which it had skidded.