The Great War As I Saw It

by Frederick George Scott

It always happened that just when we were beginning to feel settled in a place, orders came for us to move. At the end of July we heard of the attack at the Somme. Rumours began to circulate that we were to go South, and signs of the approaching pilgrimage began to manifest themselves. On August 10th all my superfluous baggage was sent back to England, and on the following day I bid good-bye to my comfortable little hut at Hooggraaf and started to ride to our new Divisional Headquarters which were to be for the time near St. Omer. After an early breakfast with my friend General Thacker, I started off on Dandy for the long ride. I passed through Abeele and Steenvoorde, where I paid my respects at the Château, overtaking many of our units, either on the march or in the fields by the wayside, and that night I arrived at Cassel and put up at the hotel. The town never looked more beautiful than at sunset on that lovely summer evening. It had about it the spell of the old world, and the quiet life which had gone on through the centuries in a kind of dream. One did hope that the attack to the South would be the beginning of the end and that peace would be restored to the shattered world. On that day, the King had arrived on a flying visit to the front, and some of his staff were billeted at the hotel. The following day I visited the Second Army Headquarters in the Casino Building, and met some of our old friends who had gone there from the Canadian Corps. In the afternoon I rode off to St. Omer, little Philo running beside me full of life and spirits. It was a hot and dusty ride. I put up at the Hotel du Commerce, where I met several Canadian officers and many airmen. The next day was Sunday so I attended the service in the military church. After it was over, I went with a young flying officer into the old cathedral.

The service had ended and we were alone in the building, but the sunlight flooded it and brought out the richness of contrast in light and shadow, and the air was still fragrant with the smell of incense. My friend and I were talking, as we sat there, about the effect the war had had upon religion. Turning to me he said, "The great thing I find when I am in a tight place in the air is to pray to Jesus Christ. Many and many a time when I have been in difficulties and thought that I really must be brought down, I have prayed to Him and He has preserved me." I looked at the boy as he spoke. He was very young, but had a keen, earnest face, and I thought how often I had seen fights in the air and how little I had imagined that the human hearts in those little craft, which looked like tiny flies among the clouds, were praying to God for help and protection. I told him how glad I was to hear his testimony to the power of Christ. When we got back to the hotel, one of the airmen came up to him and said, "Congratulations, old chap, here's your telegram." The telegram was an order for him to join a squadron which held what the airmen considered to be, from it's exceeding danger, the post of honour at the Somme front. I often wonder if the boy came through the fierce ordeal alive.

It was pleasant to meet Bishop Gwynne and his staff once again. There was always something spiritually bracing in visiting the Headquarters of our Chaplain Service at St. Omer. On the Monday I rode off to our Divisional Headquarters, which were in a fine old chateau at Tilques. I had a pleasant billet in a comfortable house at the entrance to the town, and the different units of the Division were encamped in the quaint villages round about. After their experience in the Salient, the men were glad to have a little peace and rest; although they knew they were on their journey to bigger and harder things. The country around St. Omer was so fresh and beautiful that the change of scene did everyone good. The people too were exceedingly kind and wherever we went we found that the Canadians were extremely popular. There were many interesting old places near by which brought back memories of French history. However, the day came when we had to move. From various points the battalions entrained for the South. On Monday, August 28th, I travelled by train with the 3rd Field Company of Engineers and finally found myself in a billet at Canaples. After two or three days we settled at a place called Rubempré. Here I had a clean billet beside a very malodorous pond which the village cows used as their drinking place. The country round us was quite different in character from what it had been further north. Wide stretches of open ground and rolling hills, with here and there patches of green woods, made up a very pleasant landscape. I rode one day to Amiens and visited the glorious cathedral which I had not seen since I came there as a boy thirty-three years before. I attended the service of Benediction that evening at six o'clock. The sunlight was streaming through the glorious windows, and the whole place was filled with a beauty that seemed to be not of earth. There was a large congregation present and it was made up of a varied lot of people. There were women in deep mourning, Sisters of Charity and young children. There were soldiers and old men. But they were all one in their spirit of humble adoration and intercession. The organ pealed out its noble strains until the whole place was vibrant with devotion. I shall never forget the impression that service made upon me. The next time I saw the cathedral, Amiens was deserted of its inhabitants, four shells had pierced the sacred fane itself, and the long aisles, covered with bits of broken glass, were desolate and silent.

From Rubempré we moved to Albert, where we were billeted in a small house on a back street. Our Battle Headquarters were in the Bapaume road in trenches and dugouts, on a rise in the ground which was called Tara Hill. By the side of the road was a little cemetery which had been laid out by the British, and was henceforth to be the last resting place of many Canadians. Our battalions were billeted in different places in the damaged town, and in the brick-fields near by. Our chief dressing station was in an old school-house not far from the Cathedral. Albert must have been a pleasant town in pre-war days, but now the people had deserted it and every building had either been shattered or damaged by shells. From the spire of the Cathedral hung at right angles the beautiful bronze image of the Blessed Virgin, holding up her child above her head for the adoration of the world. It seemed to me as if there was something appropriate in the strange position the statue now occupied, for, as the battalions marched past the church, it looked as if they were receiving a parting benediction from the Infant Saviour.

The character of the war had now completely changed. For months and months, we seemed to have reached a deadlock. Now we had broken through and were to push on and on into the enemy's territory. As we passed over the ground which had already been won from the Germans, we were amazed at the wonderful dugouts which they had built, and the huge craters made by the explosion of our mines. The dugouts were deep in the ground, lined with wood and lighted by electric light. Bits of handsome furniture, too, had found their way there from the captured villages, which showed that the Germans must have lived in great comfort. We were certainly glad of the homes they had made for us, for our division was in the line three times during the battle of the Somme, going back to Rubempré and Canaples when we came out for the necessary rest between the attacks.

Looking back to those terrible days of fierce fighting, the mind is so crowded with memories and pictures that it is hard to disentangle them. How well one remembers the trips up the Bapaume road to La Boisselle and Pozières. The country rolled off into the distance in vast billows, and bore marks of the fierce fighting which had occurred here when the British made their great advance. When one rode out from our rear headquarters at the end of the town one passed some brick houses more or less damaged and went on to Tara Hill. There by the wayside was a dressing station. On the hill itself there was the waste of pale yellow mud, and the piles of white chalk which marked the side of the trench in which were deep dugouts. There were many wooden huts, too, which were used as offices. The road went on down the slope on the other side of the hill to La Boisselle, where it forked into two—one going to Contalmaison, the other on the left to Pozières and finally to Bapaume. La Boisselle stood, or rather used to stand, on the point of ground where the roads parted. When we saw it, it was simply a mass of broken ground, which showed the ironwork round the former church, some broken tombstones, and the red dust and bricks of what had been houses. There were still some cellars left in which men found shelter. A well there was used by the men for some time, until cases of illness provoked an investigation and a dead German was discovered at the bottom. The whole district was at all times the scene of great activity. Men were marching to or from the line; lorries, limbers, motorcycles, ambulances and staff cars were passing or following one another on the muddy and broken way. Along the road at various points batteries were concealed, and frequently, by a sudden burst of fire, gave one an unpleasant surprise. If one took the turn to the right, which led to Contalmaison, one passed up a gradual rise in the ground and saw the long, dreary waste of landscape which told the story, by shell-ploughed roads and blackened woods, of the deadly presence of war. One of the depressions among the hills was called Sausage Valley. In it were many batteries and some cemeteries, and trenches where our brigade headquarters were. At the corner of a branch road, just above the ruins of Contalmaison, our engineers put up a little shack, and this was used by our Chaplains' Service as a distributing place for coffee and biscuits. Some men were kept there night and day boiling huge tins of water over a smoky fire in the corner. A hundred and twenty-five gallons of coffee were given away every twenty-four hours. Good strong coffee it was too, most bracing in effect. The cups used were cigarette tins, and the troops going up to the trenches or coming back from them, used to stop and have some coffee and some biscuits to cheer them on their way. The place in the road was called Casualty Corner, and was not supposed to be a very "healthy" resting place, but we did not lose any men in front of the little canteen. The work had been started by the Senior Chaplain of the Australian Division which we had relieved, and he handed it over to us.

Under our Chaplains' Service the canteen became a most helpful institution; not only was coffee given away, but many other things, including cigarettes. Many a man has told me that that drink of coffee saved his life when he was quite used up.

In Contalmaison itself, there had once been a very fine chateau. It, like the rest of the village, survived only as a heap of bricks and rubbish, but the cellars, which the Germans had used as a dressing station, were very large and from them branched off deep dugouts lined with planed boards and lit by electric light.

The road which turned to the left led down to a waste of weary ground in a wide valley where many different units were stationed in dugouts and holes in the ground. Towards the Pozières road there was a famous chalk pit. In the hillside were large dugouts, used by battalions when out of the line. There was also a light railway, and many huts and shacks of various kinds. Pozières looked very much like La Boisselle. Some heaps or rubbish and earth reddened by bricks and brick-dust alone showed where the village had been. At Pozières the Y.M.C.A. had another coffee-stall, where coffee was given away free. These coffee-stalls were a great institution, and in addition to the bracing effect of the drink provided, the rude shack with its cheery fire always made a pleasant place for rest and conversation.

After Courcelette was taken by the 2nd Division, our front line lay beyond it past Death Valley on the slope leading down to Regina Trench, and onward to the villages of Pys and Miraumont. Over all this stretch of country, waste and dreary as it got to be towards the end of September, our various fighting units were scattered, and along that front line, as we pushed the enemy back, our men made the bitter sacrifice of life and limb. It was a time of iron resolve and hard work. There was no opportunity now for amusement and social gatherings. When one spoke to staff officers, they answered in monosyllables. When one rode in their cars, one had very fixed and definite times at which to start and to return. The army had set its teeth and was out to battle in grim earnest. It was a time, however, of hope and encouragement. When, as we advanced, we saw what the German defences had been, we were filled with admiration for the splendid British attack in July which had forced the enemy to retreat. If that had been done once it could be done again, and so we pressed on. But the price we had to pay for victory was indeed costly and one's heart ached for the poor men in their awful struggle in that region of gloom and death. This was war indeed, and one wondered how long it was to last. Gradually the sad consciousness came that our advance was checked, but still the sacrifice was not in vain, for our gallant men were using up the forces of the enemy.